I shall discuss two SEO case studies that are from the ground up. I started both sites from zero, in my Singapore HDB bedroom with zero page authority and domain authority.
The first site was built on passion, in the dating advice niche, and I eventually got it to around 20k global readers and sold it off. The second site is ThreeLittlePigs.Pro, this site! Nonetheless, I am attempting to rank for digital marketing related keywords in Singapore.
These case studies are different because the former focused on global search engine results and the second one is localised to Singapore.
The goal is to also demonstrate competency by ranking our own website on the first page on Google for industry related keywords. It is also to test out certain factors that small medium business owners in Singapore aren’t that aware of: such as being in the sandbox period for new websites.
The SEO agency business in Singapore is dominated with incumbents dominating the top search results. Top digital marketing agencies such as First Page Digital and OOM and long time dominators of Singapore’s search engine results.
However, that does not mean that you can easily help other clients rank. Or that any agency should over promise results. That’s because the difficulty in every niche is different. In fact, I know a friend who hires an India based SEO consultant who charges $150 a month. He is ranked on page one, rank one on Google for an industry with zero SEO competition.
Singapore SEO Case Study 1: MarcusNeo.Com (Sold to BeyondAges.Com)
I started a dating advice business blog for Singaporean men as my first business. That’s how I got involved in SEO. I wanted to rank on page one on the search results and get clients. SEO was also how I generated my first business.
The money keyword “dating coaching Singapore” also only had 20 searches a month.
Nonetheless, it put me on a sprint to learn more about SEO. I attended two Singaporean local SEO programs. Even though I would disagree with their methods of ranking today, I did manage to rank “dating coach Singapore’ to the top of Google.Com.Sg search engine results.
The niche isn’t that competitive and I was able to do it through a combination of internal linking and a couple of backlinks from local publishers.
However, I quickly realised I didn’t have enough clients from SEO alone and pivoted to Facebook advertising. One and a half years after advertising on Facebook, I got hit by multiple bans from Meta. I tried all sorts of tactics such as changing credit cards and making multiple accounts. The bans only got worse. Yes, I believe Meta tracks your account on a computer ID level.
Looking for a replacement traffic source, that’s where I turned to global SEO.
The idea was to monetize my content globally. That was where I learned about Skyscraper SEO, guest post link building and other more advanced methods of link building.
Initially, I hired an SEO expert link builder to build links to my Skyscraper articles. However, I felt that the links were lacking in relevance and decided to take link building in my own hands.
I learned outreach based link building and low behold, the benefits kicked in after six months of link building, hitting 20000 readers globally in around 8-12 months.
The process took some manual work initially.
However I built the link building system system to:
- Ensure the links coming in were from legitimate websites, with traffic and not link farms
- Ensure the links were coming from websites with relevance
Here are our link building results:
High number of backlinks but poor organic traffic?
Even though my website had majority traffic from US and UK audidences. I couldn’t convert the traffic from US and the UK. That is where I learned about the concept of product market fit. The site’s domain was my name and I wrote content under my own name. Long story short: trying to sell dating advice to Western countries written in an Asian/ Singaporean context wasn’t possible. I had a lack of experience living in Western cultures and a lack of case studies.
An American company eventually approached me to buy the site and I agreed.
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.
Singapore SEO Case Study 2: ThreeLittlePigs.Pro
I purchased the site on X date. I did a little bit of link building but life got in the way and I stopped entirely. If you looked at the data, I opine that Google gives fresh sites a boost as opposed to inactive sites.
The site was registered and purchased in 2021. I did initial link building from September 2021 to March 2022. I built around 19 backlinks to ThreeLittlePigs.Pro. They did give me some traffic boost initially during April’s 2023 when I started link building!
However, life got in the way and I left the site inactive for a couple of years. I only restarted activity in June 2024. I guess you aren’t really in Google’s good books if you are inactive for years.
As of writing, September 30th 2024. I started link building for 4 months. I built around 22 links within 4 months and published around 20 articles. The links are manually vetted, of relevance and come from high quality sites.
I built around 22 backlinks from 22 different referring domains since June 2024 to October 2024. Our site finally got recognised by Google and started ranking on the first 3-5 pages on Google.
Here are our link building results:
I shall update this article as I continue link building into the 5th, 6th month onwards for our Singaporean based digital marketing agency.
Studying The Competition in Singapore SEO Industry
Trying to rank on page one in the SEO and digital marketing industry is one of the hardest niches to get into. I am competing against big digital marketing agencies that have at least 30 men head counts. Secondly, they are supposedly SEO experts themselves right?
However, I am testing out a hypothesis as only a handful of digital marketing agencies on page 1 are using high quality outreach based links. This data can be researched by using Ahrefs, Semrush and looking at your competitions’s backlink profile. You can roughly reverse engineer the competition.
For example, if your competitors ranking on page one have 100 high quality backlinks pointing to their site, then your gap is to build around 17 high quality links per month for the next 6 months as a new entrant.
Nonetheless, our site went from not being found on the SERPs to being somewhat stagnant on page 3 to 5 for targeted keywords. I suspect it is Google’s sandbox where they prevent new or inactive sites from ranking on the first page of the search results too quickly.
I am still sticking to the game plan of continuing to build high quality backlinks through months 5 and six.
Note, aside from link building, I also published high quality blog articles SEO, digital marketing in an attempt to achieve “topical authority”.
Conclusion
I am mindful that Google’s helpful content algorithm update in 2023 affected many small, independent publishers. Traditional SEO search results are quickly losing their spark/ focus in the SEO industry. They are deemed unstable and unreliable by many SEO experts.
On the contrary, the maps pack and local SEO have been gaining relevance in the last couple of years. I myself am hugely reliant on the search results on Google maps, looking for places to eat nearby etc.
Yes, I recommend ranking on the local maps pack (outranking traditional SEO results) and acquiring customers that way.
Local SEO and ranking via the maps pack is an SEO aspect I intend to dive deeply into in the coming year. For established small businesses with satisfied hundreds of customers, it’s a way more efficient method of acquiring customers as opposed to trying to rank on traditional SEO results.
Lastly, SEO is a marathon. It can take up to 8 – 12 months in some niches. Yet, a friend is ranking on Google’s first page and page one because his industry isn’t competitive. I suggest business owners to figure out their paid traffic funnels before investing into SEO, whether be it SEM or social media advertising.