Kevin Urrutia & Magic Rinku's Internal Linking SaaS

Guest Bio

Kevin Urrutia is a software engineer turned serial entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience building tech products. He's worked at Silicon Valley companies including Mint.com and Zaarly, and founded Voy Media, a digital marketing agency that has generated over $50 million in revenue. His latest venture, Magic Rinku, tackles one of SEO's most persistent challenges: automating internal link building at scale.

Connect with Kevin:

• Email: [email protected]
• Twitter: @danest
• Website: Magic Rinku

Episode Summary

In this unscripted conversation, Kevin shares the journey of building Magic Rinku from personal frustration to SaaS solution. We dive deep into the technical challenges of WordPress integration, the strategic use of AI versus traditional algorithms, and unconventional marketing approaches that are actually working in 2025.

Kevin reveals how he discovered 350 out of 400 articles on his own site had zero internal links, the technical nightmare of supporting multiple WordPress page builders, and why cold email and Reddit still outperform traditional SaaS marketing for developer tools.

Key Topics Covered

The Genesis Story

• How Kevin's personal pain with internal linking across 8-10 affiliate sites led to Magic Rinku
• The validation process through Reddit and direct customer conversations
• Why most SEO professionals are missing huge linking opportunities due to broken manual processes

Technical Deep Dive

• WordPress ecosystem challenges: Supporting Elementor, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg, and Classic Editor
• The 30-second delay problem and why bulk operations are complex in WordPress
• Database structure differences across page builders and how they affect plugin development
• Error handling and retry systems for WordPress API integration

AI Implementation Philosophy

• Strategic use of AI vs. traditional algorithms (RAKE, ENG tagger)
• Two specific AI use cases: contextual understanding and smart sentence generation
• Why 30% of AI suggestions are perfect, 50% need tweaking, and 20% are unusable
• The explainability problem and showing confidence scores to users

Advanced SEO Features

• Silo construction from both technical and strategic perspectives
• Tree rebalancing algorithms for hierarchical site structures
• Why circular silos were pulled from production despite working code
• The decision framework for shipping features vs. keeping them in development

Unconventional Marketing Strategy

• Cold email targeting WordPress agencies 
• Reddit as a B2B channel for finding people actively complaining about the problem
• Why traditional SaaS marketing (content, paid ads) doesn't work for unknown problem categories
• The two-email rule and why persistence beyond that is counterproductive

Company Philosophy

• Intentionally staying at 2-3 person team size
• Lifestyle business approach vs. venture scale ambitions
• The hiring challenge: finding people who understand both WordPress and SEO
• Using contractors vs. full-time employees at current scale

Quotable Moments

"Even for someone like me who knows SEO, who's been doing this for years, I had this massive blind spot. When I ran my prototype, it found 350 articles with zero internal links out of 400 total articles."

"Our biggest competitor is Excel spreadsheets and manual processes. There are other tools, but most are part of $200-500/month SEO suites. We do one thing really well."

"My rule is pretty simple - use AI for problems that require understanding context and nuance, use traditional algorithms for problems that have clear mathematical solutions."

"The freedom is the best part of being a founder, but also the worst part because you have infinite options every day."

"If a feature works for 80% of use cases and doesn't break anything, I ship it. I can iterate based on real user feedback rather than trying to anticipate every edge case."

Resources Mentioned

Tools & Platforms

• Magic Rinku - AI-powered internal link building
• WordPress page builders: Elementor, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg, Divi
• Convert SEO - for finding WordPress agencies
• Screaming Frog - SEO crawling tool
• Ahrefs - SEO platform mentioned for potential integration

Books & Learning Resources

• "The Mom Test" by Rob Fitzpatrick - customer development
• SEO blogs and communities for understanding user problems
• Reddit communities for market research and validation

Marketing Channels

• Cold email outreach to WordPress agencies
• Reddit for finding users with the specific problem
• Word of mouth within the SEO community
• Organic search for "WordPress internal linking plugin"

Key Takeaways for SaaS Founders

Product Development

1. Build something you actually use daily - Customer development is easier when you are the customer
2. Ship at 80% completeness - Iterate based on real feedback rather than anticipating edge cases
3. Use AI strategically - Apply it for context/nuance problems, traditional algorithms for mathematical solutions
4. WordPress is complex but necessary - 40% market share makes technical challenges worthwhile

Marketing & Sales

1. Go where people complain about problems - Don't wait for them to search for solutions
2. Cold email still works - When targeting the right problem with the right audience
3. Two-email maximum rule - More persistence often backfires
4. Reddit can be B2B - Focus on DMs to people explicitly stating problems

Business Strategy

1. Focus beats feature creep - Most SaaS tools fail from doing too much, not too little
2. Lifestyle business is valid - Don't scale into a job you hate
3. Small teams move faster - Less meeting overhead, closer to customers

Technical Decisions

1. Platform integration vs. standalone - User experience often trumps technical simplicity
2. Error handling is crucial - WordPress ecosystem requires robust retry systems
3. Multiple complexity levels - Serve both power users and beginners in the same tool
4. Documentation for key person risk - Critical when running lean teams