The Catalyst to Becoming Expert in SEO
As a super focused WordPress web developer, our original plan is to go into SEO a few years later when I have more confidence in offering it as a professional service in Singapore. However, in the early months of 2016, anger propelled me into becoming an SEO Expert and evolving Thinking Notes into an SEO agency.
The First Spark
The first anger came from one of our web design clients in the car battery industry, who got betrayed by their own staff who spun off a competing business while unethically riding onto their resources. I am angry because I believe strongly in ethics and honesty.
The competing business began to gain market share due to good competitive keyword rankings in the Google Search Engine. Unable to find a trusted digital marketing partner, my client wanted me to help them.
At that point in time, my clients know Thinking Notes does not offer digital marketing services as we do not believe in selling services that we are not confident to deliver. Because of anger I personally felt, we took our first step in the professional SEO niche.
I told our client, we are not there yet, but we will be.
The Second Spark
The second anger came from another one of our web design client in the chiropractic industry who has burned her investment cost in digital marketing from an agency that deliver no results. I am angry because I feel that people should be truthful and have the courage to admit faults.
If you are not a true expert in certain fields, admit it, understand your current positioning, identify your current lacking, and progress from there. Do not let the illusion of knowledge impede your ability to progress.
We send her an analysis report and told her, “We believe we can help you, no promises, but if at any time you think we are wasting your money, we can terminate the whole arrangement.
After months of execution, today, our 2 clients, Battery Empire and Singapore Pain Solutions are now the market leaders of their own industry niches, ranking extremely highly in Google Search Engine for effective competitive keywords. You can refer to their case studies over here:
- Building The #1 Chiropractic Brand in Singapore with SEO
- Creating a #1 Dominator in the Car Battery Market with SEO
The Struggles
Unknown to many, in year 2016, I fell into a period of mild depression after internalizing the fact that my late father, who passed away in 2015 due to cancer, will never come home for dinner again. I will never have the chance to live up to my promises and repay him for helping me over the years. I will never have the chance to show him my accomplishments and see him enjoying his golden years playing with grandchildren.
- I questioned my choice of leaving my full-time employment and going into entrepreneurship.
- I questioned my ability to help people (i cannot even help my own father).
- I questioned the purpose of life.
Diving into the uncharted territory of providing professional SEO services at the same time increases my stress too as now I have an additional responsibility to answer for my clients’ successes or failures. It not about money. It is about how I can help people.
My life ethos is always about helping people. My first startup is called “FlagAHero”, can tell a lot about what being me is. Business is about systematizing a flow of making money. The experience of helping people is what makes my life meaningful every day.
When I say our clients’ successes are my successes; it is not a cliche. I seriously meant it from all my heart.
In the year 2016, I also slowed down Thinking Notes’ number of web design projects as I know the company is not in a position to undertake too many projects while we are in the process of learning SEO. We made a loss of $30K+ that year, my partner was a little panicky, I told her not to worry.
Deep inside, I was still in doubt; nevertheless, I did not throw in the towel, I marched on.
Luckily FlagAHero, our kids party photography brand, is extremely strong in SEO and together with repeated referrals from happy clients, we still managed to survive that year.
The Climb
Depression is something one have to overcome himself/herself. During the period of depression, I like to sleep a lot so that I can hide away from reality and live in my own dreams. Later on, I found out that this is called “dissociation”, a symptom of depression.
When I slowly reached a deeper acceptance of what I am experiencing, a deeper understanding of the system of life, I gained the courage to move out of the hole I have dug to hide in.
At the same time, our learnings for SEO begin to have some breakthroughs. Our clients began to observe positive results in their keywords’ ranking and organic traffic to their websites. After months of hypothesis and structured testing, we began to internalize the mantra of good SEO.
It is quite difficult to explain how I learned SEO, how to be good in it and eventually becoming an SEO Expert. The more projects I begin to work on, the more complex and ever-changing I realize SEO is. Reading articles on SEO does not automatically make you good. One will need to know how to discern truth from rumors and put hypothesis into verification, in order to learn effectively.
It is like kung fu, you have to move like water. There is no ultimate and there is no forever. All i can say is:
- Being a technical WordPress theme developer helps;
- Being an experienced creative photographer helps;
- Being someone who can learn fast, think deeply yet clearly helps;
- Being someone who has the patience to follow the long ethical approach helps;
- Being someone who has the courage to admit mistakes helps;
- Being a Master Graduate specializing in Human Factor Engineering & User Experience helps;
- Being someone who can write a 50 pages white-paper based on a single line topic helps;
- Being someone who can write something that people actually read helps;
The Future
My biggest problem now is my time management and scalability. Most of my initiatives require the investment of my own time and I only have so much time every day.
As I progress in the future, I hope to establish a good team, systemize our business and workflow, which will be consistently executed by people with the correct skills and heart. To achieve this, I have recently joined a local BNI Chapter in Singapore and look forward to establishing a good and close network of SMEs business owners with the same aptitude in life.
Moving on, I hope to put myself in a better position to help more people whom I care for; spend time with people whom I love so we can all progress on and face the challenges of life as a community.
If you want to learn more about SEO, you can find out more about my upcoming SEO Course. Find out more about my SEO services, please click here.
- Why Keyword Stuffing Doesn’t Work Anymore and 2 Lessons That I Have Learnt - April 22, 2019
- How to find the best SEO company for you in 10 minutes? - February 11, 2019
- How We Become an SEO Specialist? - February 7, 2019
