The Joys of SEO

[Brian Turner]

Someone was asking me about SEO before Christimas - we arranged that I'd build him a content SEO'd site after Xmas. Because I'm such a lazy salesman he practically had to beg me to get it done for him.

Anyway, I'd told him that he should get at least some rankings. I'd done a test job for another firm he's friendly with, and they took their first order within days of the site going up (over £1000 in orders within the first week!) simply due to content SEO.

His site went up. And he waited. And he waited. No ranking. No orders. It's a new business he's running, and he's absolutely nothing to do. He calls me up and asks me to help with rankings.

Effectively, I'd promised he'd get at least something, but he hadn't. That means I either stand by my guarrantee or else be a liar. And he had referred me on to some very good work. So I decided to tack on some link building for him on top of some I was working on for a big commercial client.

Time moves on - I try link building, but not much is happening. So I try more - nothing happening.

So I go all out and push out something like 1000 links a day to his site pages.

Nothing.

Four months on from launch of site - he still hasn't had a single order, so he's decided to pack it all in. This week he went for a job interview.

Then two days ago something happened - his site/links were let out of Google's sandbox.

Last night I suddenly discovered that he's absolutely ripped through the rankings across a great number of keywords across his industry. He's got position 1 rankings across Google.com, let alone the UK pages of Google.co.uk!

I rang him today, telling him only that I needed to see him urgently about his site.

When I get there he's sat bemsued - he's getting ready to go to a follow-up job interview, but he's suddenly had 8 e-mails through asking for quotes. Each job is a minimum £100-200 a piece. He get's another while I'm sat there.

I happily show him the actual extent of his dominance of the SERPs - it's quite incredible - I would never have guarranteed him such high rankings and across so many keywords and phrases, yet he's absolutely wiping the board for them! He even has top 10 rankings for some one word search terms - something I would never promise anyone!!

So I left there, big smiles - him, big smiles. He's going to turn down the job interview and remain self-employed. He's got a real future to look for now.

I made him a very happy man, and in making him ahppy, I was happy, too. SEO success give me such a real warm glow, because I'm making real people happy. It 's a feather in my cap and I wear it proud.


Oh - and an addendum: remember I mentioned the other firm, that I'd done some basic work for? Well, apaprently, it all snowballed from there - they get too many requests for orders than they can handle, and have actually called me in next week - and will pay me - to de-optimise their site!!!

Oh, life is a funny thing sometimes.