Our coolest guy in SEO, Kris Reid, was interviewed a while ago by another great guy, Andrew Warner, of Mixergy.com. The engaging 71 minutes are full of interesting topics, such as the highs and lows of running a business, and, of course, about how important SEO and backlinks are in today’s ever-competitive market.
The Power of Mixergy.com
As you may know, Mixergy.com is a great place to learn about starting and managing a business. It contains interviews and courses filled to the brim with knowledge and lessons anyone can take and apply right away.
Founded by Andrew Warner, Mixergy aims to showcase the stories of thinkers and doers in various industries to inspire you to finally start that business you have been thinking of doing all this time. The platform does not force know-it-all gurus down your throat. Instead, it shares candid stories about the struggles of start-up founders and how they overcame their challenges.
Apart from an abundance of insightful conversations with young entrepreneurs, the website features talks with a lot of popular and successful people who started out floundering to get things right.
Some of the notable personalities who talked about their experiences on Mixergy include the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar, and KISSmetrics – Neil Patel – and the widely-read entrepreneur, writer, and blogger – Seth Godin.
The respected self-help author, entrepreneur, and public speaker Tim Ferriss also did an interview for Mixergy, as did Gary Vaynerchuk, a New York Times bestselling author and businessman.
These are but a handful of the distinguished people who talked about their journey as start-up founders on Mixergy, and if you look through the site – there are hundreds more of courses and interviews you can soak in and learn from. So, do check out Mixergy.com and learn the ropes!
Just Learn the Skills You Need to Be an Entrepreneur
Despite that Kris did the interview at 5 AM, this did not stop the two from discussing various salient points about SEO and business in general.
Kris, as the founder of Ardor SEO, shared where he was at before Ardor was formed. He used to work as a software engineer in London, in the finance sector. Then the financial crisis hit and things got rough. Kris left his job and then eventually decided to return home to Australia. Since he’d saved some money, he took his time going home and chose to go through Europe, Russia, China, and Hong Kong first.
Fast forward to today – we see Kris Reid at the helm at Ardor SEO. There were many bumps along the way, but being a generally cool guy, Kris managed to ride the waves and make great things out of his experiences.
One of the interview’s highlights was when Andrew broached the subject about Kris being a nudnik in school, always fighting against authority. But at that time there was one guy he admired, which turned out to be his dad.
Kris found his dad really cool and had always wanted to emulate him. His dad once told him, “You’re going to be an accountant or lawyer or whatever, just learn the skills you need to be an entrepreneur.” This was one of the things that empowered him to head down the entrepreneurship route.
Are SEO and Backlinks Really THAT Important?
Kris further discussed with Andrew the various things he has learned about search engine optimization over the years and what it is like to generate backlinks.
“I started learning about SEO. That’s when I realized how important backlinks were and I built some software–I just love building software–to build backlinks and manage backlinks.”
“The funny thing is Google is different in every country. So different things that used to work in 2010 still work in other countries.
So we used to build these forum profile backlinks, which are really simple. You go into a forum. You create an account. You make some little blurb about whatever the business is and have a link back to the website. A backlink is like a hyperlink, the things you click to go from one website to another.
These used to work amazing in the English-speaking world. I tell you, they still work great…”
Of course, it wasn’t smooth sailing all the way. Marketing services to people and running a business never are. Plus, Google released a lot of updates in the past few years that really changed how websites rank. And Kris had to work other jobs too while doing his best to let his SEO business take flight.
There were lots of stress involved, for sure, and Kris was even diagnosed with alopecia, which is basically just a more mysterious way of saying one is losing a lot of hair. He also suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome at one point.
Things are turning for the better, however. Reaching out and building relationships with clients helped a lot.
“We already had the product. It was more building a relationship (with customers) to work out how we could align our product with what they were doing.”
Kris developed a great software to help grow his company, and then he set up shop in Davao, Philippines. He hired a bunch of talented people who are working in office-based and remote setups. He got his mojo going and now Ardor SEO is poised for more growth.
Check out the whole interview on Mixergy.com to get a full sense of Kris Reid’s background and to learn valuable tips about SEO, backlinking, and getting a business off the ground.
