Brian Dean: the Owner of the Marketing Blog Backlinko - Natural Links

It’s hard to find a person in the online marketing space who has never heard of Brian Dean. As a serial entrepreneur and founder of the popular marketing blog Backlinko, Brian Dean is the SEO expert everyone looks up to. He has built his career on being a knowledge-centric and fact-based advisor in terms of SEO and online marketing.

Recently, he analyzed 11.8 million Google searches to gain more insights about SEO. The level of dedication and the attention to detail in his SEO strategies showcase his top-notch expertise. That’s the reason millions of readers have latched onto his website and YouTube channel to educate themselves about SEO. It’s been over a decade that Brian Dean has been active in the online marketing industry, and his impact on the SEO community is invaluable.

In this article, we will share Brian Dean’s journey, his blog’s story, and his contribution towards SEO on a global level.

Who Is Brian Dean?

Before taking over the online marketing space, Brian earned an undergraduate degree in nutrition from the University of Rhode Island and later a master’s degree in nutrition from Tufts University. He was so enamored with medicine, that he never thought he would do anything else. He enrolled in Purdue University’s Ph.D. program to become a college professor.

But life often brings unplanned lessons, and so it did for Brian. In 2008, he quit his doctoral studies with a new goal of working as a dietitian. Courtesy of the year’s financial crisis, Brian struggled to find a job. Instead, he worked on gathering information for a product and guide related to healthcare.

While cultivating an informative e-book, Brian worked as a freelance writer. Suddenly, he was generating around 12 articles each day. But life played its cards again. He was fired from his gig, which allowed him the outlet he needed to build his brand and start an online business.

Today, he is best known for his popular blog, Backlinko, which is dedicated to SEO and digital marketing topics.

Throughout his career, Brian Dean has accomplished so much that his work now never goes unnoticed:

According to his LinkedIn profile, Brian Dean has been called an “SEO genius” by Entrepreneur.com and a “brilliant entrepreneur” by Inc Magazine.
His blog, Backlinko, was listed by Forbes as one of the Top 100 Best Blogs to Follow in 2017.
Backlinko generates close to 300k website visitors every month and accounts for a seven-figure online business.
Apart from the blog, his YouTube channel has 350k+ subscribers, and his Twitter account has more than 100k followers.

The Backlinko Blog by Brian Dean

All the success Brian Dean enjoys today came at a cost. In the beginning, it took him five failed online businesses before launching Backlinko in 2012.

The idea of creating this blog was to give actionable advice on SEO.

In 2011, with the release of Google’s Panda update, websites were penalized for being low-quality or thin “content farms,” resulting in dips to their traffic stats.

Panda harmed several websites managed by Brian, as well, leading him to again seek a new job. He began writing articles related to Google updates and online marketing, and that’s how Backlinko was launched.

Today, Backlinko is the preferred home for digital marketers to get advice regarding tips, strategies, and techniques to earn higher Google rankings.

Here are some interesting stats about Backlinko from SimilarWeb’s analysis and other sources:

Direct and search traffic account for 90% of the overall traffic on Backlinko.
The top keywords that generate the most organic traffic for Backlinko are its branded keywords (e.g., “backlinko,” “brian dean,” etc.)
Backlinko’s rank is among the top 100 in the category of Business and Consumer Services.
More than 170k people have signed up for its weekly newsletter.
The average post length on Backlinko is around 3000 words.

Brian Dean’s Contribution to the SEO Community

Three major sources through which Brian Dean shares his knowledge and contributes to the SEO community are:

Most of the SEO advice Brian shares is either definitive guides or some practical steps to achieve better rankings. He focuses on getting more traffic, leads, and sales for your online business.

Here we want to share some interesting facts about Brian Dean and his contribution to the SEO community.

1. Brian Dean Doesn’t Do Any Consulting. Why?

Personally, Brian has never believed in consulting and working for clients. In his various interviews, we can see him clearly expressing his thoughts on a consulting business. He is sure that working for multiple clients is not a scalable business model. Many popular digital marketers, like Neil Patel, own consulting businesses.

But Brian seems to stand out from them. His only aim is to help people with proper and actionable SEO strategies.

Through Backlinko, Brian has been able to spread his words to thousands, if not millions, of aspiring marketers. He seems to believe in online courses, and this shows up in the SimilarWeb analysis of Backlinko, where websites like Coursera and Udemy are its top referring sites.

2. Brian Dean’s SEO Course: SEO That Works 4.0

Brian Dean offers an SEO course on his website that has helped over 4000 students and is trusted by veteran industry experts like HubSpot, ClickFunnels, Unilever, and so on.

The course gets updated regularly and is exclusive to members.

It’s quite expensive, but there are heaps of positive testimonials indicating that it’s worth the price and suitable for any beginner or expert-level marketer.

As a simple overview, here’s what this course covers:

How to do keyword research in the right way.
How to optimize your content to rank on the first page and engage your readers.
How to build backlinks using the most successful strategies to get links from authoritative sites.
How to get better and faster rankings using advanced methods like utilizing Google’s UX signals and other insider tricks.

Currently, this course is not live, but you can join the waiting list to get early access.

3. Author for Multiple Websites and Participant in Reddit’s AMA Series

Today, it’s easier than ever for experts to share their advice using various channels, like podcasts and social media.

But back in 2014, this wasn’t the case. Experts either needed to be interviewed by major publications or get their work published on those platforms.

Thanks to his expertise and connections, it was not so hard for Brian to become an author for high-authority sites like SEMrush, Moz, and Entrepreneur. He began to publish some articles on bigger SEO-oriented sites and shared his advice on SEO.

In 2014, Brian Dean started his own YouTube career, and in that same year, he participated in a series called Reddit SEO AMAs (Ask Me Anything).

Here, Reddit users would ask questions to be answered by these experts.

Brian Dean’s replies made it into the list of the best advice from a mega-collection of SEO expert advice.

Useful Articles, Guides, and Videos from Brian Dean

To be a better marketer, you can’t ignore the advice shared by Brian Dean. Here are some of his best guides and videos.

Conclusion

The journey of Brian Dean and his impact on the SEO community is praiseworthy and indispensable.

Experts like him shed light on newer SEO strategies and share a path for better rankings on Google.

At Natural Links, we admire and preach what other industry SEO experts like Brian Dean teach us.

We take care of the whole process, from building authoritative backlinks to getting ranked on Google.