From Organic Farming to SEO: Greg Heilers Impressive Journey

Greg, you spent nearly seven years working on organic farms and conservation projects like Palestine, Scotland, Guatemala, France, and you are on track for a culinary internship in Rome. Then you choose Beijing. How'd that come?

Uh, my now wife and I crossed paths in Guatemala in a city called Shayla. Beautiful place. We couldn't separate, she had to go back to Beijing and I was supposed to go to Rome for a culinary internship, and I just rejected that. Chose Beijing. So here we are in her hometown in China, in Jfe.

Wow. That's one of those moments, right? When you better half cross your path and you know exactly what you're about to do. Right?

tough call though, to be honest, in the moment it, not in hindsight, but, I. I was struggling because it was very new. the opportunity just was, we were together for 10 days and then I, I thought I have to roll the dice and, and see what will come of it.

I can imagine it wasn't a easy choice, especially like when you met someone for just a couple of days and basically you changed your whole life. what was going through your head in that moment?

In the house I was living in, there was a similar example. There was a British guy and a Korean woman. They split and the British guy turned to me and said, you know, if it's meant to be, she will wait. And he saw what was happening with me and this lovely Chinese lady and he said, if it's meant to be shall wait, you should go to Italy.

And I looked at him and I thought I wasn't asking for his advice, and I don't want to be like this guy. He was about 10 years older than me and still living the life I had been living, which wasn't bad. It was wonderful. I just wanted to move on to, I didn't know what the next phase would look like, but I realized.

When I saw it and when I saw the contrast. And so it was hard to move across the Pacific Ocean to a very big city, start working digitally instead of in the dirt. Interesting. And, what exactly from that person's life you didn't like and when and what was your like back then?

Yeah, my life back then was, I was living on a, a few hundred dollars a month, almost like you call them a backpacker. I was what I call a volunt tourist. So not these programs where you pay thousands of dollars for 10 days and plant a tree or something, but. You work in exchange for, somewhere to sleep and, and maybe some food.

And that's what I did. And when I ran outta money, I'd work a small job and then go back to another place, until my money ran out. And, and this person was doing the same, they were just 10 years ahead of me. and I thought. It just looked tiring. I just felt tired af after a certain point. I just was getting worn out.

By the short-term relationships, there wasn't a, a deep connection because you're always picking up and going to a new place e exciting until it becomes more of the same.

Man, I can quite recently do that. Uh. As, you know, like for, for the past six, seven years, I've been a nomad. And while it's fantastic to move across places and meet new people and immerse yourself in cultures, at some point it, it, it's get back to you. Like, and, and it's, it's worrying you down. It's tiring.

Switching time zones. Like Navi not having that place you can call home and, Yeah, I, I, I truly can resonate and I, I bet those that are in our situation at nomads or moving fast, even if, you know, don't move fast, how fast you, you are moving, in terms of locations.

These days about once a year or two, but my children are. In their middle of their childhood now. And so it's coming to an end for us. we are pretty sure the next spot is going to be for 10 years until they move out, because we always thought. Children deserve if we can afford it.

Stability. and so that's, that's what we'll do. But I, I didn't mean to pick a sore spot for you 'cause I'm sympathetic. All right. I really know. It's, it's still in our life today, right? We are here for two years and you meet lovely people, but you know in the back of your mind that they're going back to their home and we're going somewhere else.

And so there's something blocking a deeper connection, I think sometimes.

And that that's I think, one of the hardest thing, at least for me too. Move from one place where you already kind of build a deeper connection with someone and you can already start to call them friends and like sharing things and so on. And after that you move on. And of course you live in a connected world, but in the same time, you like the same when you're face-to-face and interact.

And speaking of interactions, you literally move in a, in a culture that it's so different and. Basically starting everything from scratch. How was the transition to Beijing?

I, I told my then girlfriend, now wife, I said, no problem. Where I grew up in Los Angeles, there's air pollution. I will, I'll fit right in. I had no idea when you landed, you could, I can still taste it as a memory. it's, it was very different for me. And to be honest, I, I will always be a foreigner here.

I, I still feel different. I look different. I live in a smaller city now, so people literally when I walk by say like, whoa, there's a foreigner, to each other in their conversation. Right? so it's, it's still different, but I'm very grateful because. I didn't have the same opportunities I had had and I had to find a new opportunity.

And that's actually what led me to digital work was that moment I didn't work online at all until I arrived in China.

And how did that happen? Because I always found fascinating how people go from a totally different industry or activity to start doing something online. Yeah, for me. The first thing I did was use English, and then I learned quickly. I'm not a very good teacher. I, I, I don't, I like doing it informally, but not in front of a classroom. So that job was out, and I found that many companies were good at translating from Mandarin to English, but they needed a native speaker on the backend.

That's where I found my little space online initially was I was the editor, and it wasn't just language, it was actually cultural translation because if anyone listening works in business, you know, even in business cultures to fit together, we have to kind of speak each other's cultural language as well.

So it was like a localization kind of, role that I started with.

And especially in that like cultural nuances can play a huge role and.

Once you did that, how that led to SEO.

so in that time, I'm a freelancer and so it took me a while to understand, but really I was my own business owner and soon I, I, even though I didn't understand that yet. I started looking around and realizing my, let's say, getting a raise could happen as fast as I wanted, or getting a, a changing roles could happen as fast as I wanted.

So I realized, well, the writers seem to make more money and have more. Time to complete the work. The editors were always go, go, go. I need this by 6:00 PM kind of relationship with the client. So I switched to writing. And to be honest, at that time we were talking 10 years ago. There was, in the SEO industry, what we call content mill, low quality content.

It's just for Google. It's not really for the human, but I didn't understand that yet. I didn't understand my position. So I was writing these articles very fast. I'm a very fast typist, but I thought people were paying me because I'm just an amazing writer. The quality of my writing is so great. I thought soon I'm going to be a novelist or who knows what's next in my future.

But I didn't actually know that I was joining this SEO industry, that that was how I tiptoed into it without realizing it.

It's such a common thing, right? When you, when you are natively good at something, you, we assume you know everything. But what was the reality like when, when you truly understood what SEO worlds mean, when you realize like, oh my God, I have so much to actually learn.

Yeah, It's something that I have problem solved by putting some blinders on almost, staying focused in just the, what we call outreach area or offsite area of S-E-O-S-E-O is a bit like a triangle. You can think of it. There's three main components. There's onsite words. architecture or technical, and then offsite.

And offsite we do by reaching out to other websites and trying to get them to link back to you or to talk about your brand. And that's how I managed to make a name for myself. We become an authority, right, in SEO by still just staying in the writing lane because. I'm actually not very technical.

There are some amazing SEO people talk about all these algorithmic and different like LLM based stuff and sure, I use AI and I can look at a script and try to figure out what's going wrong, but I can't write, I can't code, I can't, I can't do all these things that they do. And so that's for me how. Once I realized just how much there was, how I didn't get overwhelmed, I just, I just own up to it. I just say, I'm, I'm not the technical. SEO, I'm the offsite. SEO.

And it's nice to, to find your path and your lane early on rather than like chasing all the trends or all the hype that is going on. And I know that as your world, it's kind of like that, right? Like you.

Because you, you've do, you've been doing journalist outreach the hard way for years and like no paid links, no shortcuts, but the SEO industry is full of people cutting corners. What do your competitors do that drives you crazy?

for years I used to do what's called Stand against Marketing. So I used to say like, they do this, but we don't do that. Almost like we are better than. And I've come to realize, in our industry, we talk about black hat versus white. You can kind of interpret the meaning there, right?

Black, bad, white, good. It's in the name, it's there. I, I am searching for a better name for this reason because I'm realizing they are very ROI focused. So in a sense they are actually serving their clients very well. Uh, they're often serving themselves niche projects. So a lot of their tactics do drive me crazy because our clients are looking for a sustainable brand representation.

They need to keep their name in good standing with their customer base where we're long-term play, whereas their clients or their own projects don't mind if the project goes up in flames in three months as long as they made their money on that project. So. It's kind of apples and oranges is what I've come to realize.

And I used to get very perturbed like, how come they're allowed to do this and we can't. And I'm slowly coming to realize, you know, we are just taking different strategies. It's the same industry, but it's almost not in some ways we learn from each other, but, not a lot. Is applicable. The, the black hat guys are like, cool what you do, but it doesn't work.

It's too slow for me. The white hat guys are like, what you're doing is super interesting, but we're not allowed to touch it because of governance at our enterprise corporations,

Interesting, but what's the real cost of that? Like what's the real cost of, people doing black hat

There are externalities, we are including me. as marketers, we, we are manipulating the consumers. And so sometimes, to be honest, I think about leaving SEO and then I realize, no, I need to stay for nothing else, just so I stay informed as a consumer so I know what is happening. So I think that if there is a cost, I think.

That could be included in the cost of, Hey, this is, I, I don't think that it's very different from other forms of marketing though, you know? so I, I think it just depends how far there's a spectrum here, how far you're willing to twist reality. And so, we, we have certain clients, for example, we don't serve certain niches.

We don't serve, we don't, don't put our efforts behind. but I, again. Who am I to say what's right or wrong? it, but I think if there's a cost, it's, it's that the consumer still in 2026 doesn't actually know why chat GPT is suggesting something to them. It, they don't realize that there's these guys in this SEO industry that are making catchy BT suggest something to them.

That that's interesting.

Because I, I'm not an expert by any means, but in theory, you can manipulate the response of AI with what you're actually, let's say, on your own website, write about your business or yourself and so on. but I like to ask you like how AI and everything that's happening right now, affecting SEO as a whole.

So we're at the start of 2026 right now when we're recording, because, and I say that the date, because it's relevant, 'cause it, it ebbs and flows. And if you'd asked me that in 2024, I would've said not much. But it turns out that, of course, like any business, we like the efficiency gain of ai, especially we do a lot of generating words.

We used to do it all through humans. Now we generate rough drafts through LLMs and have human editors. So we like the efficiency gain as a business. But as an SEO at first, it was really dangerous for us when Reddit. Announced its deal with Google. We, it actually killed an entire cottage industry called affiliates.

There were people who made websites, informational websites that didn't have real products or services. They just linked out to other people who had products or services. That was their business model. They got a commission off the great content. Google killed that entire industry, and that's not hyperbole.

Whole industry gone. All the traffic disappeared. Went to Reddit and then Reddit iPod two months later. So that was great. For Reddit's valuation. At IPO, Reddit has since done a deal with open ai and for those who are staying on the cutting edge, I was late, not me, but for those who are ahead of me, the light bulb went off. If Reddit is gonna be an open ai, where do the SEOs need to be putting content? So that's when you started to hear everyone talk about, man, Reddit is going to hell with all the AI slop because the SEOs are flooding. Reddit. Even we now offer Reddit brand mentions. We try to have our client not in a salesy promotional, but in a informational way, contribute.

Again, our clients, they care about their brand reputation. We gotta do it slow, steady. So it is influenced it in positive and negative. To sum it up, it's, and it's an ongoing influence and it won't be going away. We haven't decided what our new acronym is as an industry. Some people say GEO, generative Engine optimization.

Some people say a EO answer engine optimization. We don't actually know what to call it anymore, but. We do know it's SEO plus AI search. It's not just SEO anymore.

Yeah, that's definitely an interesting time to be in. Industry because things are moving so fast and you need to always be up there like trying to understand exactly what's happening and how do you do that. Like, because being in marketing as well, I feel like sometimes overwhelmed, but all the things that are happening and that fear of missing out is, coming in and like, oh my God, like.

How I can be more efficient, how I can leverage this new technology or, or how I can do that and that, and in all honestly, that feels overwhelming. Like how do you deal with that?

Um, so same here. Uh, I'm, I'm not just a business owner, like many of us smaller businesses, I'm also the chief marketer at the company. So I, I hear you overwhelming. Try to be in all the channels at all the times. It's challenging, as the service provider, SEO for our clients. If we go back to when I said, whole industry died there, there are certain types of websites now that it's going to be a real uphill battle to get traffic from Google.

So we are having to advise interested clients to that. You may not want to pick this fight. You may want to find another channel to market in. And it's been interesting seeing SEOs realize that we are marketers. I think a lot of SEOs thought that we were not marketers, uh, that we were something separate from, but at the end of the day, we are, we are in the marketing budget literally on the, in, in most organizations, on their p and l.

So that has been interesting to see as well. Um, but there's an lot of opportunity, like you said, very challenging lot to learn. I'm still not the most technical guy out there. So that has been a learning curve. I, I really have had to do a lot of experiments and, and just get used to the fact that I am going to be using LLMs as part of my day to day.

so that, that was uncomfortable at first, but it's growing in comfort and just looking at the opportunity. You, you probably know the term like lux surface area. If, if we are not using. These tools and finding ways to be valuable to clients so that they can, in our, in our service, that means show up in these tools when people use them, then our luck surface area shrinks.

And by contrast, if we can understand how these tools work and understand how to seed the information going into them, then we have more luck, so to speak, because we have something to offer to clients and they will find us.

And how do you.

Like if, if someone in your industry is, look, is listening or watching us, how do you allocate time in your day to truly understand these tools, when you have kids as well and.

I am personally grappling with that question all the time, and I think if most business owners, kids or no kids, we are all because. You can work an unlimited amount of hours. It's like working at a company with, unlimited time off, right? You end up taking less time off, than you would. So, the way I personally, in this moment of life, I'm, I'm thinking of it as seasonal in that I'm striving to work an average number of hours per week in the course of a year, but I'm recognizing that.

Sometimes the company is, well, let's, let's say sometimes the company is doing awesome and it's more like hands off or it's doing so awesome that there's just more work to do and sometimes the company's not doing awesome and it's in a crisis and I need to be more present. So I personally am, I have more tactically, I have Wednesday morning set aside for my building time.

just, that's my time to try to build something, to scratch an itch. That's a repetitive task we are doing manually. and then I'm moving actually at the point of recording effective Monday, to not, not working in the company on Mondays and just seeing where that lets my head go. I don't know where that's gonna go.

I've done this in the past and it's been beneficial. And then I've gone through another season where I'm like. Who am I to think I can only work four days a week? Like I need to be working five days a week. What am I thinking? So it's really, for me at this point in my life, it's, it's like a seasonality to it and just recognizing sometimes I have time to experiment and sometimes I need to keep my head down and make the money to stay in business.

Yeah. And that's the ups and downs of, of running a business, right? Like you do have the freedom to choose what you do, but sometimes that freedom is just by, I dunno, focusing more, it, it is still quote unquote freedom because you, you choose to work more. But you know why you do it, right? Rather than being forced by, by, I dunno, other people to, to do that.

And I, I love the, the idea of having a day dedicated to building because often if we. Try to find out some hours in our day to day to I know, catch up with something or build a new automation or like figure out how to solve a repeatable problem. We might not have that time, but you know exactly that Wednesday is for that.

It's much more easier, I assume, to, to actually do it. And I'll, I think I'll steal that idea from you.

Yeah. Hey, I, I'm still looking for a group of people who are actively. Building, I know that's not what you were planning to do, but in the AI and automation, I tried to form a little group that would meet right before that to kind of inspire me. it's easier to talk about it than do it. So the, the group, we didn't end up sticking together 'cause we all realized we were just talking, not doing.

But I'm still keeping that time in my calendar and I build something every week so that I'm making progress and learning. back to your point.

I think that's a good idea because yeah, having that block time, it's, it's so valuable and, but what will surprise people? If they like listen to you and they're like, how it's actually behind the scenes to, to build Jo Aseo, how is, how that actually looks like, apart from the things that you just shared.

Yeah, I think from the outside in. I get really kind dms or even public comments from time to time about how we're crushing it. but just because I think anyone listening would be maybe like you and I, Gabe, where it's actually not an easy thing to be a business owner. In my experience, I'm, I don't consider myself a natural, I think I make. A lot of mistakes. I won't try to characterize it as more mistakes than I'm right or anything, but I'm, I make plenty of mistakes and by extension, so does my team. and so I think although we have a, I believe, a great reputation in our little space in our industry, and we are known for doing good quality work, I find myself occasionally on sales calls just reminding people like.

You know, we we're not perfect. Like we'll probably goof up and we'll need your feedback to point this out to us so that we can do a better job for you. Uh, so I think that it shouldn't be surprising, but I think some people actually would be surprised to know that.

Uh, I, I, in my meeting with my co-founder, Morgan, Taylor and Mu, who's our operator.

I'm reminding those two. 'cause we, we only really get to talk about problems, the three of us. So I just remind them, you know, like, Hey, just remember there's a lot of good stuff happening at the company. It's just, it's our job to fix the problems. And that's all we talk about together. so keep your spirits up because although our meetings can feel a little heavy, there's good things going on that everyone else sees.

So maybe that would surprise people that, that actually. Most of my week is spent dealing with problems at my company, right? It's, it's actually not super uplifting all the time. That's my job. I'm supposed to figure out how to get us out of the bottleneck of the day.

Yeah, thank you so for being so open, because indeed like being an entrepreneur is not that. Perfect life in which you work from a laptop on the beach and you sip from a coconut and that's it. Uh, all the problem disappear. Reality is like you are there in the trenches and trying to, I don't know, put water on fire and try to survive sometimes, especially when the things are changing so fast and so on.

And, hmm. I appreciate when entrepreneurs are real and they don't just sugarcoat everything and they portrait themselves like, I dunno. I'm this perfect individual that is running this perfect business and so on. And, while things are imperfect, I will say it, even that I see it from outside, you're still crushing it.

Like you, you, you are there successful, like you're invited on stage to speak and an industry events and so on. That's, that's massive. And comparing to others that are probably out of business just in the last one, two years when ai, start to enter the space. So, kudos to you that you are still there and still doing what you do.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I mean, it's something that I think if the SEO and we're, we're what you call an agency, right? So, in our little sphere of agencies. I think if, if people were looking forward, we, most of us, there was consensus that we were heading into an evolutionary bottleneck. And we, we obviously, by definition that means most of us wouldn't be going through and out the other side.

We were gonna really slim down the, the count. and I don't think we're, we're through it yet though, so I am still. Day to day at the start of 26. Trying to figure it out because I think we're in it and, and I'm, yeah, I'm, to your point, I'm grateful that we're not ha you know, we've, we've seen him over the past couple years.

We've seen multiple agencies post, like, I'm looking for places to refer my team too, 'cause we're shutting our doors. and or just quietly people disappeared that we're competitors. But I, I still don't count it as guaranteed that we make it out the other side. I believe we will, I think though that we have a lot of work ahead of us to stay relevant and it's, we already talked about some of what that looks like.

We're, we're gonna have to keep learning. as you said, I had the same dang. Archetype In my head it was gonna be me on the beach. Forget the laptop part though, Gabe. I was just gonna be on the beach. that's what was gonna be running a business look like. it's, it just hasn't happened yet.

Yeah. And man, I still want to you, I, don't get me wrong. Like, I wish you to go through this, successfully to this, this transition, but I want to.

Have an existence or ex exercise of imagination with you, like knowing everything that you know right now. If let's say overnight Jo SEO is gone, what would be your next steps in order to rebuild and recover from that?

My life isn't as simple as it was 10 years ago. That's probably, the same for everyone. So, at least at this middle phase of life in Chinese, they have an expression that, above, we have old and below, we have young at this phase, so really kind of squeezed. so I, it feels like my options are.

Are limited. I think the biggest thing to do would be to cut my expenses as much as possible. and so for our family, that would probably be moving here to China. first of all, so location, choose your location very wisely. I think, where, where we live in the United States where we're going back to in the middle of the year, costs over two times, what it costs to live here.

And I don't say that. With pride. I say that with pain. That's what I, what I'm saying. it's, it just means I have to work that much harder, maybe not more, but harder to survive, and to try to quote unquote get ahead. Like as unfortunately adults, we all are responsible for our finances. So that's the first thing I would do.

And then professionally, I think about this all the time as business owners, well, not, not all the time, but. When, when I engage in this mental exercise with my buddy Morgan, who was 50 50 owner in the company, we just kind of we're proud of ourselves because we were two non-professional guys. You know, you heard about my background, he's had a different one, but equally non-professional, shall we call it, prior to this.

And we have a heck of a lot of skills that we've picked up through running a business. You know, every business owner is. the chief like sales person, the lead gen person, the marketer, the finance, the hr, the vendor procurement specialist, what, you know, you could go down the whole dang list. And so, uh, I used to be a writer.

And then over the years, I, I think what I would probably do is look for, commission only sales roles. At first, or, or if they want to gimme some money too, great. But I would just point out to 'em like, Hey, we've had over 500 clients. Like I, at least I can get clients. Like I know that part. So if you've got a good product like we had in this scenario, if we're gone, I can, I can sell.

and I used to find that sleazy, but now I'm realizing at least our style of selling. We, we don't push. We, we are like I am with you right now. We are just telling it what it is. If someone's not a good fit, we tell 'em like, this isn't the right thing right now. Like, you need to do this other thing.

But if it is a good fit, people gravitate to that. And so without trying to compliment myself anymore, I would just say like, I would take an inventory of what I can offer, and I know AI is here. I, I know the economy isn't so easy. That it'll, and people also will perceive the failed business as like, I don't, all my skills are in the poor category.

Right. It'll be hard probably to make the case that like, no, it was for this reason. Don't hire me for that though. I, I do actually suck at that thing, but I'm really, really good at sales, I promise. Like, so it'd be tough. But yeah, first of all, on the personal side, I try to get the expenses down as quickly as possible and then.

On the work side, I would do that.

You know, Gabe, without talking too long, location really matters. In case anyone's considering this, my wife and I talk about this all the time. There's a ton of opportunity where I'm sitting right now. I live in the high tech district of Hofe, is our city name. It's not Shanghai or Beijing that you've heard of.

There's still 10 million people here, and Zoom is down the corner and they have the world's largest quantum supercomputer and they've made like a sun, like a literal SU, like a miniature. There's robots everywhere. Like there's a lot of, lot of opportunity.

Yeah.

in where we live in America, or maybe not where in your town where the listener is, but you can go and find it.

And I think that's powerful because we live in that world in which if our location, it's not giving us the opportunity or like we cannot, I dunno, expand and grow and learn or be surrounded by like you essentially technology opportunities big businesses, we can just move. And if anyone is listening to the podcast.

Has internet connection. So has the means of learning on how to do that either by like making more money to be able to move, or sometimes even by moving, you cut out the cost, like you mentioned, like comparing us costs with, living in China is so different, but obviously, the western world we say like, oh man, like China.

Like, isn't that a communist country? Like how is actually to live there and what are the misconception about it?

Yeah. I know Gabe, we said before we recorded, you haven't been to the us but I think a lot of people around the world have actually somewhat of an accurate perception of China or America, but not, not China. So your question's a great one because if someone listening hasn't been to America, Just to reaffirm for you, it is dangerous in American cities, especially the center, the city center in China, you, you never need to look over your shoulder. you, you, you never worry about going out at dark. It's extremely safe, is what I'm trying to say in America. My wife doesn't go out at night. Where we live is a general rule, and here.

Don't worry about her. If I can go to sleep, if she's out, because I just know it's China. in America we can't leave anything on the seat of our car 'cause someone will break our window and take it and it's like the thing didn't really matter, but now we got a broken window on a car to deal with.

That doesn't happen here. there's cameras everywhere. Americans would hate that loss of freedom, but. There's a different kind of freedom. It's all with, with the control that's in place. So, it, it is interesting being a foreigner in a place where it's a communist party in control, because initially I thought that that didn't matter to me, but after 11 years, I'm, I'm realizing like it, I do change what I say a little bit.

I do change how I act a little bit. it's not the same as living in America for sure. But, I would wholeheartedly recommend a visit if someone is China curious. it's not a communist. Economy. It's a very capitalist economy. There's a lot of activity happening because people are out there and hey, that's not all that life's about, but we are here on a business podcast.

So that's what we're talking about. There's, there really is so much more opportunity than where I live in America. It's, we choose to live there in America because it's so much slower and we choose to relax there. That's how different it is.

Wow. And I didn't expect that because, most people, like my imagine about us is that is the hustle country, right? Like everyone is hustling to, to live the American dream, to work hard and so on. But, I didn't expect that China to be above that when it comes to like going out there. Like getting at what they want.

But what's fascinating, like I, I talked recently with a friend, um, that just visited China and they were like, similar to you. They were sharing the same thing. And the fact that people are living in the future there, like there is, they were like in the middle of an huge intersection and there wasn't freaking noise.

'cause 90 something percent of the cars were electric. I'm like, alright, that's, that's fascinating and probably that will as well solve the pollution, problem, and so on and so forth. But yeah, I, I had encouraged as well anyone that I haven't been there, it's on my bucket list actually, to visit China because, not just from, from that perspective of.

To see how is life there, but as well, I heard that there's amazing nature and so many things, to, to visit apart from that history and everything. And yeah, after we create this image that it's just based on media, based on, maybe some, some things that we saw online. But, reality is always different and it always, where you going? By yourself and actually experiment that place. You find out that it's so much different that you, you could imagine.

Yeah. I, I think, you heard it firsthand from a friend, so that's what it would take for me too. So I don't expect people to believe it. But your question was a great one. It was. What would you do if it, if it all fell apart and if you were focused on like, how do I, how do I make some opportunity happen for me and be somewhere interesting?

I think you would find that it's less of a uphill battle here, especially for foreigners. there's just, there was a period there five years ago where the Golden Age ended. The people who lived in China before me, the golden age was in like the two thousands. It's, I think another one again, right now in a different era that we're in, but I, I think it's a really interesting time to live in China.

Nice, nice man. Make the most out of it.

And, switching a bit back to SEO, like for someone listening and wants to build authority through earned media, what would be for them the the first step to take?

so if you're going to do what we do, and just so people understand, what we do is we reach out to websites and we try to contribute information that is so valuable that they want to. Either say our company name or give us what's called a back link. You know those links we click on, to go back to us and this is what we do for clients, but this is what you do for yourself.

I would start with something called featured.com, just like the word sounds featured.com. You can sign up for a free plan. You can pay for it. The only thing to be careful there is featured started creating their own websites so that there's more diversity of opportunities for different kinds of.

Small business owners, those aren't as valuable as the ones that are independent of the host. so look for that. But featured.com a a big proponent. We use it for like, kind of our entry level. so if you're entry level to this, I would look there, and then it, it goes up. There's five other, six other big names in the space that are these platforms, and the dynamic is in search engine optimization, SEO.

There's this thing called EEAT and one of those actually really two, are relevant to us. The, the people in this conversation right now is we are experts and we have authority, and so those websites, why do they want to publish your name and link back to you? They need you to satisfy EEAT for Google. They need to have experts that are third party experts to lend authority to their articles on their website.

So we're not even writing a whole article what's featured. You're writing three, four sentences. Sometimes it's that short. They provide the question, you answer the question. If you're useful to them, they'll put you in the article and then it gets more complicated from there. But if you're just starting out, it's a really nice value exchange and.

I can't recommend it enough. you don't need a service provider. You could do this in 15 minutes a day, just carve out a little bit on your calendar.

Yeah, and it works. I, I actually stumbled upon the website last year, I think, and I managed to get my cell phone entrepreneur.com and a bunch of other websites and, it, it really works. Yeah.

And another thing is like, I want to ask, it's that acronym that you mentioned, EEAT, what that does it mean.

expertise. Experience, authorit and trustworthiness. So thi this EEAT is a component, just one. There's many thousands of ranking factors. And when I say ranking factors, they're, let's consider them bullet points in what Google.

It has what are called search engine algorithms. So it's like a formula that it looks at all these things, these factors that are all weighted differently. And EAT is, is actually, it's actually a bigger component, but it's just a component. It's not the sole thing. And so we're helping a website. When you contribute to entrepreneur, Google wants to see the entrepreneur.

Is being contributed to by real authorities. and that's what it's using to measure that. Entrepreneur isn't just kind of its own echo chamber just making stuff up. It has other people willing to put their name to it, and it's looking at you and seeing are you real or how much weight to give to this?

so that's EEAT

So Craig, once someone did that, they took the first step into, they should look, on their website or on their social presence to be consistent on the way they present themself or that has no value to date.

I think it absolutely has a value. Having as a future guest, Jason Barnard, he and his agency, Cali Cube. I had him on the podcast and he was talking about it matters so much that every time he is a guest, for example, if he is a guest on your podcast, he would update his own about page on his website and.

Write out that he was a guest on your podcast and link back to your podcast. 'cause he wants there to be this reciprocal, uh, relationship so that Google can really form this. So, uh, I, I won't claim that I'm as strong at that. I think our messaging is not uniform on cross all the different channels. It's like. time we create a new channel, we update the messaging a little, but we don't go back and update the old channels. So I, I do think it's important. And I think one thing, for example, just a tiny example, when we do the type of work we do, we make sure that we know character for character, what the brand name should look like.

You, you might be surprised, but for example. Our brand name is Jolly Space, SEO, and it was on purpose. And it's still on purpose because one day we might need to be more than jolly, SEO. We are living in an era where pretty soon we can't just be SEOs, but most of our team. Types our name as jolly, SEO, no space.

And most people you'll find do that. And there's an argument that that's actually better for Google. 'cause the SEO separated is confusing. And we do this with clients all the time. They come in and they themselves have their brands written different ways. And so we have to clarify this with them, including on their LinkedIn profile.

'cause the, you use featured or one of the more sophisticated platforms out there. The first thing that the publisher does if they want to see is Gabriel Real, is they click on your LinkedIn profile. If you remember, you had to put a LinkedIn profile into Featured, so they will click on your LinkedIn profile and if you don't have the company listed that you put in your signature on featured that you really want them to link back to, it's a big red flag for them.

Like why? Why don't you wanna publicly say that you're part of this company that privately to me, you're telling me you're part of, it's just weird. So I, it's very important.

Yeah, that's, that's very good to know. And, uh, man, it's so, I'm so grateful that I talked to you today and learned from you. And that's, uh. You share your story and you keep it real. So cannot thank you enough for that and do more of that because indeed people are all over the world searching for someone that it's actually not polished, not perfect, and I admire for that.

Admire for that.

And please tell those listening where they can engage with you.

Oh, Gabe, it's awesome. I really appreciated the conversation and you should look up Gabe's episode on YouTube, on the Jolly SEO podcast. So that's where you can look us up, as well. Uh, that was really fun. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn, Greg Highler's, or you can look at jolly SE o.com. For now. Right. So I, I appreciate it, but I had a blast and thanks for letting me come on.

Thank you, and that was Greg ERs. And if this conversation made you think differently about building something real in your life and without sacrificing the life you actually want to live and learning something about SEO, then please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if these are your kind of conversations, you know what to do, subscribe to not miss the next one. I'm Gabe Marusca and here in the wild.