Karl Kangur: The Man Behind SEO Estonia & Chiang Mai SEO on the Future of Search

Welcome to Market Movers: Building Brands & Links with Linkifi! Your go-to podcast for transforming your business into an unforgettable brand where branding meets SEO and link-building. I’m Chris Panteli, Co-Founder & CEO of Linkifi, and I’m joined by my co-host and Co-Founder, Nick Biggs.

In this episode we welcome Karl Kangur — entrepreneur, affiliate operator, Director of Marketing at Smash Digital, and co-organizer of SEO Estonia and Chiang Mai SEO. Karl’s been in the trenches for 16 years (started at 12), built and exited authority sites, and now blends AI-era SEO, editorial link building, and conference-driven deal flow.

 

Key Talking Points

✅ Conferences > Talks — The content is valuable, but the real ROI is networking; shorter 20-min talks, more structured connection time ✅ AI-Era SEO — Understand how LLMs work (training data vs. live search), then optimize for both: training corpora and Bing/Google sources ✅ Poisoning (Legally) the Well — Get in Common Crawl, saturate the web with consistent answers/brand associations, and seed consensus ✅ AIO vs. LLMs — Google AI Overviews pull from Google; ChatGPT leans on training data + Bing; Perplexity often mirrors Google more ✅ Links Still Rule — On-page and content are finite games; links are the scalable tiebreaker—focus on powerful editorial links ✅ Power > Pixel-Perfect Relevance — DR 70+ editorial placements beat DR 30 niche posts; create contextual relevance with credible examples ✅ Outbound Penalties Are the Quiet Killer — “Sell-a-link” sites lose trust (links stop counting), so profiles crumble on spam updates ✅ Track Reality, Not Vanity — LLM visibility is messy; watch direct traffic, sales calls, and “How did you hear about us?” notes

 

Quotes from Karl Kangur

📢 “We’re not married to tactics—we’re hackers of algorithms. AI just gave us a new playground.” 📢 “If Google’s fought spam for 30 years and still misses, imagine how early LLMs are.” 📢 “A DR 70 editorial link can beat ten ‘relevant’ DR 30s. Power is the tiebreaker.” 📢 “Conferences changed my life—one conversation can be a six-figure swing.” 📢 “AI is a language model—feed it the language you want it to repeat.”

 

Actionable Insights

 

🤖 LLM Visibility (What to Do Now)

• Train the model: Ensure your brand/pages are crawled by Common Crawl; publish consistent, repeated statements you want LLMs to parrot.
• Own the sources: Place listicles/citations on high-authority sites that Bing/Google commonly surface—stack multiple aligned sources.
• Write AI-readable answers: Restate the query and answer directly in the first sentence; layer E-E-A-T proof immediately after.

 

🔗 Links That Still Move Needles

• Prioritize editorial links on DR 70–90 publications; create relevance via use-cases, examples, and data (not just exact-match niches).
• Expect “buy-a-link” domains to degrade over time via unnatural outbound link penalties—don’t anchor your profile to them.
• Fill the real bottleneck: often it’s authority, not micro-relevance or anchors.

 

📈 Measure What Matters

• LLM rankings vary by session & persona; use manual spot checks for directional insight, but report on direct traffic, booked calls, and revenue.
• Bake in sales-op questions (“Which tool did you use to research us? ChatGPT? Perplexity? Google?”) and log this consistently.

 

🎤 Conference Strategy (How to Win the Room)

• Treat talks as icebreakers; the deal flow is in the bars & hallways.
• You’re not the only introvert—open with simple prompts (“What are you building? What’s working?”).
• Pro tip for Chiang Mai: mornings have meetups; evenings have secrets—pace yourself (yes, there are ginger shots, IV drips, espresso martinis).

 

Karl’s Playbook Highlights

• AI Optimization: Seed training data (Common Crawl), then target the sources LLMs cite (Bing/Google top pages) with aligned listicles and citations.
• Editorial Link Building: Place clients as examples in CRO/marketing pieces on big pubs (e.g., “best testimonial layout” → brand mention + link + context).
• All-Channel Wins: One placement can be LLM-cited, rank on Google, pass authority, and drive referral traffic—optimize for overlap.

 

About Karl Kangur

Karl Kangur is an entrepreneur, affiliate operator, and Director of Marketing at Smash Digital. He co-runs SEO Estonia and Chiang Mai SEO, and focuses on AI-era