SEO Secrets Unveiled: How to Build a Million-Dollar Business with Search Engine Mastery

SEO expert Senthilkumar reveals how he built a million-dollar company using search engine optimisation alone. In this episode, he breaks down his five-step SEO methodology, debunking common myths and offering practical advice for entrepreneurs. Learn why creating outstanding content is crucial, how to conduct effective keyword research, and why backlinks are essential for boosting your website's credibility. Senthilkumar shares insights on balancing AI-generated content with human touch, explains why SEO isn't suitable for every business, and offers tips for sustainable link-building strategies. Discover the three keys to winning at SEO and why human expertise remains invaluable in crafting a successful strategy. Whether you're a seasoned business owner or just starting out, this episode provides actionable tips to improve your online visibility and attract more leads through SEO.

Recommended podcast: Online Marketing Made Easy by Amy Porterfield

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Transcript

Jim James (00:01)
One of the main challenges that all entrepreneurs have is getting found. Google, Yahoo, Reddit, any of the search engines, the directories, they have so much content and our challenge is to be on the first page of the search results. And that's not easy considering how much content there already is, but how much content is being generated every day. My guest today,

ran a business at university and learned SEO and managed to build the business into a one million Australian dollar business by attracting leads all through the power of SEO. So we're delighted to have Senthilkumar join us from Sydney today because he's built a business himself using SEO. And now he has a business called SEO with Senthilkumar where he helps people like me and you to explain and to understand

how we can get noticed using SEO. Senthil, welcome to the show.

Senthilkumar (01:04)
Jim, thanks for having me.

Jim James (01:06)
Well, it's my pleasure because SEO always feels like a little bit of a dark art, but you're gonna help us to understand there's some science behind it, right? And also give us five-stage sort of methodology that we can follow and a free download at the end of the show. So, Senthilkumar, us at the beginning, tell us about that story that you went from sort of university, trying to build a business to a million dollar business by using SEO. Tell us about that first.

Senthilkumar (01:36)
So me and my group of friends, we were actually trying to customize paper notebooks and sell to individuals. And after that, decided, you know what, things are not working out. Nobody's buying these individually customized notebooks. And we decided to do bulk notebook printing and bulk t-shirt printing because there a lot of companies, a lot of schools, clubs looking for these printed merchandise. And we thought that SEO would be the best strategy

to do it because there were so many of these companies searching on Google for these products and services. So what happened was because I had attended an SEO course just a couple of months before I did that minor in entrepreneurship program, I decided to spend my next one to two years to fully focus my time and effort on the website of my t-shirt printing company. And by the time I graduated from university, we were getting so many leads

through SEO and word of mouth that we had to hire a team to manage these incoming leads and sales. And after that, I also started an art studio where corporates could come in to paint on t-shirts and tote bags. And again, I used SEO to bring in leads and clients. And just across my art studio and printing company, as you mentioned, I made over a million dollars in revenue

using SEO and word of mouth alone. So I didn't use any other marketing strategies and nothing else like paid ads and all that.

Jim James (03:14)
That is music to my ears because advertising is so expensive, but also as we know, although there's attribution, you're competing for keywords and SEO takes time rather than necessarily money, doesn't it? So we're going to talk about how an entrepreneur can spend some time, not too much time, moving up the rankings. do you want to just take us through how SEO works? Search engine optimization.

How does it work? Let's understand the background behind it first.

Senthilkumar (03:48)
Absolutely. Okay, Jim. I need you to answer me here. How does Google make money?

Jim James (03:54)
Well, they make money out of people like me looking for things. They sell me ads, don't they, when I search.

Senthilkumar (03:59)
ads right? Google ads, ads assistants, So if you are Google and you want to make more money then what do you need?

Jim James (04:07)
I need more people to come and look for things. Look for more people to look for.

Senthilkumar (04:11)
more people searching on Google, right? So before you can have more people searching on Google, considering your objective is to get more people searching on Google, then how would you choose the content to rank on Google page

Jim James (04:29)
Yeah, I want to serve the people that come to the website with the most relevant content as quickly as possible so they get a good user experience, I guess.

Senthilkumar (04:38)
You got it there partially. You want to give them the relevant content for the keyword they searching for. But there thousands of websites with relevant content. So as Google, Google needs to choose the most outstanding content that really engages with the person searching for this keyword and that makes them go wow. Because only then will these people trust Google to give them the best results and keep coming back to Google,

and then Google can make more money. So this is the fundamental principle of SEO that so many people miss. Your content has to be really up to the mark.

Jim James (05:20)
That's interesting. So we're going to talk later on about AI and using AI generated content and about the impact of that on SEO. We'll touch on that a bit later on, I think. But first of all, let's build from the basics. And so we've got to have great content on our websites. And is that in the form of text copy on the website or is it in terms of blogs? What sort of content are we talking about?

Senthilkumar (05:32)
Yes.

So everything on your website, mainly you're talking about, by what I mean by engaging content, is a content piece that gives value to the person searching on Google. Like say they're searching for a keyword, they find your website. The content doesn't just have to have text. It can have images. It can have videos, anything to engage people to stay on the site to

get the value that they are looking for on your website.

Jim James (06:22)
Okay, right. And I'm showing for anyone that would like to look at this on YouTube, Senthilkumar's homepage is called seowithsenthil.com  And he has a lot of great blog content, everything from, and it's all free, like seven free SEO guides and checklists, how to win SEO with Alex Hormozi and how I sold two businesses in Singapore and seven tips to sell your business. You have

Senthilkumar (06:32)
Cool.

And it's all free, right? It's all free.

Jim James (06:51)
constant flow of interesting articles with images Senthil. So are you saying that SEO is the text, if you like the marketing speak on the website, is SEO that or the blog posts or a combination?

Senthilkumar (07:11)
So it's a combination of the blog articles and, of course, your home page and every other page on your website. Everything has to be SEO optimized. And there just five steps to getting your SEO right. And getting these five steps well can help you rank on Google page one. So SEO is in a dark art that it's

Jim James (07:30)
Sit

No, it sounds as though it is an art though, even if it's not a dark art, it is an art form. So if you've got a five, it would be remiss of me not to ask you, Senthilkumar, to go through those if you don't mind.

Senthilkumar (07:38)
Yeah.

Yep. So the first step we have already gone through it. It's understanding the SEO fundamentals. And then the second step is doing the keyword research. So for keyword research, you need to find keywords which have demand in your industry that people are searching for. You need to find keywords that have less competition for you to get started in SEO. And you need to find profitable keywords because you're running a business.

After you get your keyword research done, then the next step, the third step, is to plan and create the content. And over here, mediocre content does not rank. You need to have outstanding content. So there are ways to develop content that differentiates yourself from your competitors and that impresses the visitor landing on your website. And then after the third step, the fourth

is called on-page optimization. So it might sound intimidating, but what it basically is, is making tweaks on your website in line with Google's best practices. One example of a tweak. So some of these tweaks you don't even need to make because many website builder platforms already have them inbuilt. For example, if you want your website to be mobile optimized, if you're using any

of the website builder platforms out there, it's already mobile optimized. So you have that tweak down. So there are many of these tweaks that you need to look into to make sure that you have made them before you move on to the fifth step, which is link building. So what link building means is attracting backlinks or referrals from other websites pointing to your website. So you don't want to just get

backlinks from any website because you want to be getting these referrals from good quality people, good quality websites. So these are just the five steps of SEO and it's that simple. I mean, if you're looking at the big picture.

Jim James (09:57)
Okay, well you make it sound simple. So let's go to step number two. You talked about finding keywords. I've always found that quite challenging, two reasons. One is what tool should I use? And the second is, those keywords stay the same or do I need to update them? So first of all, can you just give us some guidance on what tool or tools should we use?

Senthilkumar (10:25)
So my favorite tool to use is this tool called Uber Suggest because they are one of the more affordable SEO tools out there. And the even better part is they offer a seven day free trial. So if you know what are the products or services that you offer, you have gone through the SEO checklist that I'm going to be sharing with your audience later,

then you will know what you need to do once you go into Uber Suggest. You will know exactly how you're going to check for that competition and get those steps done. So just use the seven days free trial and get your keyword research complete within that seven days.

Jim James (11:07)
Okay, well, we won't tell Neil Patel, you're telling everyone to use the free trial and then leave, it's actually, I think, part of Neil Patel's empire, isn't it? The Uber Suggest, he bought it, I think, from the UK company, as it was originally founded in the UK, if I'm not mistaken. Okay, so we start with Uber Suggest. said you do it once, but is this a movable feast?

Senthilkumar (11:11)
You

Jim James (11:36)
Do we need to kind of do the SEO every month, every week?

Senthilkumar (11:41)
So the reason you can do the keyword research once is because I'm assuming that you know what you're selling, right? And you know what your target audience are probably looking for or searching for.

Jim James (11:51)
Yeah.

And if you don't, you've got bigger problems than SEO, of course, right? Yeah.

Senthilkumar (11:58)
Exactly. And when you type in a keyword into Uber Suggest around your niche, it will show you related keywords that also have searches. So it can give you more ideas

even the volume, the search volume may change, but just because it changes a little bit, it doesn't matter. You don't need to worry about the search volume getting a little bit higher or a little bit lesser. It doesn't matter.

Jim James (12:33)
Okay, so that's really useful to know. And then the, I guess the key point there as well to your blog comment is that one is ideally creating blog content frequently or consistently, let's say, that has got those keywords in it, Senthilkumar, so that you're creating new content.

Senthilkumar (12:56)
It's a myth. You don't need to keep creating content. That's what I love about SEO. let's say that you have done your keyword research. You have found maybe 20 to 30 keywords that you would like to write content around. So the next step is to come up with the article topics. So you want to come up with article topics that differentiate yourself from the competition and also answers what these people searching for this keyword are looking for. So

you might be coming up with maybe seven to 10 or maybe 12 article topics to address these 20 to 30 keywords. And after you come up with these articles, you just want to keep improving on it. You might need to update it if things get outdated. But as long as the content quality is there, you don't need to keep writing new content as a small business owner. Of course, if you are a media agency and your job is to create new content,

then you have to, but apart from that, if let's say you run a t-shirt printing company or a barber shop somewhere in your area, you don't need to keep producing new content,

Jim James (14:08)
Oh, that's interesting. So you've mentioned as a 10 to 20 articles. if we, let's say your average business maybe aims to produce 20 articles for which it could use AI. Maybe this is when we come onto the AI piece of the story, Cento. Many, business owners, myself included, we're not great writers. That's not what we started as, right? We're entrepreneurs.

What's your guidance for people when it comes to writing? Should they outsource that to a copywriter? Should they use a chat GPT or AI writer or there's Pepper Type out of it? There's more and more writers. What's your view?

Senthilkumar (14:50)
So the thing about AI is the reason why chat GPT has so many versions, it's because it doesn't have the most updated content. It's not going to be giving you the latest updated content that Google can show you in the search results. So you can use AI for inspiration, for some ideas if you're stuck, maybe for some pointers.

I feel that the end result, the final content that you actually write, that outstanding piece of content, has to be written by a human with a personal touch. Because that is what is going to differentiate your content from the other pieces of content already that is ranking on Google. So as a human, you can go into Google, you can type that keyword, you can see what are the other articles having that I can take inspiration

and what are they missing that I can input into my article to make that stand out.

Jim James (15:57)
That makes a lot of sense and I think people could, as you say, either use ChatGPT or any of these other writers or Bard, for example, to give inspiration, but still contribute. And if they're not good at typing, of course you can use dictation now, can't you? can just speak into your phone and use otter.ai , for example, to take the transcript down.

Senthilkumar (16:20)
But on that point, as a founder, if you don't have the time to write the article yourself, what you can do is come up with the article topic. So do the keyword research, come up with the article topic. Even come up with the article structure and maybe even the points that you want the writer to talk about. And then you can outsource it to a very experienced writer. They don't even need to be an SEO writer. They just have to be a very good blog writer. You outsource

that content to them and they give you those 10 pieces of content and you have it on your website. So it isn't that overwhelming if you look at it that.

Jim James (17:02)
Yeah, and I think that if we see it as a fundamental part of the marketing strategy and also that it doesn't have to be kind of a daily output, then it becomes a little less sort of burdensome, doesn't it? It's part of something you can understand building that content. And it's in a way a bit like having a brochure in the old days. We used to make a brochure, aging myself here a bit, but you know, used to print a brochure, eight page, 24 pages,

that was it maybe once a year. You didn't make something every week.

Senthilkumar (17:34)
Exactly. And those pieces of content that you're putting out, you don't compromise on the quality because they become your assets, right? So like three years, five years, 10 years down the road, they could be bringing in the leads and sales for your business.

Jim James (17:52)
So we've talked about getting content on the website and you mentioned then about backlinks. This is another aspect that can be quite complicated for people. Do want to just explain how backlinks work? Let's start with that because I know that your page rank can go up according to how many other pages link into you, right? It's kind of a credibility metric,

but it's also something that seems extremely difficult to figure out how to do.

Senthilkumar (18:29)
So backlinks , how I explain it to people, is just getting referrals. So you want to get referrals from other good quality websites. And to do that, once again, you need to have good content on your website. So once again, it goes back to that same core principle, have that outstanding piece of content on your website. And that's one way to attract backlinks.

You can have some infographics or something unique on your website that other people want to link to. Or I can get on podcasts like your show or other podcasts to get backlinked. That in itself is a backlink building strategy. So there are close to 11 backlink building strategies out there. And what you need to do is identify what are the backlink building strategies that are suitable for your business.

And that can help you attract backlinks in the long term. Because you don't just want to have referrals for one or two months, and then after that, nobody refers you. So that's the whole idea about backlink building.

Jim James (19:42)
Okay, and backlinks, is that where I put my content on someone else's website and then they link to my website as the source? Or is it where they say, hey, know, Senthilkumar says, hey, I'm on Jim's website. So for example, at theunnoticed.cc I have all of the guests that have been on the show, over 600 guests. So all of those are linked from my website.

Senthilkumar (20:06)
So if let's say that I'm speaking on your podcast, I tell you, hey Jim, when you drop the podcast episode, just put a link to my website, seowithsenthil.com, . So now what I've just done is I have earned a backlink from your website to my website.

Jim James (20:10)
Which you are. Yeah. Which you are.

Right, in fact, I've had one or two guests who do SEO who actually said they were only on the show for the backlinks. That made me feel special. But okay, but that's why podcasts can be a very good strategy because you're getting the backlinks from Spotify, from Apple, because we put your details in the show notes.

Senthilkumar (20:33)
So that's a reference.

Ha ha.

Mainly, you get the backlinks that matter more is the backlink that I'm getting from your website if you have one. For example. Yeah, because for Spotify and Apple, I can get a backlink from there, but if I want a backlink from there, I can always put up a podcast episode and just link it.

Jim James (21:11)
I see. Why is that?

Senthilkumar (21:26)
It's easier to get it, right? Like anybody can just put up an episode and get it back.

Jim James (21:33)
Okay, so you've got these five steps. Is there anything that we haven't covered in those five steps that we still need to be thinking

Senthilkumar (21:47)
I think we have covered quite a bit of those five steps, but I always tell people that three keys to winning an SEO, I think that's the only thing I haven't covered here. Yeah. So the first key to winning an SEO is accumulating the knowledge. So if you go to my website, there's so many articles, you download my five-step SEO checklist.

Jim James (21:59)
Okay, well, think let's do that. Let's do that because you've got plenty got a great deal of wisdom

Senthilkumar (22:15)
You can get the five steps to rank on Google. So you got the first key nailed, right? You, you, you learn, you accumulate the knowledge. So after you accumulate the knowledge, do you want to know what is the second key to winning an SEO? Or do you want to guess?

Jim James (22:29)
I absolutely I second key is to start taking some action, I would

Senthilkumar (22:33)
Exactly! Wow, okay, you got the second key right, Jim. So now you have to get the third key right, alright? So after you take action, there are thousands of websites that take action, they write lots of content, but they are not ranking on Google Page One. And that's because they are missing the third key. And what's

Jim James (22:55)
that one I'm going to have to phone for help.

Senthilkumar (22:57)
That starts with an S.

Jim James (23:02)
starts with this.

Senthilkumar (23:04)
It applies for business as well. For business, you need the knowledge, you need to take action, but you need this third key before you can succeed.

Jim James (23:13)
I'm to say sugar on this one, it begins with an S. Strategy, of course.

Senthilkumar (23:17)
Strategy, you need strategy. Business strategy, you need an SEO strategy. In SEO, you need a keyword research strategy. You need a content strategy and you need a link building strategy. And these are areas that if you don't have the experience or you don't have the time to keep refining and finding that winning strategy, then it's going to be hard to rank. So these are the areas

I help my clients one on one because these are the areas that need to be customized for every business.

Jim James (23:53)
I see, right, okay. And then that's something that say strategy, maybe the business changes or grows, then people need to modify that strategy. There are some tools I've had the founders of a company called Respona on the show, Farzad, talking about a platform that helps with finding backlinks.

So it is possible to semi-automate that process as well, isn't it? So there are some helps.

Senthilkumar (24:26)
Yeah, so these are, I mean, you can identify where you can get backlinks from, but then you need a strategy to attract these backlinks in a sustainable way. So it could be like a certain type of content to create on your website. It could be something very specific to your niche, to your offer. So it has to be,

It can't just be like, can't just say, go and get backlinks from this site. Like every business or every industry, you may need to develop a different strategy based on that industry, based on the competition, where they are getting backlinks from. Yeah, there's so many different nuances here.

Jim James (25:12)
Well, Uncentred, think what's also great about your explanation is that it's reminding me that we can't outsource this to AI or to platforms. It needs the human involvement in there, a consultant with your level of expertise to take the next step. So, you know, just creating content and trying to generally create backlinks, but actually to get real results, you've got to have some human element in there.

What would you say, Senthilkumar , would be your number one tip to people when they're thinking about SEO?

Senthilkumar (25:52)
So my number one tip is to definitely download my five-step SEO checklist and start your keyword research. Because only after you do your keyword research correctly can you know the potential of SEO for your business. And if you need some help or need some advice, you can always book a one-on-one SEO evaluation call with me,

where I will explain to you whether SEO is a good fit for your business. And you might be surprised, Jim, that there are some businesses out there where SEO is not a good fit. Like, I got on a call with the business owner and I told her, like, no, I don't think you should be doing SEO.

Jim James (26:26)
Okay.

Really, kind of business is not good for SEOs until you surprise

Senthilkumar (26:43)
So, I can give you an example. So, recently I had a call with a business owner from Singapore. She helps personal brands, like people like our course creators, coaches, to take photos, like really good photos, personal brand photography. So, what happened was when she got on a call with me, I got into Uber Suggest and I said, hey, you know, let's explore how many people are searching

personal brand photography in Singapore because that's the market you're serving. And we found that almost nobody was searching for that. It was like close to 10 searches a month or some keyword didn't even have searches. So we tried different variations and we realized more people were searching for things like wedding photography, family photography. So asked her, are you open to, you know,

doing other types of photography or do you do other types of photography? And she said, no, I want to be really focused on personal brand photography. So I told her in that case, then SEO is not suitable for you. You can maybe do partnerships or you can do Instagram, Instagram ads to educate people on the importance of having great photographs to grow their brand. Yeah, things like that.

Jim James (28:04)
Yeah, that's really, really interesting, Senthilkumar, that not every business is, if you like, friendly in that way. That's really, really an interesting insight as well. Senthilkumar , if people want to you and find this download, where can they get it

Senthilkumar (28:24)
They can get it from my main website. It's seowithsenthil.com . So you just have to go there, click on access my checklist, and then they can get the five steps and it's all very detailed for them.

Jim James (28:30)
Okay.

Okay, that's wonderful. And if you are wanting to see this on YouTube, my channel at Jim A. James, you can also see Senthilkumar's beautifully yellow, actually, beautifully sunshine colored website.

Senthilkumar (28:50)
It's the button right there, XS My Checklist here.

Jim James (28:55)
Yeah, that's perfect. Presumably that's an SEO friendly title. Central, thanks so much for joining me on today's UnNoticed Entrepreneur. A huge amount of wisdom and expertise. You know, I do have one final question for you and that is a book or a podcast that you would recommend.

Senthilkumar (29:14)
I would recommend this podcast that I've been recently listening to. It's online marketing made easy by Amy Potterfield. So I actually was part of her cause as well and her podcast has a lot of great tips related to marketing, email marketing and so much more. And I'm a great fan of marketing. I'm sure you guessed it.

Jim James (29:39)
I know I can, your energy and enthusiasm and your insight comes across so well. So Senthilkumar , thank you so much for coming on to the UnNoticed Entrepreneur show today.

Senthilkumar (29:50)
Thank you so much for having me Jim. Thank

Jim James (29:53)
Good, so we've had SEO with Center, he's in Sydney, but originally was actually in Singapore. So we had a bit of a chat about that before the mic came on, because I lived there for 12 years and very happy days for me too. If you've enjoyed this show, then please do share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur, send them a link to the show. And if you have enjoyed it as well, do please review it on the plan because that also really helps that Apple and Spotify know that people are listening and enjoying the show.

And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. and don't forget to download Senthil's five stage approach to SEO. Thank you for listening to me, Jim James, on this episode of the UnNoticed Entrepreneur.