Building and Recovering a Broadband Site

Speaker 1 0:02

Hello and welcome to . Seo is not that hard . I'm your host , ed Dawson , the founder of KeyWidgePeopleUsecom , the solution to finding the questions people ask online . In today's episode I'm going to cover the story of the floor bandcouk and how we created , ran and exited the site over the course of 18 years and the ups and downs along the way . So in the previous episode I discussed how I got into SEO , when I was working at a digital agency and was told it was now my job to be the SEO expert . So even though I didn't know much about SEO at the time , I had to learn quite quick .

Speaker 1 0:35

The next part of the journey was launching Broadband at Code at UK and how we went on to build it into one of the leading Broadband comparison sites in the UK . But let's step back to the beginning . So the company I worked for at the time was called Broadband Communications and at the time Broadband meant nothing . But then around about 2004 , broadband came to be I mean home internet delivered via Broadband . So of course that meant , with our website being Broadband at Code at UK for the agency , people started contacting us asking to get Broadband installed , which we obviously didn't do , and this became more of a problem with more people contacting , the decision was made to rebrand the agency . With this decision made , it now meant what do we do with the domain name broadbandcouk , which obviously was now developed some value what with broadband becoming a new technology ?

Speaker 1 1:39

Now Fiona , who was one of the directors at the time , is now actually my wife since 2007 , had the idea of creating a comparison site to compare broadband providers side by side , which was quite a new idea at the time . Comparison sites are very common now , but back then it was quite a novel idea . But we had then had a question of how to monetize it , and that was where we discovered affiliate marketing . We'd kind of been aware of affiliate marketing beforehand as the agency , because we had clients who had affiliates working for them , so we knew it was a kind of a thing , but it was still quite new to us . So that became the plan a comparison site comparing broadband providers and then monetizing with affiliate commissions . So we built what was , in hindsight , quite a basic website that did actually cover the majority of the major broadband supplies that were available at the time , and we managed to find an API that we could hook up to that gave us availability area by area because at the time broadband wasn't necessarily available everywhere . So it was a nice little tool that just let you put your postcode in and you could check whether broadband was available in your area . So that was quite neat .

Speaker 1 2:56

Well , the rest of the content was still quite basic . I mean , if our broadband itself was quite basic , that learned . So there wasn't a lot to say . So we've got this site built and there's obviously the case of how we're going to get traffic to it .

Speaker 1 3:09

Now , the previous site , when it was an agency , was just about the web agency . There was nothing about the technology , broadband . So you know that wasn't really getting any natural traffic . Now , on the agency side , we'd done quite a lot of PPC , not something I'd done myself personally , but we've got like paid marketing consultants on one side of the agency and so they took it and ran with running as PPC , which obviously gathered traffic .

Speaker 1 3:43

But it was very hard , very , very hard , to make it turn a profit . You know the margin was very small and it needed a lot of money , relative to the size of the agency we were at the time , to actually be able to , you know , get the traffic and make a profit . So actually , what really happened was . It just ended up making a slight loss all the time . So with the fact that it was making this loss , most of the people involved started to lose interest , because obviously the website was owned by all the partners of the agency , whereas myself and Fiona , we were looking at it and we could see that the SEO traffic organic traffic was starting to pick up slightly and that that side was actually starting to generate sales by itself . So we could see that there was maybe an opportunity here to ditch the PPC and concentrate purely on organic and then it might be able to turn a profit . So we approached the other partners and offered to buy the site out from them , and they were more than happy to do this . So the prices agreed and we bought it out , and at that point I actually decided to leave the agency myself and concentrate on broadband at KDK full time .

Speaker 1 5:08

So , yeah , we packed up the PPC and I concentrated purely on improving the on page and off page SEO , creating a lot of content , trying to improve the functionality of the site , make it a lot more in depth in what it covered and really working on building that traffic and turning it profitable , which it actually did . We turned the PPC off and immediately went profitable on a small scale . At the time I wasn't really paying myself anything a very minimal amount I paid myself and the key thing we wanted to do was to pay back the debt that we had to take on to buy the website out , and we did that . Within , I think , about six to eight months we actually paid all the debt off and we're actually starting to put money in the bank . So that was really really good . So we were our actual play worked out and we became purely content on SEO and it got to the point within a couple of years where we could actually build a small team around it . So I had another developer come in to help and we could get a designer looking at it to get the better design . And , yeah , we built a nice little business out of this .

Speaker 1 6:26

But obviously , when it came to SEO back in sort of the mid to late 2000s , I would say it was probably a little less cut and dried compared to now as to where the boundaries of white hat , gray hat , black hat were , especially when it came to link building , and at the time we did lots of paid link buying and link campaigns that nowadays would be considered really spammy Things like forum posts , blog commenting . So we commented on blogs where the blog will give you a back link and you could put the back link in and literally out and out buying links . You know , for many years , while Google had started to say this was not acceptable and they would penalize it , they didn't really have the capability to do it . So everyone all our competitors pretty much were all buying links . If you wanted to compete , you had to buy links . Now , obviously , google , as we now know , advanced their capabilities quite a lot and then , you know , we started to see penalties in the algorithm . Penalties come in .

Speaker 1 7:53

We first got hit by Panda in 2011 , and that was where some of the content that we'd done that was quite thin , which worked to attract traffic , all of a sudden didn't . So we were getting hit by Panda and that was obviously not affecting the thing content . It was affecting other parts of the site as well . So we start to see a dip in traffic and it wasn't terrible , but it was noticeable . But then the worst was to come when , in April 2012 , we got hit by Penguin and we went from ranking number one for the term broadband in the UK to I think we showed up at position 900 and something and we literally lost 99% of our Google traffic overnight . Now we were lucky for a couple of reasons . At the time Bing still drove a bit more traffic than it possibly does now in Yahoo . We were also getting a reasonable amount of direct type in traffic . So , you know , we lost , I say , 99% of Google , which translated to about 70% over all of our traffic . But that was huge and it put us in a really , really awkward position . Luckily , we'd built up reserves , so cash flow , while it was negative we could , we had some runway to keep going for a bit .

Speaker 1 9:18

But we had to immediately completely reconsider our entire strategy . We had to completely think about what we did for content and all sorts of about link building , all these toxic links we'd now gotten been penalized for and yeah , it was a case of . You know , I really didn't know what to do . It was such a big problem and I just felt completely stuck .

Speaker 1 9:45

Now this was the point that our knight in shining armor appeared , a guy called Carl Hendy who was an SEO freelancer at the time . I'd met some SEO meetups I'd been to a few years earlier and we'd just kept in touch . He'd been working for an SEO agency called AIMA and at this point he was working for himself and he just got in touch to say I noticed that your website has been hit . And I was like , yeah , big time , I have no idea what we're gonna do . And he just said , well , maybe I can help . And we had a chat , he suggested some ideas and in the end we just hired him to completely look at the problem for us and he came up with a complete new strategy and page designs for our content to help with the issues we'd had with Panda . And he also helped with the disavow process to sort of get rid of all the toxic links we'd got and all the reconsideration requests that we put into Google to get that penguin penalty

Broadband Comparison Website Success and Growth

Speaker 1 11:01

lifted .

Speaker 1 11:01

Now , it took some time these things don't get fixed overnight but it actually worked . Carl's recommendations and his help basically pulled us out of that hole and it took a few months , but we started and the first thing that started to come back was the review pages , where we had pages where we reviewed broadband providers and let other people put in their reviews , and that was one of the first areas that we redesigned based on his recommendations and that started to pull in traffic again and then , over time , more and more areas of the site that we worked on started to pull in more and more traffic and it got to the point where , when we regained our rankings , we actually we get gained more rankings . Our actual traffic went up by a factor over the next couple of years , by a factor of about five or six . So his advice and what we learned from him Was absolutely for one fellow . So all I can say is thank you , carl , you were amazing . So , with the content strategy working and fixed and Panda not being an issue Now , we obviously , as I mentioned , we got did all the reconsideration requests for penguin .

Speaker 1 12:16

We did a lot , a lot of outreach , asking people to remove toxic links where we could , and then , obviously , to surveying the ones that weren't available . Then , you know , we just looked at this and we're like we are never , ever , ever going to do that kind of link buying again . It's just not worth the hassle . We need something that is a lot more sustainable and this is where we went , which we just made the decision . We were just gonna rely completely on natural links from now on .

Speaker 1 12:47

I know there's a lot of people in the SEO world that say you know , if you don't buy links , Then you're not competing . If you don't buy links , you know we're gonna rank . I used to just not true . I mean it . It can work . Buying links can work . Buying links can help you rank , but it comes with risks and you need to appreciate those risks .

Speaker 1 13:08

And you know we'd built something up to a proper business . We had employees that relied on us . You know we've got mortgages , things like that . You know we've got commitments . We we couldn't just risk that on on Chasing short-term gains , so we decided that's it . We're gonna go on the completely natural route and we're just gonna make sure that we build a site that naturally attracts links . And that's what we've done and that's what we did ever since 2012 . And you can go look at that backlink history if you can . You can use any of the tool , the backlink checker tools . You can see the kind of links that it's built up . That site is built up over time and they are all completely natural and it means it's whenever .

Speaker 1 13:55

You know Google says it's gonna crack down on on links or core updates , where they're cracking down on links , those kind of things . We've come through them With that . I'm to worry quite so much . I mean , I wouldn't say we never worried at a core update . Everyone always worries that there's something in a corp that's gonna get you , but at least we knew that links was one thing we didn't have to worry about . And yeah , I think we're living proof that you know that that can work and we've done that with all our other sites we've launched since we've always Relyed on natural linking . We've never gone out there to buy links because the risk just doesn't worth it and it actually makes you build better sites . If you decide , you know I'm gonna only get links naturally . I've really got to work at this . We've really got to make sure that we put it . It's good , otherwise People aren't linked to it .

Speaker 1 14:44

So , with our panda and penguin issue sorted , our link building being all natural , you know , we just continued to own and operate the site for the next few years and over time we generated millions and sales for the broadband providers and we made millions in commission . So you know we were very , very happy with it . But there was still a nagging doubt . You know you've been hit once Means all your eggs are in one basket , as it was . You know , and I was also had the nagging doubt . You know , was I one trick pony , was you know what someone might say as well with the domain name like that , then obviously you're going to be able to do really well .

Speaker 1 15:22

So we started in 2016 to divert , diversify into other affiliate sites , not based on premium domain names , not based on any dodgy link buying , but just seeing if we could repeat the formula of excellent content , excellent experiences , but in other niches . And , yeah , it worked . Like I say , it was maybe a little bit slower , necessarily , than if we just , you know , if we tried to do anything a bit more dodgy , but again , we wanted this to be something defensible and long-term and with that diversification , obviously it also improved our income , but it also meant that all rogues were no longer in one basket . So , again , it helps you sleep easier at night and I know some people say you should only concentrate on one thing and just go for the one thing and don't try and diversify . Maybe those people who are given the advice of the people that did that and have never had any issues Trust me once you've had issues once but in twice shy you want to make sure that you've got a backup , that there's something there , something goes on with your main income , that you've got another income on the side , so , anyway . But this fact that we're diversified also meant that we didn't rely on Royal Binocular UK anymore , which meant that actually , we didn't need to hold on to it to keep our income . We could actually , if you wanted , to sell that asset , which is something that we discussed now and again , but we never actually put it on the market because we had no real need to Now fast forward to 2021, .

Speaker 1 17:08

We actually got approached via our old friend , cole Hendy , who helped us out in the first place . He made an intro to a company called Genie Ventures . Now we knew Genie Ventures a little bit because they ran another broadband comparison website in the UK and they're very familiar with our sector and everything that we're doing . So they actually turned out to be a really good potential sale partner and , after lots of discussions and lots and lots of legals , we actually eventually sold them in an all cash deal in summer 2021 , just over two years ago Now . I can't reserve real the exact details due to confidentiality agreements that come along with these things , but we definitely got a deal that we were happy with and allowed us to take a good chunk of money off the table while still having our other sites providing us with a nice stable income .

Speaker 1 18:18

So I mean all success to the guys at Broadband Genie and Genie Ventures . They're still operating the site . It still looks very similar to what it did when we owned it . I'm sure they've done some tweaks . I'm not completely sure on all the different things they've done , but , yeah , they seem happy and it's still ranking really well . It still ranks really well on loads of competitive terms . So it's great to see that and it was great to have that exit and make room for other ventures .

Speaker 1 18:49

So what do we do post-exit ? Well , like I said , we still operate our other affiliate sites and we've grown those , worked on those and added some extra sites . Since then I've also allowed us to spend more time renovating the farm that we bought . We bought that previous . We didn't buy the farm because of the sale , but we were halfway through renovating this farm and it allowed me time to work on managing that and getting that done . There's probably stuff . I'll talk about more of that in the future , but the main thing that we've done since then is we've launched KeywordsPeopleUsecom . He obviously sponsors this podcast because that's our business . It was really given us the time and the space to build that , based upon the systems and processes we set up to build and rank content with Broadbanded Code at UK and our future sites .

Speaker 1 19:52

I'm not going to go into full details about what KeywordsPeopleUse does right now because this isn't an advert for it and it's too much in there to get in this episode . I want this episode to be about the Broadbanded Code at UK story , but obviously this is where it ends , because if it wasn't for BroadbandedUK being sold , then we wouldn't have been in the position to have the time and energy to launch KeywordsPeopleUse . So it's just worth mentioning at the end here Hopefully that's given you a good flavour of where we came from the story of how we accidentally really ended up starting a comparison website , working out how to monetise it , how to make it profitable , taking it on by ourselves , how we got out of the problems caused by Google to us and the help that we got from that , and how we then turned that around , diversified and then ultimately exited the business , and how it's given us a runway for future things . Thanks for listening . I really appreciate it . Please subscribe , share . It really helps .

Speaker 1 21:04

Seo is not that hard . It's brought to you by KeywordsPeopleUsecom , the solution to find the questions people ask online . See why thousands of people use us every day . Try it today for free at KeywordsPeopleUsecom . If you want to get in touch with any questions . I'd love to hear from you . I'm at Channel 5 on Twitter , but you can email me at podcast at KeywordsPeopleUsecom . Bye for now , and I'll see you in the next episode of SEO is not that hard .