Brand Building with Digital PR with Gabriela Covay

with digital PR you know you're essentially you are creating brand awareness you're getting your brand featured and mentioned in the media and that is going to not only help you build your Authority your website Authority but you you also get referral traffic from the media that does feature you so you are you're driving in visitors from readers from those news organizations to your website and then if you've got a great website great user experience looks professional and whatnot then you're going to get that I'm John

Wright and you're listening to affiliate bi the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by stat [Music] [Music] strong all right so welcome to the affiliate bi podcast today we're chatting with Gabriela Co who is an SEO expert specializing in digital PR and is the founder of Bright Valley marketing which is a premium SEO and PR link building agency uh Gabriella welcome to the show thank you for having me here hi so I want to start off by asking what is your story and

how did you end up doing SEO PR link building and affiliate marketing yeah so I started off pretty much uh right after I got out of college I graduated from UC Davis back in 2009 my parents at the time my mom and my late father had started their own family uh daycare here locally and uh they're like well we need we need someone to help us build the website we don't have a website and they're like well you need to do it you just got out

of college you have nothing to do right now so uh help us out help the family I'm like uh okay I don't know anything about websites I don't even know so I just like dug in and I built their website on Wix flash based at the time if you guys remember flash it was a thing back then um I got it up and running and then my mom was like well we need we need customers now what do we do I'm like I don't know there's

like I started researching I'm like well there's this thing called SEO whatever I like just dived right in and at the time you just you know you just plugged in some keywords meta keywords and boom you're like number one I'm like wait this is this is too easy like okay this is cool okay what else can we do with this thing um so you know my parents started getting leads um started getting customers growing their family daycare and at the time I was actually I I

I was thinking of going to med school I was I had studied you know uh medicine or pre I was Premed in college for the most part and I wanted to become a doctor and then just things started just changing you know I started questioning my career path and I I I got a little bit of taste of SEO back back in the day when I was helping my parents out so um you know then I Then I then I moved back to the States I

got my master's degree in the Netherlands science and Innovation management came back to the States and then worked for a u an SEO agency and I I mean being an account manager I think I was managing like 50 different campaigns I had zero clue about like what it actually takes to manage to manage to manage an um uh like like manage a COO you know so I just I I I learned everything everything everything myself in that in that span of a year and then in

2014 just decided to go you know solo and um do my own thing and then you know I've right valy marketing has been in business now for almost 10 years so pretty cool well congrats you're you're talking about uh two extreme uh thoughts where I think students have a choice of go like you said you wanted to go to med school but then when you do SEO you're not going to SEO school it's uh there are courses in SEO but uh it doesn't exist and I

don't know if it ever will you know because everything's always changing you got to keep up with everything there's changes happening constantly especially this year with all the algorithm updates I mean it it's been it's it's been pretty impressed in it I would say especially this past year and now with the admin of AI and S and all these things on the horizon we're like none of us know what's going to really happen until it actually happen so you're just constantly learning it's like you're just

you just got to stay on top of everything and just keep experimenting trial and error test things out and that's how you learn like you can't learn I mean you can take a course right learn the fundamentals But ultimately it comes down to just testing things out and seeing what works really that's sweet I think it comes down to like you said is very true it's like well if someone's going to offer an SEO course like who who would we take a course from I mean

I would rather take a course from you than go to college or university for that same course I want someone who's living and breathing SEO and you know is getting their hands dirty building affiliate sites and you name it exactly absolutely I I agree yeah and then as far as like the pr side of things um because I didn't answer that question uh we started doing digital PR back in 2016 at the time we were doing mostly traditional PR with uh for our local um clients

in the area and you know they were getting featured in you know local news sites right and they for events they were sponsoring and whatnot uh things related to their company and we would we would basically reach out to these uh news organizations and like hey you forgot to mention you know you forgot to add a backlink to our client s would you be able to do that you know like just like really friendly short email because we knew that there was a a benefit to

getting a back Ling from a news site back in the day but no one really truly cared back then it was all about you know just guest posting on uh you know link farms and all that and it it worked it worked really really well um you know but but I always knew there was like a better approach and I I saw the future like I saw it I was like this is you know all this all this link farming and and all that stuff like

it might work now but I don't think it's going to it just doesn't feel right like it feels like you're trying to scam the system system system and and outsmarted but you're going to lose in the end like I I just it didn't feel right you know like it it was there was something like like I like I don't know I don't I don't know if I want my client uh client's website to be on this Shady website because I saw that it's Shady but it

worked back then so we're like okay well I guess yeah if it's working out we can we can play around a little bit with this but then digital PR just became this thing over time where it was like it it just became more increasingly important to build that brand and and and generate those brand signals that um are so effect you know important now nowadays with with the eat requirements and whatnot now more than ever you know um so so we slowly started building out that

service and you know this past I would say two a year and a half or so just have been really focusing on that because it's just so critical um it's such a critical component of SEO nowadays you know so it's it's it's like it's it's part of a a of a successful strategy for building like a brand and you need to build a brand now there's no way around it you have to have a solid brand that stands the test of time that will uh you

know survive these algorithm updates because now they're happening all the time like you know you just gota yeah you got to think long term if you you if you're in it to win it yeah I was gonna ask uh your definition of digital PR and what do you see in the future but be before I do that um I think what you said is a really interesting Insight which is it a digital PR not for the sake of building links but for building a brand so

can you elaborate how a lot of people might think first from a link building mentality rather than a brand building mentality yeah so you know if you come from a link building mentality you're like okay you're thinking in terms of like what can I do you know how much can I pay this Web Master or whatever to get to you know to to to to um mention me on their site to feature me what what can I do to you know you're like in this like

almost like a desperation mode type of then you're like I you know following up with them sending them a million emails trying to like H haggle with them and everything whereas with digital PR it's really it's link earning you're not really building links you're earning them naturally and organically um and you're not begging anyone for anything you're just you're sending out this press release with newsworthy information data that you've researched and sending them out to journalists and the journalists open you know your your email see

the Press really see all the awesome data and they're like whoa this is cool I want to feature I want to cover this story and I'm going to credit You by uh you know by mentioning your your brand and then also including a back link usually so it's it's a different it's different approach it's it's it's a it's a proactive rather than like you know like a reactive type of approach I would say and I want to go talking back to eat which is you know

I watched one of your eat videos and you gave some simple advice to explain um why your site is an authority and how does this translate to improve search results as well as uh better user experience yeah so if you are an affiliate website you need to communicate in the best way possible why someone should trust your site and your advice and your recommendations over you know your competitor what makes you the authority on this you know on this subject and on these recommendations so in

that video I think that you're referring to the you know why trust you know brand and then you outline you know at the bottom of each of your affiliate posts why they why people should trust you uh uh briefly talk about your review process what you do how you select the products um how you uh determine the criteria like basically uh create as much transparency as possible in your review process so that people can start trusting you a little bit more and have confidence that what

you're saying is actually legitimate and you're not just you know another affiliate site uh reviewing these products based on like Amazon reviews and what other people are saying you know you're you're actually you know testing the products or at least working with experts that you know can have have tested the products for you you know so we can go into that in a little bit you know if you're not an expert in your industry what you can do but um basically including that uh that blur

at the bottom of your you know your affiliate blogs can help a lot you know with with increasing ing trust and Google you know if you increase trust with amongst your readers you do so with Google as well it's it it goes hand in hand so as just be transparent uh communicate why you're in Authority your industry experience how many years you've been in this industry and and all that you know I mean I'm sure semantically or whatever Google sees that you know when you talk

about experience this this and that it all kind of plays into the eat you know signals that's that's that's my take on that I I it's work for us so yeah I think people maybe take it for granted where they forget to to kind of say hey I'm the author and this is what I do I'm either passionate about the topic or I've done my research and it seems like just most sites they don't do this and I'm kind of guilty of that as well yeah

but there's also an element of like you know I guess people don't want to show off or like be you know like too much in people's faces about their experience and everything but now's the time to show off Now's the Time to say I've got all these credentials I've got all the you know all this industry knowledge I we work with you know like show off as much as you can it's important don't be humble anymore yeah now I got a like a a challenging question

so when we're talking about doing this usually I look at these uh like Footers like summaries of like who you are and why you're an expert would you say to use the same text over over over again or would you say you could also rewrite that for every article just make it a little different and maybe a little bespoke would there be any advantage to doing that um you know we do a little bit of both like we talk like on the on our money pages

on our uh um product recommendation Pages we have like a standard blurb that just talks about you know the author and like what what the what the the author's background is and just keeps that part very standardized and it's it's the same across all the Articles and then there's also you know like another section that kind of um talks a little bit more in depth about that specific like product that we are reviewing or the products uh that we are reviewing and it's tailored to that

you know particular uh product like we we talk about our review process in relation to that specific uh product or products that we're reviewing yeah I think that that both is is important if you can try to do that now pulling this full circle back to Affiliates how can Affiliates use PR for link building or what are the best practices yeah so um you know really just think about um think about something that is newsworthy that you think journalists might consider newsworthy that's related to your

industry to your Niche think about all the themes and categories related to your Niche if you are like a like a family blog you know think about you know uh family activities uh uh budget friendly activities things that are also um relevant to today's society so right now you know people are thinking about budgeting right and saving money because yeah inflation in the States has gone down a little bit but people are still feeling the heat of like you know the the effects of of the

inflation that did happen so people are trying to save money think about the time of the year right now it's when we're recording this it's the holiday season we're doing a lot of holiday themed campaigns and those are really fun journalists are hungry to cover holiday themed campaigns New Year's is approaching there's another opportunity to do something that's New Year's themed so uh take advantage of the the se you know the holidays Seasons summertime winter so and and think about how all that relates to your

website and then you can start the a creative process from there to think about something that's newsworthy and then once you have an idea you can you know gather the data by running a survey which is what we prefer doing because we have all the creative flexibility in the world to ask any sort of question and get unique original data for our client or you can look at existing Publix uh data that's available online um bls.gov I mean there's so many different sources a weather spark

if you're looking at weather and and and temperatures and stuff like that um so you know you can gather existing data and then once you have all the data pack it up package it up nicely in a in a beautiful press release um ideally have like the little infographic or linkable asset that best better illustrate the data because people you know we're visual creatures we like to see things visually like most of us you know um I get confused that there are so many like stats

and numbers and everything I'm like okay I have to make sense of all this in my head but when I see a graph or I see something visual I I can understand the the data more and then if if you are able to communicate that data in a more in a simpler way and a more effective way well that just increases your chances of getting more coverage because journalists are people just like us like they're people you know so make their job easier make their lives

easier and um um um yeah once you've got all that you've got your your press release then then find the the right journalist to reach out to you can use tools like mckr Vision media database which is what we use or you if you know if you're totally budget stra like you don't have money just go to Google news.google.com come and then find um journalists that have covered uh uh um similar stories to you in the past I would say maybe a year or so and

then uh reach out to them you know you can use hunter or you know other uh tools to find their emails but usually it'll say their email right there like in the in their article like you'll you'll see their contact info for the most part so you can do that that that's just the manual free way to to to to um find journalists you can find journalists on Twitter so yeah but we usually use cision media database it just makes um our job easier and we

have our own we maintain our own um our own uh email lists for different different Industries and we clean those up all the time so everything's always uh upd and then yeah and like talking so much but then you know then then send out your your press release and then then watch The Links come in you know so that's kind of the pr process and then that show I know it could be a little bit um hard to understand but hopefully I explained it yeah there

there's a lot in there but would you say like the core element or maybe a very important element is you need a data set to to share a story because I think people are just looking for stories where they can learn from from it yes absolutely yeah so ideally yes you have some data that's interesting and um you know uh communicates a story uh that that journalists will find interesting for their for their readers but you can also do something that doesn't require you know generating

original data or anything and it's just it's newsjacking it's it's it's an expert commentary campaign you basically you know there's something that's trending in the news like recently I think it was like this past October um you know you know you know um a college loan the college Lo loan repayment thing happened and and and um students had to you know start repaying their loans so if you're like a personal finance website you could you know just kind of piggyback on that on all the the

the media that's coming out about that and then you know send the press release to journalists with your own unique expert tips about maybe what students can do now that they have to start paying back their loans like tips and and and what and that doesn't even require any sort of like visual asset or anything or original data it just requires your expert uh insights and opinions and and journalists are hungry to feature experts you know and and get their um take on a specific uh

topic so that's how you can you know you can basically just do digital PR for free but but that requires um you know staying on top of what's happening in the media trends related to your industry and and really uh the timing for that is everything because you got to hop right in you know sometimes the window opportunities like just a few days but you if you go in there at the right time you will get those links and I guess uh like I'm I I

I feel like I'm going to be asking a loaded question where would you say that most Affiliates just don't do this PR work because it requires a mixture of creativity uh your experience and obviously seeing what works and what hasn't worked as well as putting in the effort I mean I think there's too many web Masters that they want to put in the minimal effort to get the max result but it's usually the other way around yeah I think there's just there's a barrier to entry

I think because it can be overwhelming you know when you think of digital PR and it's almost like I feel like um Affiliates think that they have to you know kind of go out there and like it's it's like a new frontier almost you know because we're we've been so used to doing things the old school way um guest posting uh haggling with we Web Master paying them and and and bargaining and making deals to to get a link and whatnot um so this it's just

a very new it's a new frontier I would say and people are are are like not sure how to how to get started really but again like just like with SEO and everything else you just just start start somewhere test things out you don't have to start huge just start small uh run a small scale campaign and then get your feet wet and and learn you know learn look at your open rids or or uh journalists opening your emails if not well there might be a

problem there you know so so tweet things up and and keep trying until you you're you're going to eventually get it you just have to keep trying just like with anything else so it's trial in err what would you say are some of your best Outreach tips because you just said uh for example that you know you want to actually even pay attention that your emails are getting open let alone read so how do you make sure that your emails actually make it through and get

open and replied to when journalists or other companies they're just getting blasted by email all they long yeah so it's really important to test subject lines out initially so I I try to test you know two different subjects out uh subject lines out and see which one performs better and that's before you go full scale Outreach so start you know with the like your first initial Outreach should be a little bit smaller on the smaller scale so you can test those things out the subject lines

you can test engagement uh rates by see by seeing how many journalists click through to your email to maybe click click on that linkable asset and get more information you see that that visual representation of your data um you want to look at those things and make sure that you know everything's looking good before you go full scale and and and then you know oh yeah also avoid spam triggering words in in your in your content so you know yeah so avoid things related to you

know I I don't probably don't want to say this on the podcast but you guys know what spam words are like related to make money online fast you know get rich quick schemes all that stuff um the fun stuff the F the fun stuff yeah so because what that's going to end up doing is it's going to trigger the servers uh spam filters in many instances and your emails will just get go straight to their you know journalist spam uh uh uh box you know and

then the likelihood of your your your press release even being read is going to just plummet so just try to avoid those types of of words uh try to avoid like sensational sensational uh words and phrases and you know just just be very matter of fact based and just be professional and just yeah don't don't don't go overboard don't be like oh this it's crazy stuff that we uncover you know like don't be overly sensationalistic that doesn't work and that can also trigger spams spam F

filters would you say as well that it's best to try to keep your your all of your emails short uh I sometimes use a tool called lavender I think it's lavender. where they actually literally critique your scores as you're typing the message uh they also highlight uh spam keywords so I'm just wondering if you just naturally like to keep things short and you're always being mindful that maybe too much content is just not going to get a response yeah so I mean as far as keeping

things short so you know we always start off with like a little personalized message to the journalist um one to two sentences I would say in the beginning and then we include our press release which is usually between like 600 to 800 words so that is kind of like the sweet spot right there when you are doing Outreach so um you know you want to uh be friendly and start off with like a friendly message like hey you know we've noticed that you've covered so and

so subjects in the past and we you know below like we've uncovered some interesting data and then we actually have the press release included like right below with everything the journalist needs to write the story um you know with with great talking points with some um you know quotes from a spokesperson from your from your company give them everything they need in that press release and that's usually between 600 800 words or so and then um that that's that's kind of like if you if you

do more than that then yeah that's that then you end up just probably confusing the journalist and not good just try to keep things concise as concise as possible and I'm gonna make a big assumption that you don't use any marketing automation where you're just like putting uh emails in a sequence and then having it fully automated I am assuming that these are more B spoke emails uh yeah yes yeah so we try to keep everything as personalize as possible we do have a little bit

of automation like once we send out um a press releas to that specific journalist if they did not open the email after you know a while we we have like an automation that like sends them the email again basically just in case they missed it because these journalists get blasted with emails every day and it could be that it just got buried in their inbox but then we try not to spam them like if they didn't open it the first time they didn't open it the

second time well chances are they're not going to open it the third time and chances are if you send it again they're gonna send you to their spam like you know I don't know if you do that but I do that all the time I'm like spam spam like if someone's like constantly bothering me and especially using those weird tactics like re uh you know like like like in the subject lines like re uh you know yeah like I'm I I'm like I never responded to

you and then it's just it's just so shady like don't don't do that for the ones that that do the the hi first name ha just kidding hi John and then it's like okay I get like one of these a day now yeah it's it's really bad and now you know you've got Ai and everyone's like just generating uh so many AI generated responses to like Harrow uh for example so now journalists are getting blasted with AI generated um con responses from from their hero queries

on top of like everything else so it's just their they're they're they're just getting more emails than ever so don't don't piss them off okay I won't ask you questions on other better ways of getting a hold of journalist to reply uh we we'll keep that for your own agency and uh let people hire you for that uh but I did want to ask a question it's a challenging one where I've come from the gambling industry where when when I see people do doing link building

there's almost no PR it's almost like find a site that is willing to accept a link and when you contact them they're like oh yeah it's going to cost money and even for the site that maybe didn't used to charge money it's because the first person offered them money that they now accept it so what what what would your tips be for how to actually make um something as competitive as gambling or maybe in the personal finance where these these Affiliates or these websites they're used

to being offered money and then they kind of expect it like how could you create campaigns that are that's going to go against that that Norm well yeah so with with all of our campaigns Like We Never pay anyone any money it's all organic um earned media so you know the process is essentially the same you know if you're in in the gambling this I mean I'm not going to lie that's a that's a pretty hard initiative um digital PR campaigns for just because we're talking

about again those those spam filters so gambling is one of you know it's it's a trigger word for spam filters but you can get backlinks and you can get uh media features if you if you do a campaign that's not you know related to G yeah but it it it takes a broader stance and is like maybe you know about um you know like uh I'm just trying to think right now um activities to do with your your loved one or like I I don't know

just just just doesn't talk specifically about gambling but right yeah so if you if you take a broader stance and and you think a little bit beyond your individual uh industry then you can still get a lot of great media features that way so you just have to be a little bit more creative I'm going to take an insight there and copy it I'm going to send it to my gambling industry and uh you might get a lot of clients from uh from what you just

just said okay thank you so I want to jump to the next question which is um would you C categorize PR as being more part of demand creation that fuels affiliate marketing which is typically seen as capturing the capturing the capturing the demand yeah so with with digital PR you know you're essentially you are creating brand awareness okay so you are you are getting out there you're putting you're getting your brand featured and mentioned in the media and that is going to not only um help

you build your um Authority your website Authority but you you also get referral traffic from the the the media that does feature you so you are you're driving in um visitors from from readers from from those news uh organizations to your website and then if you've got a great website great user experience uh looks professional and whatnot then you're going to you know you're going to get that engagement people are going to start looking you know to see what you offer and whatnot you you might

start to be able to even build your email list a little bit more you you'll get signups you might get some sales um and whatnot so really like digital PR is just it's about growing your brand awareness um getting growing your brand essentially and then in turn helping you build on more authorative websites through high quality highly authorative uh PR PR links so that's that's kind of just that's that's that's it I like it because you're actually changing my perception of PR as being less about

link building and more about brand building and I'm a firm believer that both are as as important but if I had to pick one over the other I'd want the brand first over the link but of course we want the links for SEO reasons but um but um but um exactly yeah absolutely and then when we you know some news uh organizations won't uh link back to our clients they will just include their their their brand name so it's it's called a brand mention so with

those we always chase for that backlink because we know it's it backlinks are still important I mean that's really that's that's where in that's why we do what we do for those backlinks but also obviously to for for for for the media visibility and brand um brand brand growth if I should say yeah in theory it just takes them a minute to or less to add that link but I mean we've all been there yeah so I want to ask what SEO tools are in your

in your in your toolbox in my toolbox at the moment so we've got you know HRS obviously that's kind of like our my you know go-to tool I've been an HRS member since 2014 um they just they just kicked me off the Legacy PL so HR that but it's okay you know what we won't make that an ins sight I I I get it though I get it so um I mean it's just but it's such a great tool all-in-one tool um there's also uh for

our affiliate sites we use lasso so lasso helps us create you know some really nice tables conversion optimized um uh overview product overviews and whatnot we really like lasso um mention.com is another um tool that we use to track media mentions um Hess also has like Hess alerts that you could we include as well uh to track media mentions for our client um what else do I use uh yeah those are kind of like I might be using a stats drone soon though well it's funny

that you mentioned lasso because uh we don't treat them as a direct competitor yet but we are getting into the ad space so um the adtech part so um I I'm a big fan of what they do as a company and ironically enough they also now start to include stats as part of what they do and I I have explored the stats and they're they're I'm not too um Happy with I mean it doesn't provide me with too much information that I I would I would

like so I they can improve on that part but uh there's a reason for that and I can tell you from someone who's got way too much experience building these stats tools it's a it's a very difficult project it's not easy getting all the data and the richest data and probably one of the biggest pain points we have as a company is trying to make sure that the data is accurate and the inaccuracies happen for so many reasons so it's uh it's like whacka all it's

like you fix this but that comes up as another problem yeah I could imagine but it's so important to have that overview I think especially if you are you know if you're if you're if you're using multiple affiliate programs I mean it's just it can get so overwhelming trying to look at everything keep track of everything and time is money like no one has time to just just be sifting around through multiple you know like logging in here logging in there you know it's just it's

it's overwhelming so um but yeah so those are kind of the tools would say so I got another challenge is for a lot of affiliate managers especially that I'm dealing within the the gambling space and I know it's also other Industries as well I believe most of these affiliate managers don't have Outreach experience so what what can you say to convince the affiliate manager that might be listening um like how can you make sure that your email is going to get through to that affiliate getting

them to sign up to the program because I think this is actually a big problem in affiliate affiliate affiliate Mark um that's a good question I mean I don't I I'm not sure how to answer that honestly like I think I mean I can I can you know speak to like what they can do to make sure that their emails are getting the journalist inboxes because that's like my area of expertise but yeah the the other part that's I don't know it would literally be copying

your playbook for playbook for playbook for outreach yeah I mean just you know be personalized personalized personalized personalized personalization is always important um catch their attention and keep it friendly keep it concise and get to the point wait you know people don't have time to waste you know if you if your email is confusing and like we don't I don't understand like what you're what you're asking me then I'm going to just you know delete your email or just um just move on to my email

because I don't have time to to figure that out so just yeah be concise get to the point um and uh share the value like what is your value proposition like what are you what's in it for them like how how will they benefit it's all about I would I I just think it'd be very interesting if that affiliate managers understood what Affiliates have to do for both link building PR and Outreach that maybe they'd have a better appreciation of how to get a message through

to an affiliate and and also kind of like you know understanding that business a bit more where if you're an SEO affiliate then you're gonna maybe use tools like H reps to find out hey the homepage isn't the the the best spot it could actually be the inner page or maybe even the blog posts where a lot of conversions can happen yeah yeah totally so yeah you got to absolutely so I want to go into another question which is you gave me an Insight previously which

was like it was kind of like a challenge of like what could Affiliates do to get started and you had a suggestion that people should or should consider partnering up with the local business owner in that Niche or something in the brick and mortar business so I wondered if you could elaborate on that yeah so with regards to that so look if you are um thinking of becoming an affiliate getting into the affiliate marketing space in 2024 and you are not an expert in your industry

but you know you want to uh start a website in a specific Niche that you're you know you're fascinated by but you're not an actual expert actual expert actual expert in you've got to bring on experts on board right so the easiest way is to just partner up with someone local that actually has that industry experience you can leverage their brick and mortar um location so that that that that ties into eat you know they probably have a Google my business or Google business page with

reviews great that's another eat signal so you've got all these like you've got all these trust signals in place already by partnering up with the local experts so let's say if you're like if you want to review kayaks on your on your you know your new blog or whatever your affiliate blog why not partner up with like a kayak rental company that's like local and you can talk to that business own owner probably has a ton of experience with you know working with all these different

kayaks and kayak Brands and and whatnot so when you are publishing your you know when you're reviewing like different kayaks and whatnot you can actually talk to that local expert um the business owner and get their specific feedback that you can incorporate that that's not found anywhere on the web that's not being regurgitated by all of your competitors that helps you uh you know uh capture that unique value and unique perspective that no one else is doing and that's going to help you stand out in

the sea of affiliate content that's that's that's on the web right now um because you really you know you've got to go the extra mile now you can't just you know just just publish all the stuff that that your competitors are publishing and think that you're going to rank because it's not going to happen like now it it's harder harder than ever really to to to enter the space youve got to do it right you got yeah I I think it all comes back to qual

quality and this concept that you know the 1% will do the right things but uh that just makes it better for the 1% when 99% aren't willing to do the extra work including the work you do in digital digital digital PR yeah no absolutely but think about it longterm like you need to build a brand you know build a brand right now SG is on the horizon we don't know what's going to happen when you know Google releases this you know it makes this a default

um and you know organic traffic it it's getting harder and harder to get organic traffic just you know because you've got you know you've got ads you've got people also ask now you have the ugc like forums and everything everything's getting pushed to the bottom so that little sliver of organic traffic that you can capture well you better make that you better turn turn those visitors into your loyal ra you know raving fans that love you and the way to do that is by being an

authority and being um authentic to uh uh being a brand right and that ties back into dig ual PR again Brands get featured in the media be a brand uh uh build a loyal following diversify your traffic channels as well um get on YouTube get you know do videos and whatnot explore social media don't just rely on Google for your your traffic because that can get wiped out in an instant um develop that brand voice the authentic brand voice um and now you know everyone's doing

AI content pushing it and mass every it's it's all so now is a time to differentiate yourself and I'm not saying AI generated content is bad you can use it but use it wisely and maintain develop a strong brand a brand voice um something that people will resonate with and they will remember you and they're going to go back and search for you in Google and go to your website return visitors return visitors what does that show Google you have loyal fans people are going back

to your website that ties back in again into brand brand signals so everything's like you know it fuels itself so build a brand guys take go the extra mile it's worth it and then these algorithm updates then won't be like oh my God you know I I my side died overnight that's not going to be a problem anymore if you think longterm and if you think like a brand that's that's my advice so lead since we You' mentioned AI what are the ways in which AI

can help with PR yeah so AI can you know Pat GPT gosh like we use it every day for so many different purposes but we use it as an assistant okay so we we um if we need to uh let's say come up with like different ideas sometimes I mean our brainstorming process is like it it's its own process right but sometimes like we'll we'll like go to chat GPT and say okay well we've got all these different ideas what do you you know play the

role of a journalist you're a journalist uh writing on behalf of this major consumer news media Outlet tell what do you think about this story would you feature it and then so we role play with chat gbt and then we tell it to give us all the reasons why or why not it would it would feature our campaign and then it's really cool like it you get all these like talking points and pros and cons about your you know your your campaign idea and that can

kind of get you thinking like is this going to actually be newsworthy or not um you can use it as your assistant you can use it to analyze data too it's becoming better doing that um yeah there's so many different ways it's really your marketing assistant your digital PR assistant you prompted to do whatever you want it to do yeah I love hearing that because I mean the more I hear about creative ways of using it it just gives ideas like for example I've been challenging

chat GPT to help me make certain decisions so I say what would you do and it doesn't give you the decision but it gives you a lot of points which uh in my case I found points I haven't even considered I'm like wow this is is pretty powerful and that's exactly what it what it's great at you know it gets you thinking but that's where that's why it's a tool don't let it replace your own logic your own brain your own mind your own creativity don't

become over reliant on these tools um just just use them to spark you know some ideas and then get to thinking yourself so just that that's my that's my advice so one one pattern I've noticed with a lot of the SEO guests I've interviewed that have affiliate sites would you say being an SEO consultant makes you a good affiliate and then because you're a an affiliate that makes you a better SEO consultant I think it's it's yeah it goes hand in hand I mean you you

have to if you're if you want to do affiliate marketing right you need to be good at SEO it's like it's it's it's it just goes hand in hand it's it's logical to me I think so would would you say maybe as a recommendation like going full circle back to the question of how would an affiliate get started and sometimes I wonder if maybe even trying to be a consultant like you need experience before you can be a consultant but sometimes when you go down the

path of trying to do Consulting you're like I'm going to work to solve a problem for someone and then once you gain that experience you now have basic aay business you know what absolutely and it's really funny that you bring that up because lately I've been you know I'm I'm part of all these different SEO groups on Facebook and Linkedin and whatnot and people have gotten um you know hammered by the h the the hcu update right and I've been just kind of like hey yeah

let me take a look at your content and offer you my my tips I I've been like just doing like short five 10 minute videos just um you know people are sending me their content and then I'm like kind of just uh reviewing it and analyzing it in in in like just um you know like as a reader right of of like a a reader with no um ties to that particular brand but just a very uh unbiased provide them with very unbiased opinions and then

I send that back to them and it's all free it's complimentary but in I'm I'm learning too like I'm like learning along the way and I'm seeing what's what's good I'm seeing what's not good what could be improved and that's helping me it's helping them and everyone wins and you're that's how you can build experience you know do things that add value to others um and then just be helpful and then you in turn you're going to learn so many things yourself yeah it's a great

Insight because I I haven't done a lot of that myself but I started doing it recently where said okay you know I used to do do affiliate coaching and you know I've offered some Audits and like you know I don't live and breed SEO the way you do where you spend way more time than I would but it challenges me so if I don't have an answer I know I have to go do the research and dig and find an answer or at least back up

the research of why I think something might be true and um I I do think you're right it's uh it's helpful I gain a lot from it and the people I help I mean I'm I'm trying to help Affiliates yeah and then you build your network that way too and then people are going to remember you like hey this so and so you know help me out and you know maybe they they'll refer you to a client that you can work with so it's just it's

a matter of just like yeah just just diving in and helping people out and providing value and then you know and and it just pays for itself in the end you know but don't expect anything in return but it just so happens that most of the time you do get something which is nice and what do you see of the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence um well um the future of ail I mean you I think you just need to yeah

you need to uh you need to be really on top of all your numbers all your uh the stats everything like be think as a business think as you know how can I improve my business how can I get more conversions what can I do test things out have that visibility look at all the data on an ongoing basis uh make decisions test things out um yeah always always test always um but just you know with with stats always be aware of where you're at right

now um and have that that visibility into your business know your numbers uh think about like profitability like am I you know I'm investing so and so much into my content this month how much money am I actually getting back from this like what where can you know how can I become more profitable as a business as a brand um that's kind of like I guess what my train of thought is regarding that yeah it's it's good summary points which is always be testing I mean

I know so many seos that say that and I think the theme of this uh this uh interview has really been full circle about branding where you know when you do digital PR it's like like I said at the very beginning I never really thought about it as more brand building I thought it as more link building but I think with what you do you're actually separating yourselves from the the army or the Sea of Link Builders out there that that's all they just focus on

it's just onedimensional link building but I think uh I think you're right about uh building a brand this is going to lead to that better stats the better data it's you can focus on one thing and you're still gonna get you're gonna get that end result exactly absolutely you nailed it Gabriela thanks for doing this uh how can people get a hold of you yeah they can uh go to my website bright Valle marketing.com or just reach out to me directly Gabby bright valy marketing.com so

the easiest way and you can get that information in the show notes thank you so much for doing this well thank you so much thank you for tuning in to the affiliate bi podcast I'd like to take this time to ask for a small favor to leave a raing and review wherever you listen to your podcast that helps us expand our reach to rank higher in podcast directories and reach more