Start the unsmart way
One thing you should know about me is: I’m not smart.
What I mean is, objectively there have been experiences in my life that point to me being remarkably ordinary (if not, leaning towards less than ordinary).
In 3rd grade, I was placed into special ed for two months.
The same year, I was playing handball during recess and knee’d myself in the eye giving myself my first black eye.
My first SAT score was 1400 (out of 2400).
I’ll stop here for the sake of TMI.
Looking back, the reason for these “failures” was because I’ve always been the type of person to just go for it. It wasn’t until years later that I learned about the concept of overthinking.
But often times where I lacked in preparation, I gained in learning things really quickly (the hard way).
Growing up, my dad used to repeat an old Chinese saying translating to “when crossing a deep river, you have to feel the stones.”
Meaning, you have to feel for your next step carefully, and look around before taking another.
In the past three weeks, I’ve had the privilege of meeting a lot of smart people. Engineers, software developers, CEOs of startups, product managers, the works – all interested in these silly website directories.
But sometimes, it’s the smartest people I know that don’t see the end of their projects.
They either:
- Overthink and never take the first step
- Take too many steps at once, fall and decide it’s too hard to get back up and try again
Starting with the unscalable
2 years and 3 months ago, I spent about 200 hours building my first directory.
I had google maps and wordpress in a split-screen view on my macbook. Every night, I’d spend a few hours copy and pasting data manually onto my website. Names, addresses, store hours, phone numbers.
In 2022, this was an embarrassingly slow method to build a website.
Today, this is just laughable.
“If you don’t have an MVP in a week, you’re doing something wrong” is the energy I get from scrolling on Twitter/X.
I get it. There’s utility in efficiency.
Yet, every time I think of how I built that first directory, it makes me really happy.
Not because it was particularly enjoyable or a sign of my brilliance – I literally did things the least efficient way possible.
(Remember people this was 2022. ChatGPT, web scrapers, and AI SEO copywriting tools all existed)
It makes me happy because I learned more about SEO and web design than I could have imagined.
The manual work forced me to strategize every change I made to my website, because the consequence of not thinking through my next steps could result in hours of undoing my mistakes.
It started with making small changes, like adding keywords into my headers, compressing images, and adding FAQ sections and table of contents to my pages.
Then waiting.
This evolved to implementing keyword clusters, internal linking, site navigation, and optimal mobile UX.
Then waiting some more.
Eventually, I evolved to backlink research, acquiring backlinks, and finding keyword gaps.
The point is that I understood the impact of every little change I was making. Man I learned so hard, back in the day.
These days, it’s way easier to default to AI tools because it’s quick, relatively easy to learn and affordable to start.
You can also build a beautiful website in a day. But as you may have noticed, especially with website directories, it’s the most ugly websites that get millions of monthly visitors.
Using AI tools is the most efficient way to build anything nowadays.
But SEO isn’t just using the right AI tool or placing the “right” text on a website. There’s probably 5 different SEO roles I constantly switch from (in my head), including:
- Keyword Researcher
- On-Page SEO strategist
- Competitive analyst
- Off-Page SEO and Backlink outreach(er?)
- Technical SEO
While I would never resort back to my old way of doing things, I appreciate looking back and reminiscing on the journey.
It’s kinda similar to traveling to a new country alone, with no set itinerary.
All you need is a plane ticket, clothes and a place to stay.
Instead of jumping from one major tourist attractions to another because you have to see the leaning tower of Pisa, you base your judgements on a country by wandering around.
It’s by wandering around and following your curiosity where you stumble on unique corners of the city and talk to locals to grasp the true concepts of a new culture.
These are the things that create the most meaningful experiences (imo).
SEO has existed for decades now, but continues to be the new “country” people want to explore.
Especially now, because people recognize that distribution and marketing is the game.
It’s rapidly changing, so the only way to get a real pulse on SEO tactics that work is to build your own project and experiment for yourself.
Without it, you can build the greatest product in the world and no one will ever know about it.
My advice for people starting to learn SEO is to learn the basics of keyword research and on-page SEO (it’s all free on YouTube).
Choose a niche where there’s hardly anyone talking about the topic. Start building your project and implement the basics first.
If you think too far ahead, and get worried about how to get backlinks, for example, you may give yourself enough reason to quit before you start.
One small favor
In my latest video around How to Monetize A Directory, I announced that I’m seriously considering building a community for dedicated directory builders.
My floating ideas include bi-weekly (or weekly) livestreams where we do idea busts (busting good and “bad” directory niche ideas), live SEO optimization strats, and bringing in AI experts to help publish directories with emerging tools like bolt.new and such.
If you read this far down, I’d love your opinion.
Would you join a community for directory builders?
What would the ideal community environment be?
Also, originally I was leaning towards Skool. Now, I’m back to considering Circle.so for the community platform.
Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!
Best,
Frey Chu