"Be shameless. Distribute all the time. Amplify all the time."

Ross Simmonds is an SEO expert who has worked with the likes of Moz, Canva, and Mailchimp. He’s also an entrepreneur doing millions in revenue across multiple brands, including an AI product (distribution.ai). And he’s literally writing the book on distribution: “Create Once. Distribute Forever.”

I caught up with him to learn about SEO and distribution. He also shared some choice words about work-life balance. 👇

SEO still matters for indie hackers

James: You’re known as an expert in SEO and content marketing. Is SEO really worth it for indie hackers?

Ross: Yeah, I believe it is, as long as you have product-market fit.

James: What are the lowest-investment, highest-return SEO tactics?

Ross: I have a philosophy around what I call “SEO money pages”.

James: I’m all ears.

Ross: For indie hackers, money pages consist of:

• Alternative pages

• Comparison pages

• Migration pages

• Feature pages

• Solution pages

Those pages tend to be the highest-ROI assets on SaaS websites.

Alternative pages

James: Let’s dive into them.

Ross: If you are selling software, you should have a series of alternative pages where you showcase yourself and others as alternatives to your competitors.

So let's say I’m Zapier. I'm going to have a blog post that's called “Alternatives to IFTTT”.

Comparison pages

James: Pretty standard, and for a reason. Comparison pages?

Ross: These are “Zapier versus IFTTT” post.

I would even compare two of my competitors with my comparison pages because that’s going to give you somebody who is unaware that your product exists. They want your competitor's solution, but they don't know that you exist and they're comparing it to another competitor.vIn the copy on your page, you can talk about yourself. And you can run remarketing ads to people who land there.

Migration pages

James: Migration pages?

Ross: These go a little bit more enterprise, but if you're targeting people who need to migrate from a big solution to your solution, having a migration page can be a very valuable asset.

Feature pages

James: Makes sense. Feature pages?

Ross: These highlight in-demand features.

Solution pages

James: And finally, solutions pages?

Ross: These highlight the business outcomes and solutions that your customers are seeking.

Making the most of money pages

James: Any tips on how to get the most out of these money pages?

Ross:

• Use them for traffic acquisition but also run remarketing ads against the people who visit these pages.

• Create a lead magnet that can be a softer touch point on these pages if the reader doesn’t book a demo or buy.

• Include video content on the page describing the story and host it on YouTube with the same page title.

• Include these pages in the footer of your website.

• Optimize old blog content to link to these pages when appropriate.

• Embrace internal linking across this collection of landing pages and use a pillar asset to link out to each.

Other tactics

James: Any other important SEO tactics for indie hackers?

Ross: Get backlinks. Links are what Google uses to understand what's going on on the web.

James: Where do you start?

Ross: I would start to find friends in the industry who I could write blog posts for. And in those blog posts, link back to my own content.

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Competing with AI content

James: What is the state of SEO right now in regard to AI-generated content?

Ross: The state of SEO today is absolute chaos, but it also presents a fascinating opportunity.

With the rise of AI-generated content, there's going to be a differentiation between those who create content with AI, copy, paste, and press publish, and those who review the content that is facilitated by AI and elevate it to a standard that SERPs want.

James: We’ve already covered some high-leverage tactics, but what are your tips for staying on top in this chaotic, AI-filled SEO environment?

Ross: You want to aspire to the level of content that Google will actually be okay showing.

Constantly have an optimization function, meaning you’re going to constantly be updating your piece with new graphics, new visuals, new references to data and stats, etc.

The secondary piece to that is you need to optimize your content to demonstrate what Google calls EEAT: Expertise, experience, authority, and trust.

James: How do you optimize for EEAT?

Ross: You need an author page.

James: Is that what it sounds like?

Ross: If you’re on a blog post, you see that it's written by Ross Simmonds, and you click on the name, that’s the author page.

It’s focused on Ross Simmonds. It links to my social channels, talks about my university, my degree, my education, my accolades, some of the things that I've done, some of the companies that I've worked with. All of those things demonstrate further trust and authority.

Google uses that to indicate whether or not the person who wrote the piece is actually trustworthy. And it uses that to inform whether or not the content will show up in the search.

James: Let’s circle back to AI. You seem unperturbed by AI-generated content.

Ross: I think it's fine. But it needs to be really good. You’re up against whatever you’re seeing, so you have to create content that is better than that.

Leverage AI to create some content, then polish it into highly valuable blog posts.

James: Is AI more helpful for some types of content than others?

Ross: You can create those money pages much more efficiently at scale with AI. You can even unlock insights about competitors that you might not have known.

James: That’s a solid use case.

Ross: And by the way, if you are winning on SEO through AI, don't go to the internet and start talking about it. Don't go tagging Google and saying you’ve just stolen a bunch of traffic from your competitors.

Be like the “G” in lasagna and just win in silence.

If Google finds out that you're just using AI to create a bunch of content and you somehow were able to rank and shine in the SERP, they're probably going to give you a penalty.

Content arbitrage (and shoutouts)

James: Talk to me about content distribution.

Ross: Most indie hackers don't have a ton of followers or a big network. That's where I started too. I didn't have anybody who followed me on social, but I needed to get my story out there.

James: So what did you do?

Ross: I went through a channel called Inbound.org because I wanted to connect with marketers. I needed to spread my story there.

You can do the same thing. There are subreddits that exist in your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Go there and share your content.

James: Just like that?

Ross: You have to understand the ways in which the people within these different communities operate. The way that they communicate. And submit content in that format.

If I'm trying to connect with a certain subreddit that doesn’t allow link posts, but they do allow long-form content, I'm going to take a blog post that I would have written on my website and I'm going to write it in a way that people on reddit will love. I'm going to write it in a way that says that I’m a long-time fan of the subreddit, and that today’s the day I decided to give back.

Within the post, I would plug my product in a natural way and make a joke inside of it. "Shameless plug, but I think it’s valuable, blah blah blah."

Boom. That's distribution.

James: No following necessary.

Ross: Distribution isn't just through your following. It's arbitrage opportunities as well. Where you can arbitrage the existing networks of other people by going in and distributing your content into channels where your ICP is spending time.

You can also do it on social. When somebody has a viral thread, you respond back and you just have a conversation.

You’re in the comments. You’re engaging in dialogue. You’re providing value. Eventually, if you show up over and over again, you're going to reach thousands of people who are following somebody else.

James: Any good tactics for this type of "arbitrage", other than engaging in the comments?

Ross: In the early days of Hustle and Grind, a coffee subscription service that I sunsetted due to excessive shipping rates (thanks, Canada), we designed a graphic that generated crickets for months.

Then it grew our Instagram account from 5,000 followers to 110,000 followers.

James: What changed?

Ross: It was shared by someone with a large following. That influencer got us from 5,000 to 6,000. Then I started to invest in getting other influencers to share the content.

James: How?

Ross: I created a “shoutout for shoutout” spreadsheet and reached out to a bunch of influencers. I said, “You shout me out, I'll shout you out, and we'll all just go back and forth exchanging these shoutouts and growing together.”

James: And they went for it.

Ross: Yep, on Mondays one account gave me a shoutout, on Tuesdays another account, etc., and we just rotated for weeks giving each other shoutouts.

James: Not bad.

Ross: Distribution is key. You can create something that is ridiculously valuable, something that a lot of people would find interesting, insightful, and worth consuming or buying, but if it doesn't reach those people, you are limiting your growth and your opportunity at large.

Work-life integration

James: You’re doing a lot with all the businesses you’re running and launching. How do you maintain focus and get things done?

Ross: I don’t think focus is very important. I often have a lot of different projects on the go, and a lot of different things that capture my attention.

It allows me to get joy out of my work every single day. I get a lot of excitement and energy from waking up to the rush and thrill of doing different things.

But there is this idea in the back of my mind that with focus comes better results and better ROI.

James: How do you find work-life balance?

Ross: I don't believe in work-life balance. I believe it is a fictitious concept. Something that is not actually worth striving for.

James: How so?

Ross: If you look at anything in life that is worth doing, it's going to throw you off balance in your life. And striving for a perfect 50-50 balance is going to lead to mediocrity across all areas of your life rather than excellence in one area.

So I believe in work-life integration and, at the end of the day, just doing your best.

James: What's work-life integration?

Ross: It’s an acceptance of the fact that it's not always going to be 50-50. Sometimes I'll have to give 99% to my work. Sometimes I'll have to give 88% to my family, friends, spouse, whatever it may be.

Be easy on yourself when you don't get it perfectly right and ignore the gurus online who tell you that everything needs to be 50-50.

James: So how do you integrate work and life, as opposed to balancing them?

Ross: You figure out your goals, your aspirations, and how you want to succeed. And then you set up your work and your personal life in a way that allows that to happen.

You integrate your life and your work in whatever way is optimal for you and the people you love. And you do no harm along the way.

That's it. That's what work-life integration is to me.

James: How much do you work per week?

Ross: I do seven-day weeks. I'm working every day. At five, I unplug from my computer, but that's not the end of my work day.

That's the beginning of a moment in my day where I'm in full dad mode and husband mode. Then, most days, I start to work again at 9:30 or 10 until about 11:30.

James: How do you avoid burnout?

Ross: I work out. Yoga was my go-to for many years. I'm big into running now.

Just focus on your fitness and find escapes that are away from a keyboard and blue light.

Outside, that’s key. Find a way to get outside.

Be shameless

James: For sure. Any parting words?

Ross: Be shameless. Promote all the time, create all the time, distribute all the time, amplify all the time.

Don't overthink it. If you've got an idea, share it.

James: You can find Ross on X, subscribe to his marketing newsletter, or check out Foundation and distribution.ai.

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