In the middle of 2007 I began constructing basic WordPress websites purely as a passtime and to try and promote some affiliate ideas. At the time I didn’t have much knowledge about how to get the sites performing well in the search engines but I eventually learnt about this thing named SEO. As I began to learn more about the idea of search engine optimization I became keen to try and master it as well as I could.
It got to a stage where I thought that I would quite like to try and get a job within the SEO industry here in Manchester, UK.
It transpired that my age and lack of actual experience seemed to be a problem for the companies that I contacted. I can understand their attitude now because there were no doubt more suitable individuals than I looking for an SEO job.
At that time however it left me somewhat disillusioned. Out of frustration I set up a website called SEO Manchester targeting the exact same keywords. I suppose I did it more as a test of my own self-taught SEO skills against those of the SEO companies in Manchester. I thought that I’d just see how well I could get my website to perform against the might of the main companies sitting on the first couple of pages of Google for my search term “seo manchester”.
It appeared way down in the Google rankings at first but I concentrated on getting the on-page SEO right and within 16 days it hit page 1. It then did the ‘Google Dance’ and fell into obscurity for a while, before bouncing back and forth between page 6 and page 1. It then seemed to calm down after 4 weeks at number 9 or 10. With a bit more SEO effort it eventually hit the number 2 spot and stayed there for a good 6 weeks.
Then, one morning in the seventh week I checked my position and it was at the number 1 spot. What a great feeling!
It stayed there for about ten days and then was bumped off by the large SEO firm sitting directly below me. I resigned myself to thinking that it would be really tough to reclaim the number 1 slot but I continued to work on my site using both on-page and off-page SEO.
I then got an email about 2 months later asking if I’d realised that I was back at the number 1 spot again.
That was on 16th October, 2009 and my site has stayed there ever since. That makes it nearly 6 months at the number 1 spot as I’m compiling this article.
This is where my story starts to make sense if you’re a business owner with a website that isn’t doing as well as it should i.e. generating leads.
Not long after it hit the number 1 spot on Google I started to get a number of emails from business people asking if I could do the same for their websites. Initially I must admit that I politely declined their enquiries as I wasn’t confident about working with other peoples websites, particularly concerning to their businesses.
Then around Christmas time of 2009 I received an email from a commercial photographer in Manchester who said that he had been following my progress with interest, that he was impressed with what I’d achieved and that he wanted me to work on his website. He said that he knew that I was a relative novice but as his website was appearing nowhere in the search engines for any keyword he had nothing to lose. So, I thought why not?
That was to be my first SEO client. We sorted out the on-page SEO, put in more content, images and videos. I then set about working on the off-page SEO – backlinks, social media, articles, blogs, forums etc. We targeted one main keyword and 3 secondary keywords for both local searches in the Manchester area plus the UK as a whole.
Currently, his website is on page 1 of Google for both local and national searches for all his secondary keywords and in Google Maps/Local Business Centre where there is one. It is on page 1 for a local search on his main keyword and on page 3 at the moment for a national search. I currently work with him on a monthly basis continuing to enhance the SEO of his site and developing backlinks.
That success spurred me on to take on more jobs whenever suitable requests came in. I have not advertised in any way. All the work I have obtained so far has been as a result of being on page 1 of Google for my keywords. In other words all my clients have been gained for free.
I now have an Organic SEO service which is attracting enquiries every week.
If you’re a business owner can you imagine the powerful leads your own website could generate if it was on page 1 or 2 of Google like mine? Even better, wouldn’t you be excited if you were generating these hot leads for free?
What started out as a bit of fun has come full circle and ended up with me having my own SEO business. I suppose in a lot of ways I’m now grateful to those companies who, for their own good reasons at the time, didn’t consider me suitable for an SEO job with them.
Having said that, it’s quite ironic that I have recently been offered 2 jobs by SEO companies! I politely declined them both.
I now have some great clients who I really enjoy working with and I am considering outsourcing some of my SEO tasks to give me more time to work on extra ways of attracting customers to their websites.
After all that’s what my business is about – Helping small businesses get more customers.
