Everything I learnt about ranking on Google in the last 16 months (that actually works)

Back in summer 2024, I was at a crossroads. I had just handed in my resignation letter at my first software engineering job after launching 2 websites without much success. The lesson was rather obvious: building a product isn’t enough, you need to solve a real pain, and only then does the real work begin with distribution.

I ended up joining another startup as a founding engineer, partly because my own projects lacked traction. But I kept studying what separated businesses that grew from those that didn't. One channel kept coming up: organic search.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) fascinated me because the upside is absurd. Qualified traffic, essentially free, that compounds over time. Once it works, it's like having a sales team that works around the clock to bring you warm leads.

As I read and experimented with SEO, I realized the pain many website owners go through:

• Contradictory advice everywhere. One expert says X, another swears by the opposite
• The feedback loop is sloooooow. You make a change, then wait weeks to know if it worked
• Prioritization is a nightmare. Where do you even start?
• Execution is time-consuming. Business owners don’t have the time to run a blog in parallel of their business
• Delegating is not cost-efficient. SEO Agencies charge too much for the value they provide.

As months passed, I accumulated knowledge and piled up evidence that this was a problem worth solving. At some point it became unbearable, and I decided to quit my job to focus on building what would become BlogSEO, a SaaS that completely replaces an SEO agency.

Fast-forward to December 2025: I'm running 4 websites with growing traffic, helped multiple clients implement SEO strategies that actually rank, and grew BlogSEO to $50k+ ARR.

This post is everything I learnt in the last 16 months. No theory, just tactics I tested that actually worked. This might be the most valuable piece of content I’ve ever written. It's the guide I wish I had when I started. All the information you’ll ever need to rank on Google is here. Let’s go!

✨ The 15 Tactics That Just Work.