At age 13, Harry Sanders watched his dad’s boating license business suffer. His dad hired an SEO firm that had failed to deliver any real results — and the combination of the bad investment and the lack of incoming customers was sinking the business. So, Sanders stepped in. On his own volition and with his own few resources, he learned SEO by himself, and used his skills to save his dad’s business.
Those skills led to the eventual creation of StudioHawk, which is now Australia’s largest dedicated SEO agency, with a team of over 22. Sanders’ humble beginnings prove how SEO can be a gamechanger for a business — and just how necessary it is as a skill. Despite StudioHawk’s current success (with $3.5 million in revenue), just five years ago, Sanders was homeless after dropping school to pursue the agency. He stayed with friends and slept on their couches as he began offering SEO services as a freelancer. Those services yielded such impressive results that a web of referrals took form, and StudioHawk as we know it today was built.
Now, Sanders is offering a behind-the-scenes look at how he has mastered SEO for both himself and his clients, providing clarity to a skillset that admittedly few understand. This clarity can spell the difference between a company’s success or failure as more businesses migrate to online selling. SEO is the not-so-secret weapon that determines who gets seen – and who doesn’t – on the Internet.
Why SEO Matters
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the number one determinant of a business’ visibility and credibility to prospects. How and where your company’s website appears when someone makes a Google search for the service that you offer conveys a message to a prospect. If your company is the first search result, they’re far more likely to go with your company than with your competitor (even if the competitor is the search result just below you).
However, SEO is still a very nebulous concept in the digital marketing agency, and there are few clear roadmaps online for how to navigate it and use it to your advantage. Sanders actually learned SEO entirely through his own trial and error. He began to understand basic principles from scouring the internet, but he learned what works and what doesn’t from his own, hands-on experiences helping his dad and his clients.
Here’s an example of just how nebulous learning SEO can be: many believe that SEO is simply ‘keyword stuffing.’ While keywords are important, solely adding your keyword to numerous places within your website’s copy isn’t going to work – which means those who are employing that strategy are still missing out. So, what does work?
Hawk Academy
Sanders is changing the digital marketing industry through education by launching Hawk Academy, an online learning platform that teaches SEO down to the granular steps, so that anyone — novice or not — can capitalize on the power that SEO holds for businesses. The platform incorporates modules, practical guides, and quizzes to master the skill set, processes, and systems required to be an SEO whiz and apply its strategies to your business.
“In the Hawk Academy, we pull back the curtain on how we make SEO work for our agency and our clients. The platform shows the detailed steps on how anyone can master SEO with the proper time, diligence, and patience,” shared Sanders.
Alongside his passion for SEO is his passion for educational access. Being self-taught and navigating the nebulous realm of SEO education on his own for the past decade, it mattered to Sanders to create a learning platform that had no barriers, since many online SEO trainings are quite expensive. So, in addition to offering accessible pricing tiers (including FREE content for beginners and an upper limit of $300 for access to all of the modules), Hawk Academy is also providing scholarships to those who need them.
Visit hawkacademy.co to inquire further, and to begin to learn SEO skills from real SEO experts who do it professionally on a daily basis.
