Key Numbers
Google impressions built from a brand new domain
Keywords ranking in Google's top 2 positions
Total organic keywords now ranking
Key Takeaways
The Challenge When Sheri Jacobs - leadership keynote speaker, three-time bestselling author, and CEO of a multi-million dollar research agency - decided to build her personal brand website, she was starting from nothing. No domain, no existing site, no SEO foundation whatsoever. The challenge was not fixing a broken website; it was building the right one from the very first line of code.
Our Approach
Embedded with the development team from day one to ensure the new website was built with a full SEO backbone before a single page went live: site architecture, URL structure, technical setup, schema, and indexing foundations
Full keyword strategy to identify the highest-value targets across Sheri's speaking niches: innovation, leadership, risk, culture, and healthcare
On-page SEO across all key pages from launch
Content writing programme: new blog posts and landing pages created with purpose-built structure, formatting, and keyword targeting
Ongoing optimization throughout the full year engagement
The Outcome
362,000 Google impressions built entirely from zero on a brand new domain
11 keywords now ranking in Google's top 2 positions
91 organic keywords ranking in total
Top rankings for high-intent speaker search terms including "culture keynote speaker," "top healthcare speakers," "keynote speakers healthcare," "innovation speakers," and "business leadership speakers"
The Hook
Most SEO work starts with an existing website - something broken to fix, something stagnant to grow. Sheri Jacobs came to us at a different moment entirely: before her website existed. The opportunity, and the responsibility, was to build something right from the start rather than patch it later. A clean slate with no shortcuts.
Our Strategy
Building the SEO Backbone Before the Site Went Live
The most common and costly mistake in website builds is treating SEO as a retrofit - something to add after the site is live. We did the opposite. From the earliest stages of development, we worked alongside Sheri's development team to ensure that every structural decision was made with search in mind.
That meant defining the site architecture so that Google could understand the topical structure from day one. URL patterns, internal linking logic, heading hierarchy, schema implementation, canonical setup, and crawlability were all established before launch rather than bolted on afterward. A new domain is always at a disadvantage in search - the only way to compress the timeline is to give Google nothing to penalize from the start.
Keyword Strategy Across Her Full Niche
Sheri operates across a wide range of speaking verticals - innovation, leadership, risk, culture, healthcare, technology, financial services, and more. The keyword strategy mapped her full speaking footprint and identified where the most valuable search demand existed: which terms event planners and association buyers were actually typing, how competitive those terms were, and what content would need to exist for Sheri's site to be a credible result.
This became the master plan for everything that followed.
Content Built to Rank
The content programme was designed around search intent, not just topic ideas. Each blog post and landing page was built with a defined keyword target, a purpose-built structure, and formatting choices that help both readers and search engines understand the page clearly. Over the course of the year, this content library became the primary driver of organic keyword growth - turning a blank site into one with 91 ranking keywords and 11 sitting in the top two positions on Google.
The speaker-specific pages are the most commercially valuable part of that footprint. Ranking in the top positions for searches like "culture keynote speaker," "top healthcare speakers," and "innovation speakers" puts Sheri directly in front of the buyers who are actively looking to hire.
The Results
In under two years from launching on a completely fresh domain, sherijacobs.com has accumulated 362,000 Google impressions and 91 organic keywords in active rankings. Eleven of those keywords sit in Google's top two positions - the territory where clicks actually happen.
The speaker keyword rankings are the result that matters most commercially. Event planners searching for innovation, healthcare, culture, or leadership keynote speakers are now finding Sheri's site at the top of the results. That is the entire point: turning a new website into an inbound channel for speaking inquiries.
Starting from zero is the hardest version of this work. There is no existing authority to build on, no traffic to protect, and no shortcuts. The results here were earned from the ground up.
