Kristiyan Yankov runs Above Apex, a SaaS-focused link-building agency. He has been freelancing since high school, and when host Jeremy Rivera opened with the standard question — tell us why we should trust you — he refused the premise.

Yankov On Verifying Rather Than Trusting

“Well, thanks for having me, first of all. Second, you shouldn’t trust anyone. You should verify. You should verify, especially in our industry.”

— Kristiyan Yankov, Above Apex

It is a good answer to a softball question, and it turns out to be the operating principle for how his agency assesses a placement. His test is unusually simple to apply:

“One thing I always say is that if I look at a link-building opportunity and it makes sense to me, it would be the same for Google, because Google is definitely not more stupid than me. It’s quite the opposite — it’s actually smarter. So if I look at it and it makes sense to me, the website is a genuine website that serves a purpose, it’s not a PBN or whatever, it has relevant content, the link is seamlessly integrated into the actual copy and the article itself — it looks good, I’m like, ‘This looks really good, Google will probably say the same thing.’”

— Kristiyan Yankov, Above Apex

The humility in “Google is definitely not more stupid than me” is doing the analytical work. Most bad link decisions rest on the unspoken assumption that a machine will fail to notice something a human notices instantly. He describes the process as looking at it from many viewpoints and then putting on “the manual glasses.”

One framing note: Kristiyan is describing how he screens sites he wants links from — the buy side. This article applies the same test in reverse, from the host’s chair. That reversal is ours, not his.

What Hosts Screen Before They Link

Our guidance from here.

A host publishing show notes is making a small editorial endorsement with their own domain. Most will not describe it as vetting, but the checks are consistent and they happen in about thirty seconds:

• Does the destination match what you said? If you spent forty minutes on operational tooling and hand over a link to a generic services page, the host has to decide whether to link something that does not follow from the conversation.
• Does it load, and is it obviously current? A dated page, a broken layout on mobile, a copyright notice from three years ago — all read as risk on someone else’s site.
• Is it the kind of page they would link anyway? Yankov’s own test transfers exactly. Would a reasonable editor link this if there were no relationship?

The failure mode is almost never a host refusing. It is a host quietly substituting your homepage for the page you asked for, because your ask created a decision they did not want to make.

The Destination URL That Gets Approved

Kristiyan’s account of the relevance spectrum among his own clients is instructive here, because it shows how much variance there is in what practitioners consider a good link. Jeremy described the range: some clients say “yeah, just help me get some links,” while others specify the keyword phrase, which variables must appear in the sentence, that you must never link exactly on those, and that “the page can’t be too off-topic.” Kristiyan confirmed they have a client exactly like that.

The lesson for a guest is that specificity is not fussiness — it is the thing that makes the link defensible. Applied to show notes, three destinations in descending order of approval odds:

Best: the specific resource you referenced on air. If you mentioned a template, a calculator, a study or a framework by name, that page is the natural destination. The link follows from the conversation, so the host has no decision to make.

Acceptable: a page that continues the episode’s topic. A guide covering what you discussed. Weaker, but coherent.

Weakest: the homepage. It answers no question raised by the episode and asks the listener to do the navigation themselves.

Kristiyan’s own highest-value tactic points in the same direction. For SaaS, he rates listicles and roundups first — “a win all across the board… because 40-plus percent of listicles have traffic, which means potential direct clicks and visits. It’s also one of the most relevant links and brand mentions you can get at the same time.” He adds that for six months or more “it’s been proven that that is one of the main factors for getting into AI models and AI Overviews.” What makes those work is exactly what makes a good show-note link work: the destination answers the question the surrounding content raised.

Why A Homepage Link Is The Weakest Ask

A homepage link fails on every axis that makes a link worth having. It carries no topical signal, because a homepage is about everything. It converts poorly, because the listener arrives mid-intent and has to re-navigate. And it is the least interesting thing a host can offer their audience, which means it is the first thing trimmed when show notes get tidied.

There is a second-order cost too. If your only ask is the homepage, you have signalled that you did not think about the audience — which affects whether you are invited back, and whether the host mentions you to other hosts. We cover the mechanics in show-note links that actually get approved.

Making The Host’s Job Easier

Practitioner guidance.

The practical version is short. Send, within a few hours of recording while the episode is still fresh in the host’s mind:

• Two or three URLs, each with a one-line note on which part of the conversation it follows from.
• Anything you cited on air — the study, the number, the tool — so the host can verify a claim without research. This is Yankov’s principle applied to your benefit: you are pre-supplying the verification.
• Correct spellings of your name, company and any product mentioned.

None of that is a favour to you. It removes work from someone who has a publishing deadline, which is why it tends to get you the specific link rather than the generic one. More on turning that into pipeline in from guest to pipeline.

Kristiyan Yankov runs Above Apex and is on LinkedIn.

If getting booked in the first place is the constraint, that is what podcast guest booking is for.