Timeline

December, 2016 Humble Beginnings

It all started when I bought my first blog – God and You (h3sean.com). I offered my last money to God and told Him that I want to just blog for Him – to glorify Him throughout the internet. I bought the domain name, 1 gig worth of hosting and started my first independent WordPress blog.

December, 2016 My SEO Experience

I was going through my On-the-Job Training (OJT) when I stumbled upon SEO – I was hired by a young company in Ortigas (which is now out of business, unfortunately). I was given the task of SEO trainee – too bad that the SEO manager resigned just a week after I got in – leaving all the SEO work to me (there were only 2 of us for the company’s entire SEO stuff). I had an enormous quota which involved blog commenting, forum posting and adding a lot of “friends” in 5 social networks for 5 of our company’s clients – which I’m ashamed to say wasn’t really SEO work. It was honestly horrible and I worked from 6am in the morning to 12 midnight on some days – and got paid $150 a month for all of it. In the middle of it all, I was learning more about WHY I was doing things. Why I had such a huge quota. Why I had to comment intelligibly on forums. Why I had to comment intelligibly on blogs. Why the links were so important. Etc. In all of this, I applied everything to my first blog – God and You. And true enough, some of my tests worked. I got my blog to PR 3 then PR 4. And it’s ranking on a wide scale of keywords even until now.

December, 2016 The Brand

SEO Hacker as a website was born April 2010 – just a few months from my college graduation (I graduated February 2010) – while I was still working for HP as an SAP support specialist in the San Miguel Building in front of SM Megamall. It was after working hours for me (my shift was 9am – 6pm) and I had lots of time to wait for my friend (I was staying at his place during that time) who was assigned to a 3pm – 12mn shift. By this time, I was already a bit knowledgeable about SEO because of the strategies I tested out in my God and You blog (h3sean.com).

I bought SEO-Hacker.com (whose name was inspired by a blog I was following then – lifehacker.com) and built it as a ‘knowledge-base’ blog. I simply blogged about the new things I was learning about SEO. I was doubly inspired by Copyblogger.com on how they were posting such great copywriting tutorials and helping out a lot of people become better bloggers. I fashioned SEO Hacker’s style on their generous tips and tricks blog style – and even had my color scheme inspired by their color scheme then.

I worked hard in HP – learning how a services company should provide great services to clients – and the penalty of it if we don’t. I learned to do things in a timely fashion and to work well with a team. I had a lot of time after working hours to read about SEO, practice it, then write about it. Those were the first blog entries of SEO Hacker – needless to say, they’re only around 300 words and don’t make much of an SEO article. Don’t bother looking for them.

December, 2016 How I Started as a Professional

Then someone from our local church invited me to do SEO for him – he was a third party. I told him that I don’t have any professional experience but he insisted. So I went to work – but I was convicted because the website was a gambling website. I then asked God if what I was doing was glorifying to Him and I told God that if it wasn’t – He would take it away. That’s almost $550 worth of monthly income which was more than what I was getting in HP. God was faithful and He took the project away – leaving me with nothing for half a month. I went to Hongkong with my dad (it was his graduation gift to me) and I met a girl there whose uncle owned the biggest scuba diving liveaboard fleet in the Philippines. She referred me to her uncle and that was my first major contract. I was gutsy enough to pitch the contract at almost $1,000 and the company agreed. The rest, as they say, is history.

December, 2016 Where we Are Now (October, 2012)

Today, SEO Hacker has grown to more than 20 people in the team and more than 20 brands under the care of our internet marketing services. But the best part is, SEO Hacker has helped numerous up-coming SEO specialists through its blog, SEO School, and through speaking engagements throughout the country. Looking back, I could really say that it’s all by God’s grace – and even today when we face financial difficulties as a team (yes it does happen), God is gracious enough to boost us with 1 more client or with a few more people signing up for our Sterling Enrollment.