Data Driven Digital WINS

My background in SEO goes way back. In fact, when I started, it didn't even have a name yet. In those early days, everyone was racing to rank at the top of the few small search engines.

But that approach wasn't right for local businesses. They couldn't expect to rank nationally or internationally, and honestly, that wouldn't have helped them much anyway. Local companies needed localized, regional traffic instead.

At the time, I had just finished my MBA and was working in management for a large corporation, but I knew I wanted more. My specialty was Managerial Accounting, which made me great at spotting patterns and finding under-served opportunities.

That turned out to be a good thing because I was about to discover a real hole in the marketplace.

Basically, local wedding companies needed a place to promote their businesses without trying to rank in search engines. They needed their own local directory and someone to help promote them to real potential customers.

Having a first-place position in any search engine was, at best, a vanity position and did not help sales. Their customers were not outside their operating area, and ranking first did not bring in one more cent of revenue.

Real success is not about vanity metrics. It is about bringing actual customers through the door.

So, I developed a local wedding magazine and an accompanying website to showcase these businesses. Later, I added a local automotive magazine and a regional lifestyle magazine.

This helped bigger, well-known businesses in the area and gave small home-based businesses the same chance to attract customers. Even the small operations run out of a kitchen or garage could compete alongside the big players.

Someone making candle wedding favors in their kitchen wouldn't have the high expense of costly newspaper ads or renting booths at wedding shows. Instead, they were represented through the magazine and could reach their exact audience. Since each bride received a magazine in her welcome bag, the businesses continued to benefit over time.

I promoted the magazine and website by sponsoring bridal shows, purchasing print advertising, running radio spots, sending press releases, obtaining links from other online sources, and pushing the local directory in every way possible.

Eventually, I had clients throughout the Niagara Region (ON), as well as in Hamilton, Burlington, Milton, Oakville, Niagara Falls NY, and Buffalo NY.

This was SEO in its crudest and earliest form.

As time passed and the internet evolved with newer, bigger search engines launching, I moved into what is now considered more traditional search engine optimization. I took on clients from around the world.

The first was a man from Belgium. He was starting up his own SEO agency and he asked me to write all the promotional material for him. There was a lot of content to write, about 25-30 pages.

Then I was asked by a high-profile online lingerie magazine to write ten spots a week about emerging trends, new lingerie companies, and individual collections. That was fun!

All the time, I continued to build websites for various businesses and learned as much as I could about consumer behavior and online purchasing.

I went to work for an ad agency so I could see firsthand the millions and even billions of dollars spent every day and learn what types of ads were best used for online success.

Ecommerce was becoming more prevalent, and it was imperative for companies to sell online in order to grow. With more businesses online, competition increased, making local SEO even more important.

Part of SEO is content, and many clients asked me to write for their websites. Even if someone else designed the site, they often reached out to me for articles and sales material.

Over the years, I collaborated with several agency-type companies to expand my skills and refine my expertise.

Fast forward to today, I have added Pinterest SEO to my strategies. It is often forgotten or little known as a search engine, but it can produce phenomenal amounts of traffic.

I used it myself to drive traffic to a craft website. In the first six weeks of taking over the account, I generated over 1.2 million impressions on the pins. This was only possible through careful and painstaking research of Pinterest keywords, understanding how the algorithm works, and recognizing that Pinterest is not a social media platform.

People don't go to Pinterest to talk to their friends or see what others are doing. Like YouTube, Google, and Bing, Pinterest is a search engine. It's a discovery board of interests presented in colorful pins and images.

Pinterest holds great potential when you focus on its inner workings and understand how to optimize your site and pins to gain ranking positions in both the home feeds and search feeds.

It's funny how everything goes in circles and what was old often comes around again.

That's definitely true with SEO. Directories are making a comeback because users want the internet to be more organized and less overwhelming. They aren't getting what they want and need from SERPS.

Local businesses are racing madly again to get to the top of the search results. Now, AI has added a new twist to the game.

But that is another opportunity because there is so much automation to be made and so many new ways to work with it.

Which now brings me to my newest project, and that is making automated systems for all kinds of reasons for businesses and websites. In other words, their own private apps to reduce time and effort.

What stands out for me, whether I am reviewing numbers, completing an SEO audit, or consulting with clients on new directions, is that I love the thrill of working on sites and uncovering hidden opportunities.