The Great Skinny Bald American SEO Experiment: Can I Rank For It?

Right, I'm about to do something deliberately stupid to prove a point about SEO.

Starting today, I'm going to rank #1 on Google for these two phrases:

• "skinny bald american doing seo in bedford"
• "skinny bald american doing seo in milton keynes"

Why? Because I want to show you how easy it is to rank for keywords when you follow SEO basics. The problem is, most businesses are ranking for the wrong keywords - terms that sound impressive in reports but generate zero actual business.

The Hypothesis

I reckon I can hit #1 for both these ridiculous phrases within 14 days. No massive budget. No team of writers. No dodgy link farms. Just good old-fashioned SEO basics:

• Quality content (you're reading it)
• Location pages
• Natural internal linking
• Maybe a backlink or two

Current Status: Starting from Zero (Almost)

As of today, here's where we stand:

• Bedford phrase: Not ranking in our portal (though I spotted position #2 in a live search - apparently mentioning I'm American on our About page was enough to accidentally rank)
• Milton Keynes phrase: Absolutely nowhere. Starting from scratch.

Search volume for both phrases: Zero. Nobody has ever searched for a skinny bald American to do their SEO. Nobody ever will.

Why This Matters to Your Business

Here's the thing - if you're paying for SEO and your agency keeps showing you improved rankings, ask yourself:

1. What keywords are we ranking for?
2. How many people actually search for those terms?
3. Are they the terms our customers use?

Because I guarantee you, ranking #1 for keywords nobody searches for is dead easy. Watch me prove it.

The Real Keywords We're Also Tracking

For comparison, here's how we're doing for ACTUAL valuable keywords:

Bedford SEO terms:

• "seo bedford" - Position 54 (210 monthly searches)
• "bedford seo" - Position 30 (210 monthly searches)
• "seo company bedford" - Position 28 (70 monthly searches)

Here's the embarrassing bit - all these Bedford rankings are hitting our Contact page. Why? Because I never bothered creating a proper Bedford location page. Been relying on the overall website authority to rank for local terms. So yesterday, I finally wrote one.

Milton Keynes SEO terms:

• "milton keynes seo" - Position 21 (720 monthly searches)
• "seo consultant milton keynes" - Position 23 (140 monthly searches)

Milton Keynes is doing better because I actually created a location page... 18 months ago. Haven't touched it since. Yesterday, I gave it a much-needed update.

See the difference? Real competition. Real search volume. Real business value. And much, much harder to rank for. Plus, I've been a bit rubbish at maintaining them - physician, heal thyself and all that.

What I'm Actually Going to Do

The implementation is embarrassingly simple:

1. This blog series (4 episodes over 14 days)
2. Update a few existing pages to mention I'm a skinny bald American
3. Maybe grab a backlink from my networking group profile
4. Track the results daily using Norman's analytical capabilities

Total time investment: Probably less than 4 hours over two weeks.

Follow the Journey

I'll update you every few days with screenshots, rankings, and insights. By Episode 4, I'll either be:

1. Ranking #1 for both phrases (most likely)
2. Learning that even Google has standards (unlikely)

Either way, you'll see exactly how SEO works when you target the right (or wrong) keywords.

The Lesson Already

Before we even start, here's what I know: SEO basics work. Blogging, location pages, backlinks, and on-site optimisation get results. But if you're not targeting the right keywords, all that effort is wasted.

Would you rather rank #1 for a term nobody searches for, or position 15 for a term that drives actual customers?

If you're wondering whether your current SEO is targeting the right keywords, our Optimiser AI service can show you exactly what you should be ranking for.

Let Operation Dual Chrome Dome begin. See you in a few days with the first update.

Michael Nagles is the founder of KickstartSEO and, apparently, Bedford's only skinny bald American SEO specialist. He's been doing SEO since 1995, back when he had both hair and a significantly larger waistline.

Next Episode: "First Signs of Chrome Dome Recognition" (Publishing 15 July)