How I got my client to the first page of Google within 4 months
You know the expression “Content is king”? What if there’s more to it?
I had no idea what SEO even was a few years ago. Back then, I was freshly out of university. Whenever I thought about branching out with my digital marketing knowledge, these were some of the ways I discouraged myself:
Top 3 lies I told myself ↓
- I wasn’t ready yet — let me get some more experience first; otherwise no one will see me as credible enough to work with
- I didn’t know how — to do any of the technical stuff; let me spend more time learning first so I don’t waste time with mistakes
- I had no time to — I was busy doing so many things at once, so there was no consolidated direction for me to even start
💡 One day, I realized that if I don’t start — from anywhere — I would very much likely end up nowhere.
So I began researching, and started from my only point of reference — myself.
What makes quality content?
Among all the posts, videos, and articles I was naturally gravitated to… there was one thing in common: they had actual, real value first.
Allow me to briefly elaborate.
I know the general public doesn’t know much about search engine optimization. I didn’t know much either before I began this journey. It’s complicated, especially at first. Luckily, there are plenty of resources online here to help you, including my own process which I will share with you; I’m going to shed a little light on how it worked for my client. Before we met, he was enlisting the help of a sister company who outsourced their SEO. I wasn’t told how long they were paying that company before I arrived, but after I began working on their SEO — it took me within 4 months to get their website on the first page of Google, all with content I made for them by myself.
Mind you, when a massive company goes to produce content, they have plenty of resources (employees) to get a lot of work done. But not every SEO company producing your content will start out already knowing the ins-and-outs of your industry. Many of them will use your funds improperly because many SEO firms still don’t have the strategy to successfully deliver on a complex SEO campaign, not to mention there are scam SEO companies all over the world.
And that doesn’t change the fact that every SEO company is still going to want your business, because no matter your result: you’re going to make them more money.
Not every SEO company will choose the “right” influencers to reach out to for your area, but you know exactly whose Instagram profile makes you laugh every day from your own city. And you know which YouTube profiles you watch for your own industry, even if it is for entertainment purposes that often doubles as educational. You likely already know which content creators you enjoy and respect.
This is what I mean by using yourself as your first point of reference. Because you instinctively already know what quality content is, but for you.
Many SEO companies will not even know what outreach to perform for your website, for your industry and location, much less if they’re in a completely different location. By reaching out to the creators and websites and content you already personally digest, you will connect to the others just like you. But many entrepreneurs and business owners are afraid to take over for fear of messing it up, likely because “If those professionals can mess up then how could I trust myself to do a good job for my own SEO?”
Well, that is my point.
There are a huge number of SEO ripoff companies. And if you are already maintaining your website, your socials… that’s part of SEO. Whether you know it or not, you are already participating in your own optimization.
You’re already working on your own SEO… so don’t get scammed
By learning the actual process, you can use what you are already doing every day to make impacts that lead to organic growth for your business website. Not taking ownership for your digital presence, or not appropriately selecting a reputable company, not only leads to lost time and lost opportunities… it means the fate of your business website is in someone else’s hands. And third-parties receive no consequences, but your website will.
Third-party SEO companies that are more prone to simply stuffing your website’s URL in a spammy-looking website fill it with other URLs of businesses they’re doing the same thing for. (This was common for me to find with SEO clients! 😱 It’s a scam. This can get websites banned from search results.) When you do these malpractices, or black hat strategies, and perform an SEO audit on your website right after — sure, the link exists as a stable and active backlink. It may appear like your website is actually doing something — but the content doesn’t give any value for anyone in the long-run.
There is always a risk that their SEO techniques will employ malpractices such as keyword stuffing, a black hat optimization technique many third parties use as an easy way out of making quality content that visitors definitely notice.
Eventually, the search engines catch on (based on engagement levels) and it impacts your SEO negatively in the long-run. There is a difference between manual penalties and Google’s algorithmic filters; intentional bad content causes enough penalties that it is difficult to regain trust from the search engines. (So you’ll be okay as long as you’re not intentionally going out of your way to engage in shady practices, like hiding keywords in the background or intentionally spamming links.) Double checking every link that a company claims to have made for your business is a great way to ensure you aren’t being scammed, because you can see for yourself if you want your website to be associated with whatever you find.
There is indeed a difference between regular people strategizing their own SEO versus companies that exclusively use black hat strategies in order to simply feed off of customers without any end or real growth in sight.
Unfortunately many are simply relying on the fact that their customer doesn’t know any better. These manipulation tactics are part of why content is not what it used to be.
And it might be why some people are too afraid to create their own content. Not knowing where to start, paired with all the misinformation from scammers, can leave one feeling hopeless and incompetent.
I will give you all the knowledge I have about what I’ve learned from SEO, and give you my opinion on what is going to happen down the road if we don’t take responsibility for our own content creation.
👑 The goal will always be the same: Useful content.
And the focus is the same, no matter what industry you’re in.
- Your Audience
- Your Website
- Your Reach
That’s it.
Your Audience
Who is visiting your website? Are they local or international? What pages do they stay on the longest? What websites are referring people to your page? Are there any pages that currently get zero engagement — why?
Your Website
Are your pages full of rich, quality content? When your visitors arrive to your website, do they have plenty to binge? Does every page on your website link to at least one different page? (That will keep your audience moving in your website instead of stopping their engagement.)
Your Reach
Do I need to search for a long time, in the dark depths of the Internet, to find your website? Better question: Can your business be found on more than just social media? Do you have a strategy in place for your business to feature in news media or other forms of outreach?
If you want to see real-time data of your customers, feel supported in all the changes you make to your digital marketing, if you want to stop wasting time creating useless content that only adds to the sea of redundancy on the Internet — then these are the strategies needed to build quality SEO.
Organic content by definition takes time, but when you know the ins-and-outs your business — it is easier to connect to other people when imparting your knowledge. Storytelling makes for great video content, but not if you don’t know what specific subjects to address to begin with.
In this way, it is less like shooting an arrow in the dark when it comes to choosing topics to cover for your website and socials.
The goal is to boost reputation and credibility over time with content that connects to every question a person can have about your business, while also contributing information for the ease of everyone’s Internet time.
So don’t focus on trying to go viral
The original goal was never to go viral, but an unfortunate side effect to this desperation for virality is the rise of every single vocation engaging in trends and public stunts, seeking attention for their “content.” Because of people resorting to filming strangers and their reactions to these stunts (presumably earning money from them), it is a moral gray area. But this worldwide acceptance of some morally-gray trending acts have made filming online deeds the societal norm, with even teachers stripping on social media.
For the people who crack the algorithm’s code and actually go viral, it’s usually an accident. And it often comes with unwanted repercussions, like unemployment. Tanner Greenring of BuzzFeed lists the “long line of people who have been fired, justly or unjustly, for not thinking before they posted something on the Internet.” Even without negative aftermaths in their personal lives, many who have had their posts gone viral have their content taken and repurposed hundreds of times over, without ever seeing any kind of compensation for it. Yet small business owners see these posts with thousands of likes, and they think it must automatically equate to profit —when it often ends at the screen.
Every ‘like’ you receive on social media sends a dopamine boost to your brain. Dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter that plays a major role in humans’ reward and motivation behavior. It also helps your body be able to do helpful things like secrete sodium and reduce insulin levels. But what isn’t helpful is an overindulgence in any substance, our minds compensate the increased levels by supplying more of its own. Which forces your brain to need more… and more of it.
But what happens when there is too much of it, and why does it matter?
Psychological implications of ‘too much’ meaningless content
According to Mental Health Daily, “With too much dopamine, a person may become mistrusting of others and come to experience false beliefs or perceptions that have no logical basis in reality.” And just like a sugar crash, when the brain is looking for more of its ‘fix’ — it suffers a drop. With any overindulgence, the withdrawal process forces a see-saw extreme high/low effect in the brain’s chemistry.
So then what happens when the human brain is too low on dopamine? Dopamine also affects how the brain decides whether a goal is worth the effort. People that have higher amounts of dopamine in their brains automatically focus on the ‘rewards,’ rather than what they will need to do to get them, or ‘perceived costs.’ Those with low dopamine in their brains are less willing to follow through with something they want; they have a more difficult time organizing their thoughts and verbalizing them, and may experience learning deficits because they remain unmotivated.
Is overindulgence of social media leading humanity to a major social divide, fueled by constant distrust yet lack of motivation to do anything about it?
⌛ Are we already feeling these neurological consequences as a society?
How does this relate to how we digest, and create, the content on our phones?
E-commerce is expected to experience a compounded annual growth rate of 34.9% between 2020–2026, and the time spent on smartphone apps in the U.S. has already increased by 25% since 2019 —unsurprisingly since the worldwide shutdown — so humanity’s relationship with life and with social media will become enmeshed. What we consistently consume should be treaded with more caution because of how powerful our human brain truly is. We should also be more mindful of the content we are putting out, and not only regurgitate what has been said before because of the need to feel like we’re making a safe choice.
Ever heard of “Imposter Syndrome”? Does it have less to do with self-confidence and everything to do with grit?
People feel inadequate to provide value; they feel they aren’t good enough. There’s one thing to not feel good enough, it’s another thing to say, “It’s going to stop me.” That can never happen for a person with passion and perseverance. But can a person who is consistently fed what they should ‘like’ ever going to discover their own passions? Can a business owner persevere against self-doubt in a sea of advertising that looks upsettingly similar?
In a society so quick to shun and ‘cancel’ each other for mistakes made years past, it’s no wonder people today are so scared to say or do something that may eventually prove to be at the very least, embarrassing, and at the very worst, the end of their careers. So their passion is paralyzed, never attempting to add to the pool of genius and instead, continue to play it safe by copying what they see already works.
But we are all humans walking the path of life, and that alone requires some measure of persistence throughout the trial-and-error.
The attitude of “Fake it ‘til you make it” relies on a self-confidence that is meaningless and manufactured. Yet this idiom, and “imposter syndrome,” are phrases I hear more often nowadays than the word grit:
⛰️ It is the courage and resolve to focus on your goal, your passion or values, no matter how many obstacles are put in your path.
Leave things better than you found them
When putting out content, adding a little more than what was there before is how all of our industries move forward. As said by Sir Ken Robinson, “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” It is helpful to be corrected. It is also helpful to others making the same mistakes — especially if you correct yourself at the end, helping everyone who followed the journey. Not taking things on the chin, but taking things with grace.
For the young adults of a nation coming out of a global situation where one largely feels one’s inadequacies tenfold due to the events and circumstances that has caused perpetual anxiety and dependence on authority, it blindly enables a pyramid-scheme type of learning style—worst-case scenario creating a nation of copycats.
Because of this, and with so many people riding on the social media content creation wave, the general expected value for the end user has been hallowed and monetized by the digital-age attention span and modern-day capitalism.
Enduring this lack of depth is the rising trend: fast-paced learning, incentivized by video-form content on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Peers share with each other their extensive research on various topics with bite-sized, often humorous delivery. Today’s example of quality content is original, often educational, with personality that is palpable from the video.
These videos, much like Instagram photos, have behind-the-scenes labels that search engines can read. We call them hashtags, keywords, and/or alt data. If these labels match word-for-word what someone searches on the Internet, then the search engine will automatically connect the content to the searcher.
Who controls those labels? You do.
You have complete control, even on your own Instagram page right now. For example, when you go to the settings on your IG pictures and add “Alt” text, it helps not only the search engine categorize the media but also assists the blind and visually impaired who rely on this data to digest the entire Internet.
This is part of why social media and website SEO go hand-in-hand.
Although it will look different depending on which website platform you use, the descriptive areas where you input keyword-rich information can be treated similarly to how you would treat the Alt image data on social media.
Every image posted to social media is an opportunity to make your content different, and businesses have used this method to extend advertising reach. For example, writing “serene blue ocean horizon on a clear day at the beach” on the alt data of your Instagram photos will help anyone Googling for beach photography find your picture (and your business profile along with it.)
But it might be wise for professional photographers to write “serene blue ocean horizon professional beach photography by [Professional Name] on a clear day at [City, State] beach” for their alt text— because now the image will pop up for any search queries in that city and also for those searching for specifically beach photographers.
It takes a bit of nuance and care to provide real value to your audience while performing your capitalist duty to advertise for your business.
Just like each Instagram post has advanced settings for alt image data, each page on your website uses specific labels, or keywords, to tell search engines like Google what questions to reveal your website for.
The words you include will connect to your ideal customers’ future search queries. This word or phrase is considered a keyword.
When a keyword, or query, is searched for (very) often by a large number of people, it becomes a high-traffic keyword. When the query isn’t widely searched for, putting effort toward making content revolve around that query is a waste of time. That being said, putting effort toward a word that is not specific enough, a general word like “design” will yield so much competition that it is equally as redundant.
So that leaves “mid-tail” and “long-tail” keywords— basically, get hyper-specific with the queries you set your content up for. It’s already proven that the younger a person is, the longer their search queries tend to be. So even talking (and writing) like the age group you’re targeting will connect easier.
How do I know what queries are already being searched for?
For anyone looking to provide real value, it helps to know where to start. This is one of my favorite resources to find queries for ANY topic: answerthepublic.com 🔎
Simply enter your query, topic, keyword, or business’s industry, and see a list of popular questions asked on the internet about your search input.
This is a great tool for marketers, content creators, and business owners to get a sense of how people feel about their subject matter. Their curiosities and their pain points; This provides you with the ability to answer their questions, and possibly settle their pain points with your offer(s).
Now that we went over the core aspects of SEO, and had a small taste of what I consider to be a total cheatcode, let’s move onto how to put it all together.
There are three essential pillars to healthy Search Engine Optimization:
On-Page SEO ✏️
The most important tool that controls your website’s SEO is actually the blog. Blog posts that target every possible concern… for every type of customer. Not only that, but each blog requires a handful of quality keywords and backlinks.
Search engines use backlinks as a strong indicator of a webpage’s authority, relevance, and ranking potential. They’re just regular links on your page, but the best result is quality over quantity. You don’t want to be a keyword-stuffed website — it looks like spam. Instead, use a few high quality, high authority domains to increase your own site’s authority. Think top, reputable names in your industry, related resources your customers often use, and other locations where your competition can be found. Should any of these sources post your website link on their page, it exponentially increases your authority and what we call in the biz: link juice.
These small SEO boosts add up over time, and builds your website’s relevance. This works together with your Technical and Off-Page SEO to assure popular search engines that your website provides valuable resources for your users.
Off-Page SEO 💻
Having quality, useful, or educational content on your website makes it worth their while, but how do we get the visitors who aren’t already looking up relevant queries? How do they find your website out of nowhere?
The answer is that they don’t. Finding you out of nowhere would mean that you do absolutely no work and still get website visitors. We know that’s unrealistic… but what type of work needs to be done to get organic visitors?
It’s simple: Create the overall digital presence for your company. You can do this little by little, by making sure you have fresh content linking back to your business website in specific locations online. Here’s a few ideas to get started:
- Web 2.0 Profile Creation
- Industry Certifications
- Media Sharing Activities
- Google My Business
- Classified Ads
- Business Listings
- Instagram Alt Text
- Review Acquisition & Reputation Management
- Industry-Related Guest Posts or Features
- Consistent company information across the web
Technical SEO ⚙️
This is the fun part, and ideally it is Step One of your SEO Journey. How well your website actually functions is part of your site’s foundation. Brian Dean of Backlinko has a simple checklist to make sure your Technical SEO is on-point.
Connecting your website to Google Analytics and Google Search Console will make your life easier when you are ready to start tracking visitor traffic.
Google Analytics does as its name suggests, and helps you analyze the Google visitors (and other search engine traffic) that does reach your website. The most popular and least popular pages, how long your visitors spend on each page, what city they live in, etc. So you can tailor future content according to what performs the best, and tailor it to the cities searching on your website the most. You can also see if your visitors are using their phone or computer, so you know whether mobile interface design would be better suited for your customers’ user experience.
By monitoring your visitors’ behavior once they reach your website, you will know how to adapt and modify to their needs based on how long they engage with particular topics on your blog.
There’s a neat tool that helps you monitor your visitors before they even click your website.
Google Search Console helps you see which queries are currently taking visitors to your website. This is a huge help for people not sure where to begin! Once you see the keywords your website is currently ranking for, things might make even more sense to you. If you don’t think your current keywords are appropriately describing what you do, then it’s time to update and modify your website and start swapping those keywords.
Take advantage of typical search queries by labeling your images’ alt data with the location and the service being performed. (Primarily, include as much pictorial detail as possible for our visually impaired friends.)
We’re all in this journey together
Making sure your website is disability-friendly is not only a massive part of having healthy SEO, but it’s a huge part of contributing to our current human experience. You’re already using technology, it’s time to be mindful with it.
The knowledge that I’ve gathered through this journey will be available in a neat, easy-to-follow guide for those who want their hands held through this entire process — this is intended to train others through the same methods that I used to get my client to the first page of Google search results. And I’ve made sure to include some of that no-nonsense, transparent language in this article as well — I truly hope that this has served as quality content for you. 🌟
As said by Author Sam Edwards, “Content is king, but quality is green.”
Now that you have the tools, your quality SEO is waiting for you to get started.
Thanks for reading!
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