Welcome back to Market Movers: Building Brands and Links with Linkifi —the go-to show for turning organic visibility into real business growth. Hosted by Nick Biggs and Chris Panteli.
Today’s guest is Edd Dawson, veteran SEO, affiliate marketer, and creator of KeywordsPeopleUse.com. Edd built and sold the massively successful broadband.co.uk website—a site that went from dial-up days to dominating UK broadband search—using tools, data, and organic-only SEO. He’s also the voice behind the SEO is Not That Hard podcast.
We dive deep into affiliate strategy, algorithm hits (and recoveries), and where SEO still thrives in an AI-shaped internet.
Key Talking Points:
🛠️ The Broadband.co.uk Origin Story How an accidental domain acquisition turned into a multi-million pound exit—and why his wife deserves credit for the price comparison idea.
📉 Penguin, Panda & the Great Drop-Off Edd shares how they lost 80% of traffic overnight, the backlink sins that caused it, and the exact process he followed to recover and come back stronger.
💼 Building vs Finishing: Why Edd Launches Many Sites He breaks down his 20–30% success rate, the value of programmatic SEO, and why the affiliate model still works if your tool or content is hard to replicate.
🧠 Data-Driven Differentiation The real reason broadband.co.uk thrived: postcode-specific tools, proprietary data, and value-first aggregation. Not just "top 10 lists."
📊 KeywordsPeopleUse.com & Strategic Content Planning How customer search queries don’t just inform content—they help shape actual product and business strategy.
🧠 AI, Agents & What’s Next Why Ed’s team is building tools you can’t replicate without AI—and why he’s staying away from bolt-on solutions. Think: plumbers and florists using AI without even realizing it.
🔍 The Future of Google & Search Spoiler: Edd doesn’t think Google is going anywhere soon. Expect slower change than hype suggests, especially with local data and user inertia.
Quotes from Edd Dawson:
“We got hit by Penguin and went from ranking #1 to #939 for ‘broadband’… It was devastating.”
“After recovery, we didn’t just come back—we had 5x the traffic we had before.”
“If you build tools or content that can’t be replicated by a language model, you’ll always have an edge.”
“AI overviews will kill basic blog content, but not useful aggregators. You’ve got to give people something that’s hard to replicate.”
“SEO still works. You just have to be the end destination—not something an LLM can summarize.”
Takeaways & Strategy Highlights:
✅ Affiliate is not dead—bad affiliate is. High-value tools and original data still drive revenue. Build for intent and usefulness.
✅ Tools beat templates. From postcode broadband availability to speed tests, Ed’s model proves that functional tools convert better than static content.
✅ Recovery is possible (but painful). Backlink clean-up, content revamps, and expert help from people like Carl Hendy are what got broadband.co.uk back in business.
✅ Use AI—but don’t bolt it on blindly. Ed’s team is exploring AI-native products that can scale, not just gimmicks to ride the wave.
✅ Search isn’t dead, it’s evolving. Expect a hybrid future. Google, LLMs, and user trust all still matter. Local data and service-based businesses won’t vanish anytime soon.
About Edd Dawson:
Edd Dawson is a 20+ year SEO veteran and successful affiliate entrepreneur. He built and exited broadband.co.uk and now runs KeywordsPeopleUse.com, a content strategy and market research tool based on real search queries. He also hosts the podcast SEO is Not That Hard, where he breaks down actionable SEO tips in 10-minute episodes.
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