Turn Your Snowflake Red: SEO, Excellent Content, and the Backlinks That Bring Clients

Richard Lowe, The Writing King, sat down with Australian SEO specialist David James of Business Growth Digital Marketing for a conversation aimed squarely at solopreneurs and small businesses trying to get found online. The throughline is refreshingly unfashionable: forget the algorithm chasing, and build a brand on excellent content, real backlinks, and three things you can point to.

David: Tell us about yourself and how you got into the SEO space.

Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written more than 113 books under his own name and ghostwritten over 54 more for clients.

Before writing full time he spent 33 years in enterprise IT, including two decades as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

From the ARPANET to the Writing King

David: Tell us about yourself and how you got into the SEO space.

Richard: I started in 1981, hired straight out of college as VP of Consulting at a computer company, back when there was no internet, just the ARPANET, which I actually worked on. That company folded, I went to another as VP, worked on the Las Vegas Valley Water District’s pumping system, and eventually landed at Trader Joe’s as Director of Computer Operations and Technical Services. After 20 years I had money in the bank, so in October 2013 I moved to Florida, as far from California as I could get, and started writing. I learned fast that to sell books and services you have to learn SEO, otherwise nobody finds you. It’s like trying to make your snowflake stand out in a blizzard, you have to turn the snowflake red. And there are constants to SEO that hold no matter which algorithm update is current, so I focus on those rather than the technical churn.

Excellent content is king

David: How important is writing to a successful SEO campaign?

Richard: Enormously, because content is everything, and not just good content, excellent content, above everyone else’s as much as you can manage. You need multimedia too, Google owns YouTube, so put well-made videos on your site, with good graphics and proper tags, and writing broken into usable chunks. SEOs argue 300 words versus 2,000; I do both, because it serves my audience, not because it games the engine. I want people to read, decide I’m a good writer, and buy my services; ranking is a side effect. If your writing and video aren’t high quality, your SEO fails in the long run. You can play black-hat and grey-hat tricks for short-term gains, but then you’re fighting Google every step. The old line was “content is king.” It should be “excellent content is king.”

Mediocre content is bad content

David: What changes when you produce excellent content?

Richard: People stay. Buy a $20, 300-word article off Fiverr and a normal reader says “meh” and leaves, never to return, never to share or sign up, and if your list is full of that, they unsubscribe and maybe report you for spam. Put up genuinely good original content and people think “this is pretty good,” wonder what else you’ve written, and click around. Now you’re sticky. With share buttons in place, things get shared, and your analytics show people staying, reading to the end, joining the newsletter, and search engines notice and send traffic. You do have to pick the right keywords and related terms, what I call LSI keywords, woven in so they’re not obvious, because if it’s obvious, readers sense you’re scamming the engine and leave. Mediocre content is bad content. You need excellent content. Some days I get three or four qualified leads straight off the site, real money, because the content is targeted.

Know your audience, prune your brand

Richard: You have to know who your audience is. Mine is solopreneurs and small businesses who want to brand themselves, with a book I ghostwrite, a sharp LinkedIn profile, or a good blog. So my content is tailored for exactly them, not general, and every article should build credibility for that audience. I’ve gone the other way too, deleting articles, and entire blogs, that didn’t serve my brand and only diluted it. And stay white-hat. I used to write for Suite101, even got into one of their books, and when Google’s Penguin update hit, they were gone within a month or two because everything was built around the algorithm instead of around quality. As for the shortcut of transcribing someone else’s YouTube videos, don’t, YouTube auto-transcribes, Google compares text to transcripts, and you’ll get caught. Transcribe your own, by all means, you want both video and text.

HARO: 20 backlinks a month from real sites

David: What impact have you seen on natural links?

Richard: Because I’m an author with a lot of books, reporters contact me. I’m on lists like Help A Reporter Out, and when they ask for my credibility I can say I wrote a book on computer security, so I’m an expert, and suddenly there’s an article with my name and a link. It’s slow and hard to outsource because it takes real expertise, but do a few a week and over time you’re earning a solid 20 backlinks a month on real sites like Inc.com and AccuWeather. My rankings still have a long way to go, but those links send me people who actually want to buy, so the raw SEO almost stops mattering, the links themselves deliver qualified clients.

David: Twenty a month is impressive. How do you pitch?

Richard: In a couple of short paragraphs you do two things: establish why you’re credible and answer the question. That’s it. I wrote a book on computer security, and here’s the ransomware situation in two sentences, with a link if they want more. Two or three minutes, maybe five. The key is credibility plus a specific answer, not “I’m an SEO expert,” because so is everyone. What’s your proof? I wrote the book, my site ranks, I have a podcast, whatever it is, cite it, because that’s what makes you an influencer with a name.

The three-pillar foundation: LinkedIn, a blog, a book

Richard: To build yourself into a real name, do three things. One, a perfect LinkedIn profile, because if I’m considering you, that’s where I look. Two, a blog, as professional as you can make it, because that’s your home on the internet and everything centers on it, and unlike Facebook, you own it; Facebook can suspend your account in a moment, mine’s been frozen for hours over some bot or hacker, but a blog you’ve paid for and run cleanly isn’t going anywhere. Three, a book. Do all three, interconnected, and you’ve laid the foundation to go big. Skip them and you’re building on sand. Once those are as strong as you can get them, then you layer on social media, press releases, and the rest.

Ghostwriting or book coaching

Richard: If you don’t want to write, call someone like me, I’m a ghostwriter and a book coach. Ghostwriting can run expensive: you hand me notes, we do interviews, I write the book, we revise, done, I do all the work. Book coaching pushes most of the work back to you and costs much less; you write as best you can and I act as a consultant, giving confidence, fixing the English, rewriting where needed, interviewing where useful, as little or as much as you want and can afford, with real progress every week. Or it’s simply “Richard, write me a book on SEO,” and it gets done. I’ve done all three.

The publishing snowball

David: What’s publishing done for your visibility and audience?

Richard: Dramatic things, especially the LinkedIn book. Focus on LinkedIn is the basic guide to building a visible, useful profile, and it became a bestseller, around 15,000 copies, led to me becoming certified through a LinkedIn profile-optimization program, and to optimizing 300-plus executive profiles. It made me the LinkedIn expert, something I can point to and say “I wrote that from what I know works.” How to Sell on eBay did the same for eBay. More than that, the books solved my real problem, I’m trained in too many areas, computer, LinkedIn, eBay, security, and a book focuses you: I’m the LinkedIn expert, the blogging expert, the ghostwriting expert, one book each, and that creates a natural, organic audience. I’m speaking at dozens of places and doing library signings, handing people a book, and they say “you wrote a book? I’ve always wanted to,” and I say “I can help with that.” They try LinkedIn themselves, decide it’s a lot of work, and call me.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

What matters most for SEO over the long term?

Excellent content and staying white-hat. Algorithm updates come and go, but quality content targeted to your audience is the constant. Tricks can win short-term traffic, but then you’re fighting the search engine forever.

What’s the difference between good and excellent content?

Excellent content isn’t merely well-written with the right keywords. It’s targeted to a specific audience and built to reinforce your credibility, so people stay, read, share, and eventually buy. Mediocre content, Richard says, is just bad content.

How do you earn natural backlinks?

By responding to reporter queries through services like Help A Reporter Out. Pitch your credibility and a concise answer to the journalist’s question in a few minutes. Done consistently, it can produce around 20 backlinks a month from real, high-authority sites.

What are the three pillars of a personal brand?

A strong LinkedIn profile, a professional blog, and a book, all interconnected. Get those in place and you have a foundation to build on; without them, Richard says, you’re building on sand.