Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Deepak Shukla: Ranking No.1 In Life & On Google | E16

Episode Date: February 5, 2019

Do you even SEO? Still playing by rules you heard 5 years ago? Well, ya better step it up because all the #youngandprofiters are doing it! In this episode, we chat with Deepak Shukla, career coach and founder of the award-winning SEO agency, Pearl Lemon. Deepak has lived a lot of life in his short 33-years. He was an up-and-coming rapper, started several businesses, he was trained as a British soldier, backpacked through over 50 countries and the list of his extraordinary experiences go and on! Tune in to find out why randomness is your best strength and hear Deepak's best personal lessons and SEO tips to rank number one in life and on Google, Youtube and more! Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of YAP is sponsored in part by Shopify. Shopify simplifies selling online and in-person so you can focus on successfully growing your business. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com slash profiting. Hey guys, Young and Profiting Podcast has just launched the App Society on Slack. It's a cool community where listeners can network and give us valuable feedback on the show. To join App Society on Slack, go to bit.ly slash app society.

That's bit.ly slash app society. And if you're already active, share the wealth and invite your friends. App Society on Slack is sponsored by Compass HQ, a Slack app that gives insights to help your team work better together. Use Compass HQ to get detailed analytics, visualize communication patterns, and run surveys to collect input from your team. Visit CompassHQ.com to learn more.

You're listening to YAP, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. I'm your host, Halataha, and today we're speaking with Deepak Shugla, founder of the award-winning SEO Agency Pearl Lemon, and a career coach who helps his clients achieve their goals to design a life they love. Deepak has lived a lot of life in his short 33 years. He was an up-and-coming rapper, started several businesses, he's a trained British soldier, a marathon runner, went backpacking through over 50 countries, and the list of his extraordinary

experiences go on and on. Tune in to this episode to find out why randomness is your best strength, and hear Deepak's best personal lessons and SEO tips to rank number one in life and on Google. Hey Deepak, thanks for joining Young & Profiting Podcast. Hala, I'm really excited to be here. You're based in the UK, right? Correct, I'm in London in a little place called Fullham, which is zone two London for anyone who is in the UK, so listen. Very cool. Well, I have London for anyone who is in the UK, so listen to me.

Very cool. Well, I have a ton of listeners out in the UK, so you better represent. Absolutely. Where are we? All right. Well, I actually think it's going to be an awesome conversation because you have one of the most unique stories

I've ever heard of, which is why I brought you on the show. Seems like you've squeezed every bit of excitement out of life, and I can't wait to get into all that your story, your background. But first, let's start from this point in time. Tell us about who you are today. Brilliant, great question, and amazing introduction, I'm worried. My name is Deepak, I feel like I'm going on a blind date now. I run a company called Pearl Lemon.

We are, well, we're fast becoming a media group. So we started as an SEO agency and we're now expanding aggressively so. So that's what I do in work. In life, I have a cat called Jenny and my wonderful partner, Daniela. We live here in Phyllum and that's what I do today. Awesome. One of the ways that we found you was through a TED Talk, where you propose that randomness is a person's best strength. So I thought this would be a great introduction about you and your philosophy about life. So tell us about this concept.

How did you come to this realization? Diversity is, I think, at the core of every human being. To the same extent that one can love, one can hate, one can hate and love To the same extent that one can love, one can hate, one can hate and love in the same moment. And we sometimes, because of perhaps the world that we're coming from, perhaps the industrial age, we seek to kind of pigeonhole people and to use a frame to define someone. And that doesn't serve all of the amazing things that a lot of people do that they never speak of. And it also does not serve all of the amazing things that a lot of people do that they never speak of. And it

also does not serve all of the amazing things that you could do that you don't because of this need to be a particular type of person. And I think the embracing the spontaneity, the opportunity of whatever kind of comes into your life or whatever you reach out and grab actually can help you become that much more of really a dominant force and whatever you choose or wherever you choose to ultimately live out your power. So you know, if you are going to decide to go on a journey of being a host of an amazing podcast, then all of the things that you've done up to that moment, whether it's been travels to Indonesia, whether it's been doing field work in Somalia, whether it's been helping

your mum in a software update for Skype on her phone so you can talk to her. All of these things are part of the amazing randomness that I think we should embrace and actually helps us become that much more powerful when we go and do the thing that we love. Yeah, that's really powerful. That's really interesting stuff. So before we deep dive into your entrepreneurship adventures

and get all the insight about best practices for SEO because I definitely wanna get into that. Let's talk about your specific randomness, what makes Deepak special, and maybe some of the life lessons that you learned from each one of them. So one thing that caught my attention because we stalk our guests

and do an enormous amount of research, is that you're a rapper, and you went under stage names like MC, Bionic, and Deep Impact, and you have a very long and serious rap career. So tell us about that experience and we actually have a lot in common with this. Oh, well, thank you, first of all, for having spotted that and the Bionic, wow, you brought back memories. Ha, la, I love music.

I always have. I remember grabbing one of my mum's cassettes that had her like, Bollywood budgets they called or like Indian songs, recording right over that stuff and just having DJ like an MCN on repeat. That graduated to me discovering that I think it's Michael Jackson's beat it that has an instrumental section literally about for the first 60 seconds.

And I recall just literally running to the cassette player, playing those 45 seconds, trying to write something down, it running out and Michael Jackson coming in, which was beautiful, but then being like, no, damn you Michael, and then stopping the tape and reminding it. And that was the genesis.

That's awesome. So tell us about what you went on to do as a rapper, like how serious did you get about it and what did you learn from the experience? So I ended up joining a group. So Darkside Soldiers or the Darkside family, we were a group of MCs based out of some estates in Acton in West London. We ended up getting involved in rap battles, running out back doors because people were coming to the front door to try and beat us up and stuff. We hosted our own parties performed at several lovers and I was part of our own little crew and gang if you will. That developed into beginning to perform on stages at university, releasing my first kind of CD, unseen and unknown, getting nominated as a West Midlands artist

of the month, being on BBC TV, us trying to push on to television and then radio, me leaving that behind a little bit because academia kind of took precedent, but then also returning to it post-university, I went and got a corporate job, hated that corporate job, left that corporate job to start a recording studio, deep impact recordings, to then renew my rap career once again. And yeah, Carla, it's been an amazing journey actually just music within itself from really 14 up till about 24 it was a significant part of my life. Wow, and we have a lot in common So I used to want to be a singer and I actually worked at hot 97. I was Angie Martinez's assistant for at least three years and

Yeah, I had this whole singing passion and I recorded a whole album One thing that I learned from being a singer is being a good public speaker. Did it help you get over your stage fright and make you just always willing to kind of be the center of attention? Absolutely. I think that music really teaches you the art of improv, especially rapping. So stage presence and the ability to being able to think on my feet when people ask me challenging questions, like what you don't know is that before I was talking to you, I've launched a second agency with a guy who was on a training program that I built called Pearl Lemon Leads. He was in a board meeting with a business I've

got no idea about. He was struggling a little a bit and I said, put me on speaker, just call me now. And they started asking all kinds of questions that I had no preparation for. But actually, it's been the whole rap thing that's given me my preparation. It's been getting into these rap battles, going on to stages or recording 150 songs by myself because I wanted to record. And that whole creative process, as you know, so well, Hala, it's amazing. And it really does set you up for conversation, presentation, improvisation. So it's really been such an amazing asset as I've moved forward,

which I didn't really know at the time that I was doing it. Yeah. Another wild thing you did was live homelessly for one week. Oh yeah. That must have been really life-changing. Tell us about that. You know what? I was at a difficult stage of my life. That was the stage at which I was leaving music a little bit. I'd got into a relationship, a damaging one with a musician within the industry and she was violent towards me. I got into marathon running, which is something you'll probably come and ask me about in a while. And I remember the day that I left to go and live homelessly was the day after I came back from the Oslo marathon in Norway. And I went away for six nights, seven days to experience what it

was like to be homeless. It's touched my family. My uncle has been selling something called the Big Issue and has been homeless on and often in various types of institutional housing for a long time. And my family having come from rural India and been born in villages and stuff. It's something that because of that as well as perhaps we trying to seek some meaning led me onto this journey of being homeless and wow. Would you learn?

I learned how easy it is to become ignorant of all of the pain and suffering that stands in front of you. I have also learned why in some instances it's just the only way to survive because you've got your own world, you've got your own programs and equally I think on the streets, you know, I just saw this other world, Harla, and it really upset me. I saw people shooting up in the streets, I met people with massive addictions of abuse or gambling or drugs as well as meeting people that had established careers. And I think that the biggest single learning that I took away from that is it taught me to appreciate what I have because there's always, there's always a new bottom.

When you think you're at the bottom of the barrel, there's people out there that will make what you have looked like the most amazing thing in the world. And that has taught me really to just appreciate the opportunities that I'm given with this life that we have. You know, not many people would go ahead and put themselves in that situation. And it just shows how much like you're just willing to make yourself uncomfortable to experience things

so cool. Thank you. So you've done so many other random things that we actually don't even have time to cover. You've backpacked through 50 different countries, you've lived in I think nine different countries. You're a British Army reservist. You've started so through 50 different countries. You've lived in, I think, nine different countries. You're a British Army reservist. You've started so many different companies.

You're still so young, but you've done so much. So often I hear people saying that they just don't have enough time. Like, I don't have time. What's your advice to those who feel like they don't have enough time? Because you're not even 35, I think. And you've done so much already in your life. So what's your advice to those kind of people? I think that the only way that you can put yourself into a place of expansion is you have

to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's literally the only way. You need to live by that as kind of a ruin, as a means of moving forward. A lot of these things have happened, have come from places of, you know, I feel overwhelmed, I feel anxious, I feel scared, I feel kind of worried. And I think that for anybody who wants to try and find time, it's really about creating anchors,

it's about creating anchors. It's about creating anchors. I think, Harla, that the real way to get something done is to get out your credit card, find a reason that will move you to actually living outside of your comfort zone. For me, a pivotal moment was going to a self-development conference and coming out of that and in my moment of madness, you know, there's moments where we feel excited, we feel inspired, we maybe heard someone say something on a YouTube clip or something somewhere on a podcast or a conversation, use that moment. That's the moment where you attach an anchor to whatever it is that you've dreamed of. And it doesn't even matter if you don't fulfill it, right?

This is the thing that people that I find crazy, okay? I've run marathons, but I've also failed many more. I've done iron men, but I've also screwed up a lot. I'm a British Army reservist, but ultimately I didn't succeed in my application to the British Special Forces. And it's not about being successful. It's really just about the act of going out there and doing something that you're afraid of.

And I think that when you put your credit card down, when you use something like money as an incentive, then I think everything else can follow. I actually talked to this with Ben Hardy on episode number seven, all about investing, investing in your dreams and that kind of commitment. Just makes you take that extra step forward. It's all about just taking action, like you said, getting over your fears.

That's very important to keep in mind and just progressing in life. Yeah, agreed. You mentioned earlier that you quit your first proper job right after university. And I think it was at Deloitte. Just months into the job, why did you decide that corporate life was not for you? And how did you know that your destiny was entrepreneurship? I knew that corporate life wasn't for me

because I remember meeting an associate partner at a networking event. He was, who I could become, seven years into the future. He had quite kind of sunken eyes. He was a man, a few words and... Hala, I looked at him and I thought, fuck, this is not what I want to be. This is not what I want for my life in seven years from now. And you know what, here's the interesting part. It's not that I even wanted to be an entrepreneur in my 20s. I don't think I've been an entrepreneur in my 20s.

I think that what I really wanted was just adventure, exploration and discovery. I think that a lot of people get told of two paths, ultimately, right now. They get told of a corporate gig. They get told, or don't do a corporate gig, you can either kind of do some form of being an entrepreneur, whether it's vis-a-vis digital nomadding, or whether it's started tech company. These really are

the three routes. And you know what, I just knew that I didn't want to be a consultant. I knew that I love music and that's a big part of why my twenties were filled with randomness because I was really just exploring and seeing what was out there. Yeah, I think it's so important for people to realize that like in your 20s, it's so important to just get experience, just take the experiences, follow your dreams. It sounds so cliche, but just take the time like you're still young in your 20s, you know. Some people feel old when they're 20 already and it's just like, just can't believe it. I completely 100% agree with you that people get old too fast and it's like, wow, you know, this life is beautiful, travel and transport has never been cheaper. Learning how to do

anything that you want exists for, you want YouTube, is just about prompting action in your life and learning one practical skill. There's one skill that's not that hard, that everyone needs to figure out, right? There's one skill I believe that will set you free. The one skill is learning how you can make three to $4,000 a month working 15 to 20 hours a month. If you can figure out how to do that you can buy your freedom for your entire 20s.

That's one consulting gig where you check in two hours a week for example and they pay you three thousand dollars a month. You could live on that, you could go abroad, you could live in Malta, you could go to the say shelves, you could scuba dive, you could bungee jump, you could learn a language, one gig, it's all that you need. And everybody's in this rush to start a company. And it's like, well, dude, I went to Iron Man, right? Considered to be the hardest one day. I see 70-year-olds doing Iron Man.

Blue my mind. It blew my mind and that changed everything for me when I realized wow, Deepak, everybody's in a rush, but life is long. You can start a company in your 50s and become a billionaire by the time you're 68. Why the rush? Why the hurry? Yeah, I'm on the same page.

Everybody needs to just slow down and take their experiences because just getting those skills are gonna make you better later on. I started a blog site when I was like 24. I'm in corporate now, but literally everything that I learned and why I was so successful entering corporate later in life is because I could web design, I could social media,

I can write, I can lead, you know what I mean? All these things that I just learned because I was forced to and you've got to just put yourself in the position where you're forced to learn things that other people your age or whatever it is wouldn't necessarily learned. I completely, completely agree that that randomness that you built in with that journey makes you formidable when you go into the corporate workplace because you've got a resource that you can draw upon that no one else has. It's like your superpower. Yep. Young and profitors, do you have a brilliant business idea but you don't know how to move forward with it? Going into debt for a four-year degree isn't the only path to success.

Instead, learn everything you need to know about running a business for free by listening to the Millionaire University podcast. The Millionaire University podcast is a show that's changing the game for aspiring entrepreneurs. Hosted by Justin and Tara Williams, it's the ultimate resource for those who want to run a successful business and graduate rich, not broke. Justin and Tara started from Square One, just like you and me. They faced lows and dug themselves out

of huge debt. Now they're financially free and they're sharing their hard earned lessons with all of us. That's right, millionaire university will teach you everything you need to know about starting and growing a successful business. No degrees required. In each episode, you'll gain invaluable insights from seasoned entrepreneurs and mentors who truly understand what it takes to succeed. From topics like how to start a software business without creating your own software, to more broad discussions such as eight businesses you can start tomorrow to make 10K plus a month,

this podcast has it all. So don't wait, now's the time to turn your business idea into a reality by listening to the millionaire university podcast. New episodes drop Mondays and Thursdays. Find the millionaire university podcast on Apple Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Your dog is an important part of your family.

Don't settle when it comes to their health. Make the switch to fresh food made with real ingredients that are backed by science with nom nom. Nom nom delivers fresh dog food that is personalized to your dog's individual needs. Each portion is tailored to ensure your dog gets the nutrition they need so you can watch them thrive.

Nom nom's ingredients are cooked individually and then mixed together, because science tells us that every protein, carb, and veggie has different cooking times and methods. This packs in all the vitamins and minerals your dog needs, so they truly get the most out of every single bite. And Nom-nom is completely free of additives, fillers, and mystery ingredients that contribute to bloating and low energy. Your dog deserves only the best, and nom nom delivers just that. Their nutrient packed recipes are crafted by board certified veterinary nutritionists,

made fresh and shipped to your door. Absolutely free. Nom nom meals started just $2.40, and every meal is cooked in company owned kitchens right here in the US. And they've already delivered over 40 million meals, inspiring clean bowls and wagging tails everywhere. Ever since I started feeding my dog Nom Nom, he's been so much more energetic and he's getting older, he's a senior dog, but now we've been going on longer walks and he's

much more playful. He used to be pretty sluggish and sleeping all the time, but I've definitely noticed a major improvement since I started feeding him nom nom. And the best part, they offer a money back guarantee. If your dog's tail isn't wagging within 30 days, they'll refund your first order. No fillers, no nonsense, just nom nom. Go right now for 50% off your no risk two week trial

at trinom.com.shap. That's trinom.nom.com.shap for 50% off trinom.com.shap. Hear that sound, young and profitors? You should know that sound by now, but in case you don't, that's the sound of another sale on Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform that's revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you sell edgy t-shirts or offer an educational course like me, Shopify simplifies selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business.

Shopify is packed with industry-leading tools that are ready to ignite your growth, giving you complete control over your business and brand, without having to learn any new skills in design or code. And Shopify grows with you no matter how big your business gets. Thanks to an endless list of integrations and third-party apps, anything you can think of from on-demand printing to accounting to chatbots, Shopify has everything you need to revolutionize your business.

If you're a regular listener, you probably know that I use Shopify to sell my LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass. Setting up my Shopify store just took me a few days. I didn't have to worry about my website and how I was going to collect payments and how I was going to trigger abandoned cart emails and all these things that Shopify does for me with just a click of a button, even setting up my chat bot was just a click of a button. It was so easy to do. Like I said, just took a couple of days. And so it just allowed me to focus

on my actual product and making sure my LinkedIn masterclass was the best it could be. And I was able to focus on my marketing. So Shopify really, really helped me make sure that my masterclass was going to be a success right off the bat and It enabled focus and focus is everything when it comes to entrepreneurship. With Shopify single dashboard, I can manage my orders and my payments from anywhere in the world. And like I said, it's one of my favorite things to do every day is check my Shopify dashboard. It is a rush of dopamine to see all those blinking lights around the world showing me where everybody is logging on on the site. I love it. I highly recommend it. Shopify is a platform that I use every

single day and it can take your business to the next level. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopfide.com.sash.profiting. Again, go to shopfide.com.sash.profiting.all lower case to take your business to the next level today. Again, that Shopify.com, such profiting, Shopify.com, such profiting all lowercase. This is possibility powered by Shopify. Okay. So let's talk about your work life. So you did all these cool things, but you also sustained yourself in the process.

So give us a snapshot of all the different adventures that you did. Your startups, your failures, and how you got up to what you do now at Pearl Lemon. Definitely. So I left Deloitte and I before Deloitte was literature major, like an arts major at university. So I spent my time learning, reading Shakespeare, Deuterte, Gisheau, Bear, Flobeira, Chopin, all of this stuff. Then I went to Deloitte and I was a tax consultant. What I knew, leaving when I handed in to my resignation, was that, Deepak, you don't have one clue about how to make money.

And then what I did know was two things. One, what I do have is I'm British Indian, right? My parents grew up in India and came here to give us a better life. So what that gave me was work ethic. That was the first thing that I knew that I had. The second thing that I knew that I had was that I could read because I was a literature major.

I was like, I can read and I can outread maybe the best of them. So I took to Amazon. I went to Google, I went to the best sellers and I bought the first 10 books on the list at that time, the four hour work week, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Chicken Soup for the Soul, the $100 startup, whatever it might have been, and that was really the beginnings of my education. That taught me a lot of things. I then began to implement so my first business was Deep and Pat recordings. That was my recording studio.

It was in a spare room at my mum's house. Musicians would come in via our back door into the kitchen where my mom was making chapatis and lentils and Indian food. They'd come through the kitchen into the studio where they'd record music. The studio was built from wood from my local carpenter's shop and the soundproofing was from my local maintenance store where I bought like carbon fiberglass, which is used in loft insulation. That transitioned into a couple of studios. I had the green, so the red room and the blue room. I learned about hiring. I learned about how to hire really badly. I learned about a cash-based business and how that's just horrendous for accounting. I did

all of these things. that business shut down. And really what followed, Hala was a series of ventures, right? All founded upon well, okay, I need to make some money. So the studio shut down, and I remember a friend of mine said, deep head, you're an English graduate. Why don't you teach English as a tutor?

So I said, okay, I'll do that. So I signed up to an agency. I discovered that they were paying me 18 pounds per hour and the client, the parents were paying 36. And I thought, hang on, I can do this. This isn't that hard. So I figured out how to use Wix, the website builder. I built my own site.

I found out where you could order flyers from, I did some really basic design. I then looked up, parkipedia.com, which tells you where all of the car parks in London are and then I started hitting up car parks with all of my flyers. I was then getting thrown out of car parks removed by security from shopping centers but I was only targeting the cars of baby seats and the more the five door estates that I thought would have parents. That ultimately got me up to like five to maybe ten thousand pounds per month. I then discovered online listings because I thought well I don't want to just always go out and fly. I want to do something

online. So I put my first classified ad-up. That was on Gumtree. That helped the business take a significant revenue bump because I discovered this world of students who studied psychology that did not realize that psychology had a statistical module in the course and that like scuppard a lot of these students and a lot of these students happen to be international students who had money and stuff. So as soon as I got a call from something, hey, you know, I'm at my dad's office in region street and I'm struggling, bloody, bloody bar, and I was like, oh yeah, it's like 60 pounds an hour and they're like, fantastic, when can you come? I did the first couple of lessons, discovered

that there was this whole world of students pivoted and ended up transforming my tutoring agency. And then it kind of transitioned to me trying to start up, to raise some money. I took the money abroad and spent it partying, gone in a lot of trouble. The investors were not happy, but I was partying, so I was happy, slashing happy, and Yeah, there's been this kind of well-widden event, Tyler, and you know what happened that brings me to today to answer your question Mm-hmm at 30 and As you said, this was all in and amongst like living in Lisbon, fighting Thai kickboxing in Rio or whatever that whatever I was doing and wherever I was doing it I kind of at 30 decided that I wanted to come home and

That I began to as really Jack Ma talks about with his growth about Ali Barba He says it in your 20s. It's all about experience and In your 30s is really about beginning to grow something and do something that you can maybe look to achieve legacy from and I didn't really know it at the time But I did know a 30 when I launched Pearl lemon October 2016 I Realize that okay, I want to grow some roots now. I want to do something that or I want to build a business that I can be proud of and Still is around in a couple of years because I had a track record of starting something, getting bored, things happening and kind

of not sticking around and kicking out. And that's where I am today and we've got an SEO agency. We're okay. We did maybe 300,000 pounds in the last year. I don't know, there's maybe $400,000 or whatever it might be. That's been a wild journey because we bootstrapped. I was again back at my mum's house. I had no cash. I ran out of money. I'd come back from the army and I was like, all right, I need to make some money. What do I know? I'm good at

marketing. Okay, let's go with that. And now, yeah, we've got a couple of companies that we set up. The meeting that was on just before was for the new business. And it's again another whirlwind. But I enjoy the madness, I enjoy the chaos, and that's where I have that today. Yeah. So at what point did you learn SEO? That's what I don't understand. Like, yeah, all these experience at what point were you learning SEO, or is this something

you just took on and learned everything about and then started this company? So I knew a lot of different strands of digital marketing simply because I had to, when you raise money, you have to wear many different hats. And the experiences I had at Deeper Pack recordings when I learnt just about the process of tagging people on Facebook back in 2008 and what that meant about then someone appearing in someone else's newsfeed, then that moved on to, for example, gumtory, the classified ad site I told you about.

I discovered that if I keyword stuff the title, I would literally make an extra 1,500 pounds at month because I would appear in many more searches. That then transitioned into trying to text start-up, meet my tutor, and trying to list our site on all of these different directories start-up ranking. And then when I started my agency, I looked at what I perceived to be a space that was technical enough for a business to want to outsource that was interesting to me, and that would lead to retainer income, meaning that what is it that people pay for that if they find a good provider that I'll stick with for years. And I thought, well,

SEO. So then what followed was kind of aggressive learning, if you will, that happened. In the same process as I just described before, I bought a couple of books. I also went on to YouTube. I also went on to New Demi. I also paid for, you know, Brian Deane's back, Lincol. His paid program. So I spent about $5,000 in paid programs. And then I spent about 100 hours maybe learning over the course of a couple of weeks. And I then realized that already put me into a certain finite percentile of people that knew enough about SEO to do a pretty good job and then often away. And it was just from there really, Paula.

You hit exactly the right point, which I wanted you to, is that you weren't an SEO expert, but you had learned it and you had used it. And it's not just for like marketing and tech geeks. Anybody can use SEO. And it's just part of life now. Like the internet is life and the doorway to the internet is search. And so you better know how to make yourself visible

and searchable and noticeable. Absolutely. I can agree more. You chose to have a global and remote team. Yeah. How do you manage that type of a team? And why did you choose that model? I chose the model because it's what I know.

I am used to being by myself a lot of the time day to day. And that meant that I didn't want to have to have a team next to me every day. So I just naturally began hiring remotely. So that was why as to how it works. A lot of it is about letting go of control and accepting the, you know, you need to empower people and, you know, trusting them to do great work and accept also that a lot of the time they won't. But what hiring

globally does give you is a global economy to draw upon. Yeah, I personally think that this is the way the future. This is the most cost-effective way. You don't have to pay for headquarters, the value of money across different countries. It's so drastic that you can really get somebody talented in like India or the Philippines or something for unheard of rates.

And it's great for them. And it's just the way of the future. Like, even for a small podcast, I've eight people on my team, one of them's from Canada, one of them's from Estonia, you know, so. Brilliant, that's awesome. That's just the way of life now. So let's get into SEO, let's pick your brain about all the different things that you know about that area. So how do you define it? Yeah, sure. SEO is ultimately the game of visibility.

It's you appearing first or close to first when someone runs a search. And that search doesn't need to be limited to Google. There's LinkedIn search, there's Instagram search, there's search on Twitter. So, it is the game of optimizing any profile that you've got to make sure that you rank favorably when someone looks up a particular term on that platform.

And so like SEO 10 years ago, from what I know, was pretty much like a manipulative and repetitive marketing tactic. But nowadays algorithms have really turned it into an art form and it includes things like branding and content creation and so on. Can you talk about some of the once revered SEO tactics that really don't work anymore? Yeah sure, it's a great question. So keyword stuffing is one thing that we made reference to before and it doesn't work today. Keyword stuffing is really just designed to

manipulate search engines but search engines have become smarter enough to understand that it doesn't mimic the way that people actually read content. So that's one thing that doesn't work anymore. The second thing that doesn't work anymore is it's almost like it's stuffing keywords what is, it's almost like, it's stuffing keywords on your actual homepage at the bottom. What often you sometimes see is, and you still see it on maybe, you know, LinkedIn sometimes, you'll see lots of different keywords stuffed into either the HTML.

So there's also the way of these keywords are presented. So it doesn't just relate to content like in terms of blog articles, it also relates to keywords actually at the bottom of for example a homepage and that scene is being quite spammy. A third thing that doesn't work anymore. People still use it so arguably then it still works. What we'll talk about it anyway. So building private blog networks. So private blog networks are ultimately designed to of course manipulate Google's rankings. But ultimately a link exchange taken to an art form. So in a private blog network, we might have you, we might have me and we might have our friend Frank.

You, me and Frank would all exchange links between our sites to particular pages with the intent that we always a consequence increase our domain authority, increase our actual trust flow. And what we will do is do our best to not reveal to Google exactly how these links have been built. And therefore, the network that you build, once you put in any link into that network, the link becomes a lot more powerful as a consequence of the strength of the network. So then when Google becomes savvy to what's going on, the PBNs, the whole network basically collapses, including any site that's attached to it, and we do deal with sites in this space that suffer from problems like that today.

We're dealing with a couple of businesses at the moment. Typical industries where people will build that would be gambling, would be the adult space, would be CBD is a good one right now, that's quite popular. The reasons that people build links like that is because a lot of websites won't accept links from gambling sites, it won't accept links from,

I don't know, like a lingerie site, they won't accept links from these kinds of sites. So that's like a third strategy that's kind of can work, but it can also end horribly. And so let's talk about what does work in the ethical way to go about it. So you don't actually get shut down. I know that there's with SEO,

there's kind of like a right way and a wrong way to do things. And let's start with Google rankings because 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. And I read that the first page of Google receives 95% of web traffic. What are some SEO tactics for Google rank that will give us some bang for a buck? So PR and SEO work together and they kind of merge. So if you're listening guys and you know, you could look at being even on podcasts

for example, because what happens is that you get a chance to share your brand's story, you get access to an audience, you could reach out to you of course, or socially share your story, which sends social signals to Google, because then Google learns that well, people are actually socially sharing, you know, this podcast, which means that it's a podcast of importance. You also, for example, get maybe a link back because it's normal when you're on a podcast or when you present a podcast, you're linked back to the website. That's one thing that you can do. Audio is still in its very early stages. A video is here. Podcast is still early stage when you compare basically, you know, know long form technical blog content

kind of it had its heyday it's still there but everything is moving towards video now Facebook are trying to compete with YouTube audio is still still kind of at the early enough stage if you get in you could do some really interesting stuff with it so that's one space that people don't truly appreciate the power of podcasting and all it can offer in terms of SEO as well as PR and how they work together. The second thing that we could look at are really making sure that you've crossed your teas and dotted your eyes when it comes to your website's infrastructure. Take your URL, if your Frank's Coffee Shop, then plug your Frank's coffee shop into any free SEO analysis or free SEO audit tool and present those list of problems to a developer.

It doesn't matter where the developers are from. Find them from India, find them from the UK, find them from just present that list of problems and run a before and after test, pay to have those problems fixed, run another test, see if your on-page SEO is improved. The process can sometimes be that simple really, parlor. Businesses are different kinds of come to us. For that process is exactly what happens. You'd find a service provider you'd come up with once you've run a report and you're like, well, I could try and fix these issues, but I don't know what I don't know. So the point I'm trying to underline there

is don't be afraid to hire someone. Yeah, bam. If you're ready to take your business to new heights, break through to the six or seven figure mark or learn from the world's most successful people, look no further because the Kelly Roach Show has got you covered. Kelly Roach is a best-selling author,

a top-ranked podcast host, and an extremely talented marketer. She's the owner of NotOne, but six thriving companies, and now she's ready to share her knowledge and experience with you on the Kelly Roach show. Kelly is an inspirational entrepreneur, and I highly respect her. She's been a guest on YAP. She was a former social client. She's a podcast client, and I remember when she came on Young & Profiting and she talked

about her conviction marketing framework, it was like mind blowing to me. I remember immediately implementing what she taught me in the interview in my company and the marketing efforts that we were doing. And as a marketer, I really, really respect all Kelly has done, all Kelly has built. In the corporate world, Kelly secured seven promotions

in just eight years, but she didn't just stop there. She was working in nine to five. And at the same time, she built her eight-figure company as a side hustle and eventually took it and made it her full-time hustle. And her strategic business goals led her to win the prestigious Inc. 500 award for the fastest growing business in the United States. She's built an empire. She's a life changing wealth. And on top of all that she maintains a happy marriage and healthy home life. On the Kelly Road show you'll learn that it's possible to have it all. Tune into the Kelly Road show as she unveils her secrets for growing your business. It doesn't matter if you're just starting out in your career or if you're already seasoned entrepreneur. In each episode Kelly shares the truth about what it takes to create rapid

exponential growth. Unlock your potential, unleash your success, and start living your dream life today. Tune into the Kelly Road Show available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, ya fam! As you may know, I've been a full-time entrepreneur for three years now. Yet media blew up so fast it was really hard to keep everything under control, but things have settled a bit, and I'm really focused on revamping and improving our company culture. I have 16 employees, so it's a lot of people to try to rally and motivate, and I recently

had best-selling author Kim Scott on the show. And after previewing her content in our conversation, I just knew I had to take her class on master class, tackle the hard conversations with radical candor to really absorb all she has to offer. And now I'm using her radical candor method every day with my team to give in solicit feedback, to cultivate a more inclusive culture, and to empower them with my honesty. And I can see my team feeling more motivated and energized already. They are really receptive to this framework, and I'm so happy because I really needed

this class. With Masterclass, you can learn from the best to become your best, anytime, anywhere, and at your own pace. And we all know that profiting in life doesn't just mean thriving in business. With Masterclass, you can brush up on your art skills or your cooking skills, or even your modeling skills With over 180 classes from a range of world-class instructors. That thing you've always wanted to do better It's just a few clicks away. On masterclass, you'll find courses from many app-a-all star guests like Chris Voss and Daniel Pink

I've been taking their sales and negotiation classes and I've been feeling like a real shark lately I've totally leveled up my sales skills. How much would it cost you to take a one-on-one class from the world's best? A lot. But with masterclass annual memberships, it just cost you $10 a month. I have to say the most surprising thing about masterclass since I started this incredible journey on the platform is the value for the quality of classes instructors. The platform itself is beautiful. The videos are super high quality. You can't beat it gain new skills and as little as 10 minutes on your phone,

your computer tablet smart TV and my personal favorite way to learn is their audio mode to listen on the go. That way I can multitask while I learn. Get unlimited access to every class and right now as the app listener, you can get 15% off when you go to masterclass.com-profiting. That's masterclass.com-profiting for 15% off an annual membership. Masterclass.com-profiting. Yeah, definitely. Also, don't be afraid to,

if you're tech-savvy enough and a lot of my listeners are millennials, like just learn, read, go on YouTube, search things, it's okay to know not a lot and start from somewhere and just build your expertise. It will make you a better, more skilled, well-rounded person because even if you don't have a business, just being able to optimize your personal brand online is so important. If it's not your area and you're not interested, hire someone, but don't

be afraid to learn. How about you, too? I had Josh Fetcher on, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, he's a very well-known growth hacker. At the end of the show, he predicted that YouTube would be really hot for 2019 and that B2B businesses would flock to YouTube because it's really unsaturated and it's really easy to still rank for competitive keywords. So can you tell us about any tips or hacks you have in relation to YouTube SEO? Yeah, absolutely. Number one, use the primary keyword and start of a title. So if you're trying to rank for someone who's

looking for entrepreneurship advice, you would want to use the keyword, entrepreneurship advice. So you want to think about the semantic search. Semantic search refers to how is it that actually people type in search terms. The second thing that you should consider is that 93% of all Google searches are long tail, same as YouTube. What that means is that people should consider is that 93% of all Google searches are long tail, same as YouTube. What that means is that people typing things that are longer than three words. Search is becoming very much more contextual. So you want to consider that with the kind of content that you build.

So when you're producing content, think about content islands. So if you're producing content around entrepreneurship, go to Quora, think of the innumerable variations it relate to a singular subject, and then really build for one keyword with lots of variations in mind, keeping the primary keyword at the front of the actual video. That's a other consideration. That's awesome. Can you give a real example with that? Yeah, sure. And this relates to also the next tip. So let's take the example of entrepreneurship. What ranks in Google? Tutorial videos do really well. Review videos do really well. Anything that

relates to a visual component of search. And how does that apply to business? So you could really in trying to rank for entrepreneurial keywords on YouTube, you could produce content around how to start a business, how to start your first business, how to start an online business, how to start an offline business. What is business? And look at all of those variations, and I've just thought of a few of my headers you've just heard. Google it, find 15 more that are sensible, that focus on a very

particular component of how to business and create a bunch of videos that focus around that particular keyword so that you can gain ownership over it. And then there's the other thing, make sure that your tags, make sure that your descriptions are in place, make sure that you build some level of interlinking structure between videos so that one video can refer to another. That's also are in place, make sure that you build some level of interlinking structure between videos so that one video can refer to another. That's also really important. Consider building playlists that relate to content curation. That's going to be a big thing probably in 2020 that people are

going to start moving more towards just finding playlists based around particular types of content. Have a look at playlists that already exist in your space. See if you can reach out look at playlists that already exist in your space, see if you can reach out to those playlist owners to see if you can have one of your videos inserted or try and compete with that playlist by building a better playlist. So there's all of these things that can happen

as a consequence of internal YouTube search. Great advice. I think these are all gems for our listeners. So how about UX experience? So this is user experience for people who are not familiar, all about landing page optimization and getting people to take in action. So for example, click on your main button on your page.

Can you talk about some tips you have for user experience? Yes, yes, everybody's lazy, guys. Everyone's like lazy, doesn't really want to read, doesn't want to listen to anything that's hard, have big buttons, have obvious calls to action. What is the problem that you're solving? Think about some of those key tenants. What is the problem that you're solving?

Is the download now, join now, click now, get this buttered a huge is it so obvious where it is? Is the contrast right are you using clear distinction between colors so that the button is so blindingly obvious to the text is so blindingly obvious? Build beautiful things there's a lot of templates are beautiful now so there's not really a reason to have a site that at least meets a minimum standard, templates exist in abundance, done for you templates do exist in abundance. So I think that there's a lot of core components with making buttons obvious that are important, making sure that the UX experience is as you scroll through a site on a mobile is seamless,

making sure that everything loads quickly. It's probably the biggest thing that I'd say, actually, to be honest, you're the harlow. Like, your site needs to load quickly. It doesn't matter how good your UX is, if it takes too long to load, 40% of users bounce or rather exit a site after three seconds if it hasn't loaded.

That's four and 10 people that will just leave. Wow. Or two and five, we'll just leave if it takes more than three seconds to load the page. That sounds like an art and speaking of art, content creation is more important than ever. So what are your tips for going viral and writing stories at pop? Personal stories are probably of the utmost importance. I have had a lot more success by speaking about things that don't relate to SEO than I ever have

by talking about SEO. So I think that being a singular sector specialist, that concept is beginning to blur. People plug in to Gary Vaynichuk because he's an entertainment figure, as much as he is a motivational speaker. And to be honest with you, those two things don't even relate to what his business does Vaynechuk media. Or rather, he's an example of it. So have that in mind when you start producing your stories. People just want to read, it's something that at least I'm beginning to call like, edutainment, that you need to be educational, but you need to be entertaining.

And if you can find some segue with that, then I think that you'll do really well. We're moving into a world where everything is going video or audio and the large proportion of marketers are untrained. Right? They now have to produce content but they're untrained storytellers. So learn the art of storytelling. Read the book, get the audio, watch the video, pay for

some storytelling training, and I think that that will be a huge differentiator if you just get that little bit of training because everybody else out there is for the large part untrained when it comes to telling stories through their education. It's so true. People just don't know how to copyright. They just don't know how to connect. They just don't know how to connect with people. And that is such an important skill going forward as everything becomes online. And you've got to connect with people virtually. You need to do that through your writing for the

most part or your videos or your audio. But it's all the same thing. It's all telling stories. So give me your pitch as to why SEO is important for the average person, a person who's not necessarily in marketing or in tech. Why is SEO important to think about regardless? Let me ask you, when you want to buy something, where do you run a search? There's probably two places I can tell you that I run a search. When I want to buy something or when I want to find something, find my local cafe. Buy a t-shirt. I will look on Amazon, search a lot of the time, but even more so, I'll Google it, right?

Where don't I look when I'm thinking about buying something? I don't search anything on Facebook. I don't search anything on social media. Social media is social and it's huge, of course, for e-commerce. But actually, I go on to Google search when I'm looking for anything. And I just really want you to think about really is in the name. And that hopefully should demonstrate what's possible with SEO if you start using it as it's meant to be used for your business. Well, this was so interesting. Where can our listeners go to learn more about you?

Head to deepactshookler.com, you will probably find the link that, um, parlable, attached, but D-PackShookler.com, pearl-em-en.com, if you're interested in the business aspect, any of those two places or wherever you want to find me, I'm on most places. Awesome. Yeah. He's really searchable. We have a YAP society on Slack, which is basically a community of listeners for our podcast who are, you who are really into the show, really into bettering themselves. Do you have any resources?

I know you've written so many e-bucks, any resources that we could share with our group. Yeah, definitely. I've got a free 14 day training program that talks about how I built my business up to $20,000 a month. So I can share that link with you guys and go through the three training. It will give you insights into how I got the business to the stages into there.

Thanks Deepak. This was amazing. Thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us. Oh, hey, I had an amazing time. Thank you. Thanks for listening to Young & Profiting Podcast. Follow up on Instagram at Young & Profiting and check us out at Young & Profiting.comcom And now you can chat live with us every single day on our new Slack channel. Check out our show notes at YoungimProphet.com for the registration link. And if you're already active on YAHF Society, share the wealth and invite your friends. You can find me on Instagram at YAHF with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search my name, Hala Tahha.

And a huge thank you to the YAHF team. Tim, Danny, Christian, Steve, Stephanie, Nicholas, Ryan, Kayla, Shiv, and Julian. Catch you next time. This is Hala, signing off. Are you looking for ways to be happier, healthier, more productive, and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author

of the Happiness Project. And every week, we share ideas and practical solutions on the Happier with Gretchen Ruben podcast. My co-host and Happiness Guinea Pig is my sister Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Kraft, TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore fresh insights

from cutting-edge science, ancient wisdom, pop culture, and our own experiences about cultivating happiness and good habits. Every week, we offer a try this at home tip you can use to boost your happiness without spending a lot of time, energy or money. Suggestions such as follow the one minute rule. Choose a one word theme for the year or design your summer.

We also feature segments like know yourself better where we discuss questions like, are you an over buyer or an under buyer? Morning person or night person, abundance lever or simplicity lever. And every morning person or night person, abundance lover or simplicity lover, and every episode includes a happiness hack, a quick easy shortcut to more happiness. Listen and follow the podcast, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. What is that?

My mortgage rate detector. I made it out of an old altimeter alarm. With Navy Federal Credit Union's no refi-rate drop option, we could get a lower rate without refinancing our mortgage. So I'm keeping a close eye on mortgage rates. They're dropping! Call Navy Federal! Buy a home and if rates drop, you could lower your rate and save thousands.

Navy Federal Credit Union. Our members are the mission. In short, by NCUA Terms and Conditions apply equal housing lender loan subject to approval and eligibility requirements. Learn more at navyfederal.org. Learn more at NavyFederal.org