The Edward Show

E1194: Cold outreach is one of the most effective ways to build backlinks, earn media coverage, and get your content in front of the right people. But most outreach emails get ignored.
A Reddit user analyzed 6,337 cold emails and uncovered striking differences in reply rates based on email length, subject lines, follow-ups, and who receives the message.
I break down these findings, share advice from experienced link builders, and explain the cold outreach strategies I've personally used to get viral videos onto national television, earn coverage from major publications, and promote businesses.
What the data from 6,337 cold emails reveals:
- Emails under 100 words earned an 11.9% reply rate.
- Emails between 100 and 200 words earned just 1.9%.
- Emails over 200 words earned a 0.3% reply rate.
- The ideal email length fell between 60 and 90 words.
- One email earned a 4.1% reply rate. One follow-up increased that to 6.6%.
- Two follow-ups increased replies to 6.9%, with diminishing returns beyond that.
- Subject lines under 30 characters achieved an 83.7% open rate, compared to 69.5% for longer ones.
- Subject lines containing numbers performed particularly well.
- Tuesday and Wednesday outperformed Thursday and Friday.
How to get more replies to your link-building outreach:
- Personalize every message. Generic templates immediately signal mass outreach.
- Lead with something valuable to the recipient rather than asking for a favor.
- Keep subject lines short and make the first sentence immediately relevant.
- Find the right person. At larger companies, department heads and managers often make more sense than CEOs.
- Offer original research, useful statistics, corrections, or genuinely interesting content.
- Use broken links as an opportunity to suggest relevant replacement resources.
- Track positive replies rather than total replies to understand which offers work.
- Follow up once or twice rather than repeatedly chasing people.
- Use email tracking tools to understand whether recipients open your messages.
My own cold outreach experiences:
I've spent years pitching journalists, YouTubers, bloggers, and other content creators. I explain how I used concise, targeted outreach to get extraordinary results.
- 2012: My friends and I created a video where fake bodyguards and paparazzi convinced strangers in Times Square that an ordinary guy was a celebrity. I pitched the video on Reddit, reached the site's front page, and ended up on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and NBC's The Jeff Probst Show.
- 2009–2010: A crazy driving stunt video sat unnoticed on YouTube for a year. I pitched it to automotive publications, and Jalopnik featured it on its homepage for two days.
- 2018: We created an early blockchain video game and helped establish the play-to-earn genre. I reached out to major cryptocurrency YouTubers, and one of the largest channels covered our project.
The same principles apply to SEO link building.
Create something genuinely interesting, find people whose audiences care about it, and send concise, personalized messages explaining its relevance.
You don't need another generic guest posting template. You need a compelling reason for somebody to open your email, read your content, and share it.
⭐️ Reddit: What Makes Link Outreach Get Replies? - https://www.reddit.com/r/seogrowth/comments/1vqym2j/what_makes_link_outreach_actually_get_replies/ 
⭐️ Reddit: Breaking Into PR (6,337 Cold Emails Analyzed) - https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicRelations/comments/1u2f71l/breaking_into_pr_is_mostly_a_coldoutreach_problem/ 
⭐️ Short subject lines matter for newsletter open rates - https://read.first1000.co/p/things-matter-for-growing-a-newsletter 
⭐️ Times Square fake celebrity video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYU1a0lTTTw 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Why Outreach Gets Ignored
01:10 Value First Link Building
02:01 Templates Kill Replies
03:39 PR Data on Email Length
05:13 Target the Right Person
05:55 Follow Ups and Subject Lines
07:23 Tracking Opens and Deliverability
07:59 Going Viral With Smart Pitches
11:00 Make It Easy to Share
11:43 Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#linkbuilding #backlinks #searchengineoptimization #seo

E1192: How long does SEO actually take? Google's Gary Illyes shared specific timeframes for crawling, indexing, title changes, canonicalization, site migrations, manual action removals, and recovery from core updates.
Some changes take hours. Others take months. And in certain cases, Google never processes them.
Google's reported typical SEO timeframes:
- New URL discovery: 20 hours. At the slowest, weeks or never.
- Recrawling an existing URL: 1 month. At the slowest, weeks or never.
- Sitemap processing: 1 day. At the slowest, 14 days or never, depending on quality.
- Indexing: 1.5 hours. At the slowest, months or never.
- Canonical changes: 1-3 weeks. At the slowest, months.
- Site migrations: 1-3 months. At the slowest, 6 months to over a year.
- Page title changes: 1-2 days. At the slowest, several weeks to months.
- Search snippet changes: 1-2 days. At the slowest, several weeks to months.
- Google Search Console removals: 2 hours. At the slowest, 24 hours.
- Manual action removals: 1-2 weeks. At the slowest, 4-6 weeks or much longer for dormant sites.
- Core update recovery: 3-6 months. At the slowest, 6 months to a year, often requiring another core update.
These numbers represent typical ranges.
Also covered:
- Why crawling delays also delay indexing and other Google processes.
- Why some URLs never get indexed, despite appearing in XML sitemaps.
- Why Google sometimes takes months to recognize canonical changes.
- Why recovering from a Google core update often requires waiting for another update.
- Why a site migration might take more than a year to finish.
- How website authority, backlinks, and traffic influence crawling and indexing speed.
- My experience publishing a brand-new page that ranked #1 above The New York Times within five minutes.
- Why established websites with real users, backlinks, and topical relevance often get their pages crawled and indexed faster.
- Why low-authority websites with little traffic and few backlinks experience longer delays.
- Why these reported timeframes matter when diagnosing SEO problems and setting client expectations.
One of the biggest takeaways from this episode is that these timelines vary enormously between websites.
I've personally published a new page, submitted it through Google Search Console, and watched it rank #1 above The New York Times within five minutes.
The website had authority, real search traffic, backlinks, and strong topical relevance to the target keyword.
Those things matter.
If you want Google to discover, crawl, and refresh your pages faster, focus on building a website that attracts real visitors, earns backlinks, and gets shared.
⭐️ Google Shows How Long Crawling, Indexing & Recovery Can Take https://searchenginejournal.com/google-crawling-indexing-recovery-timing-ranges/591829/ 
⭐️ Ep 939 How to Build Backlinks for a Brand New Website (From Zero Authority) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcNmYaMrM3o 
⭐️ Ep 1160 How To Get Free Backlinks in 2026 (Methods That Actually Work) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-5VL9o9RGQ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Google Timing Overview
00:59 Indexing Recap Context
01:29 Key Timeframes Explained
02:13 Core Update Recovery Windows
03:00 Limits of the Data
03:32 Timing Table Breakdown
04:45 What It Means for Clients
05:34 Real World Fast Indexing Story
06:14 How to Speed Things Up
06:49 Link Building Resources
08:24 Final Thanks and Sign Off
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #technicalseo #digitalmarketing

E1193: Charles Floate shares how he ranks parasite SEO pages on Google.com itself, gets those pages cited in Google's AI Overviews, and builds campaigns that generate thousands of dollars in revenue.
With a full presentation, Charles breaks down his parasite SEO strategy, including the exact process he uses to find profitable keywords, identify powerful third-party domains, publish pages, get them indexed, and turn rankings into affiliate commissions.
He also demonstrates how he automates parasite SEO with AI agents, including a system that published 10 pages in roughly 60 seconds and another that has created over 400 pages.
We get into Google's site reputation abuse policy, the September 2026 spam update, how Google recently deindexed parasite pages on NotebookLM and Google Scripts, and why Charles believes Google's own domains remain some of the strongest opportunities in SEO.
Topics covered:
- What parasite SEO is and why high-authority websites outperform smaller domains
- How Charles finds parasite opportunities on Google.com itself
- Why Google.com and YouTube receive so much visibility in Google's AI Overviews
- How parasite pages influence AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Bing, and Copilot
- Why Google's September 2026 spam update benefited certain parasite websites
- How Charles finds free parasite opportunities on LinkedIn, Reddit, Medium, GitHub, Spotify, and other platforms
- How paid parasite placements on newspapers and magazines work
- Why certain parasite pages rank on Google the same day they go live
- How Charles identifies profitable keywords and low-competition SERPs
- How to find affiliate programs and negotiate higher commissions
- Why Charles focuses roughly 90% of his parasite campaigns on international, non-English markets
- How to optimize titles, opening sentences, and page content for target keywords
- Why people accidentally try to index the wrong parasite URLs
- How to identify canonical URLs and indexing problems
- How Charles uses AI agents, OpenClaw, and Chameleon Mode Pro to automate parasite SEO
- How his automation published 10 parasite pages in roughly 60 seconds
- How Grok Bot created more than 400 third-party pages for one brand
- Why Google removed NotebookLM parasite pages from its search index
- How Google recently deindexed another parasite opportunity involving Google Scripts
- Why Charles believes Google's site reputation abuse policy has barely changed his strategy
- How parasite SEO affects AI search results even when Google deindexes a page
- Why parasite pages traditionally suffer from poor conversion rates
- How AI Overviews change the conversion opportunity for parasite SEO
- When Charles builds backlinks, buys internal links, or uses 301 redirects
- Why internal links sometimes outperform expensive backlink campaigns
- How Charles keeps certain parasite pages ranking for five years or longer
- How a press release ranked number three on Google in nine minutes and changed an AI Overview's sentiment
- Which press release providers Charles uses for parasite SEO and online reputation management
- Why some press releases maintain rankings for years while others disappear
- How competitors use fraudulent DMCA takedowns against parasite pages in iGaming
- What barnacle SEO is and how it differs from black hat parasite SEO
- How legitimate customer review videos create additional search visibility
- Why Charles believes third-party mentions matter more in AI search
- What Charles looks for before investing in a paid parasite placement
- How he would approach a parasite SEO campaign with a $1,000 budget versus $5,000
- Why he recommends starting with contextual parasite pages
- How AI agents automate prospecting, account creation, publishing, indexing, and tracking
Charles also shares real examples of parasite pages that have survived multiple Google updates, explains what kept them ranking, and demonstrates the tools behind his automated campaigns.
Whether you're interested in parasite SEO, affiliate SEO, AI search optimization, online reputation management, or black hat SEO experiments, this episode gives you a detailed look at what Charles is doing right now.
⭐️ Charles Floate's Rainmakers community - https://www.skool.com/ai-seo-rainmakers/about?ref=38c0628b17b741f6aeb947f8b0cd1b92 
⭐️ Charles Floate on 𝕏 - https://x.com/Charles_SEO 
⭐️ Charles Floate on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlesfloate/ 
⭐️ Charles Floate on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesFloate 
⭐️ Charles Floate on Facebook - https://facebook.com/thecharlesfloate 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/  
00:00 Parasite SEO Overview
00:51 Authority And UGC Signals
02:33 Free Versus Paid Parasites
05:02 Why Parasites Win
06:14 Site Reputation Abuse Risks
09:23 Automation And Ops Stack
13:52 Conversion Problems And Fixes
16:59 AI Overviews Boost Parasites
19:06 Five Step Parasite Process
21:29 Affiliate Offers Research
25:17 Keyword Targeting Tactics
27:23 Indexing Mistakes Canonicals
28:58 Google Parasite Crackdowns
35:07 Costs Links And Internal Links
36:49 Fast Wins Press Releases ORM
37:59 iGaming DMCAs War Zone
40:35 Press Release Longevity
43:18 Newswire Indexing Picks
44:37 Barnacle SEO Basics
46:54 Social Proof Reviews
47:27 AI Era Rule Changes
51:37 Spotting Easy SERPs
52:34 Click Bombing Signals
54:49 Keeping Parasites Alive
57:21 301 Redirect Playbook
59:30 Indexers and SRA Risk
01:01:03 Grok Bot Parasite Demo
01:06:56 Budget and Outreach Tips
01:10:25 Grok Bot vs DOTS
01:13:01 Podcast Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#blackhatseo #searchengineoptimization #parasiteseo #digitalmarketing

E1191: One SEO spent the summer going through more than 30,000 documents and narrowing them down to 9,249 SEO case studies, tests, and papers with measurable results.
The final dataset covered 552 cited sources and 182 SEO tactics.
I go through some of the weirdest findings, the tests I agree with, the ones I question, and the tactics worth experimenting with on your own sites.
Some of the findings:
- Writing title tags entirely in capital letters increased organic traffic 17.5% across two independent tests
- Removing synonym keywords from title tags reduced organic traffic 27%
- Removing the word "compare" from title tags increased organic traffic 24%
- Putting product prices in title tags reduced organic traffic 15%
- Number emojis in meta descriptions reduced organic traffic 5%
- Using a 410 instead of a 404 got removed pages dropped from Google's index much faster
- Editorial backlinks earned through digital PR increased organic sessions 71%
- Disavowing links without a manual penalty showed no measurable direction
- Adding internal links to orphaned blog posts produced major ranking improvements
- Homepage footer links to category and subcategory pages increased organic sessions 5-10% in one controlled test
- Adding prominent brand CTA blocks to product pages increased conversions 80% across two tests
I also dig into the AEO and GEO findings.
The evidence there is much thinner, but some of the reported results are worth testing:
- Adding quantitative statistics increased AI citations 37%
- Adding quotes from credible named sources increased citations 22-41%
- Keyword stuffing reduced AI citations 10%
- Putting a direct answer in the opening paragraph increased citations 280%
- Writing content as discrete factual statements produced a 5X increase
- Moving source references directly next to claims increased citations 40%
- Adding author bylines increased AI citations 113%
- Human editing of AI-written content increased citations 67%
- Targeted AI-written additions to specific pages increased citations 73%
- Publishing AI-generated text across an entire site reduced organic sessions 35%
I also cover one of the most interesting findings around LLMs.txt.
Across the underlying measurements, results ranged from -19.7% to +81%. More importantly, there wasn't a single controlled LLMs.txt test in all 9,249 documents.
Anyone claiming LLMs.txt definitively improves SEO or AI visibility is working with extremely weak evidence.
We also get into Google Business Profile categories, keywords in URLs, emojis in title tags, internal linking, disavow files, title tag testing, mass AI content, and why so many GEO studies are difficult to trust.
The biggest takeaway: traditional SEO testing still produces some of the strongest measurable results, especially around title tags, internal links, backlinks, and page structure.
⭐️ Reddit: I Read 9,249 SEO Case Studies to Build the Biggest SEO Meta-Study - https://www.reddit.com/r/TechSEO/comments/1wmb181/i_read_9249_seo_case_studies_to_build_the_biggest/ 
⭐️ Ovisy: The Biggest SEO Meta-Study (Full Study) - https://ovisy.hr/blog/seo-meta-study 
⭐️ Ep 763 - The SEO Trick That Breaks All the Rules: How Ultra-Long Page Titles Boost Rankings - https://youtu.be/ufjwb51hJuc 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Meta Study Setup
00:52 How The Data Was Built
01:38 Title Tag Oddities
03:15 Breadcrumbs And Status Codes
04:01 Backlinks And Disavow
05:27 Internal Linking Wins
07:31 AEO And GEO Evidence
10:27 LLMs.txt And AI Content
11:50 Local SEO And URL Keywords
13:02 Wrap Up
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #generativeengineoptimization #answerengineoptimization

E1190: Google is making it harder to scrape its search results, and SEO tools are getting caught in the middle.
Barry Schwartz, founder of Search Engine Roundtable and one of the longest-running reporters in the search industry, joins me to break down what Google is doing, why rank-tracking data has become less reliable, and what happens next.
Barry has covered Google and search every day since 2003. In this episode, we go deep on Google's fight against AI scrapers, the September 2026 spam update, scaled AI content, Google losing trust in entire websites, and the future of SEO.
We cover:
- Google's new GoTo redirects and what they mean for SEO tools
- Why Barry says the GoTo redirect itself is not the biggest problem
- Google's broader crackdown on companies scraping its search results
- The widespread IP blocking targeting proxies used by scraping companies
- The increase in CAPTCHAs making automated Google searches harder
- Reports that Google is injecting bad or fake data into search results shown to bots
- Why unreliable SERP data creates a much bigger problem for rank trackers
- Why Google appears more focused on ChatGPT and SERP APIs than Ahrefs or Semrush
- Why Barry doubts rank trackers will return to their previous level of reliability
- Why Google Search Console has become more important as third-party data gets harder to trust
- Why selling rankings becomes harder when Google controls the underlying data
- What makes the September 2026 spam update different from recent spam updates
- Why its long rollout suggests Google is pushing several spam systems or components
- The multiple phases Barry has seen throughout the September spam update
- How Google could detect sudden explosions of AI-generated pages without behavioral data
- Why publishing 50,000 pages in a week creates an obvious pattern for Google
- How templated programmatic content fits into Google's fight against scaled AI content
- Google's complicated internal relationship with AI-generated writing
- Google's new guidance telling publishers to manually review AI-generated content
- Why scale matters more than whether one individual page used AI
- Why spam updates and core updates require different recovery strategies
- What website owners should review after getting hit by a spam update
- Why Barry warns against blindly disavowing links after an update
- The difference between fixing a spam violation and rebuilding a site after a core update
- What John Mueller meant when he said Google's systems can "lose faith in a website"
- How enough weak pages create sitewide trust and indexing problems
- Why recovering from lost trust may require rewriting, removing, and pruning content
- Why some Google spam systems already run continuously
- Why Google keeps introducing structured data and later removing support for certain types
- What actually keeps Google up at night: the enormous amount of AI content flooding the web
- Why Google's problem has flipped from not having enough content to having far too much
- Barry's perspective after nearly 50,000 published Search Engine Roundtable articles
- Why consistency, expertise, and actually caring about the industry still matter after decades in search
⭐️ Search Engine Roundtable - https://www.seroundtable.com/ 
⭐️ Barry Schwartz on 𝕏 - https://x.com/rustybrick 
⭐️ Barry Schwartz on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rustybrick/ 
⭐️ Barry Schwartz's agency, RustyBrick - https://www.rustybrick.com/ 
💎 Compact Keywords - My SEO Course - Get paying customers through SEO - Clear step-by-step video breakdowns - SEO templates to be copied and adapted for your products and services: https://compactkeywords.com/ 
00:00 Barry Schwartz Intro
01:09 GoTo Redirect Chaos
03:33 Google Blocking Tactics
07:07 Rank Tracking Future
09:06 SEO Reporting Reality
12:15 September Spam Update
15:01 Mount AI Signals
17:00 Google AI Writing Stance
20:22 Mueller Likes AI Critique
22:23 Spam Updates Hitting Harder
26:38 SEO Interest Surging
31:08 Which Sites Get Hit
32:05 Spam Update Targets
33:11 Spam Winners Losers
35:03 Old School SEO
37:15 Recovering From Hits
39:56 AI Scale Signals
41:31 Collateral Damage Stories
45:11 Google Bugs Iteration
46:14 Google And SEOs
48:44 Losing Trust Recovery
50:17 Continuous Enforcement
51:25 Schema Rise Fall
54:46 What Surprises Barry
56:04 Passion Community Work
01:00:29 Final Thanks Outro
The Edward Show. Your daily search engine optimization podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/  
#searchengineoptimization #seo #searchmarketing #digitalmarketing