Navigating SEO Challenges for Business Growth with Senthil Kumar

Unlock the secrets to driving business success with SEO expert Senthil Kumar as he shares his remarkable journey from entrepreneurship to mastering search engine optimization. Discover how Kumar transformed his university cleaning service project into a springboard for future ventures, harnessing the power of SEO to propel his notebook and t-shirt printing business to new heights. His passion for SEO didn't stop there; it fueled the growth of an innovative art studio and eventually led him to establish a thriving SEO consultancy. Along the way, Senthil highlights the common pitfalls entrepreneurs face with SEO and underscores the importance of looking beyond mere keywords to truly leverage its potential.

Gain valuable insights into the strategic process behind boosting SEO rankings, as Senthil breaks down the essential steps for a successful online presence. Learn about the intricate balance between quality content creation and meticulous keyword research, and how achieving impactful results typically spans several months. Senthil also demystifies the complex world of keyword research, explaining how to gauge search demand, competition, and profitability. As we navigate the differences between educational and profitable keywords, and clarify SEO versus SEM, you'll come away equipped with the knowledge to make informed decisions and avoid costly mistakes. Tune in for a wealth of practical advice designed to empower entrepreneurs on their path to digital success.

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Chapters

• 0:02 SEO Business Success Story
• 16:27 SEO Ranking Growth Strategy Insights

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing, and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. Today we're joined by Senthil Kumar, who is with SEO with Senthil, and he's coming to us from Sydney, australia. Let me guess.

Gary Pageau: 0:36

Senthil, we're going to talk about SEO today.

Gary Pageau: 0:37

Thank you for having me, gary, hi, yeah, we're going to talk about SEO, but you didn't get into SEO as sort of an SEO expert. You actually had a printing business and an art studio business and that's where you learned how to do SEO. So talk us a little bit about that process, how you needed to help your business and you learned all the skills. Tell us about that.

Gary Pageau: 0:58

So before that I had a cleaning services business as well.

Gary Pageau: 1:02

I had a cleaning services business as well, okay, an entrepreneur going way back.

Senthil Kumar: 1:08

Yeah, so I was back in university my dad, he surprised me with a very unusual birthday gift. So this was a three-day WordPress website creation and SEO course and towards the end of this course, the instructor forced us into groups and made us start a service-based website. So me and my group, we decided to start a cleaning services website, and then there were six of us and we delved into the website and within the next four to five months we started ranking for our very first keyword on Google, page one, which was cleaning services Singapore, and then office cleaning services Singapore. And then we started getting inquiries and we even got our first sale and we didn't offer the cleaning services ourselves, so we had to get a partner and eventually we didn't continue with the company. But it showed me that SEO, done right, works to bring you leads and sales for your business.

Gary Pageau: 2:06

Even though you weren't actually doing a cleaning business. You did it as a project and you ended up starting a cleaning business.

Senthil Kumar: 2:15

No. So we started the business thinking we wanted to scale it, but after we ranked for the first keyword and then we started working with this cleaning partner to provide the services, we decided because all of us had different goals, different ambitions of course, and, uh, some, some of my partners, they they wanted to just sell off the business and close it down.

Senthil Kumar: 2:39

And I was like, okay, but around that same period of time because I was in university at that time um, I was in this minor in entrepreneurship program where, again, we had to start our own business, right, and, um, my group, we started a notebook customization business, customizing paper notebooks, and we were struggling to sell these paper notebooks. And if you don't have customers, you don't have a business. What eventually happened was, towards the end of this minor in entrepreneurship program, one of my friends, he was like, hey, instead of selling these notebooks individually, why not we print notebooks in bulk and we sell them? Why not? We print t-shirts? A lot of companies, a lot of school clubs, they are looking for these kind of services. He was like, did you learn that SEO thing? Why not? We apply it here?

Senthil Kumar: 3:33

So that was like the pivotal moment for the next one year. I focused on our website, on SEO for the website and trying to attract people for t-shirt printing and notebook printing services within the next one to two years. But before I graduated from university, we were getting so many inquiries that we had to hire a team to handle the incoming inquiries from the printing business. Okay, and after that we also started an art studio business where we attracted corporate teams looking to paint on T-shirts, tote bags, sneakers. So this was a little more unique.

Gary Pageau: 4:14

Yeah, so it's like a one-off thing. So somebody would create an art piece on a T-shirt or canvas shoes or something like that.

Senthil Kumar: 4:23

Yeah, it's called art jamming. Usually, art jamming is done on canvases, but we wanted to make it different and let people do it on usable uh wear, so something you wear like t-shirts, tote bags, sneakers just across my t-shirt printing uh, business and art studio. We made over a million dollars in revenue using SEO and word of mouth alone. Okay, yeah, so this was one of my key achievements, and that was just before COVID happened. Yeah, yeah, there's no more art jamming during COVID.

Senthil Kumar: 4:58

Yeah. So it was disastrous because once the government policies came in and we had just renovated our studio as well and the lockdowns and everything it affected our revenue by 80 to 90 percent my whole team had to leave and eventually it was just me trying to pivot the business online. And during that time I was reflecting on what I really wanted to do and I realized I'm not an art person myself. So, like, what was I doing? Selling art services. So I thought, okay, you know what my strength is in this search engine optimization thing, in helping businesses scale using the power of search, so why not I start a business centered around this? And that is how SEO with Centrel started this last year.

Gary Pageau: 5:52

So how long have you been doing that?

Senthil Kumar: 5:54

The SEO business.

Gary Pageau: 5:54

Yeah, yeah, the SEO business.

Senthil Kumar: 5:56

Oh yeah, I just started it last year when I was moving from Singapore to Sydney Okay, because my wife found a job here, and around that point of time I was also. At first I was trying to find partners who could host my art events. And then eventually thankfully this year, because I found a partner who was helping me with the operations my partner decided to buy over my art business this year, so I could fully focus my energy and time into this SEO business.

Gary Pageau: 6:29

Okay. So what are some of the you know obstacles you see to entrepreneurs when it comes to SEO? Because I think a lot of people, you know, know they need it, but they don't really understand what to do, because they think it's well, it's putting keywords in my footer or it's you know, doing some stuff right, but they're not really sure what that means. What does SEO mean in your context?

Senthil Kumar: 7:00

Okay. So SEO means attracting organic, targeted traffic for keywords in your niche, like when people are searching for keywords in your niche. They are interested in your products and services, right, right? So you want to be ranking for these keywords on Google page one organically to attract these potential buyers to your business, right, to attract these potential buyers to your business, right? So one of the key principles that a lot of businesses miss even SEO agencies sometimes tend to miss is the fundamentals of SEO. So, gary, I want you to play along with me here, okay, yeah.

Gary Pageau: 7:46

So how does Google make money? Uh, by advertising, by selling advertising exactly google advertising.

Senthil Kumar: 7:52

So if you were google and you wanted to make more money with google advertising, then what do you need? Or even before you make any money with advertising, what do you need?

Gary Pageau: 8:03

we need, why you need customers who are going to pay for it, right?

Senthil Kumar: 8:07

yeah, but before you get customers who will pay for ads on your platform, what do you need?

Gary Pageau: 8:12

gotta help me out here.

Senthil Kumar: 8:13

You stumped me okay, okay, let me give you a hint, okay this is easy. It's so easy that I think that's why imagine your facebook. I'm not you sending my question, people asking.

Gary Pageau: 8:25

I think that's why Imagine your Facebook. I'm not using my question. People asking me questions, that's the thing.

Senthil Kumar: 8:28

So imagine your Mark Zuckerberg. Okay, mark Zuckerberg wants to make more money from Facebook ads Right, then what does he need Before he made money from Facebook ads?

Gary Pageau: 8:42

he needs Well, he needs a few things. He needs, obviously, a place to put them right, and you know a place to show ads. He needs, you know, ad rates. He also has to show results right, because if it doesn't work for people, they're not going to take out ads.

Senthil Kumar: 9:20

Exactly so. For businesses to put money into ads on Facebook before they put money into ads. Mark, to put money into ads on Facebook Before they put money into ads. Mark Zuckerberg wants to make sure there are users on Facebook.

Gary Pageau: 9:34

Right, exactly Right, you got to have someone to show the ads too right.

Senthil Kumar: 9:37

Exactly Same thing for Google, like, if Google wants to make more money, they need more people searching on Google. Based on this principle, if Google wants more people to be trusting and using Google, then what kind of content is Google going to show people searching for keywords on Google?

Gary Pageau: 9:57

It'll be relevant content. Right, it'll be the kind of people most want to be related to that. Right, it'll be because they don't want people getting frustrated and going to God forbid Bing.

Senthil Kumar: 10:09

Exactly so. People think that all they need to put out is relevant content. But relevant content is just one part of the puzzle, Because for one keyword, there are thousands of websites with relevant content. So how does Google?

Gary Pageau: 10:28

choose. Which of these pieces of relevant content would I put right on page one, closer to the top? What do they choose? Well, they probably have to look at it from this of what are the most people looking for in the context of that? Whatever that keyword is right, what has the most pointers to it?

Senthil Kumar: 10:40

So, going back to the fundamental that I spoke about, about Google wanting to attract more users to its platform over other search engines, google wants to not just display relevant content.

Senthil Kumar: 10:53

Google wants to display the most engaging content for a keyword that makes the person searching for the keyword go, wow. This is exactly what I wanted and whenever I have questions, if I go to Google, I can get the best answers with very engaging content. This is what Google wants, because the more users trust Google to give them the best results and the longer people stay on Google searching for these keywords and then being impressed by the results, then the more money Google can make. Right, it's the objective, right, right? So this is a fundamental principle that a lot of businesses miss, which then leads to them not investing enough time and effort into their content, into their website content, to really make it meet the needs of the person searching for the keyword, make it extremely engaging, make it outstanding. So I tell my clients that mediocre content does not rank on Google anymore. You need to have outstanding content that impresses the people landing on your website.

Gary Pageau: 12:07

Right, so what? So I mean when you say outstanding content? What does that actually mean? Because you know quality is a lot of times in the eyes of the beholder, right, and you know a lot of people are using AI to generate content now and it's a lot of it's not very good for a lot of reasons, right, it's, you know, very generic or misleading and it's, you know, kind of crazy. What is the quality determinant of outstanding content?

Senthil Kumar: 12:39

So outstanding content refers to content that person searching for that particular keyword most wants to see, or that addresses the pain point of that person extremely well while also keeping them engaged. So one example maybe this would be better understood with an example. So I was in the t-shirt printing industry. So let's say that someone was searching for t-shirt printing Singapore. They are looking for t-shirt printing services in Singapore and let's say I have this article with 10 t-shirt printing services in Singapore and let's say I have this article with 10 t-shirt printing companies in Singapore.

Senthil Kumar: 13:23

Okay, and how I want to make this content outstanding is I want to see what is the psychology behind someone searching for t-shirt printing Singapore. They are looking for t-shirt printing services and very likely many of these people searching for t-shirt printing especially in my industry because I knew my customers back then they were looking for competitive prices. So in my piece of content I want to include the prices of these 10, uh t-shirt printing companies, the price range, the services they offer, what is their unique selling point, things like this. I want to be including it in the article along with images and making the content readable and scannable. So when I do this, I am meeting the needs of the person searching for that keyword. So the better I can meet the needs of my target audience, the more outstanding my content can be right and another thing to take note here is to also differentiate your content from your competitors.

Senthil Kumar: 14:27

So you have to see what your competitors already have in their content and what is information that you can provide that your competitors don't have, that perhaps your searchers or your website visitors may want to see. So there's a lot of. It's not like a science, it's more of an art, right. Like you really need to like think.

Gary Pageau: 14:52

So like I mean. So let's translate that to the, to the photo world right, the photo printing world right, because in a lot of ways it's very similar right and some people do are going by price right. They want the cheapest canvas, the cheapest photo book or whatever. And you know, if you don't want to compete on that basis you know where maybe you know you can't afford to sell $10 photo books. You got to sell $20 photo books to make it work. Do you just not worry about the cheap customers and skew your content a certain way, or what are your thoughts there?

Senthil Kumar: 15:29

So that is where still the fundamental principle of business is so important. You still need to know what is your unique selling point. So if your unique selling point is being the cheapest photo printing provider in your area, then you better be the cheapest right.

Senthil Kumar: 15:51

If your unique selling point you don't want to compete on price, then you've got to find a different unique selling point. Perhaps that is express photo printing services. People sometimes they plan last minute. They want photos printed like just a day before or on the day itself. So they might go to Google and search express photo printing services and then they find you and they don't mind fucking out additional cash as long as they find a reliable express photo printer. This part, keyword research, will come in very useful to see whether there's a need for that differentiating point that you're offering.

Gary Pageau: 16:28

Now, how long does it take to build up and improve your ranking over time? Because I don't know about Australia or Singapore, but I know people in the United States, north America, where my audience in Europe, where my audience they're darn impatient right, they want to see results, but you know, the reality is this takes time, because Google takes time to index, right, and they're weighing a bunch of things and they're doing a bunch of computation.

Gary Pageau: 16:53

What is a real? So let's say I start, it's August and they're doing a bunch of computation. What is a real? So let's say I start, it's August, it's early August when we're recording this. How long will it take me to see appreciable results If I'm pumping the content in? I have a campaign, I'm doing it regularly. I'm doing these things. How long do you think that should reasonably take before I see when my investment will pay off?

Senthil Kumar: 17:15

So usually after you do the keyword research, there's a bunch of content that you may need to create around these keywords and after you create these few pieces of outstanding content, you can see results as early as four to nine months. But then sometimes people slow down when creating these pieces of outstanding content. They create it way too slowly or they think they are creating outstanding content but it's not outstanding content and some people, because they missed the keyword research step before creating the content, they end up creating content around a keyword that is way too competitive for them to begin with, especially if they're starting out in SEO, start ranking for keywords. You need to pick the less competitive keywords first and then rank them within like six to nine months after you put out the content and then you can start working on the more competitive keywords. Once google starts recognizing your website as um credible right, it's a bit more credible when you say, do investigation on keywords, what are you talking about?

Gary Pageau: 18:34

what is that process?

Senthil Kumar: 18:37

There are three aspects of keyword research, and one aspect of it is checking for keyword demand, so making sure that there is significant search volume around a particular keyword. By that I mean at least about 30, 40 searches a month, because if you don't even have about 30 to 40 searches a month for a keyword, then it might not make sense for you to write a piece of content around that keyword and then, after you establish that keyword has keyword demand.

Senthil Kumar: 19:11

The next thing you want to establish is the competition. So there is a way to check for competition without using any of those SEO tools. Once you do that, you can see which are the keywords that I can go into which have less competition to start ranking for first. And the final thing you want to be looking at is the profitability element of the keyword. So for this it requires a little bit of experience and just a little bit of thinking in your customer's shoes, Right? So let's look at photo businesses. Let's say someone is searching for photo printing methods, Right?

Gary Pageau: 19:56

Because they want a certain specific process, right yeah?

Senthil Kumar: 19:59

yeah. So let's say they're searching for photo printing methods or they are searching for how to enhance photo quality, for example. Do you think this is an educational keyword or a profitable keyword? Yeah, it's more educational than it is. It's more yeah, it's not dollars off it is. It's more yeah, it's not dollars off.

Gary Pageau: 20:19

It's educational.

Senthil Kumar: 20:20

Exactly, but whereas if someone is searching for photo printing services, where do you, where's your business based? Or where are your audience's businesses based In which part of, let's say, a certain part of USC?

Gary Pageau: 20:35

Oh, I'm in Michigan, so we'll say Michigan.

Senthil Kumar: 20:37

Michigan, let's say a certain part of usc. Oh, I'm in michigan, so we'll say michigan, michigan, let's say. Let's say michigan. Yeah, let's say someone is searching for photo printing services michigan, or photo printing services near me. That means that their buying intent is a lot higher than someone searching for an educational keyword. So this is what I call a profitable keyword. So these are the three aspects of keyword research you need to do. You need to make sure your keywords have demand, that they don't have too much competition to begin with, and you want to have a mix of educational and profitable keywords, because, as a business, you want to make money but at the same time, you also want to be seen as an authority writing educational content around your keywords.

Gary Pageau: 21:16

Right, or a resource, at the very least right. So yeah, Exactly. So where does buying Google ads based on keywords and things? How does that factor in? Does that affect your organic SEO if you slip Google a few bucks, or does that other work?

Senthil Kumar: 21:36

No, no, that so that that is a completely individual product that Google has. So that is not called SEO, that's called S E M, or sometimes also known as pay per click.

Gary Pageau: 21:50

Yep, well, that's what I'm saying, cause I mean, some people were thinking, you know, that's where I want to differentiate that, because you know cause some people think, well, if I buy a bunch of ads, I should be ranking higher, and that's not necessarily the case yep.

Senthil Kumar: 22:03

So these ads they, they often say, sponsored on them. The problem with them is that they're businesses are bidding for these keywords, sure to pay google. So if let's say you want to rank for photo printing services in michigan and and let's say that a lot of searches for that keyword and a lot of people are bidding for photo printing services michigan and paying google for google ads, what is going to happen is when people search for photo printing services in Michigan and people click on this ad. Every time someone clicks on the ad, that business that advertised for the ad is paying price for it.

Senthil Kumar: 22:49

So even if this person doesn't convert into a customer, you're paying each time someone clicks into your ad. So it can get very costly very fast, depending on your industry. Sure.

Gary Pageau: 23:00

Yeah, I know I can see that because you'd be paying for traffic that may or may not actually convert. I mean you would hope they would right, but you also hope the same thing on the other side, that if you're ranking high, people are clicking, that they're transacting as well, and we all know that's not actually happening either. People are maybe just clicking for information, they're just curious, they're just clicking around.

Senthil Kumar: 23:21

Exactly. And here I want to establish another quick difference between SEO and search engine marketing, which is, I mean, if, let's say, you're a business and you're relying on Google ads to get your leads and customers, the moment you stop paying for these ads, the moment you stop landing customers, it isn't the same for SEO. If you have established your SEO, maybe the first six months to one year is going to be challenging, but once you have these established keywords that you're already ranking for on Google, then you are just going to need very little effort and time to maintain those Google rankings and you will be getting customers one, three, five years down the road.

Gary Pageau: 24:01

So it's a very long-term approach, right? I mean again, Americans look for the quick fix, but what you're saying is that it's a very long-term approach, so you should start you attract leads in the long term.

Gary Pageau: 24:11

Exactly so you need to start now to do this if you want to make an impact by next year, right, I mean, that's basically what you have to do. Absolutely. When you're talking about creating content, how does video like video come into play with some? Is that how? How does that content, if possible, help your seo? Because obviously YouTube is part of Google, so you would probably think there'd be. If you're creating great YouTube content and you're embedding that in your website or something like that, that might help. Is there a connection between SEO and video content, even like TikTok or anything like that?

Senthil Kumar: 24:52

So I think you said it right there, right? So if if you have an engaging piece of content that you have already written, you need to make sure that you um have pictures like engaging pictures inside the content. Yeah, but one other element that you can add to give you that extra boost is a very well shot youtube video that you embed into that long piece of written content so it becomes so holistic. People who land on your website for return content they might not just read your content, they may end up watching your video. They might spend longer time on your website. You might establish more trust with them.

Gary Pageau: 25:31

So overall, it's going to benefit your seo to have that embedded into your content itself and so, just like with the google ads, you say there's sort of a there's no wall there between the ads and is is there a connection between youtube content and seo? Does google kind of favor things on the youtube side because that, because they own that, because that's always the question you have is, there's other platforms and things like that, but they may not show up in a Google search.

Senthil Kumar: 26:05

So there are no studies yet that shows that embedding your YouTube content is definitely going to help your Google rankings, but what there has been a rich research around is the fact that the more people engage with your content spend time on your website, Google tracks things like boundary Once people click onto your website, like how, how long are they staying on that piece of content before clicking out. So if the bounce rate is high, it's it's a bad indicator to Google, for example. Based on these elements, you just have to put it together and make sure that whatever you're adding to that piece of content adds value to the end user, which is why, at the very start, I talk about the fundamentals. So you just need to look at the fundamentals and not worry too much about just stuffing in a video for the sake of Right, you know exactly Doing it for the sake of doing it, right?

Gary Pageau: 27:02

So how do you suggest people integrate the content into a website, right? Should they just have a blog or should be in the product descriptions? You know, because that's always a challenge for people, at least in our industry, because of the platforms they're using for photo printing. Really don't, they're not blog friendly, right? They don't have a blogging component to it.

Senthil Kumar: 27:28

So what are your thoughts there? Keywords, then from those keywords, you need to know which keyword like which content you're going to kind of integrate with which keyword. Usually you might want to be writing blog content around many of those keywords and maybe you can select one or two keywords to put as a home page or another page on your website. But a blog is usually very critical if you're serious about your seo. So people may search for a keyword, they may find your blog article and through your blog article they find the services that you offer right as a photo business or whatever business you do so would it be helpful then to have them have a, like a separate blog platform and it just link to their store site?

Gary Pageau: 28:16

I guess is the question I'm looking at is that sort of the way you think that should go? Because, like I said, a lot of the platforms people are using don't have blogging built in. Because because I would say, for example, they have an e-commerce site, right, they have, you know, a site for making prints. People upload pictures, they choose, they make a photo book, they do all this stuff, but they need to have tutorials on how to make a great photo book or how to make a great canvas print or all those kind of things, and that's not built into the site, right? So how do you think they should do?

Senthil Kumar: 28:48

that Most website builder platforms, even e-commerce platforms like Shopify, or, if you're using other SEO-friendly website builder platforms like WordPress, squarespace, wix. There are many out there, all of them will allow you to have a blog on your menu bar and add in blog articles, right? So, um, it's best to, um, just keep it all within one website, right? Because one of the later steps in seo is attracting backlinks from other websites to your website.

Gary Pageau: 29:24

So if you have two, you're going to dilute the links okay, okay yeah, all right because, like I said, like you know, a lot of the stores, the which you know are again very photo specific don't have those built in. So that's kind of interesting, so that's interesting.

Senthil Kumar: 29:39

So keep it all in the same place for that reason yeah, exactly, even if you have a custom built website, try to get your developer to include a blog section where you can add blogs easily. Blog articles cool.

Gary Pageau: 29:54

Well, this has been a very interesting conversation. Can you tell us where people can get more information about what it is you do and how they can reach out to you and learn more?

Senthil Kumar: 30:06

So I help small business owners grow their business using SEO, so to get found on Google and to rank and grow their business revenue, just like I did for my own businesses, and I have this five-step SEO checklist that I use to rank for all the keywords on Google page one and make over a million dollars in revenue for my own businesses and I have it have website at seowithcentilcom so it's seowithcentilcom awesome, yeah we're great.

Gary Pageau: 30:44

Listen. It's been great talking to you. I've learned a few things, which I I always like to do, so I appreciate your time and hopefully we'll talk to you again soon.

Senthil Kumar: 30:53

Thank you so much, Gary. Thanks for having me.

Erin Manning: 30:56

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.