Has Anyone Used SEOMEETSREI

[Anthony Stephenson]

Has anyone used the company SEOMEETSREI for backlink services? I found them on the Investor Carrot website as one of their preferred vendors. 

[Jerryll Noorden]

Quote from @Tariq T.:

I have been a member of their Facebook group for a few months now but I personally haven't purchased any of their products which is actually something that I like about them. They have never pitched or tried to push any of their products on me or anyone else in the group. I'm no SEO expert, and I don't pretend to be, but I've picked up and used a lot of valuable information from them in the group and have seen substantial growths in my sites from the information received from these guys. Again, I haven't purchased or used their products so I am not able to speak on that but what I can speak on is their character and I can truly say that I see them as being stand up guys who are passionate about what they do and open to sharing the information without all the fluff and BS.

[Keith M Sant]

Quote from @Jerryll Noorden:

@Andy and Keith.

I have presented my case. Someone asked if you were a legitimate company, and it is my (and MANY other people's ) opinion you are not.

You teach fake SEO and drive a massive amount of shady backlinks to their site to see instant bumps in rankings, and that makes all your students think that what you are offering works,  disguised as fancy charts and graphs. You don't know the first thing about true SEO.  The time will come when Google will demote your and your student's website and everything will come crashing down for you all. I truly feel sorry for your students. 

I am not here to argue. Show as many pictures and loud barks as you like to try to convince others you are a reputable company.

People you admire and respect (I won't list names) have asked you to just STOP taking my content and just do your own thing. 

But Andy, don't kid yourself. Taking MY template and selling it for double the price is not  "student surpassing the master".  It is called theft! If you really want to surpass me. Stop copying me and do your own thing. If you can do just that, I would have helped you as I did years ago.

Do what you will. Sooner or later it will backfire. You haven't been in business long enough to know what the consequences are of misleading your students, but you will learn the hard way. You will see.

Good luck to both. I have proven my case.

 I was looking at your site and noticed you have some technical errors with your logo out of the fold and your face getting cut off. 

You can use our custom CSS. It should resolve all your issues and add a few other cool elements like the ability to zoom images upon hovering. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any way. 

.logo-full .banner .brand .brand-logo{
width:auto;
height:auto;
max-height:6rem;
}

.banner{
margin-top:0.5rem;
margin-bottom:-0.4rem;
}

.alignfull {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}

.content .h1, .content h1,
.gform_heading .h1, .gform_heading h1 {
font-size: 2.75rem;
font-weight: 500;
}

.how-it-works-head{
font-size:228% !important;
}

.content .h2, .content h2, .gform_heading .h2, .gform_heading h2 {
font-size: 2.5rem;
font-weight: 500;
}

.content .h3, .content h3, .gform_heading .h3, .gform_heading h3 {
font-size: 2rem;
font-weight: 500;
}

.content .h4, .content h4, .gform_heading .h4, .gform_heading h4 {
font-size: 1.5rem;
font-weight: 400;
}

.hero:before {
background-image: linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(100,100,100,.3), rgba(100,100,100,.3));
}

.button_header{
margin-left:10px;
}

.button_header a {
padding: 5px 10px !important;
color: #ffffff !important;
border-radius: 5px;
background-color: #ff8121;
}

.button_header:hover a
{
background-color: #d16a1b;
}
#menu-main-navigation > .menu-item a, #top-menu-banner .hl-top-menu a, .hl-top-menu-container a, .hl-top-menu-container a:active, .hl-top-menu-container a:focus, .hl-top-menu-container a:hover, .hl-top-menu-container a:visited {
font-size: 1.1rem;
}

.hero-form
.gform_footer
.gform_button {
padding: 0;
border-radius:5px;
background-color: #ff8121;
}

.hero-form
.gform_footer
.gform_button:hover {
background-color: #db6f1d;
}

.offer-you-trust
{
padding-top:0!important;
padding-bottom:0!important;
}

.fill-block
{
padding:0!important;
margin-top:0!important;
margin-bottom:0!important;
}

span[itemprop="telephone"] a {
color: #ff8121!important;
font-size:1.3rem;
}

span[itemprop="telephone"]:hover a
{
color: #ff8121!important;
font-size:1.3rem;
}

.author .sidebar {
display: none;
}
.blog .sidebar {
display: none;
}
.single-post .sidebar {
display: none;
}

@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 300;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Light'), local('Lato-Light'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-300.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-300.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: italic;
font-weight: 300;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Light Italic'), local('Lato-LightItalic'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-300.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-300.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 400;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Regular'), local('Lato-Regular'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-400.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-400.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: italic;
font-weight: 400;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Italic'), local('Lato-Italic'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-400.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-400.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 700;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Bold'), local('Lato-Bold'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-700.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-700.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: italic;
font-weight: 700;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Bold Italic'), local('Lato-BoldItalic'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-700.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-700.woff') format('woff');
}

p {
font-size: 120%
}
body {
font-weight: 300
}

.hero-content {
padding: 0rem;
}

.zoom {
transition: transform .2s; /* Animation */
}

.zoom:hover {
transform: scale(1.5);
}

.yes_list li::before, .no_list li::before{
display: none;
}

ul.yes_list, ul.no_list {
padding-left:0;
list-style-type: none;
}

.padding-about-us {
margin-right:3%;
}

.bottom-border{
border-bottom: 1px solid;
border-bottom-color:rgb(0,0,0,.2);
padding-bottom: 5px;
}

.content-wrap {
padding-top: 0;
}

.star {
margin-bottom:1rem;
}

.wp-block-separator {
color: #ECECEC;
}

[Nyx Sherwin]

Quote from @Anthony Stephenson:

Has anyone used the company SEOMEETSREI for backlink services? I found them on the Investor Carrot website as one of their preferred vendors. 

Hi Anthony,

I’ve used their services and can tell you for certain their business is legit.

About a year ago I foolishly thought, how hard can this whole digital marketing thing be, and went at it solo. Just when I thought I had it figured out Google kindly reminded me how little I actually knew. All progress was gone overnight.

Long story short through their Facebook community and paid services my site has recovered and considerably stronger than before. It’s not a coincidence that my site impressions increased 10x since the Google beat down after I started working with Keith & Andy’s company.

Both are easy to access, easy to do business with and highly reputable.

5/5 - Highly Recommend

PS. Not a paid review. Just a happy customer. 

[Jerryll Noorden]

Quote from @Keith M Sant:

Quote from @Jerryll Noorden:

@Andy and Keith.

I have presented my case. Someone asked if you were a legitimate company, and it is my (and MANY other people's ) opinion you are not.

You teach fake SEO and drive a massive amount of shady backlinks to their site to see instant bumps in rankings, and that makes all your students think that what you are offering works,  disguised as fancy charts and graphs. You don't know the first thing about true SEO.  The time will come when Google will demote your and your student's website and everything will come crashing down for you all. I truly feel sorry for your students. 

I am not here to argue. Show as many pictures and loud barks as you like to try to convince others you are a reputable company.

People you admire and respect (I won't list names) have asked you to just STOP taking my content and just do your own thing. 

But Andy, don't kid yourself. Taking MY template and selling it for double the price is not  "student surpassing the master".  It is called theft! If you really want to surpass me. Stop copying me and do your own thing. If you can do just that, I would have helped you as I did years ago.

Do what you will. Sooner or later it will backfire. You haven't been in business long enough to know what the consequences are of misleading your students, but you will learn the hard way. You will see.

Good luck to both. I have proven my case.

 I was looking at your site and noticed you have some technical errors with your logo out of the fold and your face getting cut off. 

You can use our custom CSS. It should resolve all your issues and add a few other cool elements like the ability to zoom images upon hovering. Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help in any way. 

.logo-full .banner .brand .brand-logo{
width:auto;
height:auto;
max-height:6rem;
}

.banner{
margin-top:0.5rem;
margin-bottom:-0.4rem;
}

.alignfull {
margin-bottom: 20px;
}

.content .h1, .content h1,
.gform_heading .h1, .gform_heading h1 {
font-size: 2.75rem;
font-weight: 500;
}

.how-it-works-head{
font-size:228% !important;
}

.content .h2, .content h2, .gform_heading .h2, .gform_heading h2 {
font-size: 2.5rem;
font-weight: 500;
}

.content .h3, .content h3, .gform_heading .h3, .gform_heading h3 {
font-size: 2rem;
font-weight: 500;
}

.content .h4, .content h4, .gform_heading .h4, .gform_heading h4 {
font-size: 1.5rem;
font-weight: 400;
}

.hero:before {
background-image: linear-gradient(90deg, rgba(100,100,100,.3), rgba(100,100,100,.3));
}

.button_header{
margin-left:10px;
}

.button_header a {
padding: 5px 10px !important;
color: #ffffff !important;
border-radius: 5px;
background-color: #ff8121;
}

.button_header:hover a
{
background-color: #d16a1b;
}
#menu-main-navigation > .menu-item a, #top-menu-banner .hl-top-menu a, .hl-top-menu-container a, .hl-top-menu-container a:active, .hl-top-menu-container a:focus, .hl-top-menu-container a:hover, .hl-top-menu-container a:visited {
font-size: 1.1rem;
}

.hero-form
.gform_footer
.gform_button {
padding: 0;
border-radius:5px;
background-color: #ff8121;
}

.hero-form
.gform_footer
.gform_button:hover {
background-color: #db6f1d;
}

.offer-you-trust
{
padding-top:0!important;
padding-bottom:0!important;
}

.fill-block
{
padding:0!important;
margin-top:0!important;
margin-bottom:0!important;
}

span[itemprop="telephone"] a {
color: #ff8121!important;
font-size:1.3rem;
}

span[itemprop="telephone"]:hover a
{
color: #ff8121!important;
font-size:1.3rem;
}

.author .sidebar {
display: none;
}
.blog .sidebar {
display: none;
}
.single-post .sidebar {
display: none;
}

@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 300;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Light'), local('Lato-Light'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-300.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-300.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: italic;
font-weight: 300;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Light Italic'), local('Lato-LightItalic'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-300.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-300.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 400;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Regular'), local('Lato-Regular'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-400.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-400.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: italic;
font-weight: 400;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Italic'), local('Lato-Italic'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-400.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-400.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: normal;
font-weight: 700;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Bold'), local('Lato-Bold'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-700.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/normal-700.woff') format('woff');
}
@font-face {
font-family: 'Lato';
font-style: italic;
font-weight: 700;
font-display: swap;
src: local('Lato Bold Italic'), local('Lato-BoldItalic'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-700.woff2') format('woff2'), url('https://cdn.carrot.com/fonts/lato/v16/italic-700.woff') format('woff');
}

p {
font-size: 120%
}
body {
font-weight: 300
}

.hero-content {
padding: 0rem;
}

.zoom {
transition: transform .2s; /* Animation */
}

.zoom:hover {
transform: scale(1.5);
}

.yes_list li::before, .no_list li::before{
display: none;
}

ul.yes_list, ul.no_list {
padding-left:0;
list-style-type: none;
}

.padding-about-us {
margin-right:3%;
}

.bottom-border{
border-bottom: 1px solid;
border-bottom-color:rgb(0,0,0,.2);
padding-bottom: 5px;
}

.content-wrap {
padding-top: 0;
}

.star {
margin-bottom:1rem;
}

.wp-block-separator {
color: #ECECEC;
}

 Don't worry about that site. That is on Carrot. We are finishing up our own hosting and we are transferring away from Carrot. We have long ago stopped improving that site. We have been copied so much, we are leaving that all behind and doing our own thing. 

Wait... are you really trying to save face by pointing out errors on a site we are transferring to another host and this somehow .. what..  makes you innocent from stealing my products?

Dude,

whatever ever man.

Get all your followers on here to vouch for you. Do your thing.  Seriously. Whatever you think will convince others whatever you want them to think.

The more you fight, the more obvious it is how desperate you are. Just drop it. You can only do more damage. Just drop it.

[Joshua Martin]

Well, I guess I'd just like to encourage everyone on this thread to take the high road. A lot of this is sounding a little petty (not a good look for anyone), so with the case already made on both sides, I thought I'd just try to throw in a little objectivity from an SEO bystander.

Jerryl, been watching you do SEO for years, and you're very good at it, and you're also very creative. I was out of the game for a few years and when I came back around you had started SEO for Real Estate Investors. The name makes it clear what you do but as for as the products and services offered specifically I was excited to hop on a group call with you last spring which was a 60 minute upsell of either the credibility package or the full SEO package. My hesitation was first of all the price, second of all the very hands on nature where for that price I felt like it should have been done for you, and third the relative opaqueness of the program itself. With those considerations I moved on and simply figured you had gone a sort of guru route and I just thought 'good for him.'

SEO Meets REI I discovered through some forum or other several months ago and thought I'd first check them out and size them up on their weekly facebook live calls. Here they freely give very detailed SEO strategies and tactics. They have literally shown me the things they have done and just told me to replicate it, and not simply a certain colored banner or check mark but their keyword density, headings, alt tags, etc. After seeing what they do and the type of guys they are I felt confident signing up for a backlink package with them. Results to be seen as this was only a month or so ago but I've already noticed an uptick in domain and page authority on my home page and for better or worse I feel confident I'm in good hands with these guys.

In fact, FWIW, as far as what is out there for REI SEO services I think these guys are the best bet. SEO for Real Estate Investors is probably a good program but I don't know what it entails and I know that I'd be doing the majority of the backlinking work.

Good luck all,

[Jeremy Schooler]

Keith and Andy (SEO for RE Investors),
I just wanted to say thanks for being awesome at what you do and willing to share your skills with others. Keith I've known you personally for a few years now since we first met. Andy it's been nearly a year since we met. You both have always been above reproach in your willingness to share and help. Thank you for teaching what you know and allowing people to implement and ask even more questions. You give away knowledge that people/companies charge a lot money for. You have given so much before I even realized that you also have a business that offers a whole next level of specific help in areas. I had to work to even figure that out.

Anyways, you guys are awesome. Keep your head up. There's always going to be win/lose minded people who struggle to figure out what it really means to have that win/win mindset.

[Jerryll Noorden]

Quote from @Joshua Martin:

Well, I guess I'd just like to encourage everyone on this thread to take the high road. A lot of this is sounding a little petty (not a good look for anyone), so with the case already made on both sides, I thought I'd just try to throw in a little objectivity from an SEO bystander.

Jerryl, been watching you do SEO for years, and you're very good at it, and you're also very creative. I was out of the game for a few years and when I came back around you had started SEO for Real Estate Investors. The name makes it clear what you do but as for as the products and services offered specifically I was excited to hop on a group call with you last spring which was a 60 minute upsell of either the credibility package or the full SEO package. My hesitation was first of all the price, second of all the very hands on nature where for that price I felt like it should have been done for you, and third the relative opaqueness of the program itself. With those considerations I moved on and simply figured you had gone a sort of guru route and I just thought 'good for him.'

SEO Meets REI I discovered through some forum or other several months ago and thought I'd first check them out and size them up on their weekly facebook live calls. Here they freely give very detailed SEO strategies and tactics. They have literally shown me the things they have done and just told me to replicate it, and not simply a certain colored banner or check mark but their keyword density, headings, alt tags, etc. After seeing what they do and the type of guys they are I felt confident signing up for a backlink package with them. Results to be seen as this was only a month or so ago but I've already noticed an uptick in domain and page authority on my home page and for better or worse I feel confident I'm in good hands with these guys.

In fact, FWIW, as far as what is out there for REI SEO services I think these guys are the best bet. SEO for Real Estate Investors is probably a good program but I don't know what it entails and I know that I'd be doing the majority of the backlinking work.

Good luck all,

 This is quite silly, to be honest.

This is not a competition or a popularity contest. This is not who you like better.

This is a simple matter of theft. They stealing our product and selling it as their own.

I don't care what YOU think is a better value. This is not about presenting each case and this is not about being petty. I didn't ask for this, and when companies like Carrot support these shady companies, I am forced to step up and show the world that not because "Carrot" thinks they are ok does it mean they ARE ok. 

Because Carrot openly vouching for them has caused many people to accuse US of stealing their website template while I spend YEARS perfecting my products.  And then you come here all high and mighty JUDGING me for being petty? Dude get off your high horse and spare me your life lessons.

Our workers are at risk, or our reputation is at risk, and people like you trying to add your completely irrelevant 2 cents to the matter is as I said completely irrelevant. This is not a matter of opinion. This is simply theft!

Why this is so hard for people like you to understand is ridiculous.

[Jordan Crain]

Hey Anthony,

We were students together with Chuck and Gina Biter in Clarksville a few years ago. I admired your ability to execute on such a high level while doing it all yourself. You were self-financing, marketing, buying, rehabbing, renting, and flipping your deals single-handedly and I remember wondering where you find time to sleep! It seems like you are digging deeper into SEO marketing and I can't blame you. I chose to take this marketing approach at the end of last year for my website too. I wanted to understand how it worked and I found Andy and Keith.

I have been attending their live calls and asking questions almost weekly. I am still a novice but they treat me fairly and never insult my ignorance. I started working with them on backlinks a few months ago. My site is improving in rank but their service is what blew me away. Keith has taking time to review my page to offer up tips and advice without me even asking. Once I asked a simple question about the backlinks and he sent me a Loom answering the question then spent 10 min sharing suggestions for my site's on-page.

I once DM'd  Andy regarding some formatting he uses on one of his sites. He answered my question and then told me to always ask my questions in the group so everyone can benefit.

These guys don't have anything to hide and want to see everyone improve. I can't tell you if their SEO strategy is the greatest but I will continue to work with them because they have invested time and effort to earn my trust. Folks that do that are hard to come by.

[Phil Bryson]

I have not done business with them before, but I have been in their free group for a while. What I like about Andy and Keith is that they are very active in the group and spend a lot of time trying to help people and share their knowledge freely. They have frequent live calls and the community is generally positive.

Analyzing their backlink profile, and the profiles of a few I know who have used their backlink service, it's straight trash. I can't speak to their other services but if you are serious about trying to secure and hold a top ranking position in your market it will be no small effort to undo that damage long term. This is the same problem you'll run into with the majority of SEO companies who offer backlink packages just to be real. Jerryll gave a great analogy regarding quality backlinks that it worth re-reading so you understand why. Quality white hat backlinks take effort and time so it's not something you can outsource to another country, or buy your way into, without exercising caution. Understanding how an SEO company handles backlinks is a pretty good indicator of how well they understand SEO in my opinion (there are some decent ones out there). Will you rank well or get leads using these guys? Maybe, maybe not, but I wouldn't count on it to last forever if you do. Google is getting smarter and smarter and they don't look favorably upon manipulation tactics that fake value and authority to their users.

It's easy to take advantage of people who don't know any better by showing them movement in the right direction. It doesn't take all that much to move a site from nowhere to to 3-5 pages of results, or even page 1 for some keywords. It gets people excited and then they feel like they made a good purchase. I'm speaking in general for SEO companies like this, not necessarily this one. I like to think Andy and Keith aren't intentionally and knowingly doing damage to anyone's site because they are claiming to see a lot of leads from it. However, it's blatantly obvious they used/stole Jerryll's template for their own site from a visual standpoint. The fact that they didn't take greater steps to differentiate themselves to be even having this discussion makes me think one of three things: Either they didn't know how to, didn't understand why that template worked, or they were just lazy.

[Tom Gimer]

I think what will help resolve this is if more 1st post BP members tell us how great SEOMEETSREI is.

[Matt Stark]

i used seo meets rei for link building. If you are seriously considering paying them for link building, message me and I will send you the list of links I got from them and you can see for yourself the quality of links. 

[John Swann]

@Anthony Stephenson, as I'm sure you can tell, many folks feel strongly about SEO Meets REI. The overwhelming majority of us feel so positively about Andy and Keith that we came to BP to share our thoughts.

Keith has invested hours of his time helping me with my site, for free. I recently started paying him for backlink and schema help as well. I'm seeing results that are slow and steady.

I'm sorry you initially had a poor experience with SEO Meets REI. I hope that was just growing pains at a new company. Check out Keith and Andy's FB group where they give out a ton of free info and knowledge. Hope to see you in there!

[Stephen Keighery]

I think jumping in on this post backfired on you Jeryl. You just gave Keith and Andy more PR and you can see that lots of people like what they are doing. It looks like they did copy some of your templates. Most people will iterate of a design that is doing well and you should feel proud that you built it. The problem seems to be that you are holding onto that and also holding your SEO knowledge back to try and get people to pay you $20K. Andy and Keith give away their game free and will go really deep on technical SEO stuff in there group at no charge. I haven't paid them as I have a digital marketing background and a pretty deep understanding of SEO. But I have learnt a lot from their group and I have had very in depth technical conversations which is why I am sticking up for them. Jeryl lets be real, you don't have any propriety SEO knowledge and Andy and Keith aren't reading your stuff to get advice. They are well past the things you share and are probably spending time on Search Engine Land, SEO Moz and listening to Matt Cutts or whoever all the SEOs listen to these days (I have been around SEO for 15 years so this may be dated). Point is you aren't the source of information, you are just trying to apply general SEO knowledge to Real Estate people exactly like they are. In this day and age lots of people share knowledge freely so they can reach more people and show them value and by doing so a portion of those people end up hiring you for more hands on help. I can see why someone like you would be threatened by people like them giving away so much for free. 

[Alex Capozzolo]

I've never bought SEO from Andy/Keith or Jeryll, but have considered both. 

Andy and Keith are both stand-up dudes (if you couldn't tell from their responses already). They've given away more free SEO knowledge than any other group I've seen. Super appreciative of that. It's helped me a good bit. From their free Facebook group you could probably rank your site and get leads if you have enough time to do the work yourself. They've never pushed a product on anyone and offer tons of free SEO tips.

@Anthony Stephenson if you're considering buying SEO, I'd say join their group first and watch their free videos. You can get a better understanding of if you can do some of the stuff yourself or if you'd want to hire them or someone to get it done.

Doesn't everyone on the internet semi-copy the 'general look' of each other's websites? Lol. Eventually, someone will have a better looking site than both andy and jerryl, and they will both switch their look to align with that website more, and the cycle goes on. If someone rips off some precious info you have a copyright on then sure go ham and get an attorney involved. This seems petty IMO. Plus, for people that know SEO, it takes wayy more than the look of a site to rank it.

Anyone who has built a backlink in their life has probably built a spammy one. Anyone who offers SEO has done it. Everyone in this thread has done it. I've done it. It's part of the game. Andy and Keith's results worked, and have worked for people that I've seen in the group +1 year ago since I joined. Google catches on quickly to bad practices, so at this point, since those people in the group are still ranked well and getting results, in my opinion, their sh*t don't stink.

[Trevor Mauch]

Man, this thread really started to take off. 

I wanted to pop a note (maybe the start of a novel haha? ;-) in here y'all as both Jerryll and Keith/Andy work with a lot of our clients at Carrot and we have the data and context behind much of what was discussed in this thread. 

Outside of my insights from data, there are a few things I'd like to pop in here to hopefully take this conversation in a direction that helps us all learn from this and grow in our businesses together, elevate the industry together, find a path to co-exist where each business contributes to the overall industry growth... challenges the other to innovate and create fresh new solutions for customers to win big... and leads towards our industry getting stronger not weaker. 

Industry Ethics / Trust / Improvement

When we started Carrot in '08, this space was ripe with hucksters. You didn't know who to trust, half of all courses that were on the market were good, tons of fly by nite operators (still many of those), performance in websites was an afterthought... and in general the market had nowhere trustworthy to go to learn how to grow their real estate business using the internet. 

Yes Carrot focuses on helping you get more highly motivated leads online through SEO, paid marketing, and our high performing sites... 

... but my real mission at the start was to help to start to elevate the industry to be a more legitimate industry, with higher trust, more transparency, and to challenge all companies in our space to just operate in a way that advances the industry in the right direction for the long-term rather than making a quick buck and causing the trust in the industry to regress. 

Not saying we did it alone, but I'm proud that Carrot has been a key driver over the last 8 years of helping to elevate the conversation in this market and to raise the bar for running an ethical, honest, and highly impactful business that is here for the long-term. 

We haven't been perfect. We've made mistakes as well. But every chance I get, I want to find ways to look at the impacts our actions and conversations have on the industry over the next 5-10 years as a whole. There's lots of passion in this thread and from my standpoint. Some ego on all sides creeping through to protect ones own interests (which isn't a bad thing by itself, it can just be dangerous over the long-run) that may be making the convo even more challenging to resolve. 

End of the day, I'd love to see if we can find a way to look at facts, drop ego, figure out the right next steps forward together.

Dont' have to be best friends, but there is a path (if ego is set aside) that we can all together elevate this industry rather than tear a piece of it down. 

Jerryll's Growth and Impact

I remember years back when Jerryll was just getting started online. He'd show up to our Carrot coaching calls, ask questions of me and Adrian, go execute, then come back and ask for me. Eventually we saw a shift in Jerryll where he really committed to learning everything he could learn about SEO. He started with our internal SEO training then advanced to diving deep into learning the deep details of SEO. It was cool seeing Jerryll take his scientific/engineer mind and ask, "how can I reverse engineer how Google works and test things to get my site to rank higher, and stay there?". Jerryll has been one of the guys who really took customizing his Carrot site to the next level. So much so, that as he said... his design started to get emulated and in some cases copied. 

I can appreciate your frustration Jerryll when you see people use/take/model/steal your design you worked hard to test and perfect. You mention your design is the "most ripped off design in real estate", I'd argue it is, right behind Carrot's sites :-). We've seen full businesses started (and all of them so far have died) based on either a blatant copy of our sites (and content) or bad emulation of our sites/design/structure. Initially I'd get pissed and nicely reach after them to encourage them to work hard and come up w/ their own unique output... but eventually I shifted my tone to say... "Ok, it sucks people are blatantly copying our hard work... but how do I just get so far ahead of them.. they're always copying our work from 6months to 2 years ago... and they have no clue why our design looks like it does because they didn't do the 500+ split tests to know what elements are actually important". So we focused on shifting that energy to innovation for our customer... but it still irks the heck out of me when I see people clearly copy work we'd pioneered in this space. Still today, most every competitor of ours has blatantly or partially launched their services based on Carrot... but Carrot still crushes the competition in most every measureable performance indicator... because of my intentional focus to just outserve our clients. In the end, those who outserve and out innovate will win. The ones who copy will always be behind those who are innovating. 

As Jerryll grew, he realized he could help lots of people with this knowledge, he was smart and was able to turn it into solid business. That's hard to do. You deserve all of the credit. 

Jerryll discovered that selling "done for you" services is a very hard business to scale and shifted to a high-level coaching / expert guidance model (I may not be talking about it the way you would Jerryll, so correct me below pls). This way he could scale his impact, help more people at more scale, build a business of more freedom and impact, and add lots of value. Lots of Carrot members have used his training and guidance to get great results. 

Jerrylls site style performance: 

The design style he created on top of the Carrot system consistently is in the top group of sites when we pull a list of the top 100 highest converting motivated house seller sites on our system. 

A few key reasons:

- Jerryll has been a student of not just SEO, but also user experience. His "how it works" pages are among the best ones on our network and he builds things to engage with visitors, answer their questions, and build trust. All things we've pushed over the years. Google looks at onsite user behavior when it comes to SEO and Jerryll understands that well. 
- Trust/credibility... Jerryll has built upon Carrot to really find new and creative ways to bake in credibility on a site at every turn. For years I've taught the importance of 3rd party reviews on a site, great about pages, using story in your content, using real images that build trust etc... Jerryll took that and has done it as good if not better than most across our system. 
- They're very robust in content (which is critical in conversion on high resistance types of asks, like selling a property). The content tells a story, builds trust, and credibility. 
- Large and easy to see / read calls to action. Over the years we've produced split tests that have shown that larger CTAs tend to convert better than smaller ones, Jerryll has stepped into this and really expanded the size of CTAs even more. 

There are other reasons Jerrylls sites tend to convert well, but those are just a few. 

Jerrylls Communication Style

The one critical thing I would have to say about Jerryll, and I've had this direct convo w/ you @Jerryll Noorden of course, is the communication style. It's the "in your face tell it like he sees it" style, which is polarizing and for sure will attract a number of people and will repel a number of people. Being polarizing is a great thing. They say in brand building that people should either love you or hate you (hot or cold), nothing in between.  The main challenge I have here is while Jerryll has great guidance (as of today, I haven't seen his actual program first hand, so I can't speak to his program directly, but I've heard good things about it from most), it's hard to know what he''ll say if he gets in front of our audience and if it'll jive with our Core Values at Carrot. I tend to lead with building others up, with hoping to elevate people and cast a vision for how they can improve (even my haters), and it's hard for me to fully resonate with those who take the opposite approach. Again, Jerryll and I have had this exact discussion so it's nothing new and not anything that you all in the public can't see yourself. So when you see that Jerryll hasn't been on our podcast or in our marketplace, it's more of the "man, he's wicked smart but does his approach jive with our values and the message we're aiming to put out into the world?".  

We'd had times when my support team would come to me upset at how they were treated by Jerryll, which isn't cool and I'd rather give up the income than allow my team to be treated that way by anyone. But I do genuinely see Jerrylls heart and his spirit of giving and have chose to look past that to work w/ him to see we can grow together, serve more people, and do it in a way that we'll all be proud of in 20 years. 

I will admit, some of the frustration on Jerrylls side was caused by my team inadvertently, whether it is my team saying we can't force someone to stop using a design that looks like his (it's not our legal standing to do that) or our team not communicating well enough why we can't support helping people fix their custom CSS code if they messed it up. Our team communicated it wrong... but Jerryll heard from some of his customers that "Carrot can't support Jerryll clients", which would frustrate me too. That's not the case at all. We love Jerrylls clients (because they tend to get solid results), it is the long blocks of custom CSS... if the customer messed up part of the code... our support reps aren't coders... so we can't go fix everyones custom code (but ChatGPT can now :-). So I'm working w/ my team to take that learning lesson and improve the way we're communicating. 

Jerryll I'm not asking you to change your style. People know you for it and it attracts attention... and likely has played a really strong role in your growth. But it's just the primary reason we havent worked together more deeply over the years. But I would LOVE for that to hopefully change and have us find ways to elevate the industry together. 

Jerryll Summary: 

In the end, it's been cool seeing Jerryll grow from very beginner in real estate and online marketing, to a real expert in many facets of online marketing... and one I've found opportunities to learn from as well. 

He innovated/iterated on top of the Carrot high performing platform, it worked so well others have copied it (which would irk me as well), and now he's trying to protect his hard work (I totally get it. Carrot is the most ripped off websites in the industry, so I know). 

The approach is the only thing, and if we can work through that I can see us helping tons more people for years to come. 

That's my high level thougths on the convo from the perspective of my goals with this thread and what I've seen from Jerryll over the years. Tons of good, and some frustrations on all sides. But in the end, he's helped a lot of people. I just wish the energy would be more of a positive "lets build this industry together" approach vs. the alternate approach. But that's just me. Don't change being you because of me. Being you is what makes you special.

Now I'll dive in on another post on SEO Meets REI (Keith/Andy) 

[Joe S.]

Quote from @Trevor Mauch:

Man, this thread really started to take off. 

I wanted to pop a note (maybe the start of a novel haha? ;-) in here y'all as both Jerryll and Keith/Andy work with a lot of our clients at Carrot and we have the data and context behind much of what was discussed in this thread. 

Outside of my insights from data, there are a few things I'd like to pop in here to hopefully take this conversation in a direction that helps us all learn from this and grow in our businesses together, elevate the industry together, find a path to co-exist where each business contributes to the overall industry growth... challenges the other to innovate and create fresh new solutions for customers to win big... and leads towards our industry getting stronger not weaker. 

Industry Ethics / Trust / Improvement

When we started Carrot in '08, this space was ripe with hucksters. You didn't know who to trust, half of all courses that were on the market were good, tons of fly by nite operators (still many of those), performance in websites was an afterthought... and in general the market had nowhere trustworthy to go to learn how to grow their real estate business using the internet. 

Yes Carrot focuses on helping you get more highly motivated leads online through SEO, paid marketing, and our high performing sites... 

... but my real mission at the start was to help to start to elevate the industry to be a more legitimate industry, with higher trust, more transparency, and to challenge all companies in our space to just operate in a way that advances the industry in the right direction for the long-term rather than making a quick buck and causing the trust in the industry to regress. 

Not saying we did it alone, but I'm proud that Carrot has been a key driver over the last 8 years of helping to elevate the conversation in this market and to raise the bar for running an ethical, honest, and highly impactful business that is here for the long-term. 

We haven't been perfect. We've made mistakes as well. But every chance I get, I want to find ways to look at the impacts our actions and conversations have on the industry over the next 5-10 years as a whole. There's lots of passion in this thread and from my standpoint. Some ego on all sides creeping through to protect ones own interests (which isn't a bad thing by itself, it can just be dangerous over the long-run) that may be making the convo even more challenging to resolve. 

End of the day, I'd love to see if we can find a way to look at facts, drop ego, figure out the right next steps forward together.

Dont' have to be best friends, but there is a path (if ego is set aside) that we can all together elevate this industry rather than tear a piece of it down. 

Jerryll's Growth and Impact

I remember years back when Jerryll was just getting started online. He'd show up to our Carrot coaching calls, ask questions of me and Adrian, go execute, then come back and ask for me. Eventually we saw a shift in Jerryll where he really committed to learning everything he could learn about SEO. He started with our internal SEO training then advanced to diving deep into learning the deep details of SEO. It was cool seeing Jerryll take his scientific/engineer mind and ask, "how can I reverse engineer how Google works and test things to get my site to rank higher, and stay there?". Jerryll has been one of the guys who really took customizing his Carrot site to the next level. So much so, that as he said... his design started to get emulated and in some cases copied. 

I can appreciate your frustration Jerryll when you see people use/take/model/steal your design you worked hard to test and perfect. You mention your design is the "most ripped off design in real estate", I'd argue it is, right behind Carrot's sites :-). We've seen full businesses started (and all of them so far have died) based on either a blatant copy of our sites (and content) or bad emulation of our sites/design/structure. Initially I'd get pissed and nicely reach after them to encourage them to work hard and come up w/ their own unique output... but eventually I shifted my tone to say... "Ok, it sucks people are blatantly copying our hard work... but how do I just get so far ahead of them.. they're always copying our work from 6months to 2 years ago... and they have no clue why our design looks like it does because they didn't do the 500+ split tests to know what elements are actually important". So we focused on shifting that energy to innovation for our customer... but it still irks the heck out of me when I see people clearly copy work we'd pioneered in this space. Still today, most every competitor of ours has blatantly or partially launched their services based on Carrot... but Carrot still crushes the competition in most every measureable performance indicator... because of my intentional focus to just outserve our clients. In the end, those who outserve and out innovate will win. The ones who copy will always be behind those who are innovating. 

As Jerryll grew, he realized he could help lots of people with this knowledge, he was smart and was able to turn it into solid business. That's hard to do. You deserve all of the credit. 

Jerryll discovered that selling "done for you" services is a very hard business to scale and shifted to a high-level coaching / expert guidance model (I may not be talking about it the way you would Jerryll, so correct me below pls). This way he could scale his impact, help more people at more scale, build a business of more freedom and impact, and add lots of value. Lots of Carrot members have used his training and guidance to get great results. 

Jerrylls site style performance: 

The design style he created on top of the Carrot system consistently is in the top group of sites when we pull a list of the top 100 highest converting motivated house seller sites on our system. 

A few key reasons:

- Jerryll has been a student of not just SEO, but also user experience. His "how it works" pages are among the best ones on our network and he builds things to engage with visitors, answer their questions, and build trust. All things we've pushed over the years. Google looks at onsite user behavior when it comes to SEO and Jerryll understands that well. 
- Trust/credibility... Jerryll has built upon Carrot to really find new and creative ways to bake in credibility on a site at every turn. For years I've taught the importance of 3rd party reviews on a site, great about pages, using story in your content, using real images that build trust etc... Jerryll took that and has done it as good if not better than most across our system. 
- They're very robust in content (which is critical in conversion on high resistance types of asks, like selling a property). The content tells a story, builds trust, and credibility. 
- Large and easy to see / read calls to action. Over the years we've produced split tests that have shown that larger CTAs tend to convert better than smaller ones, Jerryll has stepped into this and really expanded the size of CTAs even more. 

There are other reasons Jerrylls sites tend to convert well, but those are just a few. 

Jerrylls Communication Style

The one critical thing I would have to say about Jerryll, and I've had this direct convo w/ you @Jerryll Noorden of course, is the communication style. It's the "in your face tell it like he sees it" style, which is polarizing and for sure will attract a number of people and will repel a number of people. Being polarizing is a great thing. They say in brand building that people should either love you or hate you (hot or cold), nothing in between.  The main challenge I have here is while Jerryll has great guidance (as of today, I haven't seen his actual program first hand, so I can't speak to his program directly, but I've heard good things about it from most), it's hard to know what he''ll say if he gets in front of our audience and if it'll jive with our Core Values at Carrot. I tend to lead with building others up, with hoping to elevate people and cast a vision for how they can improve (even my haters), and it's hard for me to fully resonate with those who take the opposite approach. Again, Jerryll and I have had this exact discussion so it's nothing new and not anything that you all in the public can't see yourself. So when you see that Jerryll hasn't been on our podcast or in our marketplace, it's more of the "man, he's wicked smart but does his approach jive with our values and the message we're aiming to put out into the world?".  

We'd had times when my support team would come to me upset at how they were treated by Jerryll, which isn't cool and I'd rather give up the income than allow my team to be treated that way by anyone. But I do genuinely see Jerrylls heart and his spirit of giving and have chose to look past that to work w/ him to see we can grow together, serve more people, and do it in a way that we'll all be proud of in 20 years. 

I will admit, some of the frustration on Jerrylls side was caused by my team inadvertently, whether it is my team saying we can't force someone to stop using a design that looks like his (it's not our legal standing to do that) or our team not communicating well enough why we can't support helping people fix their custom CSS code if they messed it up. Our team communicated it wrong... but Jerryll heard from some of his customers that "Carrot can't support Jerryll clients", which would frustrate me too. That's not the case at all. We love Jerrylls clients (because they tend to get solid results), it is the long blocks of custom CSS... if the customer messed up part of the code... our support reps aren't coders... so we can't go fix everyones custom code (but ChatGPT can now :-). So I'm working w/ my team to take that learning lesson and improve the way we're communicating. 

Jerryll I'm not asking you to change your style. People know you for it and it attracts attention... and likely has played a really strong role in your growth. But it's just the primary reason we havent worked together more deeply over the years. But I would LOVE for that to hopefully change and have us find ways to elevate the industry together. 

Jerryll Summary: 

In the end, it's been cool seeing Jerryll grow from very beginner in real estate and online marketing, to a real expert in many facets of online marketing... and one I've found opportunities to learn from as well. 

He innovated/iterated on top of the Carrot high performing platform, it worked so well others have copied it (which would irk me as well), and now he's trying to protect his hard work (I totally get it. Carrot is the most ripped off websites in the industry, so I know). 

The approach is the only thing, and if we can work through that I can see us helping tons more people for years to come. 

That's my high level thougths on the convo from the perspective of my goals with this thread and what I've seen from Jerryll over the years. Tons of good, and some frustrations on all sides. But in the end, he's helped a lot of people. I just wish the energy would be more of a positive "lets build this industry together" approach vs. the alternate approach. But that's just me. Don't change being you because of me. Being you is what makes you special.

Now I'll dive in on another post on SEO Meets REI (Keith/Andy) 

 Never miss an opportunity to make a great commercial I see.. 😂 

[Jerryll Noorden]

Quote from @Trevor Mauch:

Man, this thread really started to take off. 

I wanted to pop a note (maybe the start of a novel haha? ;-) in here y'all as both Jerryll and Keith/Andy work with a lot of our clients at Carrot and we have the data and context behind much of what was discussed in this thread. 

Outside of my insights from data, there are a few things I'd like to pop in here to hopefully take this conversation in a direction that helps us all learn from this and grow in our businesses together, elevate the industry together, find a path to co-exist where each business contributes to the overall industry growth... challenges the other to innovate and create fresh new solutions for customers to win big... and leads towards our industry getting stronger not weaker. 

Industry Ethics / Trust / Improvement

When we started Carrot in '08, this space was ripe with hucksters. You didn't know who to trust, half of all courses that were on the market were good, tons of fly by nite operators (still many of those), performance in websites was an afterthought... and in general the market had nowhere trustworthy to go to learn how to grow their real estate business using the internet. 

Yes Carrot focuses on helping you get more highly motivated leads online through SEO, paid marketing, and our high performing sites... 

... but my real mission at the start was to help to start to elevate the industry to be a more legitimate industry, with higher trust, more transparency, and to challenge all companies in our space to just operate in a way that advances the industry in the right direction for the long-term rather than making a quick buck and causing the trust in the industry to regress. 

Not saying we did it alone, but I'm proud that Carrot has been a key driver over the last 8 years of helping to elevate the conversation in this market and to raise the bar for running an ethical, honest, and highly impactful business that is here for the long-term. 

We haven't been perfect. We've made mistakes as well. But every chance I get, I want to find ways to look at the impacts our actions and conversations have on the industry over the next 5-10 years as a whole. There's lots of passion in this thread and from my standpoint. Some ego on all sides creeping through to protect ones own interests (which isn't a bad thing by itself, it can just be dangerous over the long-run) that may be making the convo even more challenging to resolve. 

End of the day, I'd love to see if we can find a way to look at facts, drop ego, figure out the right next steps forward together.

Dont' have to be best friends, but there is a path (if ego is set aside) that we can all together elevate this industry rather than tear a piece of it down. 

Jerryll's Growth and Impact

I remember years back when Jerryll was just getting started online. He'd show up to our Carrot coaching calls, ask questions of me and Adrian, go execute, then come back and ask for me. Eventually we saw a shift in Jerryll where he really committed to learning everything he could learn about SEO. He started with our internal SEO training then advanced to diving deep into learning the deep details of SEO. It was cool seeing Jerryll take his scientific/engineer mind and ask, "how can I reverse engineer how Google works and test things to get my site to rank higher, and stay there?". Jerryll has been one of the guys who really took customizing his Carrot site to the next level. So much so, that as he said... his design started to get emulated and in some cases copied. 

I can appreciate your frustration Jerryll when you see people use/take/model/steal your design you worked hard to test and perfect. You mention your design is the "most ripped off design in real estate", I'd argue it is, right behind Carrot's sites :-). We've seen full businesses started (and all of them so far have died) based on either a blatant copy of our sites (and content) or bad emulation of our sites/design/structure. Initially I'd get pissed and nicely reach after them to encourage them to work hard and come up w/ their own unique output... but eventually I shifted my tone to say... "Ok, it sucks people are blatantly copying our hard work... but how do I just get so far ahead of them.. they're always copying our work from 6months to 2 years ago... and they have no clue why our design looks like it does because they didn't do the 500+ split tests to know what elements are actually important". So we focused on shifting that energy to innovation for our customer... but it still irks the heck out of me when I see people clearly copy work we'd pioneered in this space. Still today, most every competitor of ours has blatantly or partially launched their services based on Carrot... but Carrot still crushes the competition in most every measureable performance indicator... because of my intentional focus to just outserve our clients. In the end, those who outserve and out innovate will win. The ones who copy will always be behind those who are innovating. 

As Jerryll grew, he realized he could help lots of people with this knowledge, he was smart and was able to turn it into solid business. That's hard to do. You deserve all of the credit. 

Jerryll discovered that selling "done for you" services is a very hard business to scale and shifted to a high-level coaching / expert guidance model (I may not be talking about it the way you would Jerryll, so correct me below pls). This way he could scale his impact, help more people at more scale, build a business of more freedom and impact, and add lots of value. Lots of Carrot members have used his training and guidance to get great results. 

Jerrylls site style performance: 

The design style he created on top of the Carrot system consistently is in the top group of sites when we pull a list of the top 100 highest converting motivated house seller sites on our system. 

A few key reasons:

- Jerryll has been a student of not just SEO, but also user experience. His "how it works" pages are among the best ones on our network and he builds things to engage with visitors, answer their questions, and build trust. All things we've pushed over the years. Google looks at onsite user behavior when it comes to SEO and Jerryll understands that well. 
- Trust/credibility... Jerryll has built upon Carrot to really find new and creative ways to bake in credibility on a site at every turn. For years I've taught the importance of 3rd party reviews on a site, great about pages, using story in your content, using real images that build trust etc... Jerryll took that and has done it as good if not better than most across our system. 
- They're very robust in content (which is critical in conversion on high resistance types of asks, like selling a property). The content tells a story, builds trust, and credibility. 
- Large and easy to see / read calls to action. Over the years we've produced split tests that have shown that larger CTAs tend to convert better than smaller ones, Jerryll has stepped into this and really expanded the size of CTAs even more. 

There are other reasons Jerrylls sites tend to convert well, but those are just a few. 

Jerrylls Communication Style

The one critical thing I would have to say about Jerryll, and I've had this direct convo w/ you @Jerryll Noorden of course, is the communication style. It's the "in your face tell it like he sees it" style, which is polarizing and for sure will attract a number of people and will repel a number of people. Being polarizing is a great thing. They say in brand building that people should either love you or hate you (hot or cold), nothing in between.  The main challenge I have here is while Jerryll has great guidance (as of today, I haven't seen his actual program first hand, so I can't speak to his program directly, but I've heard good things about it from most), it's hard to know what he''ll say if he gets in front of our audience and if it'll jive with our Core Values at Carrot. I tend to lead with building others up, with hoping to elevate people and cast a vision for how they can improve (even my haters), and it's hard for me to fully resonate with those who take the opposite approach. Again, Jerryll and I have had this exact discussion so it's nothing new and not anything that you all in the public can't see yourself. So when you see that Jerryll hasn't been on our podcast or in our marketplace, it's more of the "man, he's wicked smart but does his approach jive with our values and the message we're aiming to put out into the world?".  

We'd had times when my support team would come to me upset at how they were treated by Jerryll, which isn't cool and I'd rather give up the income than allow my team to be treated that way by anyone. But I do genuinely see Jerrylls heart and his spirit of giving and have chose to look past that to work w/ him to see we can grow together, serve more people, and do it in a way that we'll all be proud of in 20 years. 

I will admit, some of the frustration on Jerrylls side was caused by my team inadvertently, whether it is my team saying we can't force someone to stop using a design that looks like his (it's not our legal standing to do that) or our team not communicating well enough why we can't support helping people fix their custom CSS code if they messed it up. Our team communicated it wrong... but Jerryll heard from some of his customers that "Carrot can't support Jerryll clients", which would frustrate me too. That's not the case at all. We love Jerrylls clients (because they tend to get solid results), it is the long blocks of custom CSS... if the customer messed up part of the code... our support reps aren't coders... so we can't go fix everyones custom code (but ChatGPT can now :-). So I'm working w/ my team to take that learning lesson and improve the way we're communicating. 

Jerryll I'm not asking you to change your style. People know you for it and it attracts attention... and likely has played a really strong role in your growth. But it's just the primary reason we havent worked together more deeply over the years. But I would LOVE for that to hopefully change and have us find ways to elevate the industry together. 

Jerryll Summary: 

In the end, it's been cool seeing Jerryll grow from very beginner in real estate and online marketing, to a real expert in many facets of online marketing... and one I've found opportunities to learn from as well. 

He innovated/iterated on top of the Carrot high performing platform, it worked so well others have copied it (which would irk me as well), and now he's trying to protect his hard work (I totally get it. Carrot is the most ripped off websites in the industry, so I know). 

The approach is the only thing, and if we can work through that I can see us helping tons more people for years to come. 

That's my high level thougths on the convo from the perspective of my goals with this thread and what I've seen from Jerryll over the years. Tons of good, and some frustrations on all sides. But in the end, he's helped a lot of people. I just wish the energy would be more of a positive "lets build this industry together" approach vs. the alternate approach. But that's just me. Don't change being you because of me. Being you is what makes you special.

Now I'll dive in on another post on SEO Meets REI (Keith/Andy) 

 Trevor,

Thank you, man.

Like you, I too admit and agree that my communication style is making Carrot (And bigger pockets) keep me at a distance, and I ABSOLUTELY do not blame you/them. (I would never misbehave on other people's podcasts :D :D). I would be terrified as well when some loose cannon big mouth arrogant egotistic dude has no damper. I do not hold this against you.

After the talk, I had with you. I apologized to your team, AND to bigger pockets, and I am working hard on changing things. 

And... fine.. You are correct. 
When I claimed my designs were the most copied.. I never even considered Carrot's template. So fine you can have that title! :)

But but but, I want you and everyone to understand one main difference...

... no one will ever accuse Carrot of ripping off, the people that actually copied you. Everyone knows the mighty Carrot was obviously first. What is happening to me is that people refuse to buy my products now because a lot of people think I ripped off Andy and Keith, due to  Carrot vouching they are a legitimate business. Not done on purpose I understand but severely damaging regardless.

And that holds several definitions right? Are they legit as in, they are not going to take your money and run? Correct, they will do their best to help you. But they are copying a lot from us, without significantly changing or improving and selling it as their own. In that sense, I don't care how nice they are or how many people they helped. That is not cool or acceptable.

And I truly appreciate you trying to stop all this and "grow together" and your attempt to ask them to please stop selling my designs, the problem with this is that the damage is done. 

Even if they stop selling them, everyone now thinks that we are a rip-off company. Due to the damage done, it is simply not enough for them to stop selling my products,  the world needs to know that WE didn't rip them off, it is THEM that took my products so I can restore my business reputation and not need to somehow prove to my potential customers that we are the creators of that design, our name, our logo and that WE are the real ones before they even consider joining us.

That, Trevor, is what I am viciously defending. It is HARD to make it as a business, as you obviously know. It is hard enough without this drama. I am not here because I want to. I am here because I sat on the sidelines for a LONG time watching them take my stuff.. but things changed when Carrot decided to feature them on the podcasts and vouch for them. That made things very difficult for us... and now.. I am here acting like a child fighting about all this petty stuff. 

Either way, Trevor .. this actually helps. I am done with this, I am putting my head down, and designing better templates, higher converting websites, and even stronger SEO.

Again thanks for adding your 2 cents. Peace out!

I will open up my system to you so you can have a peek at why it is successful and not just about "a pretty template". Let me know when!

And BTW, I appreciate you not asking me to change my style... but I will. I have to. All this made me bitter, and sour, and it reflects in my interaction with BP members, your team, and the people I am trying to help. (imagine, someone, asking a question on BP, I help them, and other people slam my responses down, and when I look into the people slamming me down, illegally are running MY template on their sites. Hard to be nice, I am telling you!

The more "known" you get in the space,... it is rough. Not easy.

But As I said. I am working on it.

Again, thanks.

And yes let's grow together.

But Trevor, I have to admit. I would LOVE to see you all nervous holding your ethernet cable ready to yank it off the wall the second I say something I am not supposed to on your podcast.

Admit it. It would be hilarious!

[Trevor Mauch]

SEO Meets REI / Keith/Andy

Alrighty, similar story to Jerryll. I remember when Keith showed up to his very first CarrotCamp years ago. He was just getting going online, was burnt out from working so many hours, and had just done his first $100k month in wholesaing. But he said, "I never want to have another month like that because I didn't have time to enjoy my life". 

So we guided him to shift from the hamsterwheel marketing and lower quality leads he was getting to really building his "Evergreen Marketing" w/ Carrot. 

Since then he's come back to 5 more CarrotCamps and progressively grew his SEO rankings, gets tons of organic seller leads each month, and works less than 20 hours a week on his REI business now (while doing multiple 6 figures per year).

Several CarrotCamps ago he said "I learned how to get my time back, now I feel a bit empty and unfulfilled". So we worked to find what he's passionate about and he really loved to teach and help people. 

I'd find him doing hours of phone calls for free with our customers and CarrotCampers helping them w/ their business and sharing the SEO knowledge he'd grown. 

One CarrotCamp, Andy showed up. He was doing some cool SEO stuff (I didn't have any background on where he learned it, whether he'd engaged w/ Jerryll at all, etc) and he shared what he was doing at Camp. I'm a big data guy so when he was sharing some of the scientific / data on how he grew rankings in tough markets... in ways I hadn't seen (from a data perspective) my ears perked up. At that time he was getting 50+ organic SEO leads a month through his Carrot sites and was doing well. So we had him on a podcast to teach the data side of how he'd grown those rankings. 

After CarrotCamp, Keith and Andy started to connect and somewhere between then and now decided to start their FB group and start a company helping people do what they've done. 

Using Jerrylls Site Design

I'll be 100% candid here like I was in my post above, I gave guidance months ago that they should move away from using a design inspired by Jerrylls. I didn't dive into the details of their sites vs. Jerrylls... the content itself is content they created... but the design elements and flow in general is very very modeled after Jerrylls. 

Like Jerryll mentioned if it's just an investor using it, and they didn't pay him for it... it sucks for sure.. but isn't as big of a deal. We have this happen all the time and it's very hard to protect design styles on sites (not impossible, but hard). But when one time a competitor of ours literally copied (100% copy, even the content) 3 of our sites... we had to go after them because that's not cool. They changed it, and they're not in business today because they didn't know how to create anything unique and of value to the market.  I do think this is a lesson Andy/Keith have learned from this process and from convos w/ them this week, they are moving completely away from design inspired by Jerrylls design. 

From the sites I've seen, the content is unique and their own, but the flow and style is very much modeled after Jerrylls. I do feel the right thing to do here is to change the design, apologize for using it, and innovate design/style on your end Keith/Andy so it's so darn effective everyone wants to copy it :-). 

Backlinks

Ever since day 1 of Carrot I've had a philosophy of "evergreen". i.e. - Do things once, and have them work for you for years. Create solid unique content that solves real problems for the visitor and Google likes as well (visitor first, Google second). 

From the early days we've taught people to use our stock content as a guide... if you're looking to only do PPC, sweet... just add in your credibility and you're set.. no huge need to customize the content a lot because it will convert well out of the box. But if you don't customize the content and make it fully unique to you, it'll have a hard time outranking a site that has created custom content on top of our platform (and optimized it well). 

I remember years back a client and high-level investor was stuck at number 5 in the miami market. His onpage was dialed in pretty darn good. But he really had a weak backlink profile compared to the top ranked sites. We went through how to get good backlinks and he said he didn't have time for it. So I guided him to an SEO firm and he said he didn't want to lock in on a 12 month contract (even though the ROI would be huge). So I presented him option 3, which is to build backlinks faster... you can buy them... but buying backlinks isn't something Google condones, most use a PBN or some sort of automation, and most are crappy links that will work great for the short-term and boost rankings... but you never know when the ranking will drop.

He knew the risk, he took it, he got the #1 ranking for 18 months and did 7 figures in deals... then a Google algo hit and his ranking dropped to page 3 almost overnight. He knew the risk, it was a good ROI for 18 months, but then it dropped and he hasn't gotten it back because he didn't build good healthy backlinks during that time... so it bit him. In this case he wasn't willing to do what was needed to get and retain a ranking for the long-term.

Reason I say this is I've never really believed in what some call "quick SEO". I know it works, and I know as an SEO agency (and as Carrot) people want quick results and aren't often willing to wait 8-12 months to get momentum and results. So it's a push pull... "how do we get this client results quickly and some leads coming in and deals... but at the same time do it in a way that lasts years and years and we don't have to worry about the ranking going away?". Buying backlinks of almost any kind is often considered at the least Grayhat, potentially black hat depending on how the links are built. 

So my preference is hand built links by adding value to other sites, or through HARO, with a strong citation profile, etc. Most aren't willing to do this, so purchasing "quality" backlinks is an option, it works, but it runs a real risk of over the long-term the site going down in rankings if the majority of the backlink profile is built from those types of links.  

SEO Skillset of Keith/Andy

I can say that Keith and Andy have a strong skillset from the onpage perspective as well. We've seen the data and results many times when rankings have improved on sites they worked on when all they did was improve the onpage. 

I think (from my perspective) where there may be a slight difference (may be larger than I think) in the onpage approach w/ Jerryll and Keith/Andy is Jerryll really goes deep on crafting a great experience for the website visitor. From flow, to content, credibility, etc.  Andy/Keith have dove deep on getting granular in the data side of SEO (% of entities on a page, state page vs. city page, etc). 

Not saying each company doesn't do both, that's just what I've noticed as a skillset each has clearly shown. 

Summary:

Jerryll has amazing skillsets and I'd love to collab w/ deeply if we can ensure communication style jives with our values. You have a ton more people you''ll be able to impact if so. Keith/Andy have amazing skillsets, and I'd love to see y'all create your own unique site style and update the backlink building strategy to have a healthier mix of short-term impacts with long-term health. 

One sells a high-level course, coaching, community, and helps their clients along the way to make it a reality. 

The other sells services and gives the training away at no cost. 

Different business models, but yes an overlapping audience. 

End of the day y'all, my hope is we can all find a way to build up this industry and add value.

If we all focus on... 

 - Creating good healthy competition in the market with each other, while creating unique and innovative value to the market that elevates and builds upon

 - Uplifting and casting vision for the future to improve the impact of real estate investors as a whole

- Doing things that will work for customers in 3 years just as much as it'll work in 6 months (Evergreen thinking)

- Rallying our followings around great causes and pushing the industry forward

Sorry for the long posts y'all. I know not everyone will agree w/ everything I wrote. It's just my opinion from my seat. I want to keep improving as well on my end. We got a bit stodgy at Carrot for about 18 months as we had growing pains, but we've worked crazy hard the past 6 months to build up our teams, hire a world-class COO (she started 2 weeks ago and already making a huge impact) and we're going to be innovating more in the next 2 years than we did in the previous 6. Game on, and I hope we can all work together to make this industry stronger and better.

[Trevor Mauch]

@Jerryll Noorden haha, the ethernet cable visual has me cracking up too. 

Honestly I know you'd likely be amazing on the podcast. I think it's mainly the bashing of people who don't agree w you in posts (not this thread, but others). Funny thing is your opinion in those posts is extremely aligned with mine, it's more the approach where I cringe and go... "Oh man, that could have been said differently and he would have more influence and help more people". 

But dude, I appreciate you being open to honest candid feedback. I'm as flawed as everyone else so I appreciate you giving me candid honest feedback as well man. And I'm pumped to see the way you transform this next year! 

I agree, if people are wondering if Andy/Keith created the design style that you created, people should know it was you who created that style and was modeled by them and others. Give credit where credit is due, 100% agree. 

Let's catch up Jerryll over the next couple weeks and dive into the next part of our convo we started last week. I'm pumped to learn more about what you're doing, what your vision is, and how we can help more people. 

[Matt Stark]

Quote from @Nyx Sherwin:

Quote from @Anthony Stephenson:

Has anyone used the company SEOMEETSREI for backlink services? I found them on the Investor Carrot website as one of their preferred vendors. 

Hi Anthony,

I’ve used their services and can tell you for certain their business is legit.

About a year ago I foolishly thought, how hard can this whole digital marketing thing be, and went at it solo. Just when I thought I had it figured out Google kindly reminded me how little I actually knew. All progress was gone overnight.

Long story short through their Facebook community and paid services my site has recovered and considerably stronger than before. It’s not a coincidence that my site impressions increased 10x since the Google beat down after I started working with Keith & Andy’s company.

Both are easy to access, easy to do business with and highly reputable.

5/5 - Highly Recommend

PS. Not a paid review. Just a happy customer. 

how come there are no clicks? 

[Trevor Mauch]

@Matt Stark hey hey! I could be off on this, but that graphic is only showing impressions. Usually with Google search console and Analytics their graphs show impressions, clicks, and leads all on separate graphs... so it could be that. But I'm not 100% sure. Great question! 

[Matt Stark]

Quote from @Trevor Mauch:

@Matt Stark hey hey! I could be off on this, but that graphic is only showing impressions. Usually with Google search console and Analytics their graphs show impressions, clicks, and leads all on separate graphs... so it could be that. But I'm not 100% sure. Great question! 

 @Trevor Mauch GSC shows clicks and impressions on one graph.

[Matt Stark]

after my last post, I spoke with a few investors that also shared the links they received and how much they paid. Anyone that has done seo knows the value of a link and the value with seo meets rei is 5% of what they charge. If you are not sure if what you got for your money is worth it, DM me and I can explain more. 

[Alex Z.]

Quote from @Matt Stark:

Quote from @Trevor Mauch:

@Matt Stark hey hey! I could be off on this, but that graphic is only showing impressions. Usually with Google search console and Analytics their graphs show impressions, clicks, and leads all on separate graphs... so it could be that. But I'm not 100% sure. Great question! 

 @Trevor Mauch GSC shows clicks and impressions on one graph.

 You are both correct. It has to do with the data being toggled on/off. Here is an example from a personal Carrot site of mine. Notice the colored background on the data point corresponds to the graph. 

[Anthony Stephenson]

Quote from @Jordan Crain:

Hey Anthony,

We were students together with Chuck and Gina Biter in Clarksville a few years ago. I admired your ability to execute on such a high level while doing it all yourself. You were self-financing, marketing, buying, rehabbing, renting, and flipping your deals single-handedly and I remember wondering where you find time to sleep! It seems like you are digging deeper into SEO marketing and I can't blame you. I chose to take this marketing approach at the end of last year for my website too. I wanted to understand how it worked and I found Andy and Keith.

I have been attending their live calls and asking questions almost weekly. I am still a novice but they treat me fairly and never insult my ignorance. I started working with them on backlinks a few months ago. My site is improving in rank but their service is what blew me away. Keith has taking time to review my page to offer up tips and advice without me even asking. Once I asked a simple question about the backlinks and he sent me a Loom answering the question then spent 10 min sharing suggestions for my site's on-page.

I once DM'd  Andy regarding some formatting he uses on one of his sites. He answered my question and then told me to always ask my questions in the group so everyone can benefit.

These guys don't have anything to hide and want to see everyone improve. I can't tell you if their SEO strategy is the greatest but I will continue to work with them because they have invested time and effort to earn my trust. Folks that do that are hard to come by.