Who is Kris Reid?

From software engineer to SEO

Kris grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and finished a software engineering degree at the Queensland University of Technology in 2006. He moved to London, where he worked in software engineering for major banks, until the global financial crisis cost him his contract.

A personal project changed his direction. He had built an online game, Mob Warrior, and needed players, which led him to search engine optimisation. In April 2010 he started Ardor as a simple backlink service. It grew into Ardor Backlinks, then into a full-service SEO agency with a remote team across the US, Southeast Asia and Europe. Today Kris lives in Vietnam.

Why podcasting

For Kris, podcasting is the future of real estate marketing. Hosting a show, or being interviewed on other people's, builds trust with listeners and earns the mentions and links that help in search. He practises it himself, as a guest on more than 100 podcasts, and built it into a company: in 2021 he co-founded Icons of Real Estate with Tomás Fonseca, who had previously worked at Ardor SEO.

Ardor is Icons' sister company and handles the search side: for guests on the ICONS of Real Estate Podcast, Ardor researches, writes and publishes an SEO-optimised article for the guest's website. That pairing of search and podcasting is the thread through Ardor's guides on podcast guesting as an SEO strategy and podcast SEO for agents.

Results Kris is known for

One long-term client is Avery Carl of The Short Term Shop. The Short Term Shop's sales grew from $59 million in 2019, when Avery started working with Ardor, to $621 million in 2021. Read Avery's story.