Table of Contents

SEO That Works 3.0 Review, Brian Dean’s Course Legit? Key Takeaways

March 11, 2024

by Ippei Kanehara

5 Comments

How I make $52K per month

I’ve been running a multiple 6 figure SEO lead generation agency since 2014, the key to my success?

Never stop learning!

Continue to work on your skills!

So after several years in the game, Did Brian Dean’s course SEO that Works really have anything to offer me that I would actually put into practice?

Is this the best SEO course you can invest in?

The good & the bad of this course?

& Ultimately how do you use this course to make that money online?

Let me give ya the full run-down.

SEO that Works Course Overview & Summary

What Brian’s ultimately teaching in this course is what is called content marketing.

Everyone knows in SEO its all about your ability to create backlinks.

Brian’s strategy is around building very strong content, what he calls The Power Page.

& Then you market that power page to other bloggers & influencers within your niche to link to & promote on their sites.

The idea is, bloggers are always looking to link to very authoritative content because it increases their credibility (if someone else is backing up their stance or claim) and it makes them appear smarter if the page is really good.

This is not guest posting, in fact Brian doesn’t teach guest posting at all.

Its all about how to build power pages with built-in “share triggers”

Share triggers are things about a piece of content that makes us want to share it.

Brian has identified the top share triggers & various content framework that causes articles to be shared significantly more than usual.

Before we get into that, let's quickly do a bird's-eye aerial view of this course in its entirety.

Module 0: What's Working Right Now in SEO

In this section, Brian goes over bad SEO practices that used to work 5+ years ago are no longer viable.

Like falsely believing writing a good piece of content is enough.

Nowadays you need a systematic link building strategy.

Brian confirms that backlinks are still the #1 Ranking factor in Google.

Module 1: Linkreators

How to research & find the influential bloggers within your niche that may be willing to link to your articles.

Identifying what kind of subjects do they like linking to.

Common mistake a lot of people make is that they go ahead and write a huge article before they do research to see if anyone really likes to link to that kind of subject.

Brian uses tools like ahrefs.com to quickly find where a competitor or similar article may be getting their links from, this is one of the ways to find your linkreator, its a technique I like using also.

with ahrefs you can find some relevant places that people are getting links from.

Module 2: Power Page

all about how to write that viral piece of content that’s got tons of share triggers.

Top Share Triggers

Buzzsumo did a study of 100 million articles & the longer piece of content (3000 words or more) got more shares – contrarily to what some believe… longer piece of content elicit a feeling of “awe”, a similar feeling to when one views the expansive grand canyon
content with high utility – write content that’s insanely useful & practical, the extreme version is a recipe article… gets tons of shares.
memorable content, a trademark techniques that elicit strong visual or memorable that people can latch on to. For example 4 Hour Work Week is catching & memorable. Brian Dean came up with the Skyscraper Technique which is about writing a bigger more authoritative content than the competition on the first page, very good visual.
articles that elicit positive emotions. we all know bad news travel fast, but the good news is studies found that articles that elicit positive emotions like inspiration or surprises get more shares than the negative: sad or depressing stories.
Stories are more shared than pure information. its more memorable & elicit more emotions

Awesome things to remember when writing our content on any of our monthly-money sites.

Brian also shares content framework that elicit more shares, my favorite being the Ultimate Guidebook & The Hero Formula.

His tips in the Ultimate Guidebook are super high utility, teaching you about tactics that have extremely high practicality.

His Hero Formula is telling a story of you overcoming something & sharing your experience of trials & tribulations, of growth & evolution, elicits strong emotions of awe, inspiration & motivation. Very strong way to connect to your readers.

Module 3: Content Promotion & Link Building

This is all about how to reach out to your Linkreators & promote your power pages to them.

Brian has various email pitches that you can use.

He recommends quality of pitches over quantity.

Building a relationship first, reaching out to them on social media, sharing their pages & commenting on how awesome their content is beforehand to significantly increase the likelihood that they will be willing to hear you out.

Module 4: Optimize Content for UX Signals

gets pretty technical here, apparently new factor in ranking, although I haven’t personally had any issues ranking my sites without doing any of this stuff. It can’t hurt.

Course Summary: The Good & The Bad

All in all, I enjoyed going through this course. I do agree Brian Dean’s content marketing strategy can be very powerful at getting tons of great links. His backlinko.com site has amazing stats and he’s basically showing you how he was able to get there through this content marketing strategy.

I would have to say just in general Brian’s techniques will take longer than some other SEO techniques, but its whitehat, which is considered the safest SEO method out there.

The Good

Brian is a solid communicator/orator, his lessons are easy to understand & he throws in cool tidbits like a lot of the different studies that show his claims to be true.
The Course teaches you backlink building but will also make you a better writer and copywriter.
His SEO method of content marketing is the safest and most future proof
His methods will work in conjunction with SEO methods that you may be using currently.

The Bad

His course strictly teaches about 1 SEO Method, nothing else. (aka he doesn't teach about how to get clients or scaling your agency)
Brian doesn't teach about building a personal blog network (PBN), which is sufficient to rank a lot SEO projects with significantly less effort imo.
Using Brian's Method it's very difficult to scale.

Parting Thoughts on SEO That Works

Content marketing is indeed powerful but it also requires a lot of effort & some writing talent.

Yes Brian says that using his content conceptual framework & share triggers that anyone can write power page contents.

But I know some SEO business owners that absolutely despise writing alone.

Some of those will really struggle with this course, because for example take a look at one of Brian’s own Power Page: https://backlinko.com/link-building

Super high quality…Its split up into chapters & shit! Almost like a small book!

But look…

This one page’s got 876 sites linking to it.

This method clearly works, but it heavily relies on your ability to write really awesome content like Brian.

It’s probably impossible to try & outsource. you’d end up paying a lot of money & you’d only get like 25% quality of Brian’s writing at best.

So building power pages is something you might need to handle on your own. Its difficult to scale.

Using this method for 1-2 projects is one thing but when you got like 45 clients like I do, I don’t think content marketing is the best way to go.

This is why I highly recommend learning about building your own backlinks by buying auction domains & building a proper blog network. Something we teach in our program.

SEO can work, but Lead Gen is Better, Here's Why:

SEO

Low barrier to entry = high competition
High involvement due to continual outreach.
Moderate profits for a lot for work.
High client turnover. Clients can drop you without notice.
No Control. You don't own your clients websites. #noassets
No passive income. Even on retainers...

Lead Generation

High barrier to entry = low competition
Low maintenance. Runs on autopilot.
Low overheads, high profits.
Clients remain loyal = clients for life (because they are happy).
Complete Control - You own your lead gen websites.
Passive recurring income once ranked.

IMO SEO is all about doing just enough to get results.

I currently have 2 VA’s thats building quality links for me on a daily basis, which allows my local lead generation business to continue to grow. I see my new sites rank on a regular basis & start producing new income stream for me.

Brian’s site backlinko.com is attempting to rank for some seriously competitive terms in the SEO niche like “backlinking”

In this case, you will need a power page that can attract thousands of links.

But IMO just because a keyword is difficult to rank for, doesn’t mean its a lucrative keyword.

Look its great to have Brian’s techniques in hand & I’ll use it to varying degrees to some of my projects like this blog.

(I also particularly kinda like writing so that definitely helps…)

Ultimately tho, I’m in this to make money.

& most of you are reading this because you want to make money online right?

I feel for a complete beginner, it’s better to first learn the skills to rank in local search terms & do lead generation for small businesses.

(gotta walk before you can run, right?)

To go after these uber-competitive keywords, that require incredibly in-depth articles is too much of a steep learning curb imo.

I’m here to tell you ranking sites in Google can be a lot easier than that, & you don’t need to be a great writer either.

IMO local is where the money is because the competition is much less & much easier SEO methods work really well.

No power pages needed.
Can be outsourced.

& It’s lucrative also, I built a $50K per month biz from it & continuing to grow.

But I'm not the only one, here's Patric's story:

Patric is just one of hundreds of students that have grown 7 figure companies out of the lead generation coaching program.

We not only teach SEO skills but how to build a longterm, ethical business with it.

Learn more about local lead gen here.

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Ippei Kanehara

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$52K per month providing lead generation services to small businesses

Ippei.com is for digital hustlers, industry leaders and online business owners.

His #1 online business recommendation in 2024, is to build your own lead generation business.