I don’t just blog about SEO — It’s how I’ve built several successful businesses.

But great SEO alone isn’t enough to succeed.

Anyone who makes a living as an SEO today will tell you that success comes from combining a number of strategic elements.

Thankfully, you don’t need a degree in marketing to develop the SEO skills necessary for success.

Since 2007, I have been doing SEO for my own businesses and for hundreds of clients across the globe. My approach to SEO is based on real-life experience and results, not theory.

Want to know how you can grow your business with SEO?

To succeed with SEO, you need to know how to do it both efficiently and effectively.

Unfortunately, there are lots of misunderstandings when it comes to SEO.

To cut through the nonsense, you need to put all the SEO theories to test so you can see what works and what doesn’t. Fortunately, being a full-time SEO gives me the freedom to test different SEO techniques almost daily.

What’s in it for you

For one, you can learn from my own time and effort in uncovering what SEO techniques work and what don’t.

Every piece of content I publish comes from practical, real-world results from my portfolio of websites.

That way, you get all the SEO facts and none of the fiction.

How I first discovered SEO

My journey in digital marketing started way back in 2007. I was a sweet 16-year-old and eager for a greater challenge than boxing pizzas at my local Dominoes.

With a bit of luck, timing and persistence, I somehow managed to land a job as an eCommerce databaser. During my time as a databaser (i.e spreadsheet driver), I taught myself how to write HTML by trying to fix things I broke.

One day, my boss asked me if I could do something to get the website to show up more on Google. And here begins my foray down the deep, dark rabbit hole of SEO.

Finding my feet as an SEO professional

I was pretty average to below average for most subjects at school. The one ‘A’ grade I managed to pull off in senior high school was for, you guessed it, designing a basic HTML website for my computer studies course.

Without my teacher finding out, I completely cheated the project by downloading a pirated copy of Adobe Dreamweaver (remember that!?).

Instead of hand-coding the website, I adjusted a Dreamweaver template and submitted that as my assignment.

Yep, even as a teenager, I was trying to find efficiency hacks to gain maximum results.

Upon graduating high school, I was faced with the proverbial dilemma of deciding which career path to take.

Although I cheated my only ‘A’ grade in senior high school, I loved every minute of it. Not the cheating part – but the process of piecing a website together.

So, I decided to enrol in a web design degree at my local university.

My first SEO-driven business

By now, it was 2011. I was introduced to WordPress for the first time and immediately fell in love. So much so, that I decided to start my own personal WordPress blog as a side project.

Word of mouth soon spread and much to my surprise, businesses started to approach me for work.

They had seen what I could do with WordPress and they wanted me to do the same for them.

One client became two, then three, then four…

Before I knew it, I was spending more time building websites for my clients than studying for my degree.

Then it hit me.

Why am I racking up a student debt learning about web design when I already have people paying me to do it for them?

Much to my parent’s dismay, I decided to drop out of university to pursue my freelance web design business full-time.

Building a multiple six-figure web design & SEO agency

My freelancing business continued to grow to the point where I had to rope in extra hands to help out.

Soon, my humble freelancing business grew into a full-blown agency.

Fast forward to 2021, and with a healthy multiple six-figure web design business underneath me, I decided to sell my stake in the company.

One of the key factors of the web design agency’s success was how we manage to turn our strong SEO rankings into revenue.

I took the lessons learned from the agency’s SEO and applied them to our clients.

What I am doing today

Over the years, I’ve been blessed enough to do SEO for hundreds of businesses. These businesses have ranged from startups to 9-figure multinationals and everything in between.

Since selling my stake in the web design agency, I’ve started the James Banks website to zero in on my passion for SEO.

My free content details the exact same strategies I use to rank my own websites and my clients. Here you’ll find bleeding-edge techniques for onsite, offsite and technical SEO.

Additionally, my monthly newsletter filters out all the SEO B.S while keeping you up to date with only the key SEO changes that matter.