This interview is with Kristiyan Yankov, Co-Founder at Above Apex.

Kristiyan Yankov, Co-Founder, Above Apex

Kristiyan, welcome to Featured.com! Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey to becoming an expert in the world of SEO and digital marketing?

I started my journey in 2015 when I was in high school. I was part of the biggest SEO provider on Fiverr, with over 100,000 satisfied customers, called Youngceaser. A few years later, I decided to take the SEO road on my own, and I co-founded Above Apex with my best friend and partner. We started with SEO for local businesses and moved on to servicing SaaS/Tech companies and growing a team.

You’ve mentioned your work with SaaS and tech companies, specifically in link building and digital PR. Could you elaborate on a pivotal moment or project that solidified your expertise in these areas?

We onboarded two SaaS clients at the same time. One was Influencity—one of the go-to Influencer Marketing Platforms. The second one was Italki—which is one of the biggest language-learning apps with certified tutors in the world. After a few months of hard work, we saw some astonishing results, and that validated our opinion that we should focus more on SaaS/Tech companies, as we can bring the most value there and there is a high demand for it currently.

You emphasized the importance of semantic expansion in SEO beyond traditional rankings. How can someone new to this concept identify opportunities to expand their website’s semantic reach?

One of the easiest ways to identify such opportunities is to look at your direct competitors and the most authoritative domains in the industry. Usually, they are ahead with other content marketing and expanding their website semantics, so you can get an idea of future topics you can cover and content pieces. This is a low-hanging-fruit approach that anyone can leverage.

You’ve cautioned against relying solely on Domain Rating for link building. What are some practical steps someone can take to assess the quality and relevance of a potential backlink opportunity?

Here is my breakdown of what are viable performance indicators when tracking a link-building opportunity:

– Look at the domain traffic and where the traffic is coming from.

– Look at the domain’s relevancy (is it within your industry?).

– Check the specific page you are planning on getting a backlink from in terms of content. Is the content relevant to your website?

– Have a look at the Linked Domains/Referring Domains ratio, meaning how many backlinks a website has versus how many websites it links to. The lower that number, the better.

– You can always check DR as well, but consider multiple aspects and look at the whole picture.

You’ve had success acquiring clients through LinkedIn by sharing valuable content. What advice would you give someone looking to leverage LinkedIn for business growth, particularly in showcasing their expertise?

Focus on speaking directly to your ICP. Imagine only your ideal potential clients will be reading your posts and looking at your profile, so structure your social proof and value proposition around them.

Case studies are a great way to showcase your wins and expertise, but combine that with educating and providing value, and the effect will be multiplied. Create consistency within your posting, and you will see the effects in no time.

Many businesses struggle to balance creating valuable content with promoting it effectively. What’s your approach to content promotion, and how do you ensure it reaches the right audience?

When you know who you are trying to speak to, your whole strategy is based on that. This can make or break your content creation and content promotion.

That is why it’s important to have clearly defined your ICP. It’s important to combine posting content with commenting and starting discussions within your industry and with your ICPs.

Commenting is a great way to increase the exposure of your posts while adding more value and showcasing your expertise, and it also helps the algorithm of LinkedIn push your profile to more people.

You’ve mentioned the importance of delegation for entrepreneurs. What aspect of your work did you find most beneficial to delegate first, and what advice would you give others considering this step?

As a founder, you have so many things to take care of, so if you compile a list of the ones that are most consuming and determine which ones you need to do yourself, you can delegate the rest to VAs or automate them.

The most important thing is to delegate everything you can and focus on what you are good at. Spend all of your time on this, as this would probably bring you the most results and ROI on time spent.

Burnout is a real concern for entrepreneurs. How do you personally maintain a healthy work-life balance while staying passionate about your work?

I work as long as I have the energy to do it at full capacity. As soon as I feel like I need to take a few days off, I do it. It’s that simple.

I also try not to be hard on myself and focus on spending time with others or doing some activity, since that can really get your mind off work, which helps you recharge.

Usually, your body and mind will tell you when you start doing too much, so listen to it and try to avoid burning out.

Looking ahead, what emerging trends in SEO, link building, or content marketing are you most excited about, and why?

Link building is becoming more and more about relationship-building, and I love that because our company is pretty good at that. If you think about it, relationships are a fundamental part of business, and not much can happen without them, so I would be super happy to see how that develops all of those aspects of link building, digital PR, and SEO.