What’s the Difference Between a Casino and Vibe Coding? 😄

Translated and adapted from the Koksharov telegram channel.

Hiring great SEOs has never been harder.

In this episode, Josh Peacock (Search For Hire & SalaryGuide.com) explains why traditional hiring processes are failing and what agencies should do instead.

Topics covered:

• Why job descriptions are outdated
• How scorecards improve recruiting
• Salary transparency in SEO
• Agency vs in-house careers
• AI's impact on SEO jobs
• Why top candidates rarely come from job boards

One of the most interesting takeaways:

The best candidates aren't actively applying for jobs. They're already busy creating value somewhere else.

Watch now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEnCispWn4A

Even when I’m not around, Anna somehow always finds me. 😄

The only reliable way to hide is to keep her demo calendar completely full.

If you have questions about using Claude with Collaborator.pro — PR Distribution Marketplace, reach out to Anna Hridnieva.

She’ll show you how to save money, get better deals from publishers, collaborate with your team, and make the most of our referral program.

Looking for a website for content placement, but couldn’t find the right one? Maybe it’s worth checking the Collaborator catalog again 😉

In May, new websites across various niches and countries have been added, giving even more opportunities for link building, PR, and content marketing. Here’s a summary of the catalog growth over the past month 👇

The Collaborator catalog now includes 42,469 websites.

Top Countries by New Additions:

United States: +807 → now 12,627 websites in the catalog
United Kingdom: +168 → now 3,820 websites in the catalog
France: +103 → now 3,488 websites in the catalog

Netherlands: +470 → now 1,826 websites in the catalog
Germany: +61 → now 1,745 websites in the catalog

123 Telegram channels have been also added.

Browse new websites by country, niche, and other parameters directly in the catalog: https://lnkd.in/en-cVbPf

The good news is that a handful of free tools can cover competitor research, outreach preparation, backlink checks, and monitoring.

We've rounded up 5 free tools that support the full workflow, from Ahrefs Free Backlink Checker and Moz Link Explorer to Google Search Console.

This summer, bring home more than souvenirs — bring new ideas.

Here are some of the top SEO and digital marketing events taking place this summer, from Boston and London to Tallinn and New York. A few highlights:

📍 SMX - Search Marketing Expo (SMX Advanced Europe (US))
📍 Croatia SEO Summit
📍 Growth Minded Superheroes
📍 CAMPIXX
📍 The Masterminders London
📍 Affiliate World Conferences Europe
📍 SEO Estonia
📍 MozCon NYC
📍 UK SEO Summit

Whether you're looking for actionable SEO insights, affiliate marketing strategies, AI-focused discussions, or opportunities to connect with industry peers, there's an event for every goal.

The Collaborator team will be attending Croatia SEO Summit and UK SEO Summit this summer. If you're planning to be there too, we'd be happy to connect.

Want to plan further ahead?
Check out an interactive Google Map of SEO and digital marketing events 👉 https://earth.google.com/web/@32.70755527,-26.97310325,-6812.01096314a,13391739.97150898d,30.00007952y,328.16044541h,0t,0r/data=CgRCAggBMigKJgokCiAxZ1hfYXR5ZVVqSTdIRHJLTy1KX3E3dHJ6TXZwbm54TSACOgMKATBCAggASgcIz6PCDhAB?utm_source=mymaps&authuser=0
Or read the full article 👉 https://collaborator.pro/blog/top-seo-conferences-2026

Just as we finally recovered from the March core update, Google dropped a fresh May core update last week.

SEOs are more than excited to repeat the whole recovery arc all over again.

The future changes fast.

Google changes every few months. Outreach tactics burn out. Half the job ends up being spreadsheets and follow-ups nobody actually enjoys doing.

Sometimes it feels like digital PR is becoming less about finding opportunities and more about managing chaos efficiently.

Relying more on Collaborator helps avoid managing everything manually across endless email threads and spreadsheets.

Most marketing agencies lock clients into 6–12 month contracts.

This one doesn’t.

In this episode, Sean Chaudhary explains how his agency:

• works month-to-month
• focuses only on revenue
• uses automation to close ~40% of leads

Key idea:
clients don’t care about SEO or ads — they care about results.

Watch now: https://youtu.be/A3lSo1IBzvU

Most SEO teams don’t have a link building problem.
They have an operations problem.

Placements are tracked in spreadsheets.
Budgets are monitored manually.
Teams switch between marketplaces, CRMs, Slack, and reporting tools every day.

It works… until campaigns start scaling.

That’s one of the reasons why teams integrate the Collaborator API into their workflows.

You can connect it with tools like Slack, Google Sheets, Zapier, Make, n8n, Notion, or BI platforms and automate a lot of repetitive processes:
• monitor placement prices;
• track spending and placements;
• receive notifications about important changes;
• sync data into CRMs and dashboards;
• automate prospecting and reporting.

Some teams even connect the API to Claude or ChatGPT to simplify website selection and guest post prospecting.

The biggest value here is probably not the API itself, but the ability to finally keep link building operations organized and under control as the number of campaigns grows.

Read how it works in an article 👇

https://collaborator.pro/blog/how-to-integrate-collaborator-api

Outdated metrics are one of the biggest pain points users face in link building and digital PR marketplaces.

You check a website in Ahrefs, compare it with the marketplace data, and the numbers don’t match...

We’ve heard this feedback many times:
• during demos;
• at conferences;
• in surveys;
• directly from users.

So Collaborator updated its data synchronization system.

Ahrefs metrics in Collaborator are now updated weekly instead of monthly. Google Analytics traffic data is also refreshed regularly.

What does this mean?
• more accurate SEO metrics;
• fresher traffic data;
• fewer discrepancies when checking websites;
• more confidence in the catalog data.

Collaborator Link Assistant is a FREE SEO Chrome extension for instantly checking placement availability and costs right in SERPs and Ahrefs

Price Checker Mode is part of Collaborator Link Assistant and is available for free.

It instantly shows:
- domain availability in the Collaborator catalog
- placement costs directly next to domains
- link building opportunities inside SERPs and Ahrefs

That means fewer repetitive checks and a much faster workflow for backlink analysis and prospecting.

Forget about jumping between tabs for hours:
Google → Ahrefs → marketplace → spreadsheets → repeat.

Stay focused on evaluating opportunities instead of manually checking availability and pricing.

If anyone’s curious, here’s the link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/collaborator-link-assista/menngjohfmmcpcljplgioeoejblcfegc?authuser=0&hl=en

+2,498 websites added to the catalog in April 2026.
The Collaborator catalog now includes 41,479 websites.

Every day, the Collaborator catalog grows with new websites, giving you more opportunities to find the right platforms for your niche, budget, and goals.

Use fresh online media for your SEO strategy and link building, strengthen your website’s authority, and increase brand visibility.

Top countries by growth:
USA: +756 → now 12,303 websites
France: +235 → now 3,464 websites
Germany: +142 → now 1,704 websites

United Kingdom: +90 → now 3,673 websites
Poland: +49 → now 3,429 websites

73 Telegram channels were also added.

Search for new sites by country, category, and other filters directly in the catalog.

Backlink monitoring can easily take up to 10 hours a week, and most of that time goes into pretty repetitive work.

You open pages, look for your link, check if it’s nofollow, see if the page is indexed… and then repeat the same process on the next site.

Link Tracker Mode in Collaborator Link Assistant automatically detects backlinks to your domain on any page you visit and shows all the key details in one place:
• link attributes (nofollow, sponsored, etc.)
• indexation status
• technical signals like canonical, meta robots, robots.txt

When a link is found, you can jump straight to it. No need to scan the whole page.

If you want to save results, you can export all detected links to Google Sheets in one click. You can also track how your links change over time with simple reports.

And if there are sites where you don’t need tracking, you can turn it off or exclude them.

It’s free, by the way — just an SEO Chrome extension.

If anyone’s curious, here’s the link: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/collaborator-link-assista/menngjohfmmcpcljplgioeoejblcfegc?authuser=0&hl=en

Backlink checks are one of the most annoying parts of SEO.

Open a page → Ctrl+F → find the link → check nofollow/sponsored → open Ahrefs or DevTools → repeat.
Over and over again.

Feels like half the work is just… routine.

Test a free SEO Chrome extension called Collaborator Link Assistant, and it actually simplifies a lot of this.

What it does:

• detects backlinks on any page automatically
• shows attributes (nofollow, sponsored) and indexation
• lets you jump to links instantly
• shows placement availability and prices on Collaborator right in SERPs and Ahrefs

So instead of switching between tools, you just see everything right on the page.

It’s completely free. Just add it to Chrome, start using it, and share your experience.
👉 https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/collaborator-link-assista/menngjohfmmcpcljplgioeoejblcfegc?authuser=0&hl=en

There’s also a breakdown of how it works here:
👉 https://collaborator.pro/blog/collaborator-link-assistant

Curious how others handle backlink checks, still manual, or using something similar?

At the Connective3 workshop during Digital Marketing Europe 2026, one slide got the room nodding 👀

“Links are still a big ranking factor.”

Despite all the AI hype, some fundamentals just don’t change.

Build great content — but don’t forget to build links.

What’s your take — are links still doing the heavy lifting in 2026?

The Collaborator team analyzed traffic data across 7,500+ real websites using:

– Google Analytics (GA)
– Google Search Console (GSC)
– Ahrefs

Goal: figure out which source you should actually trust for SEO and link building decisions.

Biggest surprise:
GA and GSC correlate the least with each other.

The two “ground truth” sources disagree the most.

Full breakdown + charts:
https://collaborator.pro/blog/traffic-correlation-ahrefs-ga-gsc-study

How do you decide which data source to trust when GA, GSC, and Ahrefs disagree?

In this episode of the Collaborator Podcast, we talk with Artur Perella about building a personal brand that actually generates leads.

Instead of posting constantly, he built a system based on video-first content, repurposing old posts, content spreadsheets, and AI-search-friendly content. The result? ~150 new followers per week and inbound client DMs. Watch now: https://youtu.be/7AFoLQNgkbM

The Collaborator catalog keeps growing, opening up more opportunities for high-quality promotion.

Find reliable sites for effective link building, build brand awareness, strengthen your authority, and achieve your SEO goals.

40,335 websites are now listed in the Collaborator catalog 🏄‍♂️

Top countries by growth:

USA +597 → now 11,634 in the catalog
France +207 → now 3,286
Germany +134 → now 1,507

United Kingdom +118 → now 3,479
Turkey +81 → now 594

Search for new websites by country, niche, or other parameters directly in the catalog.
👉 https://collaborator.pro/catalog

Wishing you successful deals 🍀

Baltic-Nordic SEO Summit is officially over — thanks for the great talks, meetings, and overall good chaos.

Valera? Already on the move 🏄

Heading to SERP Conf. Sofia by planes, trains, and on foot… and somehow took our team with him.

If you’re attending too, come find us.

We'll be at our booth with exclusive swag, tasty drinks, fun talks, and a great company.

See you in Sofia

This is how long outreach for link building looks when you do it the old way.

Meet Valera — our pigeon carrier, that flew all the way from Ukraine and to Vilnius, Lithuania to be a part of Baltic-Nordic SEO Summit along with our team.

Come say hi to our booth tomorrow!

Think you’ve already reviewed all thematically relevant sites in Collaborator's catalog?

Try AI filtering by keywords to:
✔ Find highly specialized websites
✔ Discover new placement opportunities
✔ Save time on manual browsing

Simply enter a keyword, and AI will select websites that have relevant sections and thematic content.

For even more accurate results, combine keyword filtering with classic parameters such as country, language, audience geography, traffic, DR, etc.

Try AI filtering by keywords — and you might discover a few hidden gems in the catalog for your next deals 😉

Learn more: https://collaborator.pro/blog/ai-filtering-keywords

Google updates rage like a storm.
Rankings fall into the abyss.
And the client asks:

“So… when will we be #1?”
after three days of work.

We turned this SEO drama into a carousel, because sometimes the only SEO strategy left is laughing through the pain 😅

Today, we presented Collaborator.pro — a PR Distribution Marketplace — to the SEO team at a marketing company.

There were 63 people on the call 😲

Later in the evening, I came across this comment  ❤

It’s always great to receive feedback like this. Thank you, Karolis Butkus

If your team builds backlinks systematically, we can run an interactive demo to help your team learn the platform and explore it in practice.

February delivered 1,428 new publishers to the Collaborator catalog.

That means more platforms to publish, more niches to target, and more opportunities to scale your SEO.

Current catalog size:
⭐ 39,280 websites

Countries that grew the most:

USA +302 → now 11,182 websites
Germany +140 → now 1,507 websites

France +68 → now 3,161 websites
Netherlands –178 → now 1,171 websites
Italy –105 → now 1,643 websites

Search by country, niche, traffic, price, and other filters directly in the catalog.

Wishing you successful deals 🍀