Unscripted SEO Podcast: Bradley Benner

I just interviewed Bradley Benner, of Semantic Links & Mastery, on the Unscripted SEO podcast.

A link is a link. Except when it sucks. How do you gauge the value of a link? How do you approach the concepts of relevance with the insight from Mark Williams Cook's Google Exploit data? He digs deep into this while sharing his own journey as an agency owner in the SEO space. There’s some great exploration about utilizing relevance signals from Majestic and other tools, which he screenshares his exact process.

Check out the recap, listen to the podcast or watch the video.

The Geographic Relevance Factor

Perhaps one of the most compelling insights shared by Benner concerns geographic relevance in link building. “Links with geographic relevance or location relevance have a significant influence on Google business profile performance in Map Search and a slight influence on organic search performance,” he explains.

He provides a practical example: “If a tree care contractor joins their local chamber of commerce and they get into the member directory and they get a link back from that member directory, Google knows that that link is coming from a local association, organization, institution… in the same general area. So that link has geographic significance.”

Quotes & Take Aways

“We do a competitive link analysis. And the first thing that we do for local SEO is we geolocate the browser to simulate a search from the particular location that the local business is physically located in. Then we search for the search queries that are the most important to that particular business so that we get true localized search results.”

“What’s really crazy is because I niched down and I productized my business and I systematized it because now it’s like an assembly line… It really helped my agency to scale, like just really scale quickly.”

• Productization allowed him to scale his agency effectively.

• Standard operating procedures (SOPs) helped in delegating tasks.

• Cold email outreach remains a powerful tool for client acquisition.

• Link building should focus on topical and geographic relevance.

• Bradley has built a successful white label link-building agency.

• Transparency in processes leads to higher conversion rates. SEO has evolved from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional system.

• Site-wide quality scores now influence individual page rankings.

• Topical relevance is crucial for effective link building.

• Geographic relevance significantly impacts local SEO performance.

• Competitive link analysis is essential for successful link building campaigns.

• Brand authority plays a critical role in SEO success.

• Links with topical relevance yield better results than those based solely on third-party metrics.

• Building a diverse link profile is important for natural-looking backlinks.

• Owning part of the information ecosystem can enhance SEO efforts.

• Focus on relevance and quality over quantity in link building.