Philipp Keller

29 Nov 2024

Hi, I'm Philipp, 46y and new on this platform 👋 I'm strangely attracted both to 9-5 work, And building startups in my free time All while being husband and father of two teenagers My little story 👇

7 Feb 2025

I've been Louvioned

Philipp Keller reposted

Marc Lou

@marclou.bsky.social

6 Feb 2025

This domain is 2 months old. It has a better rating and more backlinks than all my sites in the first 2 years of building startups. 3 lessons:

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 👇

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.

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.

I contacted my users: I emailed them personally, sent surveys, called a few users on the phone. I added missing features and made the site fast and snappy. I made sure I have the biggest inventory (IMO the biggest need). Over time the short click / long click game worked out:

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.

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 😄

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 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!

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.

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.

12 Jan 2025

I see myself flocking from 🦋 back to Twitter. Bluesky is calmer - but also more boring. It didn't spark interesting discussions, And never really moved beyond starter packs.

When I was young Kids made fun of me cause I am so skinny I never was into sports Going into gym was out of the question I would embarrass myself! Until half a year ago I was close to depression And someone adviced me to go to gym My little story 👇

Meanwhile the time at the gym is my favourite time of the week. I leave my mobile in the locker. For the next hour, all my concentration goes into the exercises, This quenches all my sorrows, And pauses unfinished thoughts (something I never achieved when going for a walk)

And I slowly mutate into a gym bro too. Yesterday I tried squats and deadlifts for the first time. All in all this was my surprise of 2024. I could never ever imagine myself enjoying going to gym so much.🏋️

First, I felt the progress in the strength. At the beginning I could only do 2 pull ups. 6 months later I was at 10 pull ups. The smile I had on my face when I achieved the 10 pull ups! 🤗

Then, it started to show in my weight. I never could get my weight above 70kg. End of year I weighed 74kg. That means 4kg in muscle weight. And I think it starts to show. Not much, but my wife noticed

It was hard to swallow. Initially I brushed it off, But then I thought: What's to loose? I changed to 4 exercises each session, 4 sets each. I started having sore muscles the next day. »That's correct« said Giorgio »only when the muscles are hurt they start to grow«

I gave Giorgio the licence to give me advice: To tell me anytime he saw me doing an exercise wrong. This was hard on my ego - but I wanted my time investments to show off. I also felt that I would only keep going if I saw some progress.

At the gym I noticed a guy: Giorgio. He's super muscular, A typical gym bro, but around my age. One day, when I arrived at the gym he asked me: »What is your plan for today?« »The whole body«. No, no no! He answered…

»Going gym is not going to wellness! What you're doing is relaxing, you never go to the limit. Men are built for fighting, for pain, for war! You need to go to the limit: 4 sets. Repetitions until you cannot do one single more!«

Meanwhile, my son started showing interest too. He's 17 and was training with dumbbells at home, And wanted to upp his exercises. So he started going to the same gym. When my muscles showed no change, his muscles grew instantly. Unfair!

But now we were two in the family. We started buying protein powder for drinks. Also Creatine. We made sure we had more proteins in our daily meals. Again, this helped him, but not me 😄

Then, one month later, I felt the "base energy" coming back. I was back to building daily, Sometimes even after dinner. Here's my github chart: I never missed one single day

But - since I was going the the gym, I wanted to see my efforts in my bodily appearance. I started buying new clothes. I started getting aware of my body posture. But my muscles wouldn't grow 🤔

Then my therapist motivated me to go to the gym. Because I knew he would ask me about it 1 week later, I half heartedly I signed up for a trial lesson at a nearby gym. The gym trainer asked for my reason. »Out of energy« She set up a full body program. 1 hour 3 times a week

I started going and noticed that I had more energy when coming home. My wife even noticed: »Usually you're much more tired around that time of the day« But the energy dropped again after a few hours. My overall energy was still low.

It was half a year ago. I only had energy for my 9-5. I have been side building for 2 years, But suddenly when I tried to build, I was sitting at the computer, And just couldn't. When I forced myself it was getting worse I took a break for a few weeks but that didn't help.

28 Dec 2024

I donated 10% of this years profits to charity Three reasons: 1. I feel grateful for having had success this year 2. I want to train my "giving muscle" early in my entrepreneur career 3. I know the people from the charity. Understanding the impact of the donation makes me happy

4. I pay less taxes

How was your 2024? For us it was a good year: Moved from a 400y old house to a 7y old flat Got my first real internet money and spent it on furniture There was some bad stuff as well but my wife and me are grateful! 🙏

24 Dec 2024

Merry Xmas! Enjoy the time with your friends and family 🍽️

23 Dec 2024

I created a traffic estimator. Which is a lot better than similarweb. Drop me your domain and I'll estimate your monthly sessions 👇

23 Dec 2024

My last weeks goal: Research/refresh 60 backlink opportunities for my SEO Kickstarter V2 With MUCH effort I made it to 40 - which is 66% I underestimated the effort. Or differently: I decided to spend more time per backlink. Am I happy with this? Yes! Cause my week goal kept me on track

Philipp Keller@philippkeller.com

Week goals update I only finished 14% of last weeks' goal 🥲 I got half sick, and also underestimated the goal A LOT This week I have vacations from my 9-5 job -> I turn into a FULLTIME BUILDER for a week. Goal: Refresh/research 60 backlinks from SEO Kickstarter V1 into V2. My workplace today 👇

22 Dec 2024

I compared similarweb, ahrefs and semrushs traffic predictions against 8 websites I have traffic data from Turns out that semrushs' prediction is the best Only looked at SEO traffic Green means it's less than 50% off the reality

23 Dec 2024

Update: with the right multipliers ahrefs performs best. BTW: the lines are sorted by traffic desc - for low traffic sites the error margins are HUGE - the bigger the site, the more accurate.

22 Dec 2024

How do you estimate other websites' traffic? Do you use… A) Similarweb B) Ahrefs (SEO traffic only) C) Semrush (SEO traffic only) D) something else… E) don't trust any of those as they are all wrong