Rob Stand was a regional sales manager at AppDynamics, previously he had worked as a commercial account manager and even as a IT software recruitment consultant. His education is previously held at Birmingham University. Rob Stand made SEOBetter to teach people how they can achieve their own goals by learning dropshipping, SEO and online marketing to sell products and services online.
Where did the idea for SEOBetter come from?
It was originally a blog I used to run many years ago to write about ideas and topics that were interesting to me. I had always had the idea to turn it into something more substantial by giving more value and teaching others what I had learnt.
This is how the project evolved. SEOBetter is now an online course learning hub for people interested in dropshipping or selling through Amazon FBA. I am also in the works for creating some free courses based around content marketing and SEO.
What does your typical day look like and how do you make it productive?
My typical day usually revolved around blogger outreach and working on online courses.
When creating a course, I need to create a category and lesson structure. From here I will have to devise the content then fluff it out and work on how I am going to structure each video for the lessons.
Towards the end of the day, I will be working on a blog I can publish on my website for inbound traffic. I try and use my blog posts as a platform to gain more subscribers through lead magnets such as eBooks.
How do you bring ideas to life?
I base my courses of whats popular with digital marketing.
I only ever create courses on topics I have worked on with proven success. This gives me the ability to give real life examples and to be able to help my students with any questions that may arise.
What’s one trend that excites you?
I am interested to see where A.I generated content goes. I have seen some new projects based on the Google developed A.I that will finish off the end of your paragraph based on the first sentence you type in.
I think this is a long way off, though if some of my writing could be offset by A.I it would save me time to work on other things.
What is one habit of yours that makes you more productive as an entrepreneur?
One habit that makes me productive is to reward myself when I finish off a long article. This could be in the form of going out for dinner or spending a few hours playing online games.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Buy bitcoin back in 2012? I everyone is thinking the same thing. No, though in all honesty, I would say to my younger self, find one website, and keep working on it. Make sure you never copy and paste content and keep everything you write unique. Keep working on it, don’t spread yourself to thing working on 5 different websites at the same time.
Tell us something that’s true that almost nobody agrees with you on.
An extremely fast loading website without the “bloat” on images and scripts, (all the fancy stuff) will rank better and convert more users. Sometimes the fastest loading website with the most basic design will convert at 26% more on average the a website that has to many transitions and slider features.
As an entrepreneur, what is the one thing you do over and over and recommend everyone else do?
Develop your writing skills. Understand that writing a book and writing an article your trying to make money off from organic traffic on Google is not in the same category.
One of the most important things you can learn is SEO and the basics principles of how it works.
Learn about keywords, search volume, search keyword competition and how you can utilize these points based on the popularity and trust of your website.
Once you know how to find a high traffic, low competition keyword and optimize your article around it, you will soon visualize your own road map to a new waterfall of organic traffic.
What you put into your blog writing you will get back out of it.
What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business?
I tend to share my articles on sites like Growthhackers, Hackernews and Reddit.
I also share my articles on quuupromote. This gives me a bit of a boost and allows me to push my content out to the major social media platforms through other peoples social accounts.
What is one failure you had as an entrepreneur, and how did you overcome it?
I have had many failures, all while trying to test out my own ideas. It’s like when you may have an epiphany about a way to gain massive amounts of traffic. You think no one else is doing it, or has thought about it so you give it a try.
I have had a few of these moments.
I have tried pushing 3000 eCommerce images to Flickr with links back to my website to gain traffic, this didn’t work.
I have tried integrating a forum into my website, only to realize it added extra hours of work and moderation and was another online marketing task I would have had to work on.
What is one business idea that you’re willing to give away to our readers?
Work on your Pinterest game plan. Create your own page and share everything you have from your website onto pinterest. Try and get onto other peoples board with your content.
Pinterest is a massive treasure trove of free traffic if you put in the time. It works with blog posts, eCommerce products and recipes.
What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?
I am just about to spend $100 renewing my license on http://seobetter.com/
They have a sale every year which I wait for so I can upgrade my license, it starts at 70% off then goes down each day for 3 days.
I use this software for SEO, keyword research and blogger outreach.
If you can’t afford ahrefs then I suggest you get this software.
What is one piece of software or a web service that helps you be productive?
As previously stated I use http://seobetter.com/
I also use Adobe Photoshop 2020, which is an essential piece of software for anyone working online. Nothing will ever match the quality and features of Photoshop.
What is the one book that you recommend our community should read and why?
I recommend this book: How to Go From Zero to 70,000 Page Views in 11 Weeks
I get most of my marketing knowledge from bloggers, reading up on new tricks and techniques. Most of the books I read, I try and make sure they are not based around digital marketing or SEO.
If you want to read a good book, go out and get Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. I think anything that is written by this author will keep your mind occupied.
What is your favorite quote?
The distance between insanity and genius can only be measured by success.
Key Learnings:
- I put most of my focus into writing and SEO
- Creating a quality online course takes time and effort
- Keep working on the same website, never give up and never copy other peoples content
Carlyn runs the day-to-day publishing operation here at ideamensch and interacts with our awesome customers and entrepreneurs. She is likely editing this with a cat on her lap.