From $4 Per Hour to SEO Millionaire

I asked Brian what it was like working for $4 an hour and working up from nothing.

Brian graduated with a degree in investment banking right after the subprime mortgage crisis crash. He'd done internships in banks and treasury departments, but the thought of wearing a suit every day was dreadful. Since he'd be making similar money either way, he figured he might as well do something he loved.

He was always a computer guy, loved technology, and grew up gaming. Digital marketing felt like the natural choice. His friends were making five bucks an hour doing it, so he jumped in.

Back in 2010, there were no courses or tutorials. You just had to figure it out. Brian started with the Ed Dale 30-day challenge to make your first dollar online, and he made it happen with AdSense. He was using Market Samurai for keyword research, which is such an old-school tool it doesn't even exist anymore.

One detail that stuck with me: "I scraped every dollar I could save and took me seven months to buy my first MacBook," Brian said. "That was a big dream of mine." That MacBook represented everything he was working toward.

The Penguin Update: Learning SEO the Hard Way

Brian's first real job was with First Beat Media, a company out of Florida. He learned quickly what a Google update really means when Penguin hit in 2011. This update penalized websites for over-optimizing anchor text, using too much of the same anchor text in backlinks.

The result? Devastating. 80% of their websites got wiped off the map. "That was baptism by fire," Brian said. They'd just finished setting up all these backlinks and Google basically said nope, you're done.

Here's the critical part: that Penguin penalty is still active today. If you're over-optimizing your anchor text, you're playing with fire.

The 15-Year-Old With an American Dream

I asked Brian about immigrating to the US about 11 years ago.

The backstory is incredible. When Brian was 15 years old in high school, his literature teacher asked students what they wanted to become after graduation. Everyone had typical answers like banker, working in literature, whatever. Brian's answer? "I want to be a business owner in United States."

At 15 years old, he was dead set on this vision. And it was rooted deep in his psychology. His dad traveled to the United States when Brian was just two years old. As a toddler, he'd ask his mom where dad was, and she'd say he's in America. Little Brian would say he wanted to go to America too, even though he had no idea what America even was. That seed was planted early.

Why Custom Coded Websites Crush Builder Sites

I asked Brian about building websites because he goes about it differently than most people. Most people use templated models or Elementor, but Brian's team custom codes all their websites.

The reason comes down to Google's core web vitals. These criteria are intense and constantly changing. Builder sites like Wix, Squarespace, Elementor, even Webflow are incredibly hard to optimize for core web vitals. You're locked into someone else's hosting and making trade-offs in design.

Brian's team looked for a custom coded solution that still uses WordPress on the backend. This way the marketing team can optimize for SEO without having to code everything, which would be insanely expensive.

The key insight here is that after a certain point, it becomes absolutely necessary to have a website that can pass core web vitals. Not just for vanity metrics, but because it directly impacts your ability to rank number one.

The 50% Traffic Difference Between Position 1 and 2

I asked when companies should consider custom coding their websites.

Brian's answer was clear: when you're on the first page, pushing links, doing everything right, but still can't crack that number one spot and your competitor above you is faster. That's when you need to invest in a faster website.

Here's the stat that blew my mind: "The difference between website that is core web vitals optimized and one that is not is the one that is core web vitals optimized can be number one, the one that is not is going to be number two," Brian said. "The difference in traffic is 50%."

Let me break that down. The first organic position on Google takes between 25-30% of clicks. Second place takes 12%. The difference is literally double. In a zero-sum game, being number one versus number two means double the traffic.

When Google looks at two sites and everything else is equal, backlinks, content, everything, the technical optimizations determine who gets number one. Google gives it to whoever provides the better user experience, which means the faster website.

The Page Speed Tricks That Actually Work

I asked what else people should watch out for besides removing animations.

Brian shared a clever trick his team uses: hiding videos. Instead of loading a YouTube video on the first page load, they create a thumbnail image. When you click it, it triggers a second click that launches the YouTube video. This way the YouTube player doesn't load initially, which dramatically speeds things up.

This becomes incredibly powerful when you have a video gallery with 20 videos. Instead of loading 20 YouTube players, you're just loading 20 compressed images. The speed difference is phenomenal.

The best part? This works for any website, even builder sites like Elementor, because video embeds create massive bloat on any platform.

The Shocking Truth: 20% of Websites Have Broken Forms

I asked if there's anything particular that almost everyone is missing.

Brian dropped a bomb: from doing audits, he's seeing that about 20% of websites don't even have working forms. At least 10% from his personal observation have non-working contact forms.

This always blows my mind. Someone has finally found you through SEO or searched up your company. They're trying to contact you and they literally can't. There's nothing worse than that.

Brian explained it often happens from WordPress updates. Contact Form 7 or Gravity Forms break from an update and nobody notices. Six months later you realize you haven't gotten any leads because nobody checked if the contact form was working.

The root problem? Not enough quality assurance. Agencies charging $1,000 for websites aren't doing proper QA. You need someone checking your website at least once a month, ideally every other week.

SEO Comes Down to Two Things: Links and Content

I asked what things you need to make sure you're doing for SEO on a consistent basis.

Brian's answer was beautifully simple: "Links and content. That's it."

But he expanded on this in a way that really clicked for me. His team has a regular content schedule with an editorial calendar ready three months in advance. This ensures content production stays on track. And they're consistently getting links.

Here's the key insight: link frequency and content frequency train Google's machine learning algorithm to come back to your site. You have to get the crawler to come back. How? You point links to your site, Google finds the link, comes back to your site.

Even if it's not a super high quality link, as long as you have something pointing back, you're telling Google to visit. Your job as a business owner is to send Google back to your website as much as possible.

The other reason Google comes back? New content. It's coming back to index your stuff and see if anything is relevant for its search results. This is why consistency matters more than perfection.

Why Organic Traffic Converts 2x Better Than Paid

Brian shared something really important about organic versus paid traffic.

First, organic traffic converts twice as good on average as paid traffic. Let that sink in. Your organic leads are literally twice as valuable.

Second, the distribution isn't even close. Ad space gets about 25-30% of clicks. Organic SEO gets 70%. So paid ads are getting half the pie size of organic.

Brian tracks attribution in HubSpot and consistently sees more leads from organic. And they cost less. When he was managing a $50,000 per month SEO department before starting his agency, the cost per lead from organic was five times cheaper than what they were paying for Google Ads.

He was managing 3,000 websites at the time, so there's probably some 80/20 principle at play. But theoretically you could get a lead from SEO costing 10 times less than a PPC lead.

This is why I'm always pushing SEO. The ROI is just dramatically better once you get it working.

The Multi-Listing Strategy: Own the Entire First Page

Brian shared a powerful strategy that completely changed how I think about SEO.

Business owners shouldn't just ask where they are on the first page of Google. They should ask: "How many of the listings on the first page can I tackle?"

If you have the mindset of a really successful business owner, you don't want just one listing. You want more. Brian learned this at his previous job in 2018. When his bosses would ask where they ranked on a keyword, he'd say "we have 8 out of 17 listings covered." If you clicked on all 17 results, 8 of them were theirs.

You don't have to invest only in a single website. You can build multiple websites and take up the entire space. You're massively increasing your surface area.

The beautiful thing about SEO? You can kick your competitors completely out of the game. You can be the only game in town. You just have to take up the entire first page.

For local businesses, this means being on local service ads, Google ads, the map pack, and organic results. When someone searches pest control near me and sees you four times, how can they not convert with you?

Topical Authority: Why You Need 100 Articles to Compete

I asked Brian about topical authority and topical maps.

His explanation made this concept finally click for me. Google evaluates if you have enough knowledge on a topic to be considered an authority based on your own content merit.

Let's say you're trying to rank for a specific type of bug in pest control. It's competitive. You have one article about that bug. Your competitor has 25 articles about that bug. The competitor gets the first spot even if you have better backlinks. It doesn't matter because they have more comprehensive content on the topic.

When Brian talks about topical authority with other SEOs, they're strictly talking about on-page SEO. It's about the content structure and coverage on your site.

Here's a practical example: you might find a keyword with 20% difficulty, which seems easy. But when you check your own website's topical authority in that space, you realize you have no authority. The benchmark might show you need to write 100 articles on this topic before you can realistically rank for those search terms.

This is why content consistency matters so much. You're not just creating content to create content. You're building comprehensive topical authority.

Black Hat SEO Doesn't Exist: The Controversial Take

I asked Brian about black hat SEO and whether there's space for it in an SEO strategy.

His answer shocked me: "There is no black hat SEO," Brian said. "Black hat SEO does not exist. It's a term made up by Google to deter people from doing SEO at all."

He explained that there are methods like cloaking and phishing-type stuff, but that's hacking, not SEO. Google weaponizes language to scare people away from doing effective SEO because if you do SEO well, you don't have to spend as much money on ads.

Brian is a believer that there's just SEO. Things either work or they don't work. There's on-page SEO where you optimize your own website, and there's parasite SEO where you use other people's websites for your benefit. Both are SEO. You have to think broader than just your own website.

The implication here is huge. Google wants you scared of SEO so you'll pour money into Google Ads instead. Don't fall for it. Do SEO, do it smart, and reap the benefits.

Three Internal Links Equal One Backlink

Brian shared his formula for internal linking that completely changed how I think about site structure.

"I always look at internal links as three internal links equals a backlink," Brian said.

This is why topical maps are so powerful. If you've got Roofing Miami as your main page, and then you're creating content about best time to replace your roof in Miami, how much does roof replacement cost in Miami, etc., all of this content links together. You're creating hundreds of internal links passing authority around.

Google sees this and says okay, you're saying this page is important with internal links, we're seeing external links from other people saying it's important, alright this must be important.

Brian shared a case study that proves this works. He pointed about 1,000 internal links with exact match and variations to a single page. This was in the massage space, extremely competitive in Melbourne, a major city with 5 million people. The page went from position 31 all the way up to position 6. That jump came purely from internal links.

If you're not leveraging internal linking, you're leaving massive SEO power on the table.

The Penguin Penalty Is Still Active Today

I asked Brian to explain the Penguin update more since he mentioned it's still active.

Back in 2010, SEO was simpler. You just got exact match anchor text, pointed tons of links with that anchor, and whoever had more links won. It was straightforward.

But then sites started having 3,000 backlinks all with the exact same anchor text pointing to one page. Google's search spam team could easily see this as blatant manipulation. Boom, you're penalized.

Brian's rule of thumb for backlinks: "The harder it is to get that one, the more valuable it is," he said. This has worked for him for 10 years. Get the hard stuff. The more insulated the link is, the less it's linking to porn, casinos, CBD, crypto, payday loans, the more valuable it becomes.

Quality over quantity isn't just a cliche. It's the fundamental truth of link building.

What Makes a Quality Backlink

I asked Brian what exactly makes a quality link.

Sure, there are cases where lots of low-quality links can work. But Brian likes quality links because they require less work and get results faster.

Here's the key: higher authority websites get crawled by Google more frequently. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs approximate how often Google visits these sites. When a high authority site publishes fresh content, it gets indexed faster. This means as soon as that content goes live, your link is on that page telling Google to visit your site.

If you post on a low authority site, it might get crawled two months from now. Your results take forever to show up. But a site with domain rating 50 and above? Gets indexed the same day.

The link passes juice to your site immediately. No lag time. Brian can literally see the impact within three days. A link goes live and boom, the page is back to number one.

This is why you should focus on quality over quantity. The ROI is dramatically better.

How Much Should You Spend on SEO?

I asked Brian a practical question: if a company is doing a million dollars a year, how much should they spend on SEO?

His answer: it depends on how much of that business is local. For a home service local business doing a million per year, SEO should be 100% of their marketing budget. That's about $50k a year, or around $4-5k per month.

This might seem high, but when you consider that organic leads convert 2x better than paid and cost 5-10x less, the ROI justifies the investment.

The 70% Revenue Increase in 6 Months

Brian shared an impressive case study that shows what's possible with proper SEO.

They worked with Pinard Law, a disability benefits attorney. In 6 months, they increased the firm's revenue by 70-100%. That's an extra $50,000 per month in revenue. There's even a video testimonial on YouTube from David Pinard about the results.

What made this work? The attorney was a stand-up guy, honest, ethical, with tons of good Google reviews. That made the SEO job easier. They took him from the second page to the top of the first page.

This case study is exactly why Brian decided to niche down and focus on attorneys. When you have proven results like this, it makes sense to double down.

My Main Takeaway

The biggest thing I learned from Brian is that core web vitals are non-negotiable if you want to rank number one. When everything else is equal between you and your competitor, the faster website wins. The difference between position 1 and position 2 is literally 50% of the traffic, which is massive.

The second big takeaway is topical authority matters more than most people realize. You can't just write one article about a topic and expect to rank against someone who has 25 articles. You need comprehensive coverage of your niche with an editorial calendar planned three months in advance.

The third thing is Brian's controversial take that black hat SEO doesn't exist. It's just SEO. Things either work or they don't work. Google weaponizes language to scare people away from doing effective SEO because they want you spending money on ads instead.

If you want to learn more from Brian, check him out at Brian Decoded on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. You can also visit his agency at Alpha Efficiency.