SEO Chatter - My story with SEO...
Reader,
As I told you in the welcome email:
"There's a real person behind this newsletter."
The truth is I've been doing SEO for 15 years and have the scars to prove it.
And in this email, you're going to learn who the "real" Stephen Hockman is behind SEO Chatter and why I'm qualified to help you succeed beyond your wildest dreams with your website.
So grab a quick snack and let me tell you my story with SEO...
My journey in began in 2005.
I just graduated college and wanted to learn SEO so I could rank a website to sell my services as a freelance video editor.
Building my own business as a 20-something seemed like a better idea than working for "the man".
So I tried, failed miserably, and eventually found a job as an intern with a non-profit organization.
Which I ended up loving actually.
Fast-forward to 2008, when I stumbled across an online course called the "30 Day Challenge" by Ed Dale.
It taught you how to set up and rank a website that could make you passive income online with affiliate marketing.
After a few weeks of following the course, I made $2.18 in affiliate commission by selling a pair of Bose headphones on a free blogging platform.
Although it was only a couple of bucks, I was instantly hooked on making money online.
So I got right back into the world of SEO.
Between 2009 to 2012, I read everything I could get my hands on about ranking websites.
I also tried every SEO trick under the sun to rank my content higher on Google to find out what actually worked and which methods were just a gimmick.
Some of my sites crashed and burned from those experiments while others soared to the first page of Google.
Throughout my tests, I made notes on what techniques worked and soon developed my own on-page SEO strategy for consistently ranking in the top 10 on Google for every keyword I wanted.
At my high point, I was earning $10,000 per month as an affiliate marketer.
But then in 2013, everything fell apart.
Google slapped my sites with a "thin content penalty" which is when they decide your site doesn't add enough value to their users and then de-ranks it.
Basically, my SEO skills satisfied the algorithm to rank my pages high in the search engine but failed a manual inspection of the written content.
And just like that, I lost all of my earnings and traffic overnight.
I became severely depressed.
And gave up all hope in SEO.
But luckily that feeling only last about 2 months.
I just couldn't stop thinking about how easy it was to make so much free money online.
So I jumped back into the game.
And I learned from my fatal mistake: publishing low-quality content.
My on-page SEO tactics were golden... I could literally rank anything I wanted.
But my content quality was weak... so my top 10 rankings would never stick if I didn't fix the root of the problem.
I spent several months examining the top-ranking pages in Google to find out what they were doing "right" and discovered a noticeable content writing pattern. That's when things "clicked".
I then combined my on-page SEO tactics with this new content writing strategy and things began to soar again.
Within one year, I had ranked all of my websites back in the top 10 for my most profitable keywords.
And I doubled the monthly income I was earning from before the crash.
That allowed me to pay off my college loans, buy a car in cash, and get into a nice 2,500 sq. ft. house.
But the best part of this story isn't my quick comeback...
It's the fact that all those rankings still continue to this day (7 years later).
That's because my content now satisfies everyone's needs:
- The user
- The Google algorithm
- The manual inspection team
That's what makes my websites impossible to fail now.
An I always tell the people I coach in SEO:
"Good on-page SEO is only half the battle. The other half is providing quality content."
However, most people rarely get the on-page SEO part right and their content never ranks high in Google because of it.
You may have the most amazing content in the world, but it rarely gets the rankings and traffic it deserves without proper on-page SEO.
Which is why I created the Mastering On-Page SEO course:
"To help people who are struggling to get their content ranked high on Google by taking all of the guesswork out of how to do on-page SEO like a pro."
The testimonials speak for themselves, which you can read here:
And like I promised in your welcome email...
For the next 24 hours, you can use this coupon code J34DK to get the course for 50% OFF and learn all of my trade secrets for ranking more content in the top 10 positions on Google using on-page SEO alone and minimal backlinks.
Well, there you have it...
You now know more about me than some of my closest friends and why I'm certified to help you succeed with SEO.
I'm thrilled to have you in my SEO community and look forward to teaching you everything I know!
Your SEO Mentor,
Stephen Hockman
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