Nick Frost

Nick Frost – Audience Development Manager Dropbox Docsend | SEO for Startups

Guest Bio:

Nick is an advisor and startup entrepreneur from Hollywood, CA

He served with the US Navy for five years.

He is the founder of AngelHack, StartupList and Advsor

He is the Startup Index Newsletter writer, helping founders raise money through the DocSend Fundraising Network.

Please welcome the senior audience development manager at Dropbox Docsend, Nick Frost!

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Knowledge Bombs:

18:50 – How does Nick get page one ranking on Google?

For Nick, it’s about creating content on a focused specific keyword or your liking. This includes building this content’s technical parts such as having an optimized schema, rich metadata, alt text on images, and more.

19:32 – How did Nick first get into SEO?

Nick started into SEO when he worked at a company before. This is where he started to learn how WordPress works, how content is crawled, and made lots of reading that is full of trial and error as he goes on.

20:19 – What made Nick interested more to SEO?

Nick got more interested into SEO when he started working for startups and small businesses where he started to lean more how to increase traction on organic content.

21:00 – Why is SEO important for startups?

According to Nick, he sees that there is value in creating content for startups. For him, the real fun begins in how to find the right audience for it so it can build an organic audience that would grow over time.

21:29 – How did Nick actually learned SEO?

Nick’s foundation in learning SEO started when he created his own website back in 2010. This is where he honed his skills in SEO and learned a lot through trial and error, as well as using resources such as Yoast, for example.

23:30 – Diving deep into Nick’s position as the Sr. Audience Development Manager

Nick worked at Dropbox Docsend as a senior audience development manager. In this section, he gave us an insight of what it’s like to work in such position. This includes his experience in finding ways how to attract a new audience and dealing with a lot of people virtually.

24:56 – SEO communities that are best for startup founders

According to Nick, there are a lot of startup communities that beginners can join depending on what industry they are at. This includes Modern Sales Pros, and Sales Hacker, just to name a few. Such communities have a forum feature where everyone can hangout and give tips and advices with each other.

26:22 – How can startups rank higher than big brand companies?

The best way to do so, according to Nick, is by optimizing your entire SEO strategy. This includes every aspect of your strategy such as the keywords, content, and more. Using on-page tools and resources is a great way to maximize the full potential of your strategy too.

28:32 – What are some on-page tools that are great for SEOs?

Nick shares some great on-page tools that are useful for beginners and pros alike. His favorite is the Yoast plugin for WordPress because it is rich in features. Clearscope is another one that he uses as well that helped him identify keywords and phrases in optimizing content.

29:53 – How did Nick double his rankings in just 1 year?

In this in-depth section, we have seen an impressive graph of how Nick’s websites made into the higher ups in just a year. So how was this possible? For Nick, it’s about figuring out the SEO holes in a website and fixing it starting there. This includes the metadata, keywords, crawling, images, and the like.

31:33 – Optimizing CTR by playing with meta titles as explained by Nick

Metadata titles are often overlooked as what Nick said. But for him, this is the perfect opportunity to utilize them to increase ctr. This is because it is like a door that consumers will look at before entering the site itself. The more optimized and attractive your title metadata is, the higher the click-through rate.

33:37 – Knowing more about SEO content “types”

When figuring out what kind of content you want to create, it’s about knowing your kind of access to information and the propriety data you will use. This is where SEO content types come into play as used by Nick through the help of listicles.

36:09 – What is the timeline and cost of SEO campaign?

For Nick, it is based on the tools and the time you are spending in optimizing such SEO in estimating the cost. For the timeline, however, building SEO can span up to two weeks or even a month based on what he said.

37:24 – Does the future of SEO lies on building an audience?

As per Nick, SEO is unique to each company and audience. This may differ from what you want to focus and what the other party wants to focus too. This means that the future of SEO does not only rely in building an audience alone, but also on how unique you can utilize it as well.

40:31 – Backlink strategies that Nick uses in Dropbox Docsend

Nick uses tools such as BuzzSumo where it allows him to monitor trends based on one’s company name. It also includes features like social monitoring, and link crawling, just to name a few. He also suggested that reaching out and pulling yourself out there in building an audience for your company can help create backlinks too.

45:09 – Nick’s success rate in getting people to include his content in other people’s content

For Nick, it’s all about familiarizing what their newsletter is in terms of style and content structure. This allows him to provide content that other people can use in a more optimized form without hassle.

46:51 – Why is monitoring performance very important for startups?

It all comes down to understanding the value of organic search. Nick explains that getting customers all lies on how well you know, understand, and utilize organic search. This allows to increase ctr and gain new audiences as time goes by.

47:59 – How does Dropbox Docsend acquisition strategy work in SEO?

Nick uses a “template” structure for Docsend that is optimized based on a person’s specific SEO needs. What’s more is that these templates can be downloadable and can be utilized how you want it to be.

49:51 – How does Nick uses his Google Business Profile?

Google Business Profile is a feature-rich resource that allows people to share, post, and integrate SEO features that are useful for websites. Nick sees this as a business version of “Yelp!” where people can see what websites you have, tips you have shared, and SEO strategies that they can use.

52:16 – Maintaining keyword rankings while using resources, is it possible?

With a plethora of resources for keywords scattering around, it can be a daunting experience to maintain their keyword rankings. But for Nick, it’s about developing content around that keyword and publish them on your chosen platform where it excels.

55:23 – Nick’s advice in becoming an SEO professional

Doing your research, finding SEO communities, and delving into anything about SEO is what Nick advices in becoming an SEO professional. For him, experimenting with your techniques too plays a vital part in honing your skills to become a professional.

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Google News:

How Google fought search spam on Google in 2021

Google caught 200 times more spam sites in 2021 compared to when they first started nearly two decades ago,

Thanks, in part, to their AI-based spam-prevention system called SpamBrain.

Link to the blog post below.

https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/webspam-report-2021

2 Google events are happening next month that you should all attend.

Google I/O and Google Marketing Live Registration are now open.

The link is in the description.

https://io.google/2022/

https://www.googlemarketinglive.com/

Dixon Jones shares his BrightonSEO presentation on How to EAT Links.

Let’s check out the main takeaway.

I love to EAT everything.

It’s an excellent foundation for any marketing strategy.

Dixon drops a couple of backlink nuggets in the presentation, so watch the whole video.

How to produce content that contains entities that are closely related to a topic by Marie Haynes

I will discuss analyzing the SERPs in SEO in the 2022 book.

If you are in the US, please email me your address, and I will send a copy to the first three that hit me up.

Nathan Gotch put out a video this past week on expired domains called the Merger Technique for SEO

Expired domains have always been a part of my SEO strategy.

When I need a link, the first thing I do is a keyword search on expireddomains.net.

And spend a few minutes seeing what domains are available.

Ross Simmonds, a past guest who dropped many knowledge bombs, shares how to Build a Customer Journey Map.

I love this idea of creating content around “problem awareness.”

My next SEO strategy will include this tactic.

Check out Ross’s episode on the SEO Video Show.

It was full of knowledge bombs.