"Less is more."

After 5 years in the SEO industry…

Nothing tends to surprise me much anymore…

But I still see a lot of SEO agencies and brands on Twitter doing this.

And most of them either never make it to the top of the SERPs or… they eventually get slapped with a Google penalty.

You see…

A vast majority of people in the SEO industry think that “doing MORE” is always better.

They think to themselves and say: 

“Hey, if I build MORE backlinks and post MORE blog posts then… I’ll outrank my competitors.”

So, they hop in their comfy chair, fire their laptop up, and waste HOURS and probably even DAYS of their time building hundreds of links and posts per month.

In the hopes that they’ll someday…maybe just someday… outrank their competitors.

But in reality…

We all know how this plays out.

Now…

Personally, I’m of the belief that “less is more.” 

I’d rather write 4-5 really really good blogs that are:

1. Relevant to the client's money pages 

2. Matches their brand style and language 

3. And lastly, resonates with their existing audience and even appeals to a newer audience.

Than publish 1800 AI-written blogs that aren’t even edited or reviewed.

Too soon? 

The same applies to link building.

Depending on the size of the brand, we usually build anywhere from 5 - 15 links per month.

But…

If you’re one of those people who builds $10 Fiverr links (and I hope you aren’t one of those people)  then…you’ve seen those deals where you can get 500 links for $10. 

But, as you know, these links will sink your ship like the Titanic.

Because those links ABSOLUTELY suck! 🤮 

Using Fiverr is one of the worst things that you could do to your site.

Sure, they’re cheap but… they’ll get your site penalized.

And if you’re serious about building a website, why outsource it to the cheapest vendor? 

So

So, DON’T use Fiverr to build backlinks – stay as far away from it as you can.

Anyway…

We usually spend $100-400 per link for our clients, depending on the site metrics, link placement, and our budget, of course. 

But we’ve spent more, upwards of $1000 in several cases, and we’ll do it again.

But every single link that we build for our clients is evaluated via a five-step quality assurance (QA) process. We check the domain’s authority, traffic trends, top-ranking pages, backlink profile, and ratio of backlinks to external links.

Now…

The reason why we build fewer links is because of this QA process.

You always want to prioritize quality over quantity.

If a potential site fails any of these 5 steps, we don’t build it – simple.

If we built a link every single time we got a positive response from our cold email campaigns, we’d probably build 4-5x the number of links each month. 

But we’d also lose half our business in a matter of months because brand sites would tank.

This QA process plays a critical role in 1) the results we get and 2) the trust that brands place in us, which is why we have such good relationships with all of them. 

So… in conclusion:

If you think doing more is going to be the answer to all your problems then you’re mistaken.

10 high-quality blogs is far better than 100 low-quality blogs

10 high-quality links are far better than 100 low to medium-quality links

Now…

An important point of clarification – if you have the capacity to produce 15 high-quality blogs or links, do that, of course. 

But don’t sacrifice quality for the sake of volume.

In my experience — at least in the eCommerce world — less is truly more.

If you want a winning SEO strategy that makes you a shit ton of money and outranks your competitors then you might want to watch this video:

Until next time,

Kai Cromwell