I learned about SEO through my first business, a Singaporean dating advice site that I later wanted to take international. This is in the coaching niche. Service professionals and providers in Singapore can take away key lessons from this case study.
In hindsight, it taught me lessons that go beyond SEO—it showed me that traffic isn’t as important as product-market fit.
However, for this SEO case study, I’ll mainly focus on how I achieved SEO organic growth locally, then on an international scale.
Targeted Keywords for MarcusNeo.Com
I obsessed over the keywords “dating coach” and “dating coach Singapore” in Singapore’s local search results. Eventually, I achieved page one, rank one for those keywords. The SEO traffic led to interviews on national TV and a couple of articles written for Channel News Asia.
However, these keywords only added up to 20-30 searches a month. (inspite of this, I generated more than 100k of revenue in this business). In hindsight, it was quite a feat.
I focused on a lot of dubious local SEO methods up till the pandemic came and the local market dried up. I then had the idea of making it into an international blog using SEO.
Once the local market dried up,
MarcusNeo.Com Link Building Track Records
I understood the importance of link building and hired a link building agency on Upwork that specialized in the Skyscraper method. Yes, links were coming in, but they weren’t very targeted.
If I remembered correctly, I paid around 2.5k USD for two – three months of link building efforts. Yes, and $500 for a setup fee.
That’s around 10 links per month for September 2019 and October 2019, totalling 20 links.
However, the links came from sites that weren’t very niche-relevant. I decided to stop working with the agency after a couple of months, as there was no noticeable improvement. In hindsight, my site might have just been in the sandbox phase.
Our Own Internal Link Building Efforts
I then took it upon myself to learn link building and studied more from SEO experts and thought leaders.
I signed up for online SEO courses and started managing everything myself, from research to outreach. I hired virtual assistants on Upwork to help, and focused on building links from sites that were more relevant to my niche.
For example, if my site was about dating advice, I aimed for links from dating, relationship, or men’s self-improvement websites. From December 2019 to June 2020, I focused on building links aggressively. Traffic skyrocketed, and in early 2022, the site even crashed from the surge in visitors.
Tabulation of Link Building
| Month | Links Built |
|---|---|
| January 2021 | 2 |
| February 2021 | 2 |
| March 2021 | 7 |
| May 2021 | 1 |
| June 2021 | 7 |
| July 2021 | 4 |
| Total | 23 |
Traffic Growth on Google Analytics
Our link-building efforts began as early as September 2019, but the site only started gaining significant traffic in July 2020. This is only after solid 6 to 9 months of consistent work.
On the content’s end, I also streamlined blog articles, combining them and making articles more solid. I also targeted lower-competition, long-tail keywords for each article.
These combined strategies played a key role in driving a steady increase in traffic.
Conclusion
In conclusion, my SEO process has been one of trial, error, and persistence. Starting with a niche local site and transitioning to an international blog taught me that success in SEO is hugely reliant on high quality link building.