Desmond says: “For mine, it's about digital PR and link earning over link building.

What I'm seeing a lot (also from my own experience), is that a lot of SEO specialists are focusing on buying links instead of earning links or implementing digital PR.

What I would really recommend is for everybody to build a story – a very interesting story with compelling content – that people want to share, instead of pushing your content constantly.”

What are the key elements that need to be incorporated in this story?

“From my own experience (because everything is based on my own agency experience, of course) what we do is, you need to have newsworthy content. Is it interesting for their platform to write about?

For example, if you're reaching out for a partnership with a platform that's focusing on entrepreneurs, then the content must be newsworthy for entrepreneurs, but also the quality has to be on a certain level. High quality, of course. That is one thing.

The story must be unique, but it also must resonate with the core values of your company – and also, to make it even better, it must resonate with the core values of the platform.”

Okay so, depending on where you're publishing it, it needs to resonate and be appropriate for the style of communication medium that you're publishing on.

Does that mean that it should be published everywhere?

“No, no. That's the thing. Don't publish your content everywhere. Make it very tailored based on each platform.

Instead of reaching out to everybody, select 5 to 10 media platforms within your niche that are writing about stuff that you have knowledge about and where you can have added value for their target audience. What I always say when I reach out to them or when they reach out to me is, ‘How can we have an added value for a target audience?’

But also, always show that you understand their target audience and give examples of, ‘This will be very interesting for your target audience. Check on our website or check on other relevant platforms.’

What I mostly do is – let's say we have a platform about finance, and we are reaching out to platforms that are writing about software. Then we would say, ‘Hey, check this interesting article that we also have written for another software company.’ But, in addition, what happens is that most of those partnerships that we create, they're also placed on social media.

I will also refer to their social media because traditional link building, for example, is more often only on their blog. Going for partnerships, they will also share it on their own channels through social media, which is also essential for SEO, in my opinion.”

Initially, I was thinking that you might be talking about an expanded version of the About page that really details what the company is about and the story of the company, and perhaps publishing that elsewhere in the form of different social media posts.

But it sounds like you're also talking about incorporating what your values are and what your company does as part of other posts that you make online and other communications that you make online.

“Indeed. That's perfect, what you're saying. To give you an example, I have my own online marketing agency in Amsterdam. Besides the fact that we are an SEO and advertising-focused agency, we are also focusing a lot on diversity.

For example, I'm writing a lot about cognitive diversity, and I also did a TED talk about this topic. So, I also explain to the different partnerships that I work with (especially platforms where a lot of entrepreneurs are there, and also to our audience, of course) how you can use cognitive diversity to increase your company's revenue or to grow your company.

We're an agency, but we're not talking about the benefits of SEO, which you see in most traditional articles. We're more talking about, ‘We have grown from 0 to 13 people. We find cognitive diversity very important – the idea that everybody thinks differently – and we also accept that people think differently. How have we implemented this as a company?’

Then it's also easier to get partnerships like this because you're really bringing something.”

Does that mean that you're trying to do business with other businesses that have the same values as you so, for instance, businesses that that are also keen to do something about diversity as well?

“Yes, indeed. That's perfect, but also, in the beginning, when I started just reaching out to tell my story, some companies would say, ‘That doesn't fit with our platform’, and that's also okay.”

The flip side of that, of course, is that you might be talking to companies that don't have diversity or something else that you're passionate about as one of their core values, so it might not resonate with them.

Do you have concerns that saying that particular values are important for you might turn off other people?

“Yes, of course, but I really believe in cognitive diversity – so thinking differently. Also, multiple pieces of research from places like Harvard have shown that companies that are cognitively diverse outperform companies where everybody has the same way of thinking.

It also sparks the target audience, and we work with companies that want to be market leaders. If you say, ‘I don't want to outperform other companies because I don't want to think differently’, then you automatically don't even fall into our target audience.”

I'm keen to really understand how you make your brand story interweave with the rest of your content marketing efforts.

In terms of keyword targeting, for example, do you still have marketing-type blog posts as your primary focus, with marketing-type keyword phrases that are relevant to your agency as the core terms that you're trying to attract, but you have your story as part of that? Or do you actively try and attract audiences that are searching for keywords in relation to your brand values?

“That's a good question. I think it's both. On our website, we have marketing-related use cases, but also blogs about, let's say, how to implement SEO for Shopify and the best practices.

But our outreach and our digital PR strategy is more focused on the core values and thinking, ‘I want to be market leader so, to become market leader, I want to think differently. I want to be a step ahead of everybody.’”

What about if you're an SEO working for a larger organisation and you're not sure if your organisation has any distinct values?

How do you go about assisting with the creation of those values and, at the same time, trying to keep the majority of people on board?

“That's a good question. I believe that every company has its own values and its own way of being distinct from others. If you can’t show the way that you're different from your direct competitors, why would customers buy from you?

What we do is, we organise a strategy session where we sit together and we discuss, ‘What are the pain points of your customer? Who is your customer?’

I think that's the first step. Who is your ideal customer? What are their pain points? What are their needs? What are the substitutes for what you are offering? And then, based on that, you will come up with, ‘Okay, they find this important. This is what you're good at. Let's match that.’”

I like that. You start off with a customer in mind and, to a certain degree, hone your values to reflect what's likely to appeal to your ideal target customer.

“Indeed. The fun thing is that I started my SEO career as a link builder, so I really know all the ins and outs of link building. At some point, in the beginning, what I already started doing differently was building relationships.

If you are very transactional and, if person A has a platform, you’re just going to buy their link for 500 euros, you don't build a relationship – or, you build a relationship, but it's very transactional. But you could say, ‘Hey, I can help you to get more traffic. I can help you to have really next-level content.’

I always also ask, ‘How do people reply when you post on social or below your articles?’ That also really helps because if they say, ‘People reply very well and they go on to share it on LinkedIn and other socials’, that really helps us with the article but it also shows that we are really adding value because if somebody was doubting our content they would never share it on other platforms.”

You mentioned link building, and the thing about link building is it's much easier to tie a metric to it: How many links have you built? What kind of impact has it had on your rankings?

With building a brand by having values and telling a story, it's harder to be tangible with that. How do you measure the success or the impact of telling your story and sharing your values with people?

“That's a good question. Let's use my own agency as an example. A lot of different people reach out to me through LinkedIn or start following me on LinkedIn. That is one thing: people start following the LinkedIn account for the agency, so you're also seeing that growing. You can see it in terms of referral traffic. These are the main metrics.

To be honest, I don't really look into the direct impact on the keywords. When I have looked into it, though, I see that we are really growing in terms of rankings on competitive keywords because we're really building a brand.

An important one that I almost forgot, which I really monitor, is the amount of people who are looking for my name, but also the amount of people who are looking for our brand name. In the case of my agency, DGTLbase, I'm really seeing that that is growing.”

How often do you hone your story? Because a brand is, to a certain degree, a living organism, in that it's not something that stands still. It changes all the time.

How do you ensure that your brand is relevant and as up-to-date as possible? Do you actually sit down every few months and define what your brand is about and what its values are?

“Yes, indeed. What we do is we have a coach, a business coach, and we have a lot of people around us who share, ‘This is what we stand for as an agency’.

Let's say every year or every 6 months, we really sit down, do an offsite, and look into, ‘Where do we stand in the market?’ but also, ‘What do we stand for?’ and ‘What are our core values? Is it still resonating with what we're already bringing out to the market?’

One of the next things that we're now working on is, every quarter, we ask the team, ‘How happy are you within the company? How safe do you feel?’ and a lot of other stuff.

One of the things that we're also going to integrate is, ‘Are we living by our own principles?’, and that's also part of the brand. What we are sharing outside, are we also living by that?”

You also said, ‘Where do we stand in the market?’

Do you actually benchmark your brand values against your competitors and try and get some understanding of what their values are?

“Yes. Based on looking at the market, that's how we saw that, on this point, we are really different.

It was also just talking with other agency owners. You speak a lot with each other, and then you ask, ‘What do you stand for?’ and they would say, ‘I stand for this.’ and I might say, ‘Oh, it's funny that you're saying that because I also find that you guys really stand for cognitive diversity.’

We first started as a full-service agency. At some point, we said, ‘We're only going to do advertising, SEO, and analytics. We pitched that to clients, and they were like, ‘We thought that you were already a search agency focused on advertising and SEO.’ I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we didn't do something very well with the branding.’

A great brand knows when to say, ‘No, we don't do that. This is what we do an exceptional job at and, if you want something else, go to this other person, they can help you instead.’

“Indeed.”

You've shared what SEO should be doing in 2024. Now let's talk about what SEO shouldn't be doing. What's something that's seductive in terms of time, but ultimately counterproductive? What's something that SEO shouldn't be doing in 2024?

“That's a very good question. What I would go for is something that I also did back in the day, and I'm still receiving emails about: focus on directories. I think you're aware of what directories are?”

Yes, absolutely. I was just actually thinking as you were saying that, ‘Does DMOZ still exist?’ because that was one of the first directories online.

“True. I would really say, focus on the other stuff that I mentioned. Focus on link earning and focus on building a good digital PR strategy for your client instead of focusing on directories because you can get a lot of cool partnerships and relationships, but also quite cool results.

There are a few results that I'm very proud of. For example, for one client we got the link on Microsoft.com, but also on Bloomberg, Meshed, Tech Times, and stuff like that. That's very cool to achieve, as an SEO specialist.”

Desmond Boateng is Co-Founder and SEO Director at DGTLbase, and you can find him over at DGTLbase.com.