Jumpstart Your B2B SEO: Expert Insights from Senthilkumar Subramanian

In this episode of B2B Brand180, Linda interviews Senthilkumar Subramanian to discuss his five-step Jumpstart SEO System.

Senthil shares his success stories of ranking over a hundred keywords on Google and generating over a million dollars in revenue for his previous businesses. They delve into the importance of SEO, the common mistakes businesses make, strategies for choosing the right keywords, and the fundamentals of creating outstanding content. Senthil also provides insight into the technical aspects of SEO and offers practical advice for businesses to enhance their search engine rankings.


01:23 The Importance of Google Rankings
02:58 Strategies for Competitive Keywords
05:39 Understanding SEO Fundamentals
06:44 Common SEO Mistakes
08:39 Creating Outstanding Content
10:21 Long Form vs. Short Form Content
11:26 SEO Maintenance and Best Practices
14:04 Backlink Building Explained
14:41 Simplifying SEO Terminology

More Info on Senthil:

Website (& Freebie Download): https://www.seowithsenthil.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/senthilkumar-subramanian-ba02a783/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/senthil.kumar.96387/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seowithsenthil

Linda's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/

Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: https://mill.agency

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency/

Linda's Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/

Transcript

Linda Fanaras 0:00

Hi, I'm Linda Feneres, host of the B2B Brand CEO of Millennium Agency, where you will learn the latest tips on how to grow your business with marketing. Today I'm excited to bring in Sentil Kumar. He's the founder of SEO with Sentil. He uses this five step jumpstart SEO system, which he's going to talk about, and he is going to talk about how he's ranked for a hundred plus keywords on. Google page number one and made over a million in revenue and his business and art studio, which is now sold. So great to have you here. Thank you for coming on today.

Senthil Kumar 0:39

Hi Linda. Thank you for having me.

Linda Fanaras 0:41

Absolutely. Did I miss anything about you? Happy to have you chime in if there's anything else you might want to add.

Senthil Kumar 0:48

No, you shared my key achievements, which was my printing company and art studio, which I made over a million dollars in revenue using SEO and word of mouth alone. So I didn't use any other marketing strategies.

Linda Fanaras 1:00

Excellent. All right. Fantastic. So today we're going to talk about SEO because we do know that a lot of business owners. don't really know much about SEO or don't know exactly how to improve their search engine rankings, particularly today with a lot of additional traffic on the internet, it's becoming more and more cluttered. So let's get started. So I'll have you ask this real simple question. Why is ranking, you know, on the top of Google pages. So important

Senthil Kumar 1:31

because you get targeted traffic looking for information related to the products or services that you sell. And because these people, they are already searching for information related to services or products in your niche. They already have a stronger buying. Intent as compared to someone on Facebook or Instagram, who are just scrolling these social media platforms for fun. So, not just that when you attract these potential buyers using SEO, you don't need to pay more and more money to ads, or whether it's Google ads, social media ads, you don't have to keep paying more money to attract more leads. And. Once you start ranking on Google, even though the first six months to one year where you start establishing those Google rankings may be challenging. Once you rank these keywords on Google, then the maintenance part is a lot less time consuming. And you still get to enjoy the benefits of SEO or SEO done. Well, if you did it well, you get to enjoy the benefits of it. One, three, five years down the road. Even after You put, stop putting in so much effort into it. So that's my favorite part about SEO because I don't like to keep having to put in a lot of time and effort and keep tweaking, tweaking something, right?

Linda Fanaras 2:57

Right. That makes sense. A lot of times companies will choose keywords that are really competitive. Do you have any ideas or strategies for companies that may find that they're up against a lot of other similar companies and they just can't compete and stay on top of it because of the amount of content they're putting out because of the SEO that they're putting behind it?

Senthil Kumar 3:18

Yeah. So Linda, your question itself has a mistake that many of these companies are making, which is to go for a highly competitive keyword right at the beginning. So what I tell my clients is. If, you're going for a soccer competition and you haven't even won your local league, for example, I'm from Singapore and if Singapore hasn't even won in the Asian league and, and they're trying to compete in the world cup, it's going to be really challenging, right?

Linda Fanaras 3:49

Right.

Senthil Kumar 3:49

So, always start off with less competitive keywords. There's a way to check the competition, and then once you start ranking for less competitive keywords, then you slowly work on the more competitive keywords. So, this way, the less competitive keywords helps you to establish some baseline traffic and authority, and then you build up to the more competitive ones. And this way, you will already be getting traction leads and sales for your business when you start ranking for the less competitive keywords and it takes much less time.

Linda Fanaras 4:24

And I think a lot of companies do it the other way around. They look at their competitors, see exactly what they rank for and say, Oh, I want to rank for that too. But that is really not the right strategy. And it is, it is good to really consider those I guess I'll say less competitive keywords that where you would have an opportunity to rank. And maybe you can explain to our audience why that is, why, number one, why it works and why that's important.

Senthil Kumar 4:48

So, it works because Google wants to show the best results for any keyword that people are searching for. And many of these less competitive keywords, they are forgotten because people Don't aggressively work towards writing great content for these keywords. Mm-Hmm. So if you spot that keyword and say, Hey, you know, this, this is a keyword that has less competition and that I can work on writing an article around.

Linda Fanaras 5:18

Right. Then,

Senthil Kumar 5:19

It, it meets the needs of the person searching for that keyword. Yeah. So it's a lot faster to bring in these people onto your website.

Linda Fanaras 5:27

So what do you think the first step is for businesses and what should they be taking advantage of in order to rank for their, either their website or their page? What is the number one key step they should do?

Senthil Kumar 5:39

The number one key step for any business to start ranking on Google page one is to understand SEO fundamentals. So what do I mean by that? They need to put themselves in the shoes of Google and think, what, how does Google make money? So if you ask yourself that question, Google makes money through Google advertising. And if Google wants to make more money through Google advertising, Google needs more people searching on Google. Correct. So if Google wants more users, more people spending more time on Google, then Google will want to choose the most relevant and engaging content. That people love to rank organically on Google. So if you understand this core principle of what Google wants to earn the trust of people searching on Google, then all the other steps become so much easier because anytime you get stuck during the process, you always come back to the fundamentals and ask yourself, If I were Google, then what would I do?

Linda Fanaras 6:41

So what do you think people miss when it comes to SEO? What are some of the things that you've noticed that they actually mistakes that they might make or what they miss when they're trying to rank with SEO?

Senthil Kumar 6:52

You mentioned one of the mistakes earlier, which was keyword research. So that's the second step. After you understand the fundamentals, you need to get the keyword research, right? And you can check for the keyword demand. Also known as keyword search volume,

Linda Fanaras 7:06

and then

Senthil Kumar 7:07

you can check for the keyword competition.

Linda Fanaras 7:09

So,

Senthil Kumar 7:10

Sometimes people cannot find keywords that are less competitive to begin working on. And there's one more aspect of keyword research, which is understanding the profitability element of a keyword. let's see, someone was searching for, Why should I why invest in corporate team bonding or why is corporate team bonding important? Then they're just looking to find out more about why they should do it. For example, or they might be searching for some information around a product or service.

Linda Fanaras 7:40

Right.

Senthil Kumar 7:41

Which says that they are not inclined to buy that product or service yet. Whereas if, let's say, someone is searching for corporate team bonding activities in Singapore, they are obviously looking for corporate team bonding within their area, and they are much more likely to buy from you. Right. So, you have to understand the intent of keyword searches. So, one mistake that businesses make is failing at the keyword research.

Linda Fanaras 8:06

The

Senthil Kumar 8:06

second mistake they make is creating mediocre content. So, remember I spoke about the fundamentals?

Linda Fanaras 8:13

Yes. Because many of them,

Senthil Kumar 8:15

They just looking at what's already out there, or they're just looking at putting something relevant for that keyword out. In the shortest time possible,

Linda Fanaras 8:25

we don't

Senthil Kumar 8:25

invest in the quality. Right. So, I often tell my clients that mediocre content does not rank on Google anymore. You need to have outstanding content and, and that, that's not easy to, to

Linda Fanaras 8:38

Yeah. And how would you find outstanding content for our audience? I mean, Yeah. I think a lot of people think that they're creating outstanding content, but maybe they're not.

Senthil Kumar 8:50

Yeah, that's a great question. So the very first thing before you create outstanding content is to understand the psychology behind the person searching for a particular keyword and really understanding your your client so well and knowing what is the information they're going to need.

Linda Fanaras 9:10

That

Senthil Kumar 9:10

perhaps your competitors aren't providing, or that perhaps will add value to the

Linda Fanaras 9:16

person searching for that

Senthil Kumar 9:17

keyword. And then the next thing is, of course, making sure your content is viewable, scannable with images not too clunky, bullet points, everything. It, it is comprehensive in the sense that they get everything they need from, from, you know, your content. Okay.

Linda Fanaras 9:36

Okay.

Senthil Kumar 9:37

And the third thing is they don't leave your content piece. Let's say someone lands on your article and then they look at it and then they exit the page. It's an indicator to Google that, hey, you know what, the bounce rate is too high. Seems pretty high, so it might not be good. So you have to look at these kind of key elements and of course, ask your customers as well, whether, you know, like, what can I have in my content to make it better? And another thing that I do, which helps is also doing some competitor research

Linda Fanaras 10:09

to,

Senthil Kumar 10:10

Find all the good elements your competitors are providing that you can take inspiration from. And then also add in what they are missing. Yeah. So then you make it.

Linda Fanaras 10:21

So a lot of clients will focus in on long form content versus short form content. Do you have any feedback for our audience? Whether one is, so can you do short? short form and actually make it really valuable and rich and great content and have the same equal value as a long form?

Senthil Kumar 10:40

So there has been research that long form content or content with a certain number of words tends to perform better than short form. Short form content.

Linda Fanaras 10:52

But

Senthil Kumar 10:53

then again, I tell people that, like, stop worrying about the length, as long as every word you add in the article is adding value to that person searching for that keyword.

Linda Fanaras 11:07

Right.

Senthil Kumar 11:07

If your reader is going to benefit from you making the content longer. Okay. Definitely make it longer, but don't just use keywords for the sake of meeting some word count and compromise on the quality of your article.

Linda Fanaras 11:22

Yeah, so stay focused really on the quality. Exactly. How often do you think companies should be updating their SEO, maybe speak a little bit about images and alt tags and making sure sort of that back end of the website is optimized as well.

Senthil Kumar 11:39

Okay. Yeah, that's quite a lot in one question, but I'll try my best. So, firstly, it's a myth that people have. You need to keep creating the content. As a business owner to work on your SEO or do well in SEO, because unless you are a media business, like where, you know, you, you need to write blogs all the time, but I see you, and if you're running a small business, you only need to write a small batch of content after you do the keyword research, it might be five, 10 or 15 pieces of content based on your niche. And once you. Create that outstanding content. You do not need to create, keep creating new content, which is great news. Right. And The second thing is that you may need to make tweaks in the content and try to improve on the content until it ranks on Google. But once it's ranking on Google, then you just need to make sure that the content is up to date. So if there are things that are relevant or links that you have included in your content that is broken, you may need to go in and replace it. But apart from this maintenance. You do not have to keep creating new content. The second part of the question. So, of course, when you create the content, it's the third step of SEO. Keyword research and then the third step is creating the content. When you create the content, you need to put in the title tag. The description of your content, you need to make sure you have a URL that looks clean. And then these are some of the basics. And then the fourth step is making tweaks on your website. in line with Google's on page optimization best practices. So it might seem overwhelming, but what this means is that Google has a bunch of best practices, for example, making sure your website is mobile optimized, which nowadays is a given because, like, websites build their platforms to Help you build a mobile optimized website.

Linda Fanaras 13:41

Making sure your

Senthil Kumar 13:42

website doesn't load too slowly. Or, or it could be, Linking within your article internal, Linking within your website linking out to other Articles as well on the web. So these are just a few of the best practices. But there are many of these best practices that If you follow, it helps your content get seen much faster. And finally, the fifth step is what you mentioned about links. So it's called backlink building, where you need to attract backlinks or build backlinks from other websites pointing to your website. So in simple terms, it's just getting referrals. And you don't want to be getting referrals from other fishy websites.

Linda Fanaras 14:25

Right. You want to be getting referrals from

Senthil Kumar 14:28

other websites. Good quality websites

Linda Fanaras 14:30

and this

Senthil Kumar 14:31

indicates, Hey, you know, this website is getting referrals from other good quality websites. So this website is good as well.

Linda Fanaras 14:38

Yeah. So do you think so that's, that's a great point. When you're talking about SEO, what are some of these words mean to our audience, if you want to talk about the volume and all of that.

Senthil Kumar 14:49

So there are a lot of words that sound overwhelming, but if you look at it if you break it down, it isn't that complicated. So. Like, like for example, there's this thing called title tag,

Linda Fanaras 15:05

right?

Senthil Kumar 15:06

They call it title tag, but I mean, if you want to explain it in simple terms, it is The title of your article, right? Most of the time it's the title of the article that with the focus keyword that you're looking to rank for. So, um, what are the terms? Search volume means it's how many people are searching for a keyword. There's one more that sounds scary, okay it's called domain authority. So, this, this is often used when you come to the last stage, when you're doing backlink building. Remember I mentioned you, you need to get good quality sites linking to your website. So domain authority means that it helps you see how established your website is. And how many basically the higher your domain authority, like the higher quality your website looks. In the eyes of Google, that's how I would simplify it, right? So if you want to have a rough gauge of, you know, whether you should get a backlink from another website, you look at their domain authority and see, you know, is it higher than mine?

Linda Fanaras 16:11

Or how many

Senthil Kumar 16:12

backlinks

Linda Fanaras 16:12

they have versus how many you have, so

Senthil Kumar 16:15

Exactly. Yeah, you can, you can look at a few factors and then gauge whether you want the backlink from their website to your website. Perfect.

Linda Fanaras 16:23

So, a final closing question, what do you, what would be some great takeaways for the audience other than what we covered today?

Senthil Kumar 16:32

I think the biggest takeaway is that not enough people realize That there are actually some keywords that they could be ranking for that aren't competitive. That even their competitors are not working on.

Linda Fanaras 16:49

So

Senthil Kumar 16:50

because of this, people think, Oh, SEO is too much effort. And there are even people who put in effort to creating blog content without even doing the keyword research. And they just had to do one step before that, which is the keyword research and then write the content. That's it. But because they don't do that, second step, then they are missing out on potential traffic so many years down the road.

Linda Fanaras 17:14

That's a great point. Awesome. Well, I thank you for sharing all the information on SEO. I would love for you to tell our audience how businesses, how they can get in touch with you.

Senthil Kumar 17:25

So they can go to my website seowithsenthil. com and on my website I have this five step SEO checklist. It's a very, very detailed checklist of how I ranked for hundreds of keywords on Google page one and how they can too. So, if they want to get started, they can just go to the website and download my five step checklist.

Linda Fanaras 17:49

Fantastic. I just wanna take a moment here and thank the audience for listening in. Again, I am Linda Fanis, host of the B2B Brand 180 podcast and CEO of Millennium Agency. And you can visit us at Mill MILL agency or connect with me on LinkedIn. Thanks again for listening to the B2B Brand 180 podcast.