Ranking Revolution

Doug: Hey, what's going on in this
episode, we have the second part

of the interview with Olga czar.

And if you missed the first
part, we actually talk about how

she really started, uh, growing
her business with SEO audits.

And it kind of goes hand in hand with
how she grew her brand, her brand.

Blog, and then she used social
media, I think primarily Twitter,

and she's now launched a podcast.

She does some YouTube stuff as well, but
we talk about how she has grown her brand

in a very competitive space, uh, SEO and
marketing because everyone in the space

is basically a marketer and we kind of
know what we're doing in that respect.

So with that said, we get
into all of the details.

Now, this is part.

Two of the conversation.

If you miss part one, we talk about
how she runs her main business,

which is like SEO auditing.

So if you miss that,
definitely check it out.

It'll still a standalone, but if you
want to have the full conversation,

be sure to check out part one as well.

And without further ado, let's get
to the interview with Olga czar.

So let's talk about the
inspiration for starting SEO sly.

And I mean, you, you worked in the
industry for 10 plus years and you

had all this knowledge building up.

And I, I feel like maybe like many of
us were like, I just want to get it out.

Like no one else is saying it, but any
other big inspiration to start the blog

and really the, the whole platform, which
we'll describe in a second, but yeah.

What's the origin story.

Olga: Okay.

So, around.

2010 or so, I heard about like, earning
money online, AdSense, these were

the times, maybe even earlier that
it was easy to earn money off ads.

And there was this program called Site
Build It, and they were teaching you step

by step how to create a site, monetize
it, very, very thorough, very nice.

And I created a couple of sites this
way and started earning money of them.

It wasn't like huge money, but it
was enough for me to understand

that it really I think works this
process works and it is possible.

And I learned SEO, even though I
didn't know it was SEO at the time.

And then there was a time, uh, I, I.

I, I, I think I graduated from university
and I had a choice either to be English

translator or to do something else.

And I knew already that I
don't want to be a translator.

So I started applying for jobs
and I got an SEO job as a junior

and it kind of, my knowledge was
enough for me to get that job.

And.

I was working there, I wasn't earning
a lot of money, very little money if

we think about it today, very little.

I was doing, building those websites,
they weren't super successful still.

At some point some maybe took off
but I, I, I kind of decided to

follow that path of being at the
agency and learning as much as I can.

So I kept learning, learning, learning.

And then I think pandemic came.

And I was already like
seven plus years into that.

And then I thought, why am I creating
those sites about all those weird

things when I can create the site
about SEO, which is something I think

I love, I love, I love the most.

So I registered the domain and started
simply sharing the things I do at work.

Some things I learned.

And it kind of took off,
even though it was 2020.

I started in August 2020, so
it is almost four years ago.

And I think around December I think
Aleda Solis or Brody Clark or both of

them, they kind of found in Google some
of the articles I wrote because I was

writing them, uh, they were very in depth.

With all the screenshots, all
the SEO optimizations, keyword

research based, of course.

And they started to rank
basically after like a couple of

months, no sandbox in this case.

And they shared it on Twitter.

Twitter was very powerful back then.

And then kind of a lot of people
started to notice me and kind

of the snowball effect happened.

And I think a year later
actually I had a small following.

I started newsletter.

And it was kind of slowly growing.

I still had a job, but I still I
kept building SEOfly, SEOfly blog.

Then I got offer at a U.

S.

based lawyer, SEO agency.

They offered me a lot more money
than I had at the Polish agency.

So I switched there.

But I already knew that I am not
an employee and I have to end up

as an independent SEO consultant.

So I kept doing SEO fly.

Then I created, I think in
2022, I created YouTube podcast.

And in 2022, from what I remember,
I decided to give up that job.

I had just one client,
but I said, fuck it.

I want to be a free person.

I am giving it up.

We'll see what happens.

If not, if, if I don't have any
clients, I will have all the time

in the world to simply do the blog.

But.

I think in 60 days I was able to double
the amount of money I had at the agency.

Then I landed a couple of other clients.

And this is what has been
happening up until now.

The issue now is that I am super busy.

As I mentioned, I have the wait list and,
uh, I cannot really take more clients

and I don't want to grow into an agency.

I don't want to hire
people, manage people.

This is definitely not
something I want to do.

I am a free person.

I want to travel.

I want to take months off if I want to.

So I'm now doing client work in this kind
of boutique SEO agency type of style.

But now my goal is to spend 50 percent
of my time still growing SEO Sly.

That's why I created SEO Sly Pro
to kind of get more passive income.

I already have a lot of
sponsors of my SEO newsletter.

So it kind of also allowed me to get
some Kind of passive income income and

the course is another thing because
with clients, I can only do as much.

I can only work on five, six, maybe
10 websites a month, not, not more

without sacrificing the quality.

And that allows me to kind of
spread my wings, do experiments

and get paid for that.

So my My main goal for, I think, 2025 is
to just have two, three, my top favorite

beloved clients and do them because I
love them and spend all the other time

simply experimenting, sharing, doing
courses, YouTube, you know, Because

I find it very I simply love it.

I think this is the, the, my favorites,
my favorite part of SEO because it

gives me so much freedom and I think
you understand me perfectly that

Doug: when, when did you and I
connect, do you remember it was a 2021,

Olga: I think, yeah, I think so.

Because I, I think Lisa, uh, your former
student, I think she connected me with

you, so around that time, I think, yeah.

Yeah.

Doug: Okay, I

Olga: still had a job.

I remember,

Doug: right?

Yeah.

And I remember we would have
you were on my other show, the

Doug show a couple few times.

And I think after we recorded, you
were like, ah, like, I wanted it.

Yeah.

I want to get away from, you know,
the nine to five and just do other

stuff and have a little more freedom.

So I get it.

Well, let's let's talk about
the, the overall platform.

I'll, I'll just like repeat it to
make sure I understand everything.

So you have the blog, you
have Twitter, which you did.

Like you said, you got a
pretty good following there.

You have the newsletter, which
is pretty popular and you have

several thousand subscribers.

I think

Olga: eight, 8, 000 now.

Doug: Great.

And then the podcast, you kick
that off and the YouTube channel.

So I think like you and I do the same.

And SEO

Olga: is like pro this kind
of membership area as well.

Doug: Okay.

And any other pieces of the
platform do some LinkedIn.

Olga: LinkedIn, yeah, I'm now mostly
more, I'm publishing more on LinkedIn

than on Twitter because Twitter kind
of isn't working the way it used to.

So, so I would say Twitter, LinkedIn,
SEO Slide Pro, and I have this SEOSlide.

cloud version of the site which
Has all those premium premium

products, which now are the course
and as you say, pro platform.

So those I think those things,

Doug: I

Olga: think it is everything.

Yeah,

Doug: so people could check out the
previous episode where we talked about the

audit and the packages and all that stuff.

One thing that is really valuable that
you did a great job with is The content

that you created was the perfect top end
funnel so that the people that started

following you would become your client.

So you cited a six to eight week
wait list for your 5, 000 plus audit.

And that's crazy, right?

Cause like, if, if someone's like, okay,
on average, it takes you about 20 hours

to do One of the audits maybe a little
bit more you could do a couple of them

per week people could do the math It's
a decent chunk of money and I think

you know, you're doing other work too.

So you wouldn't totally fill that up.

Olga: Yeah

Doug: so Can you talk about how you?

Selected the topics that you were going
to cover so that it educated the potential

clients They had a connection with you.

They trusted you.

So basically they would sign up and
say hey You I want you to do an audit

on my site and we're ready to pay
you, you know, 12, 000 right away.

Olga: So to be honest I was doing it
the way I do it for my clients as well.

I basically when I registered
the domain, I simply do like,

did like competitive analysis.

I Plugged in all the best known
SEO websites, like search engine

journal, those types of things.

Maybe I shouldn't start with
those competitors with a new

site because the site was brand
new domain rating, like zero.

But I selected those sites
and I did some filtering.

I, um, I, I chose the keywords that
were relatively not, not that difficult.

I did a lot of filtering and then I had
a list of keywords potentially to target.

And I think among those keywords,
the ones which I started

with were search operators.

So I find the keyword
Google search operators.

This one is pretty competitive.

But then I found Bing search operators,
I think Yandex search operators,

and I created like the entire
list of search operators articles.

These were the first one, the
first ones I created, and they

started ranking instantly.

And I think the next one was SEO audit.

Very competitive keyword and
how to do an SEO audit, but I

decided, okay, what I don't care.

I will, I will write
about it and share it.

I will document my entire process.

And it will be a nice exercise for
me to kind of, refresh my knowledge.

And I think the next one was how to do an
SEO audit, which was like 20, 12 K words.

And this was the, the audit, which
was then you probably heard the story.

Copied, turned into a book, sold
on Amazon, and printed as well.

And it also gave me a lot of
publicity, this kind of, this, this

situation, because I became very angry.

I was tweeting and all that stuff.

It doesn't matter, a shitstorm happened.

So I was simply doing that the
way I would do it for a client.

And of course I knew these are
very highly competitive keywords.

So, I was also like looking for long tail
keywords around audits, question keywords.

And I was also writing articles
about them, shorter articles.

They were very fast to rank.

Then I started Doing videos about audits,
like common questions about audits, common

questions from the auditing process.

In some cases there was
a video and an article.

I embedded the video in the article.

And for a lot of queries, I had
like, Number one to ranking and then

there was my video so it was kind
of, I had more real estate in Serbs.

So, and I naturally started to gravitate
towards just talking about audits.

Then I naturally earned a lot of links.

I didn't buy a single link to my website.

I only, I think, bought two press
releases or something like that.

But other than that people
actually started to cite me.

I think even, uh, Moz, uh, edit a
link, Ahrefs, like all those big names.

They linked to me because they thought
my, my content was good enough.

Then I was invited to write
at a search engine journal.

I was invited to a bunch of
podcasts, including yours.

And those leads were coming
usually through YouTube, through

Podcasts, my podcasts or my
appearance in other podcasts.

I also had a bunch of, I think, leads from
your show as well from different sources.

Like I started to still appear everywhere.

And I think it is important, especially
now when we have AI, it is way

easier to repurpose the content.

So I just published a very
long lawyer SEO guide.

I just recorded a long video and
I will record smaller guides.

For lawyers as a lawyer, SEO of
specific aspects to support that

one and supporting videos and then
I will turn them into a podcast.

So it is like getting one piece of content
in many mediums usually gives you simply

like more traffic, more real estate
and more leads at the end of the day.

Doug: And you cited something
which I think a lot of people are.

Doing more with the help of a I
maybe solely with a huge amount of

help of it from a I, but you know,
you write the blog post and you

have this great tutorial, which is a
classic way to build your audience.

Like you tell people how to do it, but
it's hard and you have more expertise.

So there's a good chance.

There's a handful of people
that will pay you to do it

because you've done it before.

And even though you showed them how to do
it now, they know how hard it is, right?

Olga: Yeah,

Doug: you repurpose the content
in multiple different formats.

And then you started
slicing it and dicing it.

So you would go.

Really deep into one area or a
specific like avatar or user type

or client type, like a lawyer, or
it could be a dentist or whatever.

Like, someone could say, Oh, how do you do
an SEO audit for an orthodontist in the U.

S.

And it could be a little bit different
and they put their own spin on it.

So, as far as, like, currently, or how
are you using a I to help repurpose the

content that maybe you've already done?

Olga: Uh huh.

Yeah.

So, Usually I also do interviews with,
with other people and now I try to have

specific topics for those interviews.

Like, I, I had the interview with Martin
Split from Google about JavaScript SEO.

So.

The entire transcript I put it into
ai, into cloud ai and I asked it to

simply write the highlights, create,
create a nice LinkedIn post a Twitter

post, highlighting the main findings.

So this is social media posts
are, are great to write with ai.

I also created kind of my own list
of JavaScript SEO things I want

to talk about, questions I asked
Martin, and I fed them into, this

time I think it was ChatGPT, and I
said, and I asked it to write answers

based on what Martin answered.

This way, I was also able to publish
a very, very long guide based on

the transcript and also based on, on
some Google documentation and my own

knowledge by just providing like,
notes clues not writing it every,

not writing all of it, what AI is.

Also what, what ai is also nice
to use for is I also started

using it to create funny images.

For my blog posts, like recently
for lawyer SEO, a lot of scary

images I created with that.

And, uh, the other thing is so,
podcast notes descriptions, of course,

for YouTube videos, stuff like that.

And FAQs.

So, uh, FAQs are basically
supplemental content.

And in many cases, you can increase
the word counts and topical

authority topical relevance.

If you add to a blog post or a page a
bunch of FAQs and make sure those FAQs

are headings and in those headings you
have like those variations of keywords,

LSIs, entities, whatever is necessary.

And ChatGPT is very, very, very
good at writing those FAQs.

I can quickly optimize any page
and make it more relevant with just

asking, feeding the article to chat
GPT and asking it to write FAQs.

Doug: Perfect.

Well, like normal, I think I could go
on and on and we could talk about this

and maybe, maybe we'll do a round two.

We can get something scheduled.

But is there any, Other thoughts
that you have overall from, you know,

your approach, maybe you're giving
advice to someone who has, you know,

five or 10 years of experience.

So they're actually an expert and they're
thinking, Hey, I want to put out content

and I know that I need to approach
it in sort of a step by step way, but

there are, you know, They're a little
bit nervous because like you're four

years in from starting the blog or so,
and you made a huge amount of headway.

You had some obstacles, you were working
full time, and you did this on the side

and you were able to, you know, escape
from a day job and do your own thing.

So yeah, any broad advice for
someone who's like, all right, I

want to follow in her footsteps.

Olga: Yeah, I would say, especially
now more than ever you have to probably

show your face, your personality.

You have to build your own brand because
we don't know, but maybe in a few years

time everything will be written by AI.

Everything you'll find on Google,
assuming Google is still there.

And I think people will be looking for
other people they can trust, and that's

why I think you cannot be really hidden.

Ten years ago, it was possible to
have a faceless website, faceless

YouTube channel, and you would rank.

Now, not necessarily.

So don't be afraid of showing your face
coming, uh, showing your YouTube videos,

podcasts, not only like writing, so
that people know you are a real person.

And be consistent with that.

This is, this is another
very important thing.

30 minutes a day, wake up earlier,
spend 30 minutes writing a blog post.

And usually you will, you will
spend more because you will get

into that mode but just get started.

Consistency and showing your face.

The two ones, the two,
those two, I would say.

Doug: Well, it's always
a pleasure to catch up.

We will link up to all
the places that you're at.

But is there like a home base
that, you know, people should just

go to, to find all your stuff?

Olga: I would

say SEOsly.

com and SEOsly.

cloud, the

Olga: two, and you will find
everything that you need there.

Doug: All right.

Perfect.

Well, we will catch up again soon
and thanks a lot for your time today.

Olga: Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much.

Bye bye, everyone.

Doug: Thanks to Olga for chatting with me.

And if you have any questions or
comments or want to connect with her,

we'll put links in the show notes and
description so you can get to all the

stuff that we talked about in the episode.

So thanks to Olga.

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