From Zero SEO Foundation to 900 Keywords Ranking Top 10, in 8 Months
Octillion Training Academy runs UK vocational and safety training courses spanning gas, electrical, plumbing, and NVQ programs. Starting from a site with no ethical SEO practice and slow load times, a full technical, on-page, off-page, and generative-search (GEO) strategy took organic visibility from near zero to compounding growth.
From an unindexed, unoptimized site to a compounding organic engine
Weekly users growth
Illustrative curve based on the 52-week roadmap, hover the markers for milestones.
Five phases, in the order they actually happened
Each stage builds on the one before it. Scroll to follow the strategy from first click to compounding growth.
Technical & Performance Audit
A full audit found the site wasn't SEO-friendly and loaded too slowly, so images were converted to WebP, unused CSS was compressed, and mobile performance scores were lifted from 37 to 77.
On-Page SEO & Keyword Targeting
Long-tail keyword research and competitor analysis shaped a content plan built around Octillion's courses, with rewritten image alt text and meta descriptions across every core page.
Off-Page SEO & Backlink Building
Internal and external linking, guest posting, and outreach grew the backlink profile from zero spam links to 3,100 quality backlinks.
Technical Error Resolution
Resolved 16 pages causing 404 errors and 8 pages causing 5xx server errors, then submitted a clean sitemap so Google could fully index the site.
GEO & AI Search Optimization
Structured content to perform inside Google's AI Overviews, a new generative layer of search, helping Octillion's course pages get cited directly in AI-powered answers.
Inside the Octillion project
Project planning and search visibility from the supplied project archive.
What fixing the foundation made possible
Backlink profile rebuilt
Grew from zero tracked backlinks to 3,100 quality links through outreach, guest posting, and internal/external linking.
Errors eliminated
Resolved 16 pages causing 404 errors and 8 pages causing 5xx server errors that were blocking indexing entirely.
Early GEO adopter
Optimized course content for Google's AI Overviews ahead of most competitors in the vocational training space.
"Fixing what was broken came before chasing what was possible, the technical audit, not the keyword list, is what made the next eight months of growth possible."
Muhammad Ahmad, SEO Strategist, Octillion Training Academy