Devrims #TechTalk 062: Karl Hudson Talks About SEO

Karl Hudson started young, but he started great. His first steps into the world of digital marketing was at the age of 14 to help his parents. He then ventured towards affiliate marketing. His entrepreneurial streak lead him to create dozens of online businesses, achieving notable rankings in the UK search engines for many years.

As the visionary behind Searcharoo, Karl set out with the mission to establish the best link building agency in the industry. With an impressive portfolio of managing and ranking around 2,000 websites on a monthly basis, Karl recognized the value in the extensive link-building activities his team performed. This insight led to the creation of a link building agency that supplies high-quality links to others, leveraging his team’s expertise and the robust infrastructure he built.

Karl Hudson’s extensive experience and strategic foresight make him a formidable figure in the digital marketing and SEO landscape, continuously driving success for his clients and his ventures.

Devrims: Hello Karl, glad to have you here with us. Please introduce yourself and share a brief overview of your background in online marketing. What inspired you to dive into online marketing at such a young age?

Karl: I am Karl Hudson. I have been involved in digital marketing and SEO since I was around 14 years old. Initially, I got involved to help my parents, then ventured into affiliate marketing, launched my own businesses, and eventually became a shareholder in launching 46 online gaming sites. These sites ranked for many years in the UK search engines.

I also run a link building brand called Searcharoo and a disavow agency called Backlink Doctor and various other businesses.

Devrims: As the founder of Searcharoo, what motivated you to establish this venture? Could you tell us about the mission and vision behind Searcharoo?

Karl: The mission around Searcharoo was to launch the best link building agency and to keep the team busy when they weren’t working on our own assets. We actively manage and rank around 2,000 websites on a month-to-month basis. Since we build a lot of links, it made sense to launch a link building agency where we can supply some of these links to others.

Devrims: With the increasing focus on content relevance and authority, how does Searcharoo approach content creation and link building to establish clients as authoritative voices in their respective industries?

Karl: I think link building in any niche is pretty hard and working with the expectations of clients is always the hardest part. We always try to educate clients and help them focus on a strategy overtime which is what SEO typically takes and people hate to hear this. It takes time to establish a brand. It takes time to find great links. It takes time to rank. If you’re looking for a wham-bam affair, then you’re better off going down other avenues, like parasite SEO.

Devrims: How do you ensure transparency and open communication with clients throughout the link-building and content-creation process?

Karl: The team works with full transparency. They interact with the clients closely to get their full approval. Throughout the whole process, we keeping our customers happy each step of the way. Even with slowing down the link building process, we prioritise keeping customers happy. Hence we’ve had 1 refund in over 6 years of business due to a customer not being happy.

Devrims: How common are penalties for websites employing parasite SEO tactics, and which types of businesses are predominantly utilizing this strategy in their digital marketing efforts?

Karl: This is very common and it is dependent on the experience of the business building the links. Parasite SEO tactics usually get away with (penalties) for longer (as compared to other tactices), but again it all depends on the anchor text choices and link placements they are trying.

Devrims: What measures should businesses take to ensure that parasite SEO efforts align with their overall digital marketing objectives and brand reputation?

Karl: I really despise the term “parasite SEO”. I think the better suited term is “Piggy Back SEO” as parasite SEO just sounds bad. I think they should always build with brand and trust first. This way, it can help leverage and build power to their brands.

Devrims: How does a tiered link-building strategy enhance the overall SEO performance of a website, and what are the best practices for implementing and managing such a strategy effectively?

Karl: Many people forget to build tiers when they are doing their link building the ranking algorithm is all about referring domains, so I would say this is vital to it. You should be focusing on building tiers of links as soon as possible.

Devrims: How do you distribute anchor text ratios and link metrics across the different tiers in a natural way that doesn’t get flagged as over-optimization?

Karl: Lower tiers I always focus on building branded to the site in question i.e. if site1.com was linking to site2.com the anchors I would be building to site1.com would be related to that site or the specific page and not related to the site2.com. In terms of ratios, I just stick with generic, branded and URL, I don’t overthink this part on the tiered section, I do spend a lot more time on this on the tier1.

Devrims: Let’s do a quick rapid-fire round.

Devrims: As a digital marketer and entrepreneur, how important is managed cloud hosting for ensuring optimal performance and scalability of websites and digital marketing campaigns?

Karl: Very important we use cloud hosting ourselves and dedicated servers. You need to make sure your website is as fast as possible and also ensure you enable backups.

Devrims: As a business owner and digital marketing expert, what advice would you give aspiring entrepreneurs or digital marketers? 

Karl: Building a brand takes time, but it’s worth it in the long run. Focus on multiple avenues of traffic. Do not start by focusing on SEO as it’s a very quick way of burning your money. Focus on paid traffic sources and try to generate that ROI and then reinvest that ROI into SEO and other traffic sources.