Seb loved his job.

All this changed when he got married to Ronda.

Ronda is a Web Designer.

She is also extremely ambitious.

She felt that Seb was wasting his talent by working for someone else.

She wanted Seb to start his own Carpet Cleaning business.

She told Seb that she would build him a website, then one of her colleagues would make the website show up on Page 1 of Google, and for the capital – he could take out a Business Starter loan from his bank.

After several weeks of debates and discussion, Seb agreed to start his own business.

He got the loan and used it to buy a van and cleaning equipment.

Seb’s boss, Viktor, was very upset.

Viktor had placed a lot of trust in Seb.

He had given Seb a pay rise and fat bonus every year.

He had replaced Seb’s equipment with the newest model.

Only three months earlier, he bought a new van and gave it to Seb.

Viktor felt he deserved more loyalty from Seb.

So, he was understandably upset.

Seb tried to explain to him, but…

This only made Viktor angrier.

He told Seb no real man would let his wife control his life.

Viktor told colleagues that Seb’s wife wore the trousers in the marriage.

When Seb heard this he stormed into Viktor’s office and gave him a piece of his mind.

Then he walked out of the company.

It was an acrimonious parting of ways.

Anyway…

Things went well for the first sixteen months of Seb’s new business.

His website was on Page 1 of Google for several London neighbourhoods.

Every month, he got lots of new clients, and…

Once Seb did his magic, he got repeat bookings.

Business was good.

Marriage was good.

Life was good.

Then suddenly, the calls from new clients stopped.

Seb didn’t understand why.

So, he mentioned it to Ronda (his wife).

Ronda checked Google.

Seb’s website wasn’t on Page 1.

It wasn’t on Page 2.

It didn’t appear on Page 3, either.

In fact, it didn’t appear on the first 10 pages of Google.

It was the same for all the neighbourhoods that the website previously had Page 1 rankings for.

Ronda was confused.

So, she mentioned it to her colleague – the one who helped get the Page 1 rankings.

He told her that many of his SEO clients were experiencing similar problems.

Long story short… Google had penalized the websites for some of the inbound links that had been used.

He tried to fix the problem, but nothing worked.

In fact, things even got worse for some websites.

Without new clients, Seb’s income dropped drastically.

He was still getting repeat business and referrals but they only counted for about 63% of his income.

In other words, Google was responsible for 37% of his revenue, and…

He lost all of this revenue almost instantly.

Seb had bills to pay.

Seb had elderly parents to take care of.

Seb had loan repayments to make.

His money was running out half-way through the month.

He had to do something.

So…

Out of desperation, Seb decided to call his old boss, Viktor to ask if he could have his old job back, on a part-time basis.

His hands shook as he made the phone call.

He ended the call before the phone could ring.

He summoned up courage, as he paced up and down the room, four times. One for each year that he worked for Viktor.

Then he made the call again.

This time he let the phone ring.

It was picked on the third ring.

“Hi, Viktor. It’s Seb here…”

“I know who it is. What do you want?”

“Erm… erm… I wanted to erm…”

“Spit it out, Seb!”

“Viktor, please erm… can I have my job back?”

“GET LOST!”

Then Seb heard a click.

Then silence.

Seb wished he’d never made the call.

He should have known better.

He’d never felt so humiliated in his life.

His head was in a big mess.

He blamed Ronda for making him leave his job.

Viktor was right. He wasn’t a real man.

How had he let himself be manipulated so badly by Ronda?

It was time for him to man up.

It was time for him to show Ronda who is boss.

It was time for him to prove to the world that he wore the trousers in his marriage.

So, he started throwing his weight around the house.

He became a thorn in the flesh of Ronda.

They argued a lot. Almost daily.

Things got so bad that Ronda moved out, and moved in with her parents.

SEO had destroyed their marriage! 🙁

With Ronda out of the house – Seb had no one to fight with every day, and he ended up with a lot of spare time on his hands, so…

He started to learn about SEO on the internet.

He went down a very deep rabbit hole, and…

Eventually, he ended up on an underground SEO Forum.

As he read through several threads, one poster (robosearch) stood out to him.

Even though most of his posts were contrarian, robosearch was hugely respected by the other posters.

Lots of people thanked him for helping them improve rankings for their websites.

So, Seb sent a private message to robosearch.

He explained his predicament. He begged robosearch to help. He wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, and was very surprised when robosearch replied six days later.

robosearch asked Seb for the URL of his website.

Seb sent the URL, but he didn’t hear from robosearch for 10 days.

He had given up hope.

Then robosearch responded.

“Your backlinks killed your rankings. Get rid of them. Let me know when you’ve done that.”

Seb’s replied that he didn’t know how to get rid of backlinks.

robosearch sent him detailed instructions.

Seb followed the instructions to the letter, and checked on a weekly basis to see if the links had “disappeared”. After six weeks, only four of the backlinks were left, and those disappeared nine days later.

He excitedly reported back to robosearch.

robosearch told him that he should now be able to restore his Page 1 rankings with just a few backlinks, and…

robosearch told him exactly what backlinks to use.

“Let me know if your website is not on Page 1 after 30 days.”

Seb checked his website’s rankings religiously every single day.

After five days, his website appeared on Page 9 of Google.

Then it rose steadily. All the way to Page 4.

It seemed to get stuck on Page 4 for several days.

Then it suddenly jumped to Page 2.

Seb was excited, and started checking the rankings every hour, even though he didn’t notice any improvements.

However, when he woke up the next morning, his website was in the No. 5 position on Page 1 of Google!

It was exactly 26 days after ALL the “killer” links had disappeared.

He fired off a message to robosearch.

robosearch responded that the ranking should rise even higher.

He was right.

Seb’s website rose as high as the No. 3 position.

This was higher than it had ever been before the website lost its rankings, and…

The phone calls from new clients had resumed almost as suddenly as they had stopped.

His business had been revived… from the ashes!

However… he couldn’t cope with all the new clients. He needed extra hands. So, he offered one of his former colleagues a job. He offered to pay him more than he was getting from Viktor.

The colleague accepted the job offer and joined Seb.

Viktor was furious.

Revenge was sweet!

And… Seb was in a much better place… mentally and emotionally.

He reached out to Ronda.

He wanted her back. She wanted him back, too.

Reconciliation was easy, and…

Their marriage was rescued! 🙂

By this time, Seb and robosearch had become good friends.

Seb wanted to know what the real secret of the “lost but found” Page 1 rankings was.

So he asked robosearch.

Robosearch sent him a very long reply.

Seb read it three times.

Each time he read it, he got angrier than before.

He just couldn’t believe how stupid he had been.

Since robosearch’s reply was very long, here’s a brief summary of what he wrote…