Building Backlinks And PR Authority In AI Search | Kateryna Horina from Collaborator.pro

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By adding Pathmonk to your website in seconds, letting the AI do all the work and increase conversions while you keep doing marketing as usual, check us out on Pathmonk.com. Hey everyone. Welcome back to today’s episode of Pathmonk Presents. Today we’re joined by a special guest today we’re joined by Kateryna. She’s the marketing and partnership manager over at Collaborator.pro Kateryna, welcome through the show.

Kateryna Horina: Hi. Thanks so much for inviting me. Happy to be here.

Rick: Happy to have you Kateryna. And, we finally made this happen. People don’t know this, we took a few times, a few tries to actually get together today. So between illness and holidays and whatnot. So here we are. Glad to have you and I’m excited to get started.

To start, why don’t we maybe talk about the basics a little bit. What’s the big idea behind Collaborator.pro, and if you were explaining it to a friend over coffee, how would you describe what you do?

Kateryna Horina: So basically Collaborator is a PR distribution platform and we connect advertisers and publishers. The way I love to describe it for people, especially who are not into the SEO industry, is we’re basically an Amazon, but for backlinks. So you go on a website, you choose the catalog, and you are able to choose any website that you want your guest post published on.

We have a huge catalog that is growing every day. We hand moderated, we have a lot of SEO tools integrated right away. Some of them are Ahrefs, Similarweb, even Google Search Console and Google Analytics. We are getting the full picture in one place, and that’s pretty much it. That’s straightforward to streamline your backlink building process.

Rick: Okay. So that’s a marketer’s haven in a way, I would say. Are there any certain types of businesses or maybe industries where you feel your product really shines at the moment?

Kateryna Horina: Mostly, I would say it’s for SEO teams, because we have a lot of functionality specifically for agencies and stuff like that. It’s really easy to work with your team all in one place without sharing a password, it’s easy to report and do everything all in one place.

And lately we’ve been seeing a lot of business owners as well, because people are mostly interested in ranking in LLMs. So a lot of people who are not really into SEO as much, they’re using us a lot for PR distribution and to get ranked in ChatGPT and major LLMs. So these are the most common ones.

Rick: Got it. And also there’s a component of being ranked in LLMs that’s a little bit more… there are different things you need to consider. Do you guys help out with that side of things too? Is there an education process or something you do?

Kateryna Horina: We do have a lot of educational stuff. First of all, we have our own blog, which is really active. We also have our own YouTube channel, which has educational videos and also has a podcast. We do a lot of social media, which includes onboarding materials, so a lot of stuff like that where we also go into how to rank in LLMs.

Basically, the way Collaborator helps you to do it is: the more citations you get, the more quality backlinks you get, the more your chances to rank in LLMs. We actually did a case study not so long ago about it—you can check it out on our website as well—which proves backlinks are one of the ways to get ranked in LLMs, in the AI reviews as well.

Rick: That’s sweet. Okay. So you said SEO teams are your ICP, if we want to use marketing lingo. How do most of these people discover you, and are there any marketing channels that have become your go-to for bringing in more of them?

Kateryna Horina: I would say the first one, like the top one, is definitely word of mouth—especially in Ukraine where we originated. Pretty much every SEO in Ukraine knows us already, which is pretty nice. I’ve even seen job postings for SEO-related jobs where Collaborator is mentioned as one of the requirements.

We also have the largest SEO community on Telegram in Ukraine, which definitely helps. And in terms of international growth, we’ve been focused on going international for the last couple years.

The channels that we focus on lately are online and offline events—we sponsor and attend a lot of SEO conferences. This past year we’ve been to Vietnam for SEO Mastery Summit, we went to Brighton recently, we also went to a festival in San Diego, and we sponsor meetups across Europe and some in the US.

Another one would definitely be influencer cooperations. We’ve been doing a lot of those over the last year. So yeah, these are the top three as of now.

Rick: Got it. I imagine influencers would be in there—people connect with people. If someone recommends something, especially an influencer they trust, that carries a lot of weight.

Kateryna Horina: Definitely. Especially lately, people trust influencers more than they trust a paid ad. People trust word of mouth, so definitely agree.

Rick: How much of a role does your website play in pulling in new business? Anything that’s working really well or that you want to improve?

Kateryna Horina: I personally don’t work with our website that much. I assist with some content creation, but I’m mostly focused on content for socials and podcasts. So I can’t go too deep.

But lately I noticed people pay a lot of attention to everything AI related—getting ranked in AI reviews, ChatGPT, and stuff like that. Having content on your website that proves it can help them reach that goal definitely helps. And basic SEO as well.

One of the biggest parts of our website specifically is our catalog. It’s the main thing. Once you go into the catalog and compare it to other backlink marketplaces, you can see it includes much more info and data, it’s functional and easy to use. So if a person goes on the website and checks the catalog, it’s the best selling point for us.

Rick: Sweet. Okay. Good to know. Let’s talk about you for a second. You mentioned tools like Canva and CapCut. On a daily basis, what does your workday look like as a partnership and marketing manager?

Kateryna Horina: It really depends, because I cover a lot of different roles. Right now I’m part of the team that does content for social media across many platforms—Reddit, LinkedIn, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky, everything.

I also produce our podcast. We have Sammy Ben Sadek as a host, and I’m responsible for scheduling, being there for recordings, making sure everything technical is set, writing assignments for our video editor, and also distribution.

I’m also responsible for influencer collaborations and the events we attend or sponsor. So my day-to-day can look really different depending on what the main focus is. Some days it’s research and emails, other days it’s writing assignments, calls with the team, or calls with influencers.

There’s no strict structure, but I actually like that because it’s hard for me to do repetitive things. Switching tasks helps me stay creative and gives me more freedom in how I structure my day.

Rick: That’s pretty sweet. It sounds like there’s a balance between calls and head-down work. Let’s jump into our rapid fire segment. When it comes to content, do you prefer watching, listening, or reading?

Kateryna Horina: Definitely reading. Watching is a bit hard for me.

Rick: Really?

Kateryna Horina: Yeah. Especially with all the short-form content I consume and produce, it’s hard for me to pay attention to what I watch. Reading is way easier.

Rick: What’s the last piece of content you read that stuck with you?

Kateryna Horina: I’m currently rereading one of my favorite books: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson. I also read a book about storytelling for brands—I can’t remember the name right now, sorry—but it was really helpful for updating my knowledge on storytelling.

I started my career as a journalist and copywriter, so I’m a storyteller naturally. I haven’t been working with written content as much lately—more videos and imagery—so it was helpful to see how it evolved.

For shorter stuff, I love Reddit. I’ve been on Reddit for 10 years and I enjoy long reads, marketing-related or just interesting topics like NoStupidQuestions. And The Subtle Art… is an easy read that gives me a break from work and news.

Rick: I know that book. It doesn’t scream Shakespeare, but that’s the beauty of it—it speaks like we speak. If you had a magic wand and could fix one frustrating thing in your marketing life with tech, what would it be?

Kateryna Horina: I would love a new tool for analytics. I don’t enjoy crunching numbers. I would love to automate it. We have so many analytics channels that you still have to pull data manually, scrape it, and then put it into a tool. I’d love something that would get everything together in one or two clicks.

Once the data is there, analyzing is easy for me. But I hate Excel. I hate spreadsheets. So that would be a lifesaver.

Rick: Fair enough. As a creative type, I get that. What’s one repetitive task you’d love to put on autopilot forever?

Kateryna Horina: Analytics and reporting, definitely. Preparing documents, packaging everything nicely—I love writing conclusions, I hate the formatting and the “nice package” part.

Also trend discovery and news for content. I love researching, but there’s so much content and it’s hard to keep up without getting overwhelmed. I’ve been trying to build automations with Make, and I’d love to perfect it so I could get ready-made ideas without all the overload.

Rick: That’s the struggle of the creative process. We’re wrapping up—this went by fast. If people remember one thing from today, what should it be about your work?

Kateryna Horina: Collaborator is a Ukrainian-based company, which I’m really proud of. We’re doing an amazing job compared to other platforms I’ve seen. I’m proud to promote this product.

Definitely check us out and check out our podcast—it’s on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, everywhere. And follow us on social media. We do a lot of cool content, and I’d love for more people to see it.

Rick: Sweet. We’ll link everything in the show notes. Kateryna, thanks again for being on the show—great insights, and the reading recommendation too. I wish you a wonderful day.

Kateryna Horina: Thank you so much and have a good day. Thanks for having me.

Rick: Of course. All right. Bye everyone. Bye.