"Clint Butler, Ted Ives, Brian William, Terry Samuels: Day 2 Wrap-Up and Link-Building / E-Com Panel"

The Day 2 closing session, a Clint Butler mindset and five-tier link-building monologue followed by an open SEO panel with Ted Ives and Brian William on ranking probability, referring domains, and e-commerce on-page.

This is the Day 2 wrap-up of SEO Spring Training 2026. Clint Butler hosts: he opens with a business-mindset segment, recaps the other Day 2 speakers, and walks his five-tier backlinking diagram and anchor-text gradient. He then hands off to an open SEO question-and-answer panel with Ted Ives (ranking probability, Googlebot's accelerated JavaScript clock, referring domains) and Brian William (e-commerce on-page). Terry Samuels closes with next-year event and affiliate announcements, and an unnamed participant recaps a separate on-page push-ads training. The session is heavy on off-page tactics.

Main takeaways

1. Spend four hours a day showing or selling your genius, not building. Clint Butler (citing Alex Hormozi) argues wealth comes from promotion, and that building, tinkering, and vibe-coding steal energy from selling. His framing: of roughly 30 energy units in a 30-hour week, put 15 to 20 into nothing but selling your product or service.

2. Clint's five-tier backlinking runs a relevance gradient anchored by tier, not by a fixed anchor percentage. Tier 1 to the money page is brand anchors only (brand and partial-brand), tier 2 uses related searches, tier 3 uses exact-match, tier 4 uses bolded keyword variations, and tier 5 uses LSI / Yake entities, all passing relevance upward. Anchor text is the relevance vote that Google follows all the way down to tier 5.

3. Exact match belongs on tier 3, never tier 1, and tier 3 is built on a refreshable cloud bucket. Tier 3 is an AWS bucket where the bucket URL is the exact-match keyword and an HTML meta refresh fires; if tier 4 or tier 5 gets messed up, you delete the bucket and keep the clean tier 2 and tier 3. Guest posts must use brand anchors only, because Google has footprints on guest posts.

4. Three tiers is enough for local, five only for the most competitive niches. You stop where the competition lets you stop. Local clients and small or new PBNs should stop at three (tier 3 = cloud sites = a blank HTML doc with a meta refresh); adult and similarly competitive niches require all five.

5. Treat a Google ranking as a probability, not a fixed number. Ted Ives: repeating the same search ten times in a minute (fresh sessions) reveals the ranking is a range, not a static value. Managing the client's perception of that probability is what keeps you from getting fired when they check and see a different number.

6. Googlebot accelerates JavaScript clock time, currently snapping the rendered DOM at about four seconds. Ted Ives: Google runs a JavaScript clock roughly 20x real time and used to capture the rendered DOM at 20 seconds after document-ready, now lowered to four. JS frameworks that pull content via web services slower than four seconds will have that content missed by Google. The live proof is topseofactors.com.

7. Google is actively flagging headless Chrome in both Search and Maps source code. Ted Ives says Google is not hiding it; the flagging is visible in their JavaScript. It is a reason to ask hard questions of your tool providers, not a reason for SEOs to panic.

8. Most small sites have a backlink quantity problem, not a quality problem; start with referring domains. Ted Ives: PageRank is logarithmic (each tier needs about 10x the links of the prior tier), so quality-only link profiles are a small-site scheme that does not scale. Referring-domain count is the smallest, cheapest, safest, fastest metric to improve, and it wins keywords about 80% of the time assuming on-page is sound.

9. For e-commerce, internal linking moves the needle faster than external links. Both panelists agree external link value takes about three weeks to register, while internal linking shows adjustments quickly. Critical e-com basics are merchant-center feeds, schema (including the new buy-form schema for AI agents), image SEO, and a real supplemental-content strategy.

10. Fix the "names of things" and kill conjoined categories on e-com sites. Brian William: replace zero-targeting category names (bestsellers, new arrivals) and artistic product names ("Majestic Sunset Snuffler" for an orange silk scarf) with keyword-rich names. Never make conjoined categories like "Socks and Shoes" (nobody searches that, and it is a usability failure that pushes users to site search).

Key points

Clint Butler (host wrap-up, tier-linking diagram, panel host)

Business mindset (the "when you get home" open): - Quotes Alex Hormozi ("not my favorite guy, but he's smart"): spend four hours every day showing people what you do. Framed as showing, not selling: show people four hours a day your genius and they will pay you for it. - Energy-unit model: a 30-hour week is 30 units of energy, one per hour. Allocate 15 to 20 units per week to nothing but trying to sell your product or service. - Self-reported scale: claims three Inc. 5000s, "every award anyone's ever given out," and companies that make about thirty million dollars a year (self-reported, not independently verified). - Lists what he is currently promoting: filling four events, selling three softwares, five coaching programs, and running ads for a bowling alley he owns (filling Monday-night summer leagues). - 7-11-4 rule (attributed to Google): a buyer needs seven hours of engagement across eleven touch points across four platforms before becoming a customer. - Buyer math he cites: only 1 in 10 buys on the first try; about 3 of 10 will never buy; he fights for the other 6 over time. "Know, like, and trust has nothing to do with buying." He aims to make his product inevitable and relevant so they buy from him.

Five-tier backlinking and anchor-text gradient: - Origin story: ranked in Olympia, Washington (was neighbors with Ted Ives there); heavy GSA user. Accidentally duplicated an off-topic GSA project at tier 5 while ranking a Bellevue SEO page; within seven days the off-topic tier-5 set knocked the page out of results. Lesson: Google follows anchor-text relevance all the way down to tier 5. - Tier 1 (to money page): brand anchors only. Guest posts must be brand anchors only because Google has footprints on guest-post networks; anything other than brand on a guest post will hurt you. - Niche edits: write the article yourself and supply the exact sentence and exact words for the link; do not let the host change them. Partial-match and exact-match anchors are safe only on PBNs you own (you can kill them quickly if you run into trouble). - Tier 2: related-search anchors (scroll to the related-searches block at the bottom of a Google SERP). - Tier 3: exact match, built on an AWS bucket where the bucket name / URL is the exact-match keyword and an HTML meta refresh fires; if tier 4 or 5 breaks, delete the bucket and keep clean tier 2 and tier 3. - Tier 4: bolded keyword variations (from a tool like Cora Pop; the tool is rendered phonetically as "Quora" in the transcript and is almost certainly Cora). - Tier 5: LSI / Yake entities (from Cora's big list, or Website Auditor with the TFIDF / entity tool). Avoid generic anchors like "read more." - Anchor-profile management: do not chase fixed percentages; read the whole anchor-text profile for what it is heavy in. Clint runs deliberately heavy in URL anchors. - URL-anchor source: "Elias created the dash system inside of Neo" (DAS). Running DAS on a new client creates a couple thousand URL-only links for anchor diversity so later exact-match links do not stand out. - Brand anchors go to all pages (inner pages and homepage), not just the homepage. Example anchors for a "things to do in Bellevue" post: "Digitalier," "Digitalier SEO," or partial "Digitalier's guide." - Tier rule: "you stop where your competition says you can stop." Local stops at three; adult requires all five. New / small PBNs stop at three to build PBN authority. Tier 3 for local = cloud sites = a blank HTML document with a meta refresh. - Self-reported: made $60,000/month ranking adult escort sites worldwide using this model (self-reported, not independently verified); used Xrumer (transcribed "Xriver") for those. - For max-volume / toxicity-tolerant links: hire a coder who knows PHP exploits to assemble a large list of sites with un-updated plugins and big backlink profiles (the mechanism behind mass niche-edit networks).

Ghost links / link echo: - Test from SEO Intelligence Agency. A PBN network sold as "SEO Nitro" (run by Dory Frant, reportedly about $50,000/month) was manually deindexed entirely by Google. - Links built on that deindexed network still ranked pages, disproving "if it is not indexed the link does not count." - Removing all the links and measuring decay took about six months to drop off ("link echo"). A low-crawl-rate deindexed PBN means a longer echo. The same mechanism appears in bad migrations where old and new URLs coexist for about 10 months.

Meta refresh as a tier-3 / link-building mechanism: - An HTML meta-refresh tag can refresh the same page (to add a keyword into the URL) or change URLs (redirect). - Black-hat variant (credited to "Kyle Now," with a Laura mention): rank the original content, then fire the meta refresh at one minute so a staying visitor is sent where you want. - Reference: Google "HTML meta refresh tag"; W3 Schools is the first or second result with example code. Clint frames it as a legitimate redirect, the same function as an .htaccess redirect or a JavaScript window.location redirect. - An unnamed attendee says Clint showed him this diagram at Treasure Island in 2021 or 2022 and it helped tremendously; he was already doing branded traffic and PAAs for tier 2, and the tier-3 meta refresh "was the answer."

Speaker recap (Clint's notes on other Day 2 sessions): - Austin: solving problems. Marty: positioning / de-positioning, taking market share with integrity rather than finding new customers. Adam: trust formula, "no clients equals no business," agencies are best as marketers (named Scorpion, Sesame as examples). - Bill Hartzer: rebuilding from archived sites for links; Clint flags the open legal question of copyright transfer on defunct businesses. Cautionary tale: a client, smallbusinesstrends.com, had its entire site duplicated across 50+ domains. - Mike Merlino: Green Gobblers case study (Clint follows him, no new notes). - Simon: recommended the book Atomic Habits; topic vector embeddings; shared an LLM-audit skill that Clint suggests pairing with Marty's positioning work. - Darryl Osborne / Surge: Surge 1 = content syndication, Surge 2 = more syndication plus RSS plus brand building, Surge 3 = AI applied. Surge 3 includes a 60-second manual brand audit for entity recognition, citation, and a cooperation count. - Brian William off-page-content ideas (from Brian's earlier session, not the panel): publishing on other people's sites (listicles, award posts); interviews dropped into NotebookLM to make a podcast then an article; advertorials (old weightlifting-magazine-style affiliate stories, with Randy for guidelines); research-report PDFs (40 to 50 pages, pending a Neo PDF-syndication feature with about 100 no-links for citations); Common Crawl API; llms.txt plus about eleven supporting files and an independent sitemap. - Herc (Hercules): showed Zazzio; uses an EMD as an advantage not a requirement; keyword process = cluster keywords first, use KGR (intitle) to sort by easiest. Mentions Garrett Altcock's TSD (subdomain) network: a New York personal-injury attorney site with about 1,000 subdomains. Brian William buys e-com domains and makes a subdomain per product / category to ease ranking.

Ted Ives (panel)

• Core SEO software author; his tool is referred to phonetically as "Quora" / "Quora Lite" (almost certainly Cora / Cora Lite). Cora Lite = on-page factors, HTML report with brandable header/footer; full Cora = a large HTML "keyword content report" with about 30 to 40 tabs including a keyword-variation generator.
• "Ranking probability": searching the same query about 10 times in a minute with fresh sessions shows the ranking is a range (for example 2 to 7, most common 4), not a static 3. Manage client perception (for example "60% of the time you are a 4, 30% a 2") to avoid getting fired.
• Accelerated time: a test changing the ranked keyword once per second found the page ended up ranking for whatever keyword showed at 20 seconds after document-ready, revealing that Googlebot runs a JavaScript clock about 20x real time.
• Current value: the DOM-snapshot point moved from 20 seconds to 4 seconds after document-ready. JS frameworks pulling content via web services slower than 4 seconds will have that content missed by Google.
• Live proof: topseofactors.com. The title tag has an incrementing counter; searching "top SEO factors" shows the counter value in the indexed result, revealing how long Google waited before snapping the rendered DOM. (The 4-second figure and about-20x clock are Ted's stated current values, worth re-verifying against the site.)
• Headless Chrome: Google is flagging / monitoring headless Chrome in its source code, visible in their JavaScript, present in both Search and Maps. Ask hard questions of your tool providers.
• PageRank is logarithmic: each point up needs about 10x the backlinks of the prior tier at about half the cost. Historical toolbar figures he cites: the floor between PR 7.9 and 8.0 was 12.5 million backlinks; PR 9 about 120 million; built on the very low average quality of a web backlink.
• Big players (Walmart, Apple, Amazon) have "trash" average backlinks because you see the averages. Implication: you need a very good reason to say no to a link; take any link that meets the internet average.
• Most small sites do not have a backlink-quality problem, they just do not have backlinks. Start with referring domains: the smallest, cheapest, safest, fastest number; wins a keyword about 80% of the time on referring domains alone, assuming on-page technical is sound. "Don't send a lot of backlinks to a shitty website."
• Page speed is a "filter, not a factor." On a slow 3G ferry connection into Seattle, rankings looked great (slow heavy sites fell out), then returned to normal on office broadband. Slow pages appear in fewer searches but rankings do not move when they appear. Tell clients you will see it in traffic, not rankings.
• Core Web Vitals test: Ted ran about a thousand keywords by 100 results each and found no correlation between any Core Web Vitals component and rankings except page weight. Mobile gets fewer impressions from a slow site; desktop stays the same; same pattern in maps. Local traffic is about 80% mobile.
• "Canaries in the coal mine": a test site that tracks things that should not rank but do, watched over time (Kyle Roof lorem-ipsum and rhinoplasty-Plano pages; schema-only pages; very slow heavy pages ranking #1 and #2). If Google ever fixes a category, the tracker shows the drop. The site is currently broken and needs updating.
• Crawl / indexing diagnostics: if indexed pages in Search Console far exceed the real page count, Google found an infinite loop and quits. If server response time degrades under fast crawling, Google quits to avoid harm. Trust Glass over the GSC crawl report.

Brian William (panel, e-commerce)

• E-com needle-movers: merchant-center feeds and schema are critically vital; image SEO on product images (stop neglecting it); supplemental content (most e-com sites have no strategy here).
• Supplemental content = programmatic horizontal SEO. Example: a templatized "100 things to consider when caring for a sterling silver amethyst bracelet" care list, swapping the category term (for example 24-karat ruby earrings) to SEO all jewelry pages at once.
• "Names of things" audit (first, easiest e-com SEO; delivers value while learning the business): replace zero-targeting category names. "Bestsellers" gives untargeted traffic, so use "best-selling pearls" / "most popular pearls"; "New arrivals" becomes "new pearls." Fix artistic product names ("Majestic Sunset Snuffler" becomes "orange silk scarf"); nobody searches the artistic name.
• Conjoined categories are banned (for example "Socks and Shoes"): zero search volume and a usability failure, where a socks shopper pages through shoes and bails to site search.
• Faceted-navigation crawl trap = free lead source. Search a parameter plus a product (for example "Puppy Coffee Mug") in Google to find sites indexing pages they should not; this is an infinite crawl that slows updates and indexing. Fix: the faceted-nav / add-to-cart links are A tags Googlebot crawls; turn them into buttons with an onclick event.
• AI buy-flow schema: a new feature where schema tells the agent this is the form to fill out, where to set quantities, and how to push the buy button, so an AI shopper can be recommended and buy a specific product. Helps fix the search-parameter bug.
• Internal linking beats external for e-com speed: external link value takes about 3 weeks to register; internal linking shows adjustments quickly. Link building is still worthwhile but slow (crawl budget).

Panel: crawl-rate / indexing diagnostics (multi-speaker)

• Why one same-size (about 200-page) local site indexes within an afternoon and another takes days: publishing pace / change volume. Frequent changes keep Google coming back; stop publishing and crawl rate throttles down. Magic number cited: about 2 posts per week to keep fast indexing.
• "Brisket effect" analogy (Clint): a smoked brisket stalls 4 to 5 hours; turn up the heat (add supportive content) to break the stall; stagnant sites flat-line, so avoid stagnation.
• Ted's technical causes: infinite loop (indexed pages far exceeding real page count), slow server response under crawl. Distrust the GSC crawl report; use Glass.
• Bad navigation can throttle crawl (fixing nav improved crawl). A jewelry store with 15 language folders was not fully crawled in a month; splitting into one domain per language got the whole thing crawled in 24 to 48 hours.

Terry Samuels (event + affiliate announcements)

• Next year is the eighth event; the price has not been raised in three years and is being lowered, with one VIP ticket level under two grand for the whole week and a QR code in the app for the pre-sale.
• If Terry asks you to speak next year after you buy, he refunds the ticket.
• Plat Pay affiliate: a QR code (file named 5857.png, unlabeled in the app) was uploaded by Lynn and links to a Plat Pay landing page owned by Jed Morley; attendees sign up as affiliates and earn by signing up their clients.

Unnamed participant (on-page push ads recap)

• Praised "Dan's training" on creating on-page push advertisements from generated news articles "hacked into the Google News Network." Value: implementable right at the start of a client engagement to get phones ringing fast, before ad verification and page-building complete. The participant's name and the presenter's full name are not given in the source.

Note on speaker names: the e-com speaker is labeled "Brian William"; Clint also refers to the same person as "Brian Williams" and "Brian Whitham" within the recap, and the transcript spelling is inconsistent. The Plat Pay affiliate page is Jed Morley's, announced during the wrap-up by Terry Samuels and Lynn. Ted Ives's tool name is transcribed phonetically as "Quora" and is almost certainly Cora. Self-reported revenue figures and the 7-11-4 rule are Clint's claims, not independently verified.

Source

Synthesized from the SEO ST Day 2 conference recording of the Day 2 wrap-up and link-building / e-commerce panel (transcript: SEO ST Day 2 Wrap UP-full.txt). No deck accompanied this session. Phonetically transcribed names and tools, and self-reported figures, are marked as unverified above.