If there's one marketing skill that I'm indebted to – it's Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO helped fund my wedding.
STORY
Go back to 2013 when I was still a music producer.
Music producers are a weird bunch. We think getting new gear means being able to make better music. Like most, I fell into the trap of buying new production gear every other week.
Thankfully, I did something smart.
Instead of simply playing with the gear, I got my studio assistant to shoot videos of me unboxing and demoing gear. Then I uploaded them to YouTube.
I didn't overthink. I didn't try to act like I knew-it-all. I didn't care if people watched the videos. I just shared what's on my mind. (Gary V calls this documenting instead of creating.)
An example below:
Well, I didn't stop at just videos.
I wrote blog posts and embedded the YouTube video on them.
I'd then optimize the title and meta description on both the YouTube video and blog post. After that, it's all up to Google.
My videos and content started ranking.
Seeing traffic growing, I signed up for an affiliate account on Amazon Associates and placed affiliate links around my content.
Did I become an overnight millionaire? No.
In the first month, I made $3.20.
Then $6.36 in the next month.
9 months later, I was making $557 per month. And the number kept growing.
Eventually, I used a bulk of the earnings to buy an engagement ring and put together a memorable wedding.
All thanks to SEO.
3 lessons you can apply – now
If you're still reading, let me share 3 takeaway lessons.
1 - Stop overthinking sh*t
And just ship your work.
I know what you're thinking. "What if I create content and people judge me?," or "What if they don't like it?". It's that little voice in your head.
It's easy to overthink sh*t.
You focus so much on yourself – your fears, ego and what others might think. And you start to forget why you're doing whatever you're doing in the first place.
The trick is to switch the focus to your audience. How are you helping them by building your business? How are you making their lives better with the content you're making?
When you get out of your own head, and focus on enriching someone else – it becomes a lot easier to put things out.
Think about someone you admire. What if he or she had given in to overthinking and did not produce that video, book or business? What if J.K. Rowling gave into her insecurities and did not write Harry Potter?
2 - Share your experience
The reason my content worked was simply because I shared my experience.
My experience was unique. An asian guy with a weird English accent, sharing this thoughts and demo-ing a piece of music gear.
Nobody, not even AI can replicate it.
Marketers who use AI to generate content, end up with bland, boring and similar content.
Will it help anyone? Will it create discussion? Will it change someone's life?
Sorry, but nobody cares about your generated AI content or videos.
Instead, focus on sharing new ideas. Share behind-the-scenes of your experiments and case studies. Tell a story or share something you discovered.
3 - SEO will work for most businesses
What do most people do before they buy something? That's right, they'll search online!
- Is it worth buying a MacBook M4
- Paracetamol vs ibuprofen
- [Business Name] reviews
No wonder my did unboxing and review content worked well! People were searching for authentic and real experience, to make a purchasing decision.
Online search is not going away.
Yes, paid advertising and social media content are important marketing channels. But the best, highest-converting traffic on planet Earth comes from Google's organic search.
Put plainly.
If you don't show up on Google when your prospects search for what you're selling, you may as well not exist at all.
If you're a business in Malaysia...
I'll tell you a secret – most businesses in Malaysia, don't pay attention to SEO.
This means one thing... you have an unfair advantage of ranking your website, if you serve local customers.
Just like a business we helped, Hydro One – lost all their Google rankings when they built a new website and retook all #1 Google spots in less than a year.
This is one of my favourite success stories, and you can be next.
Search & Scale: Drive a steady customer stream in 2025
Next week, on Wednesday, we're conducting Search & Scale, our Search Engine Optimization workshop.
Taught by ex-head of content of Sumo, Dean Yeong will detail out the SEO strategies and techniques that he used to help grow companies like AppSumo into a $80 million company.
Here are some highlights of what you'll get from the program:
- Step-by-step ways to do SEO so that your website ranks online in matter of weeks, not years.
- Principles that make you better than 95% of SEO consultants. You’ll finally know what actually works, and which strategy is made-up nonsense.
- How to outcompete your competitors, even if you’re up against a GIANT and have limited budget.
- The Zig-Zag Link Method to building legitimate backlinks that catapults your website to the top of Google.
- A never-shared-before case study on how one piece of content pulled in millions of revenue (and how you can copy this strategy to open a floodgate of customers for your own business.)
- Done-for-you SEO templates and frameworks that we use ourselves in our business and for clients.
Search & Scale is a step-by-step workshop, and you'll get everything you need to take businesses with no online search presence, to showing up for every keyword around its products and services.
The workshop starts on 15th Jan (Wednesday), so get a spot while you can. The price will increase the next time it opens.
Hope to see you inside.
