Evergreen Content Marketing with Steven Khanna of WhitePress

I I think with within the affiliate marketing space and I could be wrong I get a Feeling Again as an outsider cuz I still consider myself as an outsider within the SEO space being only in it for two years affiliate marketing does need a bit of a revolution in my opinion it needs a lot more technology being interfaced into affiliate sites where the journey becomes a lot more seamless whether it's onboarding continuation more Revenue generation leads whatever that might be I apart from Seno I think

General anyways the industry screaming out for an absolutely revolutionary tool which will just help affiliate marketers I'm John Wright and you're listening to affiliate bi the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by [Music] [Music] stats welcome to the affiliate bi podcast today we're chatting with Stephen Cana who is the head of English Markets at White press he's also content creat and I want to pass it back to you stepen to tell us a bit more about you and welcome to the show thank

you John uh absolute pleasure you know thanks for having me um yeah my journey or my relatively uh you know very newish Journey intoo I've only been in Su like a couple of years uh funny story me having drinks on a Friday night uh in Poland where I live and my boss Tom was the head of international growth we just ended up chatting I I had a bit of Interest anyways within the digital digital marketing space and all of that we kind of connected and he

ended up offering saying H have you ever heard about about about SEO SEO um the honest answer was no uh and he tried to explaining it to me and it took a while uh anyways we had several meetings backwards and forwards here I am two years later uh leading the uh English Market here by white press you know getting the brand name out there you know going on webinars and po podcast all around the world ending up as speakers you know as as an expert uh

which knows all of who knows all about link building but SE is such such a massive space you know that John you know there's so much to learn every day uh which kind of ties back to my past experience which has been running restaurants Michelin star restaurants back in the UK you know 20 plus years I'm actually a wine simil by trade and all of that but that's exactly what happens there SEO in a strange way cuz we've got saying in the restaurant world that the

day you guys think you've actually conquered that industry you know karma is going to come and hit you so bad and that's exactly what I love about SEO there is so much new to learn about every day because quite simply you could never predict what Google's going to do the next morning the next day we all know what's been going on we currently still in a massive uh roll out of the update going on which clearly has shook the industry you know this is the biggest

update the most severe update I've seen whether it's manual penalties being given out to AI influences you know people being targeted but then on the other end of the spectrum they're also targeting proper white hat uh link building agencies or sites who've never ever done anything which is remotely shady and poor guys even their websites are being targeted so who knows how the industry would change you know by the time we finish finish March yeah I mean even by the time we finish this episode so

much is changing and we'll definitely get into that a bit further um there seems to be a pretty big SEO Community happening in Poland what's going on down there yeah um Poland's been a bit of a revolution when it comes to you know the SEO knowledge and I remember five six years uh previously you know they all used to be in terms of ranking there was hardly any technical SEO going on it was all about buying links pbns and all of that but since that time

um I've seen people like Robert ncha uh who's you know the biggest polish Legend here you know and I've learned a lot from that gentleman where the knowledge of uh the Polish seos here is just off the charts and we've seen that I saw it as a um evidence when white press has been doing our conferences the last couple of years in Poland and we hold some big ones so people like the KY roofs and the Matt diges uh or the Charles floats when they when

they came in they were all Spellbound you're like mate the SEO space in Poland is just growing rapidly the the knowledge level people have and now with AI being such a big factor in our life not just SEO uh you know we we white press has a habit of buying certain strategic tools out there we just bought another platform which is called Seno which is going to be very quick quick quick as a competition to ah refs and semrush quite big in the Polish market and

their CEO Damian an absolute Legend I've had chats with him and trust me after two minutes I feel like like an idiot the the the kind of knowledge this guy has how combining AI into SEO is just mindboggling so I always knew that the Polish SEO space uh or within the internet industry you know the Polish uh Community had is really switched on really really clever cookies and now they've up their game when it comes to how internationally SEO is perceived and I can see similar

things you know when it comes to how to rank a website you know being very white hat keeping up with the Google uh algo updates I see the Polish Community doing exactly the same so I think I'm privileged that I me as in being in white press and we be predominantly a Polish company that's where our head office is that's where I am right now I think in the right place at the right time when it comes to a you know riding the the growth the

Polish Su Community is Community is Community is experiencing uh and me being kind of in a lot of ways the face of white press when it comes to English Markets I can kind of combine and leverage that knowledge I'm getting from the local Polish Community combining it with all the international players who you know I'm good mates with whether it's the Charlie or the Kyle Rose or the Matt tiges you know uh and kind of being uh learning from from both ends so I couldn't be

more blessed to be honest yeah I mean that's uh like that app you said it was a cuto cuto it's spelled as s n u t o yeah I've heard about this recently and yeah just to hear that there's uh anyone that wants to be crazy enough to go up against the HRS and the semrush but I think uh the community has been kind of asking for a little bit more competition correct correct that's that's the idea and you know we've obviously invested serious money in

there to get some more servers out there start crawling the English Markets and all so I would tell your audience wait six months and you'll see Seno's name popping up a lot we're going to have to chat after the show about that app um so I'm in Malta right now and I'm talking with a lot of gambling Affiliates and the talk of town isn't just uh updates and people getting uh slammed all over the place uh but I mean a lot of the SEO tactics that

we've been hearing for quite some while are like um like the parasite SEO where Outlook India just went massive with like not only selling links and how much they were selling for but do you think with the changes where Outlook India is uh got put back down Earth you think the power is going back to the Affiliates where they don't have to feel threatened by big news media sites like USA Today that are just gonna turn into affiliate sites yes yes I agree and I think

this is a long time coming when it came to parasite SEO you know I've heard plent of experts who have supported parasite SEO but obviously for the right reasons even though the tactics a bit you know grayish light black ha whatever uh but clearly Google's making a statement here you know uh I and this is just my my hunch my gut instinct but mixed with a lot of knowledge and opinions I've heard from people since the update Google wants to create that equili that balance again

and I think that talk about oh AI is going to take over and parasite SEO is is such an easy way to kind of cheat Google algorithms and all of that I don't think they mind that uh it's when those things start becoming a lot bigger you know the Big Daddy comes in cracks the whip uh and gets people back in in the line so to speak only time will tell John you know whoever is making those predictions whether it's myself or all the other big

names you can't really predict what Google's going to uh do a month from now two months from now how the next updates going to look like however Us in the SEO space it's all about predicting uh what the patterns are and seeing how it is so based on ground reality as of today I agree with you you know the power is going to get back to you know the affiliate owners and all of that where the Outlook indas and all the other websites which were perhaps

overdoing it with the parasite SEO I think they'll have to take a deep breath uh rest strategize again and see how they kind of you know come up with a newer strategy which is more slightly Google friendly if I can say that so what would you say in your mind is like the future of Link building and what would you describe as like Evergreen link building strategies yeah well no matter every six months I hear that links would have no value or link building is dead

but let's let's face it uh links would remain one of the most important factors if not the top one but at least you know number two number three number four major ranking Factor um how I see the link building industry changing since this update and Beyond I think digital PR is going to play uh a very important role in this you know um acquiring links through high quality content even though the turnaround times might be longer I think that's how it's going to end up uh

panning out at least till the end of 2024 you know I'll be honest the link Wenders out there uh might suffer a bit of a hit uh where everyone's scared you know our inventory as well within white press you know a percentage a very small percentage was affected but thank God and I I I kind of kudos to my leadership where we wetting sides in an extremely in intrinsic level you know not much is happened to White press people are still spending money and all of

that but I think why I'm interested you know what it's it's actually a great question because before the update people were pivoting from guest po between guest posting but then they were investing a lot of money into Niche edits because clearly a page is ranking you know you're not taking a shot in the dark you know you you do and you and you gain image it value the needle moves compared to a guest posting but now the updates happened I want to see how people kind

of react to it uh in fact the feedback or the meetings I've had with clients not that any of my clients websites were hit they're all doing what they're supposed to be doing people have been coming back to me and say Steve what do you think what should be our next quarterly plan now even though we had a plan in place how should we address the link building thing and I kept telling them I went back to one thing and I said guys you kept asking

me for websites to link with which had uh stable or increasing traffic and I kept telling you listen majority of them there's a lot of AI content being used there to scale which is kind of fooling the algorithm start considering real websites even though it might show a bit of a downward traffic Trend and those websites the ones which have not been hit but still have a bit of a Down traffic Trend in my opinion are the real websites because clearly if that was abused in

terms of AI in terms of shady link building tactics or pbn and all of that they were the first ones to be to be hit so those are kind of interesting conversations I'm currently having with a bit of my eye on on the update and see how it happens so probably early days for me to kind of put my finger on it as to how it might pan out but obviously been doing link building for a while I think people will still invest a lot in

link building because it is a major ranking Factor but I think they'll pivot a lot more towards Niche edits SL digital PR and then play a waiting game and see okay what happens next yeah well I guess uh like you know for keeping your clients happy I guess it's not too difficult if you're focusing on the Evergreen stuff as opposed to I mean yeah maybe there's nothing wrong with the parasite SEO and the AI content where it's trending up but like you said if it's not

really stable and you kind of already know that there's going to be a maybe no future for that it's uh you don't want to be on the wrong side of the fence and I'm sure some people are riding that wave but um you know a lot of people they're just actually having their business taken from under them and maybe they should have had the the Evergreen um you know link building strategy I agree I agree and I was having a chat with James douly the other

day and he said Mate A lot of people are getting it wrong it's not in the entire that every site built on AI or used AI content which is been it's not the AI content which is being really hit or the AI strategy it's the spam which people have put out and literally scaled it you know with no human uh interference at all you know some of the content creation we do in wi press we use some AI tools just to get ideas just to get

Frameworks and guidelines but clearly we need you know uh a human involvement in there in terms of editing and all of that but I think as it always happens with human with human with human evolution every time there's a new technology which comes in which shortens our work people would tend to abuse it you know you forget forget SEO you look at everything else in the past you know before before when the first iPhones were launched you know uh why do we all complain now about

you know our younger generation everyone's addicted to our to the telephones to screens and all of that but that's because by Nature we are kind of a bit lazy every time we see technology doing most of our jobs people would do it and on top of that I think a lot of business owners probably got a bit greedy as well I've heard horror stories where copywriters have been sacked overnight because they thought AI is the game of fantastic AI tools out there I'm going to thrash

out content everything's fine Google's not going to do anything there we go Google woke up and said uhuh mate it it ain't happening any longer so AI would still uh content creation would still be used a lot but I think now people would be a lot more careful with the human involvement however I've also seen plenty of other uh content creation agencies who probably predicted this and they were wise enough not to use any AI at all and I've had several conversations with my clients or

other SEO experts in the UK and they said mate I was ahead of time they have still had a full team of copywriters there and everything just just just works fine yeah it's interesting you talk about digital PR as being kind of like the thing that's really important and I think there's some insight behind it which is I mean if you're going to do digital PR right the the implication is that you actually have to put a lot of upfront work and I mean when you

look at parasite SEO and AI content it's not upfront work it's a little bit of work trying to get the maximum gain as a as opposed to putting in a lot of effort maybe not knowing what where it's going to pay off but it just seems like not a lot of people are doing digital PR and when you listen to the tactics of people like you know Gabriel uh kov and FY kazone it's uh I I get excited hearing about some of the strategies they use

for for building links in a quality manner yeah for me ferry in particular the guy is genius what he does with uh with his digital pi and not just him I'm seeing several other names pop up Chris pantelli and Nick Nick BS from linkify these boys have you know a similar view of building their digital PR links you know their smash out links left right and center and you know another a name to watch out for really but what ferry has done is just just changed

the industry you know does it take a longer period in terms of turnaround times of course it does but that's that's exactly what Google wants is lots of homework being done lots of fantastic content being created you know innovative ways which don't break Google's guidelines in order to get that maximum link juice as we all talk about in order to move the needle so I'm a big fan of Ferry he'll be actually visiting and speaking at our conference in Poland in May uh I've met him

couple of times you know he's become a good mate um yeah I'd love to learn more from Ferry not to mention all his parody videos he makes you know yeah a Str stroke a stroke a stroke a genius yeah I mean in terms of like you know content creation which you know you've got a lot of experience on and that's kind of uh more your skill set it just seems like you know for building the right content you have to well it's not just a you

know putting in the the time and effort it's like you need to get get a story out and sometimes the story is tactics like what fery does or sometimes you got to just do some research and saying I'm G to compile this this guide or create a data set that doesn't exist and yeah we don't see enough of that I I've I've heard in the fiip marketing space that uh the Publishers they're begging for these data stories and whenever you have one they're they can take

it and they can spin it into a lot of stuff I agree I agree and end of the day that's what Google wants maximum user engagement content being pushed out which is useful based on the keywords you know an end user is is is is typing in so yes I agree and that's why that human involvement is so important mixed with a bit of AI in there you need to do uh the research you need to come up with amazing angles there uh in order to

you know keep that user on that page on that website for long and I think people like Ferry people like Chris people like Gabriela these guys are are the ones who do it really well um yeah but it'll be interesting uh as how it's going to pan out because if that's what is the future of link building in majority in terms of digital PR the competition is just going to grow because a lot of people will move their budgets into digital PR which means there's more

there's more there's more competition but is there enough Talent out there in the market to absorb all those those budgets as well so yes these are troubl times people are talking about but for me out of every chaos There's an opportunity which arises and I I'm I'm in a way a lot of I'm I'm I'm in a way excited you know commiserations to people of course who their websites have been hit and I'm 100% with them you know we're all in the same SEO space in

the SEO Community we help each other yet I'm looking at what the future holds after this chaotic period yeah but I mean I kind of look at a company like white press and Go the whole ecosystem you have a business that can scale and kind of weather any storm so I think you're always going to be in a fortunate position there thanks John thanks yeah I mean our platform is amazing you know the audio was to give 100% transparency to all the SEO agencies or the

brands out there wanting to do link building uh and that was the idea to scale it you know we started the company 11 years ago and being a really small startup in Poland to now operating in 30 different countries uh you know 12 physical offices around the world we publish upwards of what 15,000 guest posts or Niche edits every month you know but all done with Precision all done as close to white hat as possible so that you know we don't end up hitting our clients

websites every time there's there's an algo update um but of course it comes with a lot of Blood Sweat and Tears you know it does come with a lot of human engagement we got 200 people working you know uh that sometimes is just a beast on its own trying to manage expectations people working remotely people in the office you know you know it I mean you know it's it's it's not a it's not an easy bowl game when it comes to big companies you know doing

30 40 odd million euros um uh turnover annually uh but yeah can't be can't be more excited though yeah I can almost relate as uh as a company of 10 people but that's a a whole other ball game so yeah I wanted to ask you about what do you see as the current trends of like Niche edits versus guest posting yeah so as I was saying you know we we saw after the previous September update and then speeding up a bit more after the November update

last year where people started pushing more towards Niche edits and I think that was driven a bit through by the other resio influences out there in the market especially after the changai conference uh I wasn't really listening to the talks too much because white press had a booth outside but most of the conversations I had with some of our new clients they all kept saying there were a couple of um presentations there within the link building space where people kept talking you know what n shedit

seems to be a lot more safer option and a quicker option in terms of moving the needle I still think that's going to happen and I think it's going to happen with a percentage where people start investing up to 70% of their quarterly budget into Niche edits um probably go 15% guest posts and the other 15 maybe 20% take a bit on Niche edits and start doing a more digital PR as well but in my opinion these are the trends we've seen uh over a period

six to eight months and I think Niche edits if I was a brand or I was an SEO guy representing a client of mine Niche edits anytime any day and my thoughts uh maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong or maybe I'm on the right line of thinking would you say a knee shed it was is kind of more like the bottom of uh the funnel content where I mean like a guest post is typically your pseudo Topp of funnel yes yes yes I agree

I agree with that um you know guest posting yes you get a lot more freedom you know you can you can you know create a Content the way you want to Niche edits there are restrictions there for sure but I think in terms of value for money the ROI and everything you know I would still pick uh nich edits um I know some of the biggest names in the industry who run multi-million pound agencies out there uh where link building is an active part of their

revenue stream they all do nich edits all of them yeah uh going full circle back to parasite SEO or maybe it's not even parasite SEO it's like I created a subreddit or a Reddit channel for affiliate software and obviously this was a week ago where this was all flying high everyone was talking about how much traffic cor and Reddit are getting and I still think they are but it's kind of funny that as of like a couple days ago the traffic uh it was flying and

then it kind of went down um would you still say that stuff like this is a good strategy and just to add a bit more context the the Reddit Channel I created was more of a bottom of funnel and I actually think it's getting real and legit traffic which is you know I'm actually excited about doing something that looks like it's small potatoes but actually has more value yeah um proceed with caution is what I would say you know things which have been working which are

still working um working um it all comes down to relevance uh end of the day you know if the end results are what your channel and your strategy demands is is matching what Google guidelines are especially during the update I would say continue doing it uh you know I've been having charts with Charles float recently we've been talking a lot about the Reddit and all of that and he says exactly the same thing is keep doing if you not hit as of now and even if

you have a bit of a downward Trend as long as it's not falling off a cliff the traffic then clearly there's no point in changing or Reinventing the wheel so I would recommend do what you're doing but proceed with ction so I got a the next question is more about kind of I mean you guys with white press you're always supporting the SEO community and I had Mark right on as a guest who said The Secret of his success was being able to sell SEO and

simplify it in a way that of makes sense and he said a lot of seos they they just go straight into too much jargon and they're trying to show off but it ends up having the opposite effects so what would you say are good tips for people to sell SEO to people given that you might be helping others kind of maybe go a little bit away from White press but uh well it it's clearly worked for you guys yes now that's where my past experience come

in the comes into this picture so me you know running restaurants Michin Stu back in the UK uh doing a bit more B2B sales in a completely different industry coming in with new set of ideas and I'm with Mark 100% SEO the moment you talk about SEO subconsciously you start thinking of the Matrix you know so most of the technical jargon you've got to break it down into very simplified terms where people are on the same frequency as you are but you got to show your

the the ROI these people would get end of the day say yes we need to build traffic yes we need to improve the authority score on the website but what they really want is for us to make money for them so once your sales pitch is including that factor where they could actually gain a lot of Revenue with guaranteed case studies to show but it's all done in a clear concise uh non-technical jargon people would connect and one of the biggest reasons for my success for

two years with wi press and I'm talking to some of the biggest agencies names and Brands you know giving their campaigns to me is I've kept it very simple and I was reviewing this two days ago last week where I remember when I used to do Discovery onboarding calls or demo calls of our platform the first 6 months I used to take 30 minutes now I take 8 minutes because I've cut off all the other jargon I was trained on by my technical there in y

press because I quickly realize people don't want to listen to all of that make it very simple easy cu the more you talk and more you explain the more questions pop up and you don't want them you want to be leading a conversation where it simply says that's the amount I need to pay because that's the pain point I'm going to fix this pain point it's going to take this much of time and the end result is you can expect this much and if you can

all put those kind of four factors or explanation categories in very simple English you know or any other language you speak uh it it does the job and that's one thing I speak to a lot of seos around the world when we go on conferences when I'm having a child with him I said guys people don't don't want to feel stupid as Mark was saying yeah it's exactly it that's brilliant yeah it's it's about having that same frequency but then 5% more to stick be tuned

into you and kind of following the moment there's a disparity between what your understanding and knowledge is compared to what they are they'll just switch off it's it's it's simple as that and on top of that your personality plays such a big part you know Mark's an amazing guy you know people who are within sales you still have to do your deliverables you still have to deliver the kpis and everything but I've got a simple formula people need to like you because if they like you

they'll Trust you and if they trust you they'll give you their business but that Journey from the first call to them liking you that's the most that's the toughest part and a lot of seos out there perhaps don't don't have that switch in them and there are lots of little things you know responding uh to emails to texts to phone calls within 10 15 minutes you know being for them all the time when things go wrong even though you know your client might have made that

mistake rather than pushing it back onto them you take that ownership and responsibility you know dish out favors to them you know all that comes into relationship building which then drives business end of the day we're all humans emotional animals you know if you hit the emotional strings in an honest way people would like you yeah and the irony for that is when they when you've clicked with them in the emotional sense they'll use logic to rationalize where they're doing business with you even though it's

actually emotional correct so I'm going to take a lot of notes here that what you've said is great for seos but I actually believe the same is true for SAS companies like ourselves and I'm G to spend a little bit of time later today looking at the white press website to go how do let's reverse engineer uh their success strategies and I actually I'm sure I'll be able to copy a lot of ideas uh that would apply to SAS companies brilliant brilliant so yeah I just

want to uh finish off with what's next for you and what do you have as ations for this year and next this is going to be challenging even though it's exciting uh and then Google update has just you know thrown a spanner in the works there obviously lots of conferences this year uh cuz white press started its own events brand called U wibes we've got 18 events planned this year I've got no idea how we're going to pull it off uh I'm obviously not going to

all the 18 cuz I'm just going to end up getting divorced cuz my wife's going to kick me out but I'm going to all the biggest English ones uh all the international ones so whether it's the Vietnam Matt singer event early next month uh Robert Nells one happening end of this month um we will be doing another big one with a partner in Cyprus in October which is going to be all about link building we've potentially signed another partner to perhaps crack the asianchinese market because

we know that's where the money is at this stage you know it's all about scaling up getting to my annual Targets this year to be honest learning more about SEO the technical SEO part of things you know your topical mapping your semantic seos and all of that asking millions of questions to corai for example again a good ma of mind you know probably attending few more courses you know I've enjoyed my journey so far within the space of Link building but SEO is so much more

and I think I'm at that point where at Le within my markets my business is safe and strong and I've got strong sales leaders in place it's now me elevating a my own brand by going to several events obviously white press leveraging through it but also for me to get more knowledge where you know when I I can easily walk into podcasts and webinars and talk in a very convincing manner about the technical SEO part of stuff so yeah and then what happens 2025 26 who

knows mate you yeah Life's a mystery so my last question which I ask every guest and you could probably literally answer with one word which is cuto as you know these types of SEO tools are in my mind the original business intelligence tools and affiliate marketing so what do you see as the future of um affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence you can say Seno and just like leave it there I would probably say AO then uh cuz this this seems to bridge the

gap uh between these two industries but kind of if I had to dig in slightly more deeper um yeah yeah maybe the to just kind of intersect because it's like I know with h refs and I'm sure s Rush does it and I wouldn't be surprised Seno probably has it I mean these tools are so Advanced that you can even export the stuff into looker studio and build even crazier dashboards I just think that what we have today is so immense and Powerful it's kind of

like where do you start but we're seeing people like Kai uh take these things and kind of turn them into like not just businesses but kind of like uh like sub Industries within SEO yeah but I I think with within the affiliate marketing space and I could be wrong I get a Feeling Again as an outsider because I still consider myself as an outsider within the SEO space being only in it for two years affiliate marketing thing does need a bit of a revolution in my

opinion it needs a lot more technology being interfaced into affiliate sites where the journey becomes a lot more seamless whether it's onboarding continuation more Revenue generation leads whatever that might be I apart from cuto I think in general anyways the industry is screaming out for an absolutely revolutionary tool which will just help affiliate marketers I still feel affiliate marketing at times times becomes very conservative there's there's whatever knowledge is there it's kind of never given out it's a bit more secretive so to speak as compared

to the genuine SEO Community uh but and that could be because of the lack of tools out there uh I I think you hit the nail on the head there it's uh I do agree what you said is true it you're you're saying it as if you've been in affiliate marketing for 10 to 20 years but it's I I see it from my side and I agree I think uh the only tools we do have are the SEO tools but I think there's a there's definitely

a lot more that's missing and you're right about um yeah kind of a affiliate marketing today is a little bit Elementary it's tracking links it's content I mean that's kind of the basics but where's it leveling up you go to the SEO space and the conversations they're two different worlds Worlds Apart correct correct so John maybe that could be one of your new projects who knows H you can start working we are we already have a couple of those projects in mind so I'll share them

and I'm sure we're going to run into each other at a few of these SEO conferences so I'm going to pass it back to you Stephen to say thank you for doing this and how can people get a hold of you and we'll also include those links in the show notes brilliant uh many thanks for having me here I'm very active on LinkedIn uh Stephen K or just go on to White press's website hit on the English um uh landing page there you'll see my telephone

number there I'm on hundreds of WhatsApp groups when it comes to your communities just you know I'm sure someone would have my telephone number anyways but LinkedIn is the easiest route to get to me brilliant thank you so much brilliant look thanks thanks a lot for having me cheers 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 Reading and Review wherever you listen to your podcast that helps us expand our

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