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In Summary
Victor Karpenko, Founder & CEO of MjSeo Agency joins Chase Nobles the CEO and founder of kush.com on this HempList Podcast
Victor not only discusses how he became a master of SEO and building an online presence over the last 15+ years, but also touches on how it’s been operating a business founded in Ukraine, with about 75% local Ukrainian employees! He talks about how they haven’t had to stop business in Ukraine during the Russian Invasion, and how they’ve had to move shop but were able to actually hire and expand since the war began.
Finally Chase talks about how Kush.com and it’s previous sites have used SEO to grow, and both give their opinions on popular companies in the space like Google and LinkedIn.
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The company’s personalized promotional tactics help companies thrive in the digital space.
The cannabis SEO experts from the MjSeo agency know to help your marijuana business increase site traffic and, therefore, the number of customers.
“
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Transcript (Auto-Generated)
hey everybody chase nobles here founder
over at kush.com got Victor Karpenko
here from mj seo agency super excited to
have you on the show
talk about a subject that is near and
dear to my heart which is seo and
marketing and uh happy to have you on
the show victor thanks for joining us
hey thanks for uh like
like
i don’t know how we’re going to say
thanks for coming and have opportunity
to talk with you and like share my
experience yeah absolutely well you know
i think a lot of people have a you know
it happens to you every day i’m sure
how do i rank number one for this or how
do i you know
increase my organic traffic because that
is
by a long shot the most long-term
sustainable metric for marketing in this
industry
yeah what do you like
where where did you get the knowledge
base what was kind of the origin story
here to be able to answer that question
effectively
and understand the value behind it
okay well so i started like 15 years ago
so it’s pretty long
yeah so i’m doing seo like 15 years and
i started when i actually was like
buying and selling domain names like
long time ago
like and i had my own domain portfolio
and i wanted to sell more you know so
i started website and like in
pretty short period of time i rank it uh
number one
for
most of the keywords i bet basically was
competing like with go daily auction
with other websites and from there i was
taking clients running my own projects
and stuff like this
and eventually we have pretty big seo
agency right now like it’s 175 people
plus that just focus only on seo that’s
all
that’s amazing and what were you selling
originally what was the what was the
original sale
uh again uh like the website
yeah what
what were you trying to rank for to sell
uh it was like by domain by branded
domain it’s
basically something like brandpod.com
right now or brand bucket it’s like
like
like cheap version of these websites
like back then
right so this is early on when a lot of
businesses might not have had a big
representation on the web
what a wild time that was right you know
you had all kinds of black hat
strategies ranking high wasn’t
as hard as it is today
but also you know around 2004 2005
everybody got shaken up because of
you know all of the here’s how to do it
black hat tutorials right
um pretty wild experience did did that
were you around for that rollout i think
it was panda
um
a couple other different rollouts google
did penguin might have been one
yeah i was in pandora penguin it was
- and then penguin was 2012 so it
was basically content uh algorithm
google rolled out and then it was links
one
and it was fun time like we were
recovering a lot of it’s like about 100
websites from google penguin we like
figured out pretty quick what to do
so
it was cool
yeah i bet it was because who are you
going to call whenever you lose 100 of
your traffic overnight you need to call
an expert somebody that knows what
they’re doing
yeah um
based up here in seattle you know we
have moz which was uh you know
one of the leading startups in this
space and they just really took off with
you know primarily around the content
that they put out into the industry
as far as a tool a sas tool sounds like
you’ve built a sas tool yourself to help
people understand their links what is
that can you tell us a little bit about
that
it’s called
that pro and it’s basically to manage
backlinks uh
it check
the tool checks a lot of different like
things like google index google cache is
the link exist
and uh shows a lot of uh things like
uh it’s it shows a lot of statistics
that actually make you uh
make important seo decisions pretty fast
and you started to talk about mozy is a
funny story because like i remember it
was 2012 or 2013 and i’m originally from
ukraine
uh and the mom of uh rentfishkin came to
ukraine to talk about like you know how
uh rent was running this on the board uh
like whiteboard friday show
and i was listening like wow cool you
should like get this
videos and i started my on the board
it’s the same as ren fishkin did
uh
in english but i did it like in russian
in ukrainian and uh we had 300 issues
like
so
i did it like for five years
approximately and it did work
so
white boy whiteboard friday i mean i
used to refresh the page to see when the
new whiteboard friday went up because it
was always such good content
um
you know i know there’s a lot of you
know international turmoil between
russia and ukraine and everything that’s
going on and it’s a horrible situation
over there but
there are a lot of ukrainians in the seo
space and uh it’s
kind of wild if you get deep enough a
lot of arrows point right back to
ukraine as people that have gotten
really good at this is it is is it just
something in the culture over there that
just makes ukrainians so great at seo
because
yeah you spend enough time in the space
you find you find a number of ukrainians
that have just crushed it in the space
for a lot of their accounts
it’s true because we have a lot of like
big u.s brands that actually owned or
cone by like some ukrainians and of
course they build them like from scratch
because you know when you have a traffic
it’s easier to build business when you
don’t have right
so
we
we have a lot of people here like pretty
good expertise like uh like technical
like
uh with lots of tools uh like different
teams like starting one like from casino
to web hosting to payday loans to like
credit cards and different niches like
and
it’s good
atmosphere to be around yeah
do you still employ a lot of ukrainians
being from there
uh we we have like most of our team is
like more than 75 percent like uh in
ukraine and like they are safe secure
and they are working even better than
before the war started so we are
we are
i think we and they are doing good job
like
uh growing and actually delivering what
we promised to our clients and
it was tough in the beginning you know
like first two weeks was super like
um unpredictable you know like yeah
i think
you know speaking for myself it’s just
how can you not try to know what’s going
on over there and it’s i’m really happy
to hear that your team is safe secure
and um
you know still still able to focus
on
what they’re great at considering the
situation that the country is in so
um proud work keeping people employed
and uh you know vying for their safety
it’s uh it’s a mess
back to you
back to the oh go ahead
i’m sorry the good point that we didn’t
fire anyone we actually like starting
like we kept all the team and now
actually starting to grow which is like
really rare because we already worked
with mostly we work with
english-speaking clients and
as an agency you know uh
like a lot of our competitors just like
you know
they they stopped operating because
and
it’s good for us that we were focusing
on western markets like
i think like 80 years ago was just
switched focus and started to work like
with us uk australia and new zealand
like and other countries
versus
ukrainian and russian yeah
yeah that’s wild it’s wild to think
about you know how split you know that
the markets are they’re entirely
different right um
is is
is google even the primary search engine
in russia or is it the andex or
something like that
uh in russia it’s yandex yeah and by
like in ukraine it’s definitely google
and russia already tried to invade
in ukraine and they actually did in 2014
so after that yandex blocked in ukraine
so it’s only google so that’s why
everybody google in ukraine does seo for
google
in us because the market is not that big
you know like so everyone that why you
ask why it’s a lot of seos because
people want to grow right so they go
create niche website
in any niche in us and just rank them
you know
the same as in like uh canada industry
it’s a lot of project
owned actually by ukrainians yeah right
when when i first got started with this
business we were cush tourism um and
kush tourism
started out selling tours up here in
seattle but our the goal was to be you
know kind of a tourist resource and
i don’t keep good tabs on the site now
but back in the day you know we were
ranking number one for is we legal in
pretty much every state it was a wild
time because that the volume of traffic
was
already a really big baseline but then
when cannabis got legalized in
california um
i mean
i was up on the phone with godaddy all
night just trying to keep the site live
because we’re getting like 300 people a
second searching is we legal in
california is we legally california
there’s a wild and that happened with
every state back then it was a wild time
a lot of what happens now though and i
want to bring this back to a question
for you a lot of what happens now is
google’s you know position zero or their
um
uh not even rich snippets anymore but
map results have you know destroyed a
lot of the
um
organic rankings of companies especially
any kind of aggregator site
how do you look at what google’s doing
which you know in a large way is making
a really great product for consumers but
hurting a lot of businesses and that
destruction and that disruption in the
industry
of seo has had a very tangible effect
anybody that runs any kind of aggregator
site
how do you look at that what what do you
think the future is gonna look like are
we ever gonna leave google.com are
people gonna go to other websites and
how do you play in that in that realm
how do you play in that environment
well it’s getting more technological
right so it’s the competition is also
growth so
we make internal tools
where actually i don’t rely on some
senior or like team seo or some team
leads i rely on data so basically we
getting data from ahrefs from majestic
from similar web from search matrix uh
from our own tools
and then we just see okay what’s going
on like in the uh for this keyword group
we analyze it we can see okay
what’s the age of this domain what how
many backlinks which type of the
backlinks how many backlinks in index
which anchor tags they use how many
anchor texts in in the index so
when you actually see the this as a data
it’s pretty much not that hard you just
need to
set up a team and make it happen like to
actually write content make this pages
and
i don’t
i don’t uh think like especially me i
don’t think it’s getting worse it’s
getting better like just look uh at
leastly right now 10 million organic
search hrefs shows you know weed maps uh
all other like a big aggregator they
they don’t decrease
but the thing is
people do invest more in seo they set up
teams and when when
you know organic traffic number one
source you can buy ads it’s like uh
like in the state maybe it’s legal but
federally it’s not right so you can’t
use like facebook and and
like google ads so basically
you rely on organic traffic that’s why
we decided like uh make a branch in our
seo profi agency that called mjseo and
now we actually rank for if you type in
google uh cannabis seo agency where
number one you know which is pretty cool
yeah
that is pretty cool and congrats i mean
it’s hard to rank for such a competitive
term because you’re up that’s like
that’s like a gold belt you know you’re
up against every other seo agency that
says they’re great at getting to the
number one position on google which is
you know between you and i it’s 70 of
the traffic if not more in a lot of
cases right yeah yeah you look at that
and you’re fighting everybody else that
says they’re good at it and you’re
winning so congratulations proud work
it’s probably more meaningful to you
than it is to anybody else but that’s
really exciting and i respect that
thanks thanks but
you know what’s actually funny we
approach to our clients do all this data
stuff
like set up teams
but when we started okay we got some
sales managers and they started to
outreach and link it in and stuff and it
just doesn’t work you know like you bug
people and then
i said okay let’s rank our own website
so we rank our own website now we get
getting leads and we don’t do all this
like
um
i don’t know how to even say uh
and
it’s not useful actually like to bug
people through linkedin and stuff like
this so
yeah now i see the value even on our
website the value that we
give to the our clients in like this
niche yeah it’s invaluable you know um i
think
i can’t tell you
i don’t even check my linkedin messages
anymore because they’re all like
hey
we noticed this was wrong with your
website or hey we can get you to number
one for this i mean i get i got probably
thousands of those messages in my
linkedin inbox it’s actually kind of
become a mess i think i made a critical
error whenever i just started accepting
everybody as a connection request so
um
it’s become a little bit of a
of a show
on my linkedin but it
it’s kind of amazing because if you get
that first click right
then they see that you know the accounts
that you have the ability the work that
you do and the ability that your team is
capable of achieving
and now you have the instant credibility
and they call you
right and
i think that’s the value of you know
whether you sell gummies or vape
cartridges or anything like that that’s
the value of rank um we have a pretty
deep
strategy with you know our platform
cush.com um
you know
from an seo standpoint harvesting as
much of the
you know keywords and product data and
things like that and trying to turn it
into you know
searchable pages just you know to
increase traffic to you know be top of
mind of top of search really top of
search is top of mind but uh you know
anybody that’s in kind of our position
like illegally has to do that because
otherwise their organic traffic goes
away where’s the paid right yeah yeah
for a brand because a lot of brands
listen to this you know say you’re a you
know cbd
beverage company for example
and
yeah beverage might not be the best say
you’re a cbd flower company something
like something that you can ship
and say 90 of your business is
e-commerce or you’d like it to be
e-commerce direct to consumer
you know the highest margin out there
yep closest relationship with the
customer
when you talk to a like an account that
wants that kind of service of ranking
for
uh i don’t know give me give me a search
term you would want to rank for in that
in that
category um i don’t know like actually
the uh
delta eight gummies was a good example
actually delta gummies yeah
we actually ranked the client top three
for this term and it took so it’s like
uh three like
three months to get some results to top
ten and six to actually get to top three
so like i pretty much know what i’m
talking about yeah so yeah what do you
recommend for a brand that’s looking at
it and going how do i do that what what
is like what is it gonna take you know
you said three six months three months
that’s internally like how do you
how do you strategize with an account
and what is the investment from a
business to actually implement an seo
strategy long term that’s going to grow
their business
i mean it’s
it’s numbers you know like sometimes
like uh i remember i said to the clients
we charged like five to a k per month
10k per month and they’re like wow it’s
so much money but when you actually rank
for example for delta eight
gummies
uh the search term right now i i think
is 151
000 per month and just imagine if you
sell 100 cans per day with the price 50
bucks right so 100 per day it’s about
like
2500 or
30 like 3 000
items per month
just
calculate it right so this is the
revenue you can get out of this like uh
five to
10k like in three to uh like nine months
like
so
how do we know how to rank we don’t know
how to rank actually we we just take
numbers in uh this keyword group and
trying to uh seek relation between like
okay who is number one what they did
what the content when how they optimize
what links they build do they how
outreach links do they have links from
main pages do they have like some free
links okay what’s the index between
these links and we just see like in most
cases we just see the real numbers and
then you’re like okay what i need to do
to implement okay right
like from 30 to 50 pages
uh that will um
help this keyword group to actually rank
so it’s like can be sub
sub pages but with the same like
if they are initially relevant for the
main keyword group then build links then
okay when when i’m saying build links
it sounds easy but when you actually
outreach these bloggers they don’t want
to like place uh links for like cbd or
like
with websites right
so
you just uh
like for example like out of 100
webmasters we contact
contact they like 10
only can place or even less right so it
means we need to have more capacity to
to send to contact like 300 of them to
get this 10 10 links or 30 links and
we just put it on a plan we have uh seo
team lead or senior seo who actually
research keywords like
first part is to get actual keywords so
like we go to
semrush hrefs keyword finder like other
tools like and just get a lot of
keywords for this keyword group okay
next step is to analyze the structure of
all the uh pages like how do they use h1
h2s what tags they use is like quotes
what code they use there how many images
and stuff like this so
we have this internal tool called common
control
that actually gives this data from one
to three minutes right now so uh so
my um
job in my company to optimize
efficiency efficiency i’m sorry like for
not pronouncing this keyword as a
keyword this word so you know you nailed
it you nailed it yeah
so like
i looked okay one seo can do like i
don’t know like 10 keyword groups
per week this is actually not that many
but when you actually want to rank for
them you need to dedicate the dedicated
time so i went to our developers and we
actually made a tool that optimized they
get this data that before they used to
give
getting excel right now in our own
dashboards like
i don’t know from one to three minutes
so now they know what to do like just by
analyzing the top then they
need to go deeper and see okay which
kind of backlinks
uh what’s the index part uh how much
content and just put it up on the plan
and there is the price like real price
you know it’s not like
some to buy some package that promise
you i don’t know
like place three guest posts per month
it doesn’t work this way no it doesn’t
it has to be a concerted strategy i
you know for anybody listening if you
have no idea what victor is talking
about but you want to rank on google
um
there’s two ways to do it work with
somebody that really understands what
they’re doing and a set objective and
can present a strategy that you truly
understand
like victor
or learn it yourself but it takes time
effort
learning a lot of understanding of how
to do these things because it is
incredibly challenging in this space
like you were talking about getting
backlinks for weed websites and put it
into that category
you know
so much more difficult
than you know if you’re if you have a
new invention for you know i don’t know
a shoe right but it’s it’s it is a wild
thing to see whenever it works and when
it’s effective and you can win a market
you are um and you can build a brand
when you are effective so if this isn’t
a part of your strategy as a brand
definitely take a peek now
maybe one one of the challenging
questions but every
every seo master has a war story
um sorry wrong term but has a story that
they love to tell about how they
overcame something or how they built
this crazy thing that worked really well
do you have any of those do you have any
stories that you’d like to tell just a
fun for any for people that understand
the space
what was uh do you have a grand
achievement that you did or something
fun that you did or funny give us a
little give us a little story about a
project
so many stories
i don’t know where like i think
the funds uh like the real game changer
for me was like i remember in 2018 i
swept i switched from the agency side
because we hired like uh chief operating
officer and she said like i don’t need
to be in the process we will do all
stuff on their own so i
opened another company with my own
projects in high gaming niche it’s
basically like uh in
legal
geos in legal jurisdiction it’s like
affiliate casino websites and i just
switched there for half a year
and this is like i think the best thing
that happened to me in seo because
i actually started to realize how
how to actually deliver deliver the
value and just set up teams as you want
not as like clients saying they need to
so the approach
the approach was like we grew pretty
good
like we ranked our websites like not
that fast but we did in like one to one
and a half year two pretty decent
results i haven’t talked about this it
was on chiang mai seo in thailand it’s
like uh
med degree launch this conference pretty
good one like it’s a lot of cool people
that come in there
so i i i shared the case study from zero
to 100 000 dollars per month on this
affiliate web website and actually they
were our projects like so
the whole point is like we looked we
test some stuff we had like some
failures but like uh
those websites started to grow and the
whole point is that the process you set
up people and they are responsible of
the process they know what to do and
they actually doing this 24 7 just on
one or two projects and in this case you
will get results because come on when
someone says i will like crank your
website you actually need to focus on it
you actually need to put some energy and
work there to research to do to do
so after this we changed then i came
back to the company like
to a an agency
and uh we started to do like because
it’s uh like you need to hire right
people uh so we have hr department you
need to uh control and have like uh
pretty good like um
how do you say matrix like kpis
so uh we started to
uh like program like automatic
dashboards where like seos based uh
like their kpis based in uh like when
you deliver actual results you see so
and uh
we started to change this step by step
and now i’m
it’s still a lot of
work to do but now we are actually ready
to scale step step by step to get to the
level i wanted well that’s very exciting
victor it’s been a pleasure talking with
you i appreciate your time to hop on the
podcast hope we can work together in the
future uh it’d be really exciting to
work with somebody that has as much
knowledge as you do
and appreciate everything you do great
to meet you victor
thanks thanks for uh getting me to this
like uh
podcast and
like uh i i wish your website grow and
have a lot of organic traffic
i appreciate that we’ll give you a back
link
all right victor great to talk to you be
in touch and uh yeah good to meet you
have a good one yeah you too thank you
Tyana Daley
