News media I Collaborated with as a journalist in Spain (prior to Launching Townsquare SEO)
How a cash prize launched Townsquare SEO
In 2019, I worked at a national newspaper covering breaking news in Spain. Print advertising revenues were falling…and management offered a cash prize to the journalist behind the top-read online news article each month.
Starting salaries for even qualified journalists like me are tough…I needed that prize!
But for months I couldn’t do better than second place.
Then I realised our top-read articles were not “better” than mine. They just ranked in position #1 on Google for high-volume search queries.
I began studying keyword research, preparing content for search engines and—most importantly—acquiring citations to boost the “digital authority” of my pages.
That’s when I wrote the post that took our website to 1+ million monthly users for the first time and I won the prize!
When the COVID-19 pandemic arrived and the furlough system collapsed, I tested my SEO skills on the website of a real estate agency in Barcelona. Within 3 months the leads had doubled…and we were outranking Idealista (Spain’s #1 property portal) for a handful of high-value searches!
In 2020, I launched Townsquare SEO with a mission to help businesses selling premium products & services in Spain outrank their competition on search engines and get more high-value clients.
SEO Secrets
SEO is not a checklist…SEO is a competition
It seems odd to explain Townsquare SEO with a story of a competition. But it’s the secret to understanding SEO.
You’ll have seen designers creating “SEO-ready websites”…writers offering “SEO-focused content”…and even SEO agencies spending weeks writing your “meta tags” and “meta descriptions” and “H1s and H2s”.
It’s no surprise that, months later, you’re not in position #1 for the keywords you wanted.
Every premium product or service in Spain only has a handful of keywords that potential clients use—think “[name of service] in [town or region]”. For each keyword, only 1 business can appear in position #1.
Nine times out of 10, a search engine selects the business to rank in position #1 based on its “digital authority”. Which means, the quality and quantity of citations from other websites talking about you online.
At Townsquare SEO, we still implement all the best practices. But we also provide the digital authority that helps you outrank your competition in 6-12 months (or less!).
Our Agency
A lightweight SEO agency focused on results
Joshua Parfitt
Owner
Joshua is the point of contact for all SEO clients. He creates the SEO strategy, implements any content updates and sends the weekly SEO report on a Friday.
Jon
Off-page SEO Specialist
Jon has been getting websites to the top of search engines since the early 2000s. He manages the creation of citations to build your digital authority.
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