Ep 154: How To Build Premium Backlinks Using Your Own Team with Dan Ray

How would you like to acquire backlinks that add thousands to your monthly revenue? Hi, I'm Jaryd Krause, host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And in this episode, I'm speaking with Dan Ray, who is an SEO pro and backlink builder. He has helped clients add thousands of dollars per month to their businesses with these bespoke backlink building services. Now, Dan is completely sold out, so it's almost impossible to become a client.

But we were lucky enough to get him as our Mastermind to train us on how we can build premium backlinks for ourselves using his own methods and using our own team. And because this was so valuable, I wanted to release part one of this training to you guys as a podcast episode. Now, in this episode, Dan and I talk about his wild health story and how it ended up helping him become a better business owner. Now, Dan and I tried to get him booked on to do this training multiple times, but his health was playing up. So there are some interesting things happening.

It's got to do with losing an eye, kidney failure, and all that sort of stuff. So stay tuned for that wild story. In the episode, we also talk about why it's against Google's terms to even ask for a backlink without paying for it. But we also talk about what is a good backlink versus a bad backlink, not just using DR, and how we can build white hat backlinks in an organic, evergreen strategy. We also talk about why link building can be easy.

Most people presume it to be hard, but it can be easy if you know how to use Dan systems. We also talk about what tool Dan uses for backlink building outreach. There's so much value in this podcast episode. Do you want to build or grow your content website? Niche website builders have helped hundreds of people take their content websites from a few hundred dollars per month to over tens of thousands of dollars per month with crafted content creation, buying old domains, and link building strategies.

These strategies have helped people increase their traffic authority, monthly earnings, and website valuation too. Head to nichewebsite.builders/bob to get 10% off any link building or 10% more from their content creation services. That's nichewebsite.builders/bob. I'll put a link in the description too.

Dan, thank you so much for coming on. And welcome back to the BOB podcast.

What up?

So last time you were on, actually, I don't think it was last time, but the first time you were on episode 35, we talked about your ten X ten link building strategy. So people are listening. Make sure you go away and check that out. Then we've also updated to say that there's another episode. I couldn't find the number as quickly as I wanted to before you came on, but we updated that to the ten x ten X ten link building strategy.

So there are two episodes there that you guys should go and listen to if you haven't already. But Dan, I wanted to get you back on, do a bit of training for us in the Mastermind, and then release the first half as an episode. And we were going to do it late last year, then some things happened, and you said you've got an interesting story for us, so I guess I'll hand over the mic to you.

What happened?

Yeah, I've had a really bad year, to be honest, in terms of interest.

In 2021, right?

Yeah. This whole year has just been pretty, to be honest. But I woke up one day in the middle of March and my left eye was really blurry, and I was like, That's weird. So I went to the hospital. So I'm thinking they're going to give me some sort of cream or some tablets or whatever, and it'll just clear up in a few weeks. They say the nurse was brutal as well. She just went, Oh, so this is permanent, and we'll try and save what vision you have left. And I'm like, Cheers, mate. What do you do with that information? I vomited. I was like, I just got really hot.

And I was like, That's scary to hear, right?

Yeah.

Because I'm just like, right, so I'm going blind now. That's fantastic news, because my right eye wasn't as blurry, but it was still quite bad. So my left eye was pretty much useless. And it was so bad that trying to look out of both of my eyes was worse than just looking at my right eye. So I was wearing, like, an eye patch, and they're just telling me, There's nothing we can do. I'm like, great. And I go in one day to the doctor, and I'm just like, Look, is there nothing I can do? Because I can't work, I can't look at my computer because I can't see you three guys now. It'd be, like, just beautiful blurs.

I was messaging you, and you're like, I don't know what you said because I can't read. That was a few months ago. My entire business runs online. I couldn't do anything. So I'm like, Look, there's got to be something. And he goes,Well, this is an experimental treatment, right? And they inject the back of your eyeball and suck out, I guess, water pressure, I don't know exactly. And he's like, But it's probably only about 50-50 whether you lose your eye or not.

Whoa.

So I'm like, Well, my eyes shit anyway.

Yeah, you couldn't really see from anywhere, right?

Exactly. And I did it, and it really helped. It's much better.

Awesome.

I still can't see that well, but it's much better. So then I'm like, Whoo, chilling off that feeling good. And then my kidneys failed—complete renal failure. So I'm in the hospital for a while after that, and they go, Oh yeah, this is permanent too, by the way, so you're going to have to have dialysis for like three times a week for the rest of your life. And I'm like, Great, but I'm on the transplant list, and I've been diabetic since I was eight years old as well. So when they do that and give you the transplant, they're going to do a kidney and a pancreas, which means I won't be diabetic for the first time in my life. So that's actually quite exciting.

So I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah.

So you get a new kidney, right?

Yeah, but at the moment I have a permanent chest tube in. Yeah, I would show you, but you've used it, and I want to see that. So yeah. Do you know what, I guess the most Dan Ray thing about this is that I've been sitting in dialysis because dialysis takes 4 hours, right? You sit there, they take your blood out, and they put it back in, and you can't go anywhere or do anything.

So I've been working during the day. I'm the most distracted mother in the world. I cannot sit still and do 4 hours of work at any other time. So I've been forcing myself to do work, and it's actually been really good for business.

That's so good. I guess it's a blessing in the pain, right? I went through glandular fever, and I'm not saying I can't one up you at all. I mean, kidney failure and eye failure are nothing compared to being a little sick and getting glandular fever. But I look back at that and I'm like, That's one good thing that happened to me because I just overworked and I got so sick and I couldn't work anymore, so it forced me to work less and it helped me with my business so much. Now I can work less but earn more, and that was a blessing for me amongst the crap. So I'm sorry to hear about your year, but I'm stoked with the 4 hours of focus that you've got.

That's cool.

Do you know what, out of all of it that's happened, the most annoying thing is that I'm on a fluid restriction and I get so thirsty?

Don't drink as much water.

I'm allowed to drink like one liter of total fluid a day. And that includes, like, if you go for a meal and you have gravy on it, you have to include the gravy in your fluid allowance. It's so annoying.

So you're thirsty all the time, man.

All the time, yeah.

I'm always getting in trouble with my partner for not drinking enough water, man.

So tell us what you've been working on. In those 4 hours. Is that client's work?

Well, yeah, a bit of everything, really. I've always, always run through this sort of goal if something happens to me because, I don't know if you're aware, this kind of sh*t has happened to me before. My kidneys have always been dodgy, and they sometimes fail, but they usually come back without any really meaningful long term treatment options. It's a couple of tablets and stuff, and they're okay again. So I've always been like, Right, when my kidneys fail and I need to because you can't really work, you sit, you're feeling shit in the hospital.

I'm in there for like a month at a time sometimes. And it's just like, I need my business to continue running without me being present and being a part of it. And it seems like I don't believe in fate and stuff like that, right? But every time I start losing that part of my business, it happens and reminds me that the team is really important, the processes are really important. You need to have all these things in place. So Dan Ray is not required. So it reinvigorated that. And now I have a brilliant team, and I was like, Right, this never happens again.

And this is when my eyes opened. So before my kidneys went down, I was like, Right, we need the team to be in place. I need them to be rock solid because I have a team and they are doing good work. But I guess I'd been a bit slack in their management.

And you could pick up the slack as well because you had time.

I was because, if we're behind on a campaign, I just do a couple of days and we catch up for that.

You can't do that. You can't just go; I'll pick up the slack when I'm in the hospital.

Well, yeah, the first thing that happened with my eyes was that they gave me these disgusting, like, steroid injections in my eyes to try and save them, I guess. You can see the needle, like, through your eyes. It's going into your eyes.

It's disgusting.

Yeah, it's horrible. After that, it scratches the inside of your eye. So I was completely blind for nearly a month, like three weeks to a month. So I was like, Right, this time, nothing got done because my team wasn't capable of working without me. Because what they got used to was coming and asking me every day, Danny, is this good enough? Shall we do this? And without me saying yes.

They couldn't make the decisions by themselves, so we fixed that. And that's mainly what I've been doing. And also, I'm working on, like, really trying to grow, like, my own personal reputation now because I know I've always been capable of it, but I could never really be bothered, like, playing the game to sell courses and stuff. But I've spoken to a few of the guys who are doing it on Twitter, and they're going crazy. So I'm running a load of Twitter ads at the moment. I'm on about 5000 followers, and I want to get to ten K before probably the end of next week.

Cool.

Wow. And then we're going to start selling some courses there.

And you've got a really good community as well, right? In that Facebook group, I'm like, man, you've got some good interaction. It's cool to see.

Yeah. The Facebook group is the thing about it is it's really reliant on me as an individual. It's a really cool place to be, and I'm really proud of what I've built, but if I don't post, it doesn't really sustain itself.

Yeah. And your personality is so, like, I don't know; it's hard to replace you because I know your personality. It may be hard for people—the listeners—to understand, but you've got a pretty different personality than most people, and it's cool and funny. Yeah. Well, I don't know how it's very unique. You are you. And what I like about it is that you're being you and not apologizing for being you.

That's the thing. Right. Because the group, for me, was never supposed to be like a training community. The idea was that people were bugging me and asking me questions. I was like, Right. The very first day I made the group, the idea was that every time somebody asks me a question, I'll make a video to explain it, and then every time someone asks that question, I don't have to answer it. I could just share the video that I've already answered.

But obviously, the world doesn't work like that because people want the same answer over and over again in a new format. So it doesn't work like that. But I'm really proud of what I've done there. But it does require me a lot. So when I'm down, because right good I'm completely unavailable, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are my dialysis days. I'm completely unavailable. It wipes me out. I come home from the hospital, I eat food, and I go to sleep. So I've got Tuesday, Thursday, and then the weekends, and nobody is around on Facebook at the weekend.

Yeah. So I want to send people to your group to check that out, but I want them to know why. Right. We haven't even talked about link building yet, but thanks for sharing your story because I think there's so many things within that. Like you said, it's very good, Ray. You can see the positives in it and the good things that have come from it. So where are you doing a different type of link building now? Are you still doing your ten x ten strategy?

Well, we're doing it, so it's really hard to say because I've said it privately, but this is my first public saying of it. I've fully sold out.

Okay, congrats.

When I've been teaching link building, I've always loved it. I loved getting a link, and it was better for me when we couldn't get links, then I could solve the problem of getting a link. That's the part that I love. So we always did it white hat as anything. We worked on the harder clients that other people couldn't get links for and stuff like that, and we charged a lot of money for it. And I've never really sold to my audience, and I was always apprehensive about selling to SEO agencies and other SEOs and that kind of thing, simply because I thought, I don't want somebody making a margin on what I'm doing because I'm already overpriced.

Yeah. And then they own the audience, and you don't have one.

Yeah, right? So now I say a bit more, I'm absolutely, completely in on my audience. We can do links. We can do better links than most other people can. And here's the price. So right now, it's like, How can I make as much money as possible in the most stress free way possible? So I tell people exactly what they're getting. I tell people exactly what the price is.

And you know what? If you don't want to pay the price and you're a bit like you're going to do a lot of links to me and stuff, I'll talk to you about it. Because right now I'm saying, I'm a businessman, you're a businessman. Let's talk to each other like businessmen and make a sale. As long as my margins are still good, I'll do it.

Yeah.

And if it's not, then you don't need that. You don't all waste your time if somebody's going to nickel and dime. Most people know what a white hat is. But yeah, let's talk about what makes a good backlink and what a good backlink looks like. Because a lot of people are just like, Hey, I just want to hire Dr. Site, right? But there are so many other things that go into it that are very important that a lot of people miss the mark, especially people that are listening right now. They're like, Yeah, I just want a good link from a good site. But come on, you can get robbed if you just do that.

Yeah, well, first off, the word white hat, right? It's a marketing term. There's no such thing as a white hat link, because if you're following Google's terms of service exactly, you shouldn't be asking for a link at all, ever, under any circumstance. Whatever the value exchange is, you should not be buying links. Yeah. Even if you're not buying them, like a free link, if you say to them, Can I have a link? Or you perform any activity that does so.

Guest posting and stuff for a link are still not covered by the policy, right?

Yeah. Because you're not supposed to do anything that's aimed at getting a link. I imagine how the Internet would look if that didn't exist.

I agree.

It's technical.

Yeah, I agree.

So what I mean when I say white hat is that it's manual outreach without using an existing list and without paying for the link at the end. So it's as white and as close to Google's terms of service as it can be.

I just want to define that for people who are going to use you as a service or anybody else as a service. Yeah, you're going to need to pay for the link builder to do that service, but the link builder is not paying for the link because the service that they're doing to get that right is just for people to understand that conceptually.

That's the theory as time has gone on. I first met you, like, two years ago, three years ago, or something like that.

That's what I think I said to these guys. Yeah, the other day.

Yeah. Since then, the world's changed, man. There are so many people teaching link building, and it's really, really easy to go to any blog owner and say, Hey, can I have a link? They say, No, I'll give you $50. They can say, Okay, because a lot of blog owners don't have any money. They're running this blog, and trying to make money off it. And the first offer that comes to them is from a link builder saying, Hey, can I have a link?

So a lot of blog owners are now used to being offered money. So it means the ones that are available who will do it for free are less available, so there are fewer links out there now if you're doing white hat stuff. So the game has changed a lot. It's actually easier to get white hat links now because the people who send out mass emails are link builders, who send out thousands of emails every day.

That's crazy.

Like, Hey, do you want some money? You want some money. You want some money. And people hate it and they're so used to seeing the email. The format is the same, and the templates are the same. So if you stand out, you don't have to stand out that much. If you stand out a little bit, people are more willing to at least read your email and see what you're offering. And I always say to people, It's all about the value exchange. Nobody's going to ever say, Oh yeah, I'll just give you a link for nothing.

It has to be worth their time. Right? So you've given them a really well written post, which most people aren't doing. So we hire full time writers, and they spend a whole day researching and writing one article. That's an eight hour day to write 1,000 words. So our writing is good, so we can do stuff like that. But a lot of link builders are not trying to do that. They're just trying to say, Hey, and that's it, because my life is much easier to say, Hey, do you want $30? Oh, you've got an existing post that has my keyword in it.

Do you want $30? And if they say yes, that's a way easier link than having to ask first.

Negotiate an article.

And then come up with an article idea and have the writer write it.

Like, oh yeah, it's a lot of work. And also managing the people through that process, just throwing money at it is an easy resolution.

Yeah, exactly.

So that's a bit about the process of how people, if they were crazy enough to go away and do it themselves, I could never know what.

Actually, if you don't mind paying for links, it's so fucking easy to do it. I found out I was going blind, and the next day I was like, I'm still useful. And I sat down here, probably wearing this exact same outfit, and I made a course, and it was the simplest process in the world, like 20 1 minute videos. It was like, Do this and then me doing it, and then Do this and then me doing it. It was the most actionable thing. And I called it link Building for people with no skill. What was it? No skill and no experience. Because I probably couldn't have gotten away with calling it Link Building for Dummies. Right?

Yeah, that was it.

Nobody wants to buy that.

Yeah, I was selling it, and I was like, It's so easy because we use this tool called Bush Stream. Do you know it? So there's a tool called Bush Stream, right? And it has a little plugin for Chrome. And what you do is Google stuff like the top 100 blogs about blogging. Yeah, dogs, whatever, right? And it will pull up. People have already made these lists of 100, and what it does is you click this little button, and it takes 5 seconds, and it pulls all 100 of those blogs into a project, goes and finds all the contact info using Hunter, and you can mass outreach to up to 200 people a day.

What's the tool called?

BuzzStream.

BuzzStream? Yeah. So bush. B-U-S buzz. Cool. So I actually did that process manually showing a Mastermind member how to outreach people, not for link building, but for something else in terms of authority. That's really cool.

How many people do you have in your Mastermind?

It depends. I don't work with more than 20 people at one time.

If later this week, next week, or whatever you want to do live, you can get them all on one Zoom call. I'll show them how to build ten links. We're going to say ten, as it's a nice round number. Could be more in 15 minutes. If you want me to do that, I'll come in and show you exactly how to do that using just BuzzStream.

Yeah, cool. Instead of having to do it live, maybe we can pre recorded or something. I don't know what's going to be easier.

Yeah, I can do that. As well, because the idea is that this one tool that costs you about $30 a month can replace me, who will cost you $5,000 a month.

Amazing. Let's do it, man. Let's do it. Just for people listening, what makes the backlink good versus the bad backlink? In terms of a lot of people thinking about DR and authority, I want to talk about things like relevancy traffic and then other metrics, like what a good backlink looks like versus a bad backlink for a site.

Yeah. So the first thing you're ever going to see when you talk to a link builder is metrics, traffic numbers, and stuff like that. Right. Because that's what people want to buy. They want high Dr links with high organic traffic. I mostly completely ignore all that, and I only use it for sales. When I build links to my own sites. I'm going purely for relevance. Right. If the person who clicks on the link on that page will be interested in my thing, that's at the end of it. Then it's a good link. And that's how the Internet should work, I think.

Yeah. And we talk about this in different forms of marketing, but I think a really good word to use here that can help explain this is intent. Right? Having high intent is more relevant. Like if you've got an article on the best dog food for this particular dog breed while they're going through this illness. If you get that article on your own site, and then there's another article on another site that covers that but links to your site, that's a highly relevant link, because they've got high intent, because people are going to want to know more about that diet for that dog.

Yeah, exactly. Here's a tip for all you people who want to go out and buy links, right? And you want to do it yourself, the best way to do it is to just Google whatever keyword you want to rank for. Just Google that in quotation marks in Google, and then every site that comes up already has your keyword on the page. You cannot get more relevant than that.

Yes.

It doesn't mean those sites are good because we'll go through more criteria later. But as a standalone, on your very first list, just do that because your keywords are already on the page. If you offer this person money to change that keyword to your link, it will be a perfectly relevant link on a perfectly relevant page.

Awesome. So you're more focused on relevancy than other metrics. Right, that's great.

Personally, yes. But it's really difficult to teach somebody, especially if they're in another country, because we hire a lot of Filipino and Indian people. It's really hard to teach those people what relevance is. It's one of those things you just know if you see it. So you have to have a really strict criteria of if it's this, no, if it's this, no. If it's this, no. And it's easier to say, if a site has this, don't add it to the list, than it is to say it needs to have this, this, and this. It's easier to have negative factors for them to discard than it is to find positive factors to add.

Yeah, I know what it's like to work with a team, and it can be a challenge, but it's great once you've got an awesome team. Like you mentioned before, I want to talk about getting links to competitors' sites. Sometimes people are just like, They wouldn't even think about it, that they could get a link from a competitor's site. Whether it's direct or indirect. I know that you love to do this. It's a cheeky way to get links, and usually the relevancy is quite high.

That's it for part one of this training with Dan Ray. You can find out more about Dan, what he does over on his Twitter account. It's at Amazing Dan Ray. There'll be links to that in the show notes, too. In part two of this training that we do with the Mastermind, you can only get access if you are a member of the Mastermind. Dan and I talk about how to get backlinks from our competitors, even if you never thought it was possible to do so.

We also talk about why following the same boring outreach template does not get you any responses or results and what we can do instead. We also talk about why and how you should give more than you get when you're looking to build backlinks and do outreach. And Dan shares the story of what he did to give so much value that asking for a backlink in exchange for the value he provided would make it really hard for that person to say no. We also talk about how to build an outreach team of just three people, what their tasks are, and how to get awesome results without actually having to do the work.

We talk about how to train your team to do the work without costing you time to check it as well. But we also talk about how to set the team up for success so they're confident they can get results without bothering you as well. And we also answer some Mastermind questions from Mastermind members and so much more in part, to the training. If you want to get access to this and any other training in the Inner circle, you can join the Mastermind by going to buyingonlinebusinesses.co/innercircle. That's it, guys. I hope you enjoyed the episode, and I'll speak to you soon.