iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Philipp Keller @philippkeller.com · 07/02/2025

Yes, still working on it, soon to be released as V2

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Reposted by Philipp Keller

Marc Lou @marclou.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

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:

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thank you - it takes a bit to write them :) glad they help

my site: weegee.ch my competitor: wgzimmer.ch

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Philipp Keller @philippkeller.com · 21/01/2025

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 👇

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Yes. Flocking back to twitter. But then, after Musks gesture yesterday 🧐

Philipp Keller @philippkeller.com · 18/01/2025

Me agreeing to everything!? I‘m offended 😫

Philipp Keller @philippkeller.com · 16/01/2025

Yes! The following tab is boring and the for you too random. That sums it up

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Philipp Keller @philippkeller.com · 16/01/2025

Hey Eli, how are you! Yes I‘ve seen your ai conversations about books- interesting concept! I‘ve learned from you IMO that AI is a great way to organise thoughts!

Philipp Keller @philippkeller.com · 16/01/2025

Haha! This comment made my day! And I should come more often- then I would have seen it earlier:))

Yes we indiehackers managed the rare stunt of migrating only 50% so now you need to post on both to reach em all

Thanks for the kind words. What is the blocking culture you talk about?

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Yes! Also started reading recently because I some days just don’t see the point of social media

I guess they improved the algo at twitter

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😂 Maybe I mentally filter these out. But on bsky I miss the heated debates. Everything is so tame..

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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.

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Nice, do you go together always? My son and me rarely go together, we have different time schedule. But last time when we went together he showed me his routine and I followed it closely. He's researching this a lot more than me.

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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.🏋️

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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)

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

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! 🤗

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.

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«

»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!«

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…

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 😄