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I reached #1 on Google for my most relevant keywords. That is for my real estate search weegee​.ch: I outrank the main player who was there for 20 years. I never imagined this would be possible I spent $0 for SEO tools and wrote no blog posts. How I got there 👇

When I launched 2.5 years ago I told Google to index my site and thought "that'll do, I will be on page 2 or 3". But I was on page 43. I got 0 traffic. Google told me my site is not mobile friendly (I forgot the viewport), I fixed this and hoped things would improve.

Problem was, that Google would not recrawl my site. I requested reindex through google search console but Google had no appetite in recrawling my site. It still warned me about the site being bad on mobile even though I fixed it weeks ago.

Now my site had too many pages. It is a shared flat search with thousands of crawled listings. Google won't spend lots of crawling budget on a fresh site. A SEO friend told me I should fix all on-site SEO problems so when Google eventually recrawls I would land on page 2-3.

I ran ahrefs' free site audit and fixed all problems. It took lots of time. After the next crawl my mobile issues were gone. But it still only crawled a few dozens pages and I still was on page 43. My SEO friend was baffled. Turns out he never did SEO for a fresh site.

In ahrefs SEO guide ahrefs.com/seo I learned I need backlinks. Their advice: Look where your competitor has backlinks from, email these sites and ask for a backlink. Semrush has a free tier with 10 actions per day. Downloading my competitors backlinks=1 action - easy!

I crafted my messaging: My shared flat search is bigger and better than my competitors, linking to my site improves their site as they can offer their visitor a better service (this is called "skyscraper technique"). Plus I'm a single programmer who built this on the weekend.

I had no idea if this messaging would work, I never did cold emailling but I was curious enough. I started with smaller sites to test my messaging: I searched their email addresses, crafted every email personally to mention their site and avoid a "mass mailing feel".

I didn't get any reply. I thought that was it. Then after 2 weeks I got the first replies and my first backlinks. These were university sites which needed to forward my email a few times until it reached the webmaster.

One university even put my request into the agenda of their next weekly meeting. My request was approved and I got the backlink 😄

So I reached out to more websites: From 50 I reached out to I got back 12 backlinks. This was enough for Google to take me more seriously: They crawled more pages and more frequently and even more importantly: I climbed up to the first page.

But I was still not in the top #3. My ahrefs DR was at 18. But my competitors have DR's above 40. But instead of hunting for more backlinks I invested into the usability of my site.

Google has the concept of "long clicks" and "short clicks": If someone clicks my competitor and after 1min returns to Google it's a "short click". My competitor gets ranked down. If they click my site and they return only after half an hour or not at all I get ranked up.

My main competitor has a site full of ads and their search sucks. So I knew that eventually through offering more inventory and a better search I'd win the SEO game. Which after 2.5 years I did. My site is now constantly ranking above my main competitor for my main keywords.

Granted: my competitor still has more traffic than me. They built up their name over 20 years and also get more mouth to mouth than me. But eventually I'll also beat them traffic wise because I reach more new people through SEO than them.

so it's a google switzerland? in french or german (or Italian) ?