if you like it then you should've built a brand on it

a little over one month ago i started working on this SEO email newsletter about building a brand.

since that time the all-knowing, gently glowing Sun that we all worship and love has traveled 359,498,031.4166666667 miles through space and time i did the MATH!

but not us, we're chained to the same desk, endlessly reading stories about SEO and watching TikTok when we become lifted by the wave of existential hopelessness generated becaue it's day 10,371 of rising each morning and performing the rituals of meaninglessness that is our job like checking our email in Outlook and responding in slack finally crests and threatens to break--

WHOOPS!

jumped the tracks there and got a little bit off topic.

our lives are amazing.

slack is cool

the sun is a brutal harbinger of our inevitable fiery end

THIS IS A NEWSLETTER ABOUT SEO

News and Updates

Here it is, this week's (month's) shitposting memes for you to click on so ConvertKit knows you read my newsletter and makes my metrics look goated AND so I don't "resend" this to you in three-to-five days because it says you didn't interact with my email because you black email trackers like me...

In other news

I've been doing a lot of internal work building an SEO business on an amazing, one-word domain name that I shared in a previous newsletter, and which I will let you know exactly when it's ready for primetime.

If you love beautiful, human-written content with heart and a point of view, or links that won't make you cringe and hope no one actually looks at your link profile, you will love the thing I'm building.

This isn't really news but whatever

Advise community is 10/10 one of my fave places on the internet. Some really cool shit happening over there. Our next AMA (with Jacky Chou and myself) is on August 1st at noon.

I may be biased but you can be biased AND right, so... I think you should join, it's $119/mo.

Skip the application process by clicking this link, which is fine because I already know you're a smart entrepreneur we'd love to have in the community because you read this amazing newsletter...

Now, onto the main stuff:

Wow building a god damned brand is hard nobody should do try and do it

Just kidding.

It's absolutely worth doing if you want to build the Bryan Johnson of businesses (you know, except for the part where got Long Covid and aged a bunch).

One of the best organic traffic strategies you can have is to not be super thirsty for organic traffic.

It's like how when you're younger and you're not in a relationship but you're desperate to be loved you give off absolute shit vibes, but when you're emotionally taken care of and in a healthy relationship, you got that confidence, you get more romantic interest than you ever had before.

Not that *I* ever had that desperate edge:

hs senior photo ^

still got it bitch:

Anyway.

I've been building out a side project since January 2023 so I've been a bit obsessed with this brand shit.

What is this project?

It's a small press, publishing fiction books about death and other cool shit. It takes all of my spare money and attention. As a business, it's a 0/10, but I don't need it to be a 10/10 yet. I can play it slow for now.

Why am I doing this?

Not *just* because I'm stupid (starting a small press is famously a terrible business idea, money black hole, takes 10,000ccs of work). If I was going to get all Tim Ferriss philosophical--Ferrissophical, obviously--I would tell you that if I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd spend most of my time and new-found riches building this publishing company.

I was like "damn, one day when I retire or whatever I want to have my own publishing company" but then I just said FUCK IT, YOLO I'm gonna do it now...

I love it. I love the work we do.

Now I'm gonna share some metrics of how things have been going on the SEO/traffic side of things:

Search Console Graph (year):

Analytics Graph (year):

Traffic Sources:

direct - 44.6%
search - 24.1%
social - 16%
links - 10.6%
other: - 5.24%

That's directly from analytics, but look at this Similar Web graph of our traffic sources:

Keep in mind, almost zero sales come from organic traffic at this point. Word of mouth and social is where it's at.

But of course I don't want that to be the case forever.

Compare that traffic source breakdown with an affiliate site or info site where search traffic is at 98%:

YOU GOT NO BRAND, SON.

What tf is building a brand anyway?

I asked several SEO influencers about this, but they're either too busy being successful SEO influencers *or* my OWN brand is anti-establishment, so cutting edge, so brilliant that it sparkles in their eyes from the Mozcon stage with the power of A THOUSAND DYING SUNS and they are afraid to even open an email from me lest they are blinded for life.

...It's one of those two.

However, ONE person got back to me: Tim Soulo, from Ahrefs.

Here's what he said in response to what does it mean to build a brand?

The way I understand it, "build a brand" consists of two building blocks.The first one is "being known" or "exposure." The more people have seen your brand - the more you are "known."

This can easily be achieved by pumping money in advertising to get more eyeballs onto your brand.

The second one is your reputation and what exactly you're known for.

This one is much harder to control as every interaction with your brand/company/product/content will contribute to it.

No one wants to be widely known for an awful product or bad customer experience, right?

So "building a brand" isn't really the responsibility of the marketing team only. The entire company is responsible for it.

Makes sense.

I also asked this (beautiful, amazing) email newsletter audience several weeks ago what does it mean to build a brand. Here are the answers:

I'd say build the community first ... and by that I mean FIND the community first, or borrow one then turn it into the kindling to build a big brand fire around.

Find the people, speak to them in a language they can hear. Then listen when they speak back. That's how you get started building a brand.

Easier said than done!

- George

Building a brand means (to me) creating a product or service that does not cease to exist when I meet my creator. Reeking of delusions of grandeur, perhaps - Steve Jobs got it right with Apple.

- Theo

Building a brand involves creating a unique identity, reputation, and emotional connection with the target audience through consistent messaging, visuals, and experiences across various online platforms, promoting trust, loyalty, and … making people come back for what you have to offer.

- Germans

I've come to terms that it's very much a long, long-term strategy. Ain't gonna happen over 1 yr, 3 yr or 5... maybe by 5 you have decent footing.

But a brand, really and truly it comes down to how you make people feel through your work. Since a brand is what people would know you for, it helps when you're drawing from multiple sources to mesh together an idea or using concepts from a different industry to communicate a perspective.

- Peter

I would say building a brand is the same as building a business. Something that doesn’t just rely on the latest trick or flash in the pan, short term money grab. An actual business that solves a problem, helps people, makes the world (or internet) a better place, etc. May require you putting some money into and reinvesting profits back into for a while because you see it as a long term play that will be around for years. As you build with this type of mindset, I feel like you become less concerned about one particular source of customers/revenue/traffic/etc. To me, there is more freedom involved in building a brand, and less chance of your emotions being whipsawed by Google because your entire life and well being are not solely in the big’s hands. People will find brands they love.

- Ryan

Have a look, a face, and something to say. Building a brand is sort of like building a human, or a pet. People need something to relate to. So, it needs to have similar traits. Something to look at, something to hear. And that needs to make them feel something. Figure out what that something is and work backwards.

- Jen

Lotta abstract concepts there, but I think building a brand is a fairly abstract concept.

Like I said, I've been thinking about this for a while as I try and build a TWO brands of my own. Here's how I'm approaching it:

1 - Your brand has to DO something

SOMETHING!

Sell me some bone broth.

Teach me about paleontology.

Produce the scariest god damned zombie stories on the planet.

If all your brand DOES is serve me ads or link me to Amazon: *buzzer sound*

That's not doing something. That's just being the world's most annoying middleman. (And no hate to the player on that one, I'm just being real with you--I've earned a lot of money selling sites where I was the world's most annoying middleman for CBD/cannabis shit).

Yes, if you're a Forbes or a WebMD or something and you've already ESTABLISHED a brand, plus you got a bunch of what people call EEAT with a 200-deep writers bench, okay, sure. You can give my computer screen ringworm with your ads and still be a brand because you did OTHER things besides that.

If your main shit is that you repurposed an aged domain and you rank for 200,000 keywords and have 2 inches of readable space in between all the ads... that ain't it.

2 - Your brand has to stand for something or mean something

Basecamp has a pretty well known post about your brand defining itself by identifying an "enemy."

One bonus you get from having an enemy is a very clear marketing message. People are stoked by conflict. And they also understand a product by comparing it to others. With a chosen enemy, you’re feeding people a story they want to hear. Not only will they understand your product better and faster, they’ll take sides. And that’s a sure-fire way to get attention and ignite passion.

I think you can and SHOULD take a similar stance as a brand (maybe not a confrontational--I can see how that could work well if you're creating a project management app in a cutthroat space, but maybe tone down the conflict a bit when it comes to brand-building).

Brand building has been on my mind a lot lately, as I'm working to build a new service-based business in the SEO space (nbd, just trying to stake out my own little plot of land on one of the world's most overcrowded spaces) with my Ranks.com brand -- launching "SOONISH!" Like how this is a "WEEKLY" newsletter. lolcry

Anyway, as someone interested in publishing (human-written books) and as someone who has already had an entire ass-full of shitty AI content pushed at him on blogs, in emails, TikTok, LinkedIN and everywhere else, I'm extremely pro-human-written content.

This doesn't mean I don't think there's a place for AI in SEO/marketing, but life is short and there's already so much REALLY GOOD content that exists and so much being created everyday, there is literally no time to read shitty AI content.

So, love it or hate it, but Ranks.com is 100% focused on beautiful, engaging human-written content with heart and with an original point of view.

You want cheap AI content, go somewhere else, buddy. This service is for people that ACTUALLY CARE about their site and what it says to the world.

So Ranks.com, as a brand, will be very clear about what it stands for in the context of what it delivers.

What does YOUR brand stand for?

3 - Your brand has to be KNOWN for something

What's your style?

What's your voice?

What's your viewpoint?

If you've read this newsletter for longer than one issue, could you articulate what those are for me?

I hope so. I haven't put a ton of time into building Rank Theory into a brand outside of putting my entire bloody heart and guts into each issue, but in doing that I think I've built something distinctive. Where else are you gonna go for longform, curse-filled, meme-tastic SEO information from someone doing an ill-advised amount of stupid shit that lends itself to writing about to help inform others?

And I'm not just talking about a brand's slogan.

Have it your way, burger king

I'm loving it, mcdonalds

Live más, taco bell

(god, am I just hungry? Maybe I'm not mad about brands, maybe I'm just hungry...)

With my small press, we are leaning in to being a bunch of gothy weirdos that like books about death and other specific sub-genres.

I also publish a fiction magazine called The Deadlands that publishes poetry, nonfiction, and fiction all about death, dying, the afterlife, the underworld, etc.

If someone asks on Twitter "hey I have an absolutely bonkers retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice, where should I submit it for publication?"

Probably two out of three people or even THREE out of three people (that know about our magazine) would say "definitely Deadlands."

Bringing it back to SEO, we don't rank for a lot of keywords (because we're not trying to--people don't discover short fiction by searching for "what short fiction should I read"), so we go hard on social where word of mouth is big.

We're building a reputation--that is a part of building a strong brand. Eventually we'll rank for a bunch of gorgeous keywords that will help us find our audience, but it's not where we're starting.

Wrapping it up

Really, "building a brand" is just one single, delicious ingredient on your business sandwich, tangentially related to SEO.

But it's something you should FOR SURE be thinking about.

It's like they all say:

The best time to start focusing on building a brand so it can help your SEO was 10 years ago.

The second best time was 9 years, 364 days, 23 hours, and 59 minutes.

The THIRD best time was 9 years, 364 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes.

The fourth best, let's see... 9 years...

you get it. It's a stupid saying.

But you should start focusing on that shit right now.

Thank you and goodnight.

Work With Me

Don't got much for you right now, but if you've got a business looking for premium SEO strategy and consultation, I got you. Just hit reply.

we did it

another great newsletter written and, if you made it this far, read.

what did you think about this one?

the most generous thing you can do after reading this is hit reply and say what's up, tell me if you enjoyed this newsletter, and whatever else.

it's a lonely business, and yes, I'm a hermit, but I also like to hear from people via the relative safety of my email inbox.

PS next (month?) newsletter I think will be a deep dive into writing content that ranks, a stupid thing I am obsessed with.

until then...

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