Home

Hi.

I am Pinoy SEO

Award-Winning Filipino Freelance SEO and GEO specialist and consultant with Free and Paid Training Courses in the Philippines.

I work with clients anywhere in the world but most of my clients are in Australia, UK, US, and Canada. My niche is diverse from e-commerce clothing stores, to surveying equipment, plumbers, dentists, and drone specialists.

Tools I Use:

My name is Rene Leandro Padilla. I have been an SEO freelancer, consultant, and agency owner since 2010 helping more than 250+ websites get ranked.

We have over 100+ 5-Star reviews on our SEO courses.

Winner of the Outstanding Digital Freelancer of the Year 2024 Given by the City Government of Iligan

About Me

I am a graduate of a 4-year Bachelor of Science in Information Technology course at one of the major universities in the Philippines.

I used to be a technical support representative in one of the call centers in Cebu. In 2010, I tried my hands on an online job and landed in the field of search engine optimization. I got fascinated and tried my best to learn the most out of it. Since then, I never looked back and pursued this career.

0

Years of SEO Experience

0

Websites Ranked

Over the years, I have not only unlocked the secrets behind SEO success but also developed strategies that consistently delivered results. My websites outperformed competitors, and demand grew for insights, leading to the inception of bespoke, cutting-edge SEO and GEO training courses in the Philippines.

Advantages of Pinoy SEO Training in the Philippines:

  1. Hands-on Learning: I believe in the power of practical, hands-on learning. My courses are built around real-world case studies and live projects, ensuring participants can apply their new knowledge directly.

  2. Up-to-Date Techniques: The digital world evolves daily, and so do my courses. I stay on the pulse of every search engine algorithm update and SEO trend, refining my courses to ensure you’re always ahead of the game.

  3. Personalized Assistance: Recognizing that each individual and business has unique needs, I offer personalized mentorship alongside my courses. I’m here to guide you, answer your questions, and provide tailored advice to ensure your SEO strategy is a success.

  4. Networking Opportunities: Joining any of my SEO training courses means becoming part of a community. You’ll have the opportunity to network with other like-minded individuals, share insights, and collaborate on potential projects.

PinoySEO SEO Process

SEO is a broad topic that touches anything that affects the performance of a website inside a search engine.

The following is the general SEO process cycle I do for websites.

1st

Website Audit

This is the part where I get to know your website and its current state. I determine the issues and suggest recommendations on how to solve them.

Learn more

2nd

Keyword Research

This is the part where I determine the right target keywords for your website and forecast how many visitors we can have if we are able to rank top in the search engines for them.

3rd

Competitive Analysis

This is the part where I check who are your competitors and what they are doing in terms of SEO and where we can get leverage and compete with them.

4th

Onpage SEO

This is the part where I do SEO on your website. This touches metadata, content, images, video, optimization.

5th

Offpage SEO

This is the part where I strengthen your website authority through backlinks and mentions from important and related websites.

6th

Reporting and Data Analysis

This is the part where we can all make sense of what we are doing and analyze progress based on real quantitative data generated by tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, SEMRush, among others.

 

After analyzing and we see there are more things we can do, we can go back to step 1 and do the cycle again to keep improving the rankings.

Featured Free SEO Courses


Watch the free training video below about 

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) introduction.

What People Say About My Trainings

Ayos kaayo videos nimo boss. More uploads, more power!
eKo
Informative kaayo sir! Thank you sir! Sa uban ani naa nani bayad, premium course nani..
Rodmark
Salamat kaayu sir ani imong free tutorial. Godbless you more Sir...
Inday
Thank you sa free course boss
Niza Meliston
Salamat sir. unta dili ka mag sawa mag upload ug mga tutorials unsaon pag work aning SEO. dako kaayung tabang ❤️
Crislao
sulit na tutorial boss. simple and direct to the point.
JCD Gaming

Ongoing Paid SEO Bootcamps

No Data Available in this Section
No Data Available in this Section

UPCOMING BOOTCAMP


Free AI SEO Tools by PinoySEO.ph

GBP Auditor – Audits your Google Business Profile and gives recommendations.

ChatGPT Visibility Tool – Checks if your brand or website is mentioned in ChatGPT results.

Check Your Potential Salary as an SEO Specialist in the Philippines

The SEO Specialist Salary Calculator Philippines helps estimate the potential monthly salary of SEO professionals based on their experience, skill level, tools knowledge, and digital marketing capabilities. Whether you are a beginner learning SEO or an experienced specialist working with international clients, this calculator provides a quick estimate of your earning potential in the Philippine digital marketing industry.

SEO Specialist Salary Calculator Philippines

Estimate the monthly salary of an SEO Specialist in the Philippines.

SEO Bootcamp Graduates

Batch 1
Batch 2

WordPress Bootcamp Graduates

Batch 1
Batch 2
Batch 3

PinoySEO.ph Courses Stats

0

Free and Paid Courses Conducted

0

Enrolled students in our free and paid courses
(as of August 2026)

International Coaching Testimonials
(US and Australia)

Testimonial of Blake DeWitt, CEO of Investorade.com - USA
Testimonial of Paola Yit, CEO of PoshDeluxe.com.au - AUSTRALIA

SEO News and Blog

Read the latest SEO news and events here.

Homepage
September 29, 2026One of the most common questions I get from Pinoy SEO Bootcamp students is simple: “Sir, once I learn SEO, how do I actually make money from it?” Fair question. SEO is a skill, not a job title. The money comes from how you apply it. I have been doing SEO since 2010 — that is 16 years — and over that time I have turned the same core skill into several different income streams. Some are client services, some are websites I own, and some are businesses built on top of teaching and talent. Here are eleven ways to make money once you know SEO, each with a real example from my own work. No hypotheticals. 1. Offer SEO services to international clients This is where most SEO careers start, and it is still my biggest income stream. Businesses in the US, UK, Canada and Australia pay well for SEO because one extra customer from Google is worth a lot to them. As a Filipino SEO, you can deliver that work at a price that makes sense for them and pays very well for you. Real example: HillMed Holistic Stress Management, a physician-led wellness clinic in Plano, Texas. We handle their local SEO and their AI visibility — making sure the clinic shows up not just on Google, but also when people ask ChatGPT for recommendations. The clinic now ranks on Google for “ketamine therapy plano”, one of its most valuable local searches. And not long after we started, the doctor emailed us to say a new patient had found him through ChatGPT. I have been doing client SEO since 2010, and it has earned me 8 digits in Philippine pesos. Today that work runs through MalachiSoft Inc, the agency I founded. Tip: Today, “SEO services” should include AI visibility, also called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Clients increasingly ask how they can appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. If you can answer that, you are worth more. 2. Do white-label SEO for other agencies Not every client has to be yours. Many agencies abroad sell SEO to their own clients but do not have enough people to do the work. They hire a partner to deliver it quietly under the agency’s brand. That is white-label SEO. Real example: We do white-label SEO for an agency client in Canada. They own the client relationship and the sales; we do the SEO work behind the scenes. For you, this means steady work without having to find and close every client yourself. 3. Add paid ads for your existing SEO clients Once a client trusts you with SEO, the easiest new income is another service for the same client. SEO and paid ads use the same knowledge — keywords, search intent, landing pages, conversions — so it is a natural add-on. Real example: We added ads management for clients we were already doing SEO for, including one of the newest ad platforms: ChatGPT Ads. In a 6-week pilot for a US wellness client, the campaign produced 22 leads at about $52 each. Same client, same relationship, more revenue. 4. Offer web design as a complementary service If you know SEO, you already know what a good website needs: fast loading, clear structure, proper headings, pages built around what people search for. Many clients need a new or rebuilt site before SEO can even work. Offering web design means you can take that project too, instead of sending it to someone else. Real example: We built the first website of MedImpact International, a healthcare company with teams in the Philippines, India and the Gulf region — from their designer’s Figma files to a live WordPress site in two months. Because we build with SEO in mind from day one, the site is ready to rank. 5. Build websites that earn from Google AdSense Client work trades time for money. Your own websites can earn while you sleep. The simplest model: publish helpful content, rank it on Google, and earn from the ads Google AdSense shows to your visitors. More traffic, more earnings. Real example: BiblicalLifeLessons.com, a site of short daily devotionals. People search for this kind of content every day, and the site earns through AdSense. It is a good reminder that you do not need a “money” niche to make money — you need a topic people search for consistently. 6. Sell digital products Once your site ranks and people trust it, you can sell them something directly. Digital products are ideal: you create them once and sell them many times, with no shipping and no inventory. Real example: ExamsPinas.com, our guide to Philippine licensure and board exams. Exam takers find the site through Google while searching for schedules and review tips, and we sell PDF reviewers to help them prepare. The SEO brings the visitors; the product turns them into income. 7. Sell physical products SEO is not only for online businesses. If you sell something people can hold, eat or use, the same skills help customers find you: a well-optimized Google Business Profile, good reviews, and showing up when people nearby search for what you sell. Real example: Pipie Co, our cake shop. We built it a properly optimized website that ranked for local searches, and we optimized its Google Business Profile so it showed up in Google Maps. SEO became the shop’s biggest source of traffic. Even as a small shop, it was earning around 6 digits in Philippine pesos every month. Pipie Co is temporarily closed right now because we are moving it to a new location, but it proved that SEO skills are just as powerful for a local, physical business as they are for a website. 8. Do affiliate marketing With affiliate marketing, you recommend other companies’ products and earn a commission when your visitors buy. SEO is what gets those visitors to your recommendations in the first place. Real example: ExamsPinas.com again. Besides selling reviewers, the site is a Shopee affiliate. We have an image on the site that links to printed, physical reviewers sold on Shopee. When a visitor clicks through and buys one, we earn a commission. One site, several income streams — that is the power of owning traffic. 9. Build a niche directory and sell upgraded listings A directory lists every business in one niche or location in one place. If you rank it for the searches people make (“pickleball courts near me”, “restaurants in Iligan”), the businesses listed there start to care about how they look on your site. That is when you can offer upgraded profiles: more photos, better placement, booking buttons or a verified badge, for a fee. Real example: PickleMap.ph, our directory of pickleball courts across the Philippines. It ranks well on Google for court searches, and it has started earning from court owners who upgrade their profiles. The income is still small, but it is real, and it grows as the sport and the site’s traffic grow. It is a good model to copy for any fast-growing niche in your area. 10. Teach SEO to others Once you have real results, people will want to learn how you did it. Teaching is one of the most rewarding ways to earn from SEO, because you get paid while helping others start their own careers. Real example: Pinoy SEO — the site you are reading now. I have been teaching SEO for 4 years through our bootcamps, and teaching SEO has earned 8 digits in Philippine pesos. More importantly, our graduates are now landing their own clients here and abroad. Tip: Teach only what you have actually done. Students can tell the difference between a teacher who has results and one who only read about them. 11. Earn from referrals Once you are known in the industry, people will ask you for recommendations — “Do you know a good SEO?” or “Can you find me a VA?” You can turn those conversations into income by referring people you trust. Real example: SOVATalents.com. The talents listed there are graduates of our own PinoySEO and SOVA training programs — SEO specialists, WordPress designers and virtual assistants. When a business needs help, we refer one of our graduates, and our company earns from that referral. The business gets talent we have trained ourselves, our graduate gets work, and we get paid for making the match. What we are still building Not every project makes money right away, and we want to be honest about that. Calculators.ph and GraceMatch.ph are not earning yet. But both are already getting great rankings on Google. That is the part that matters. Rankings mean traffic, and traffic is what every income stream in this post needs. Once a site ranks, turning on AdSense, affiliate links, paid listings or bookings is the easy part. These sites have the potential to make money online; we are just choosing the right model for each one. With SEO, you build the traffic first, and the income follows. Two newer projects follow the same idea. Halin AI is a free AI bookkeeper for Filipino freelancers and sole proprietors. You chat in Bisaya, Tagalog or English, snap receipt photos, and it keeps your books and reminds you of BIR deadlines. It is 100% free during early access, and its blog articles on topics like BIR open cases and the 8% tax option are how people find it. Later, users will be able to upgrade for more bookkeeping options. That is the freemium model: SEO brings in free users, and a share of them upgrade. And DigitalKids.ph teaches Filipino kids aged 8 to 12 coding, web design, AI and online safety through free games, with no ads and no in-app purchases. For kids and families, it stays free. The earning potential is on the school side: licensing the platform to schools that want to use it in class. The free version builds the audience and the reputation that make those school deals possible. We have also built two free AI tools for SEOs and business owners. The GBP Auditor checks a Google Business Profile and shows what to fix to rank better in Google Maps. The ChatGPT Visibility tool checks whether ChatGPT mentions your brand when people ask about your industry. Both are free for now, and they may become freemium later, with the basic check staying free and deeper reports as a paid upgrade. Free tools are one of the easiest ways to earn links, traffic and trust, and those are exactly what an SEO knows how to turn into income. Where should you start? If you are new, do not try all eleven at once. This is the order I usually recommend: Start with client SEO (way 1 or 2). It pays right away and teaches you what actually works. Add services for the clients you already have (ways 3 and 4). It is easier to earn more from a happy client than to find a new one. Build your own sites and products on the side (ways 5 to 9). They take longer, but they keep earning even when you are not doing client work. Teach and refer (ways 10 and 11) once you have results people can see. Earnings mentioned in this post are my own and are not a promise of what you will earn. Your results depend on your skills, effort and consistency. Learn the skill that makes all of this possible Every income stream in this post starts from the same place: knowing how to get a website found on Google and in AI search. That is exactly what we teach in the Pinoy SEO Bootcamp. Batch 44 is fully booked and starts on September 30, 2026. We will announce Batch 45 soon, so stay tuned to pinoyseo.ph and our newsletter so you don’t miss it. [...] Read more...
September 19, 2026A new student testimonial just landed on the Pinoy SEO YouTube channel — and this one comes with a story we love telling. Ralf Perino is a graduate of our Batch 33 SEO Training Bootcamp. After finishing that batch he did what every PinoySEO grad hopes to do: he went out, landed his first paying client, and started doing real SEO work — specifically Google Business Profile (GBP) optimization, one of the highest-ROI corners of local SEO today. And now — a couple of batches later — he is back. Not for a repeat of the bootcamp, but enrolled in our 1-on-1 coaching program to sharpen the specific SEO skills his client accounts now demand. From Batch 33 to a paying GBP client Ralf’s original bootcamp — Batch 33 — walked him through the SEO fundamentals the same way every PinoySEO batch does: keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, off-page basics, and the local SEO chapter that covers Google Business Profile in depth. For a lot of new SEOs, GBP is where the first paid work shows up. There are two reasons for this. First, every brick-and-mortar business in the Philippines eventually needs it. Restaurants, clinics, salons, dental offices, real estate agents, driving schools, event venues — they all live and die by their Google Maps presence. Second, GBP is measurable in a way clients understand. You can show a screenshot of a listing at position 7 in the local pack today and position 2 next month. That before-and-after is easy to sell. Ralf spotted that opportunity, positioned himself as a GBP specialist coming out of Batch 33, and landed a client. We are keeping that client’s details private, but the work is real, it is paid, and it is what most Bootcamp graduates are chasing in their first six months. Why he came back for 1-on-1 coaching Here is the part of the story that says the most about where Ralf is in his career: he did not go looking for a different course or a different coach. He came back to PinoySEO for a focused, 1-on-1 program — two things a group bootcamp can only partially deliver. 1. Focused education. A bootcamp is deliberately broad. It has to give twenty different students a shared foundation, so it moves through every SEO discipline at a general level. Once you are actively serving a client, though, your real questions are narrow and specific. “How do I fix this exact category of GBP suspension?” “Why is my client’s service-area listing losing to a competitor with fewer reviews?” “What is the fastest way to audit a WordPress site for technical issues before I quote a retainer?” Those questions do not have textbook answers. They need a real coach looking at your real account. 2. SEO checking of his client sites. This is the other half of what Ralf signed up for — someone senior reviewing the actual sites he is working on and telling him what he is missing. That kind of second-pair-of-eyes SEO auditing is worth more than a hundred YouTube tutorials once you are billing clients. You cannot Google your way to the specific fix your client needs. You need a coach with sixteen years in Philippine SEO to look at the audit with you and say “here is what I would prioritize, here is what I would ignore, and here is the argument you should use with the client.” His portfolio site: perinorankslocal.com There is a third piece of the 1-on-1 package worth showing off, and Ralf is a good example of it. Every 1-on-1 student gets a real, owned domain to use as a training and portfolio site — not a subdomain of pinoyseo.ph. Ralf’s is live at perinorankslocal.com. To be clear: perinorankslocal.com is not his paying client. It is his own site, part of the 1-on-1 package he bought, and it is where he sharpens the techniques he then applies to real client accounts. Think of it like a med student’s teaching hospital — a controlled environment where a coach can watch you rank a page, fix a technical issue, or launch a local schema build without any client fires in the middle. The reason we hand out a real domain instead of a subdomain is that it doubles as a portfolio asset. A real domain is transferrable, it is portfolio-grade for future job applications, and it is a serious signal to future clients that the student owns their work. Bootcamp students share a training subdomain because the training is broad; 1-on-1 students walk out with their own .com because the goal is to build a career, not just complete a course. What this pattern tells us The PinoySEO team notices this pattern with our strongest graduates: the ones who do best long-term treat their SEO career as a stack of investments, not a single course. Bootcamp gives the foundation. First client gives real reps. 1-on-1 coaching turns those reps into a specialization. Then that specialization compounds into a full agency, a senior in-house role, or an international consulting practice. Ralf is on that trajectory. Batch 33 was his foundation. His current GBP client is his real-world lab. The 1-on-1 sessions are the accelerator. A year from now the story we expect to be telling about Ralf is not “he got his first client” — it is “he has a book of clients, a specialty, and a reputation.” A quick word to current bootcamp students If you are in the current batch or you have just graduated, look at Ralf’s timeline and take the useful pieces from it: Pick a specialty early. Ralf picked GBP. It could be technical SEO, e-commerce SEO, WordPress SEO, or SaaS content SEO — but pick one lane where you can point at real work. Charge before you feel ready. The first client you sign will teach you more than the last month of the bootcamp did. The paid pressure is the accelerator. Get a senior review when the questions get specific. If your questions have moved from “what is a canonical tag” to “should I canonicalize these paginated category pages for this specific client,” that is the signal you have outgrown general lessons. Having an experienced SEO review your real work is what moves you forward from there. To Ralf, from all of us Thank you for sending the testimonial and — more importantly — for coming back. Watching a Batch 33 graduate re-invest in his own career is exactly the loop we built this program to create. Your GBP client is lucky to have you working on their account, and we are going to make sure your 1-on-1 sessions turn every question your client throws at you into a repeatable playbook. Ikaw na, kabayan. See you in the next session. Ready to start your own SEO career? Ralf’s journey started in a Pinoy SEO Bootcamp batch. If you want the same foundation that got him from zero to a paying GBP client, the Pinoy SEO Bootcamp is where that starts. Batch 44 is fully booked and starts on September 30, 2026. We will announce Batch 45 soon, so stay tuned to pinoyseo.ph and our newsletter so you don’t miss it. If you are a bootcamp grad with an update to share, drop a comment below with your story. We would love to feature your win too. [...] Read more...
September 14, 2026Two milestones in one week. That is the update we just received from Stephanne Alfaro, one of our recent Pinoy SEO Bootcamp graduates. The first: she just got her very first freelance SEO client. Not just any client — a from-scratch project where she’ll be building the entire SEO strategy from the ground up. No inherited setup. No existing team to lean on. Just her, the fundamentals she picked up from Bootcamp, and a real website that needs to grow. The second: she has an active application in for an SEO Specialist / SEO Assistant role with a UK-based SEO specialist, working part-time. She has already completed the assessments and is now waiting for the results. Two clients on the table. One local, from-scratch. One international, part-time. Both landed in the space of a single week. Why a “from scratch” first client actually matters A lot of new SEOs get their start by joining an established team — running keyword research for someone else’s strategy, updating meta descriptions inside someone else’s CMS, filing reports into someone else’s template. It is a fine way to start. You learn the tools quickly. What you do not learn quickly that way is ownership. Deciding which keywords the site should chase. Deciding the site architecture. Deciding what stays in the sitemap and what gets no-indexed. Deciding when to publish, what to publish, and how to measure whether it worked. Stephanne’s first client gives her all of that on day one. She owns the audit. She writes the strategy. She picks the tools. She sets the reporting cadence. She defends the calls. Six months into that kind of work, you have skills that a “junior SEO who did tasks” resume simply cannot show. You have case study material. You have before-and-after screenshots. You have a story to tell in interviews. The PinoySEO team has watched this pattern play out with graduate after graduate: the ones who take a from-scratch client early — even a small one — accelerate past their peers within a year. Stephanne is starting on the fast track. Applying internationally is not gatekept anymore A few years ago, working for a UK SEO specialist meant either relocating or getting extraordinarily lucky with a remote-first agency. Today the game is different. UK, Australian, US, and Canadian SEO consultancies routinely hire part-time and fractional Filipino SEO specialists — because the SEO fundamentals are universal, English is the working language, and the time-zone overlap works for asynchronous project work. Stephanne’s UK application is not an outlier. It is the direction the market is going. Foreign consultancies want SEO thinkers who can run a keyword project, deliver a technical audit, and communicate clearly in writing — three things every Pinoy SEO Bootcamp graduate is drilled on. The assessments she is waiting on are usually a mix of: a keyword research task, a mock audit of a real client site, sometimes a written recommendation exercise. If Bootcamp did its job, none of these should be surprises. She has done exactly this kind of work in Batch training exercises already. What this means for other graduates and current students If you are in the middle of Bootcamp right now — or you just graduated and are wondering when the first client shows up — Stephanne’s timeline is a useful reference point. Your first client rarely comes from a job board. It comes from a friend who owns a small business, a former colleague who runs a side hustle, a Facebook group where someone posts “hiring SEO.” The first “yes” is a conversation, not an application. From-scratch work is the fastest teacher. If a friend needs help launching a site, take the project even if the scope is small. What you learn shipping a real launch is worth more than three months of hypothetical exercises. Apply internationally in parallel. Do not wait until you feel “ready.” The application process itself is training. Assessments are how you find out where your gaps are, and every assessment you complete makes the next one easier. Announce your availability publicly. Facebook post, LinkedIn banner, group intro. People need to know you are open for work before they can hire you. The bigger picture Stephanne is not the first graduate to land a first client within weeks of finishing Bootcamp. She will not be the last. But every update like hers reinforces what the PinoySEO team believes about Filipino SEO talent: the skill ceiling here is high, the market is real, and the international opportunities are already open. What was missing for a lot of aspiring SEOs was structured training that mapped one-to-one onto the work paying clients actually need. That is exactly what Bootcamp delivers. The PinoySEO team is rooting for both applications — local and international — to convert. Stephanne, from all of us: ikaw na, kabayan. We know you have the foundations. Now it is just about executing what you already know. Want to write your own success update? If you are ready to start your SEO career — with a curriculum built around real client work, not textbook theory — the Pinoy SEO Bootcamp is where our graduates like Stephanne got their foundation. Batch 44 is open now. Check the homepage for the current schedule and enrollment details. And if you are a Bootcamp graduate with a story like Stephanne’s — a first client, a job offer, a milestone — send it to us. We would love to feature your win too. [...] Read more...
September 5, 2026Why “ranking #1” doesn’t mean what you think — how to measure where your listing actually appears on the screen, with a full pixel breakdown of the Philippine SERP for “free seo training philippines.” The report says you won. The traffic says you didn’t. Every SEO has seen this one. Rankings are stable. Position #1 for the money keyword, position #3 for two more. And clicks are down 30% quarter over quarter. The instinct is to blame an algorithm update. Usually the answer is simpler and more physical: your listing never moved, but the page around it got taller. Position #1 in 2019 sat roughly 300 pixels from the top of the screen. Today the median #1 result on desktop sits around 1,000 pixels down. The rank didn’t change. The distance did. That gap — between where you rank and how far down you actually are — is what pixel rank tracking measures. What pixel rank tracking actually is Pixel rank tracking measures how far down the results page, in pixels, your listing appears — instead of which numbered slot it occupies. Ordinal rank quietly assumes every result above you takes up the same amount of space. That assumption held when a SERP was ten blue links of near-identical height. It does not hold now. Today’s results page is a stack of variable-height blocks: AI Overviews, expanded ad units, People Also Ask, video carousels, Places packs, forum results with nested answers. Each renders at a different height, and that height changes by query, by device, and sometimes by hour. Rank tells you your place in a queue. Pixel depth tells you whether anyone in that queue can see you. The numbers that make this urgent Large-scale studies of the 2026 search landscape put hard figures on the squeeze: The desktop fold sits at roughly 800 pixels; the mobile fold at roughly 400 pixels. The median desktop position #1 now sits about 1,000 pixels down — meaning more than half of all #1 rankings are already below the fold. Position #2 typically sits another 250–300 pixels below position #1. A desktop AI Overview averages about 1,110 pixels when expanded (617 px on mobile). One AI Overview can consume more than a full mobile screen on its own. Only about 10% of searches now show even one complete organic result above the fold. Four or more organic results above the fold happens less than 1% of the time. One finding deserves a pause: the biggest recent downward shove came less from AI Overviews than from paid units getting physically larger. Ads didn’t multiply — they got taller. Which is exactly the kind of change ordinal rank tracking cannot see. How to calculate pixel rank The concept is simple: measure the vertical distance, in CSS pixels, from the top of the results page to the top of your listing’s container. There are three ways to get there. 1. The tooling route seoClarity, AccuRanker, Advanced Web Ranking, Similarweb, DemandSphere and Myposeo all report pixel position; Ubersuggest has a lighter version. They render the SERP at a fixed viewport and measure the bounding box of each result. Fastest option, and the right one at scale. 2. The DIY route Load the SERP in a headless browser at a fixed viewport and read the offset directly: document.querySelector('#search a[href*="yourdomain.com"]') .closest('div.g') .getBoundingClientRect().top + window.scrollY 3. The screenshot route (no tools required) You can measure pixel depth from screenshots alone — which is exactly how the case study below was produced. Take your screenshots. Capture the SERP from the top, then scroll and capture again with some overlap. Note that Retina Mac captures are typically 2× the logical resolution, so raw image pixels are not CSS pixels. Find your scale factor. Use an element of known height. The People Also Ask block is ideal — each question row is 54 CSS pixels tall. Measure the spacing between two PAA questions in your image and divide by 54. In the case study below, PAA rows were 72 image pixels apart: 72 ÷ 54 = 1.333. Convert. CSS pixels = image pixels ÷ scale factor. At 1.333×, that means multiplying every image measurement by 0.75. Chain your scrolls. For a page taller than one screen, find an element visible in two consecutive screenshots and use it to stitch them into one continuous coordinate system. Locate your fold. Subtract browser chrome and, on Mac, the menu bar from your screen height. A 14-inch MacBook Pro at 1512×982 with a maximized Chrome window gives roughly an 860-pixel fold. It takes about ten minutes. Do it manually at least once — seeing your own SERP measured changes how you read every ranking report afterwards. The four metrics worth tracking First Brand Pixel (FBP). The depth at which your brand first appears anywhere on the page — organic, AI Overview citation, Places, PAA, or a social profile. This is your single most important visibility number, and it is usually far better than your organic depth. Owned-domain pixel depth. Where your actual website appears. Keep this separate from FBP: a brand mention in an AI Overview builds awareness, but a link on your own domain earns the session. Brand share of first screen. What percentage of the first viewport your brand occupies. This catches multi-asset visibility that rank tracking flattens into a single number. Competitor-free depth. How far down the page a user can read before hitting a rival. This is the metric that tells you whether you own a SERP or merely appear on it. Real example: “free seo training philippines” Here is a live measurement of a Philippine commercial SERP — Google, desktop, incognito, Philippines location, September 2026, measured with the screenshot method above. The fold sits at approximately 860 pixels. Every Pinoy SEO appearance on page one #Brand assetPixel depthAbove fold?1AI Overview — “Pinoy SEO” link in the opening sentence~224Yes2AI Overview right-rail source card (with brand logo)~217–290Yes3AI Overview source chip — “Pinoy SEO +1”~272Yes4AI Overview bullet #1 — “Led by Coach Leandro Padilla…”~360Yes5“Pinoy SEO YouTube Channel” link inside the AI Overview~431Yes6pinoyseo.ph homepage — organic #1~590Yes7Facebook · Pinoy SEO (22.8K followers)~890Just below8LinkedIn · Pinoy SEO (330 followers)~1,331No9YouTube · Pinoy SEO (1.4K followers)~1,483No10pinoyseo.ph/courses — “Courses Archive”~2,192No Measurements below ~1,300 px are chained across screenshot boundaries; treat those as ±80 px. Competitor and SERP-feature overlay Competitor / SERP featurePixel depthseotraining.ph homepage — organic #2~735People Also Ask block~1,040seotraining.ph — “Square One: The Free SEO Starter Course”~1,635Reddit — r/buhaydigital thread~1,785Inventive Media — SEO bootcamp Makati~2,042People Also Search For~2,360 Pixel depths measured on the same capture, same viewport. What the numbers say Pinoy SEO owns this SERP — it doesn’t just rank on it. The brand is the grammatical subject of the AI Overview’s opening sentence at 224 pixels, holds the image-bearing right-rail source card, is bullet #1 in the summary, and the homepage sits at organic #1, fully above the fold at 590 pixels. A user can read the entire first screen and encounter no competitor at all. seotraining.ph doesn’t appear until 735 pixels; Inventive Media doesn’t appear until 2,042 pixels — more than two full screens down. Ten brand assets on one page. Website homepage, courses page, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, plus five distinct AI Overview surfaces. Ordinal rank tracking reports this SERP as “#1.” That single number describes roughly 6% of what is actually happening on the page. The differentiator Google chose. The AI Overview specifically cites “regional languages like Bisaya.” No competitor can replicate that quickly, and Google’s synthesis selected it as the defining attribute of the brand — a useful signal about which part of your positioning the model finds genuinely distinctive. The same brand, a different keyword Now the identical brand measured on “seo training philippines” — same day, same device, same setup: Metric“free seo training philippines”“seo training philippines”First Brand Pixel~224 px~426 pxOwned-domain depth~590 px (above fold)~1,292 px (below fold)Organic position#1#3Competitors above the site02Brand share of first screen~37%~0% (AI Overview only) Two keywords, one brand, one measurement session. Same brand. Same authority. Same day. A 702-pixel difference in owned-domain depth, and the difference between owning the first screen and being invisible on it. On the broader keyword, the Pinoy SEO listing sits about 460 pixels below the fold behind two competitors. On the “free” variant it sits above the fold at #1. No ordinal rank report would show you that, because “#3” and “#1” look like a two-position gap. In pixels it is the difference between a user seeing you immediately and a user never seeing you at all. Where pixel data exposes weaknesses that rank hides A strong asset with a badly presented result. The pinoyseo.ph/courses page sits at 2,192 pixels — the deepest brand asset on the page. It ranks on the strength of “Free Bisaya SEO Training Philippines,” the exact differentiator the AI Overview singled out, but it surfaces with the title “Courses Archive” and a snippet that repeats itself verbatim. The best differentiator has the worst-presented listing. The fix is a dedicated landing page and a written meta description, not a link-building campaign. Missing sitelinks on the #1 result. The homepage result occupies about 145 pixels. A sitelinked result adds roughly 60–100 pixels of owned vertical space, pushing competitors further down and increasing first-screen share at zero content cost. An unclaimed PAA block at 1,040 pixels. Four questions, including “Where can I learn SEO for free?” — a direct match to the brand’s positioning. Winning one would place a fifth brand impression at ~1,100 pixels and break up the competitor stretch between 735 and 1,635. Concentration risk. Roughly 77% of the above-fold brand presence depends on staying cited in the AI Overview. That is outstanding performance and concentrated exposure at the same time. AI Overviews re-synthesize; a citation is not a ranking, and it does not persist by default. How to act on pixel data Stop optimizing rank; start optimizing distance. Moving #4 to #3 on a SERP where #1 already sits at 1,400 pixels changes nothing. Moving #3 to #2 where the fold cuts at #2 is worth real money. Pixel depth tells you which SERPs still have a fold worth competing for. Change format, not just position. If you can’t move up, move sideways into a format that renders higher — an AI Overview citation, a PAA answer, an image or video pack, a Places listing, a sitelinked result. Each one pulls your brand above your organic position. Recalibrate your CTR curves. Most CTR models are ordinal and are now badly wrong on feature-heavy SERPs. Segment keywords by pixel depth before forecasting traffic from a ranking projection. Track mobile separately. At a 400-pixel fold, a single AI Overview can mean nothing organic is visible at all. Mobile is where the damage shows up first and worst. Track both AI Overview states. A collapsed AI Overview and an expanded one produce very different pixel depths for everything beneath. Report both — your organic depth is effectively bimodal depending on user behaviour. The limitations, honestly Pixel depth is a proxy for visibility, not for attention — a user who scrolls past an AI Overview may still engage deeply with the result below it. It is volatile: SERP features fire inconsistently, so single-day snapshots are noisy and you need trend lines to say anything confident. Personalization, ad-auction variation and dynamic layout shifts mean two measurements of “the same” SERP can legitimately differ. And it says nothing at all about whether the traffic converts. A pixel figure is also meaningless without its viewport. Always record device, screen resolution, browser and location alongside the number, or you are comparing measurements that were never comparable. The takeaway Ranking #1 is a claim about a queue. Pixel depth is a claim about a screen. Only one of those is where your customers actually live. Two questions replace “what do I rank?”: At what pixel does my brand first appear? How much of the first screen do I own? Answer those two and you will know the thing your ranking report has never been able to tell you. Measurements taken September 2026 on Google, desktop, incognito, Philippines location, at an ~860-pixel fold. Pixel figures are estimates derived from calibrated screenshots and carry roughly ±5% error, rising to ±80 px for elements chained across screenshot boundaries. [...] Read more...
September 3, 2026Last month our team ran a simple site:pinoyseo.ph search on Google, expecting to see our usual mix of SEO training articles, student stories, and course pages. Instead, we found hundreds of casino URLs, Instagram viewer promos, Polish gambling reviews, and fake power-tool product pages — all indexed on our own domain. None of it was written by anyone on the PinoySEO team. None of it was approved by us. All of it was hosted at pinoyseo.ph/profile// — WordPress author archive pages generated automatically by fake accounts that had quietly signed up on our site over the years. When we exported our WordPress user list, the scale hit our team in the face: 13,922 total users. 5,931 of them were spam bots. That’s 42% of our entire user database. This is the full story of how the PinoySEO team diagnosed it, defended against it, and cleaned it up in about 3 hours across two evenings — with zero real students affected and zero data loss. If you run a WordPress site with open registration (especially with Tutor LMS, LearnDash, or WooCommerce customer signup), you almost certainly have the same problem we did. Here’s exactly what to look for and what to do. Step 1: Run site:yourdomain.com right now This is the 30-second diagnostic that started everything for our team. Open a fresh Google tab and type: site:yourdomain.com Scroll through the first 5-10 pages of results. If you spot ANY of these red flags, you have a spam-registration problem: URLs under /profile/, /author/, or /user/ that you never created Content in languages you don’t write in (Russian, Polish, Chinese, Arabic) Casino, gambling, or betting keywords in the title “Best XYZ viewer/downloader/converter” tool listings Fake job postings (we found a fake “SEO Analyst” listing on our domain) SEO-spammy content about industries you don’t cover (we found baby cots, power tools, Kenya casinos) What we found on pinoyseo.ph included: “Top 5 Private Instagram Viewer 2025,” “Kenya Live Casino Tools,” “Bitz Casino Kenya,” “5 Killer Quora Answers On Casino Games Kenya by Ronda,” “Power Tool Suppliers UK,” “Complete Guide On Private Instagram Viewers This Year,” “JungliWin casino promo,” and “The Story Behind Best Cot Will Haunt You For The Rest.” All of it was published as author bio content by fake user accounts. Step 2: Diagnose the scope — export your users to CSV Install the free Export Users to CSV plugin (or WebToffee’s Import Export Users). Go to Users → Export → download everything as CSV. Open the CSV in Excel or Google Sheets. Sort by email domain (create a column that extracts the part after @). Then group by domain and count. These are the exact spam domain patterns our team found on pinoyseo.ph. If you see any of these in your own list, they are almost certainly bots: Domain patternTypeOur countyzoms.comDisposable1,392gmx.comMixed abuse763*.elyquin.orgBot farm (multiple subdomains)1,818*.rixyle.comBot farm734*.hivoltz.orgBot farm258*.dravix.orgBot farm257*.xylzen.comBot farm240anonmails.deDisposable1191secmail.com1-second temp mail31casinotds.xyzCasino spam17sitesseo.siteSEO abuse29 The “bot farm” domains are especially telling. These are private domains registered specifically to serve as unlimited email-generator services for bot networks. If you see a domain with dozens or hundreds of your users on it and you don’t recognize the domain name — it’s not your students. It’s a botnet. Step 3: Stop the bleeding BEFORE you delete anything This is the step most people skip and then regret. If you delete 6,000 spam accounts today but leave your registration form wide open, you’ll have 6,000 new ones next month. Seal the entry point first. Install Advanced Google reCAPTCHA (free) Get free reCAPTCHA v3 keys at google.com/recaptcha/admin — create a new site, choose v3, add your domain (just yourdomain.com — no www, no https://) Install and activate the Advanced Google reCAPTCHA plugin by WebFactory Ltd Settings → paste Site Key and Secret Key Set score threshold to 0.5 (default) Enable protection on: Registration form, Login form, Lost password form, Comment form, WooCommerce checkout, WooCommerce registration reCAPTCHA v3 is invisible to real users — it silently scores the “human likelihood” of every form submission. Bots score close to 0.0 and get blocked automatically. Real users score close to 0.9 and pass through without seeing a CAPTCHA challenge at all. Install Wordfence (free) Wordfence adds a second layer of defense that reCAPTCHA can’t provide: behavioral analysis, IP blocking, brute-force protection, and lockout on invalid usernames. Together, reCAPTCHA v3 + Wordfence blocks roughly 99.5% of automated attacks on the registration form. A note for Tutor LMS operators If you’re using Tutor LMS free (like we are at PinoySEO) for course enrollment, don’t turn off “Anyone can register” in WordPress settings. Tutor LMS depends on it — turning it off will break student signups. Instead, keep registration ON and let reCAPTCHA + Wordfence do the filtering. That’s what our team did and it works. Also — if you use WPForms Lite on a custom registration page, don’t forget WPForms has its OWN reCAPTCHA settings under WPForms → Settings → CAPTCHA. Configure them with the same keys you used in Advanced Google reCAPTCHA. This bit our team later in a separate incident we’ll write up soon. Step 4: Back up your database Non-negotiable. Before mass-deleting anything, install UpdraftPlus (free) and take a full backup — database + files — to both local download and cloud (Google Drive, Dropbox, or S3). If something goes wrong during the cleanup, you need a rollback plan. Our team has never had a WordPress cleanup go sideways, but we’ve heard enough horror stories from other Filipino WP admins to know that “just this once we’ll skip the backup” is how people lose everything. Step 5: Bulk-delete by email domain pattern (safely) We looked for an existing WordPress plugin that could bulk-delete users by email domain pattern with role-based safety guards, and honestly, none of them fit our needs. The ones we found either couldn’t handle wildcards (*.elyquin.org), didn’t batch properly (would time out on 6,000 deletions), or didn’t have safeguards to prevent accidentally deleting admins. So we built one. It’s a single-file WordPress plugin our team called PinoySEO Spam User Cleanup. Here’s what it does: Editable list of spam email-domain patterns (23 defaults pre-loaded from our own attack surface) Wildcard support — *.rixyle.com matches tapi.rixyle.com, tida.rixyle.com, etc. Dry-run Preview button — shows the count and first 10 matched users before you delete anything Batched deletion — 50 users per AJAX call to avoid server timeouts on shared hosting Live terminal-style progress log (green text on black background — very satisfying) Auto-retry on batch failure Hardcoded safety: administrators, editors, authors, shop managers, and Tutor LMS instructors are NEVER deleted regardless of email address Two-click confirmation required before deletion starts Deletes the user account plus all their spam content in one operation The plugin is not on the WordPress.org repository yet — the PinoySEO team is considering whether to submit it or leave it as a one-off tool for admins who need it. If you want a copy, drop a comment on this post and we’ll share it. Step 6: The actual cleanup run On the night of August 28, at 2:57 AM (yes, our team does its best troubleshooting late), we clicked the Delete button and watched the terminal log scroll for about 25 minutes. Here’s what happened: Preview showed: “Would delete 6,384 users matching your spam-domain list. Elevated roles skipped: 0.” First 10 sample users displayed for verification — all clearly bots on 1secmail.com, anonmails.de, mailmenot.io, various .elyquin.org subdomains 128 batches of 50 users each ran cleanly, one after another Every batch logged the same pattern: … batch ok: -50 users · X remaining · running total: Y Zero errors across all 6,384 deletions Final green line at 3:26 AM: “✓ DONE. Deleted 6,384 spam users. 0 errors.” The green line every WordPress admin wants to see: “✓ DONE. Deleted 6,384 spam users. 0 errors.” The math worked out to roughly one batch every 12 seconds — bottlenecked entirely by our server’s slow TTFB, not by the plugin. On a faster host, this would have finished in under 10 minutes. Step 7: Kill the indexed spam URLs in Google Deleting the users deletes the source, but the URLs stay in Google’s index until it re-crawls them. Two things to do: 1. Turn OFF author archives in Yoast SEO Yoast SEO → Settings → Content Types → Author archives → toggle Off. This tells Google to noindex all /author/* URLs going forward. Also toggle off Date archives while you’re there — they’re rarely useful for SEO. 2. Submit URL removals in Google Search Console GSC → Removals → New Request → “Temporarily remove URL” → paste https://yourdomain.com/profile/ and check “Remove all URLs with this prefix.” Repeat for /author/. This gives you an immediate 6-month suppression while Google re-crawls and recognizes the 404s. Within 24 hours, all our /profile/* spam URLs stopped appearing in Google search results. Within 2 weeks, most had dropped out of the index entirely. The final numbers MetricBeforeAfterTotal WordPress users13,9227,538Spam accounts5,931 (42%)0Real Tutor LMS students~7,988~7,988Newsletter subscribers3939Spam /profile/* URLs indexed5,931+0 (returning 404)Bot registration pathWide openreCAPTCHA v3 + WordfenceReal students affectedN/A0Errors during 6,384 deletionsN/A0 Lessons for Filipino WordPress admins Assume you have this problem until you check. 42% of our users were bots and the PinoySEO team had no idea. If you’ve never audited your WordPress user database, do it this week. Open registration + no CAPTCHA + WordPress author archives = free SEO for spammers. Bots don’t need to “hack” anything. They just fill out your open form, add spammy content to their bio, and WordPress auto-publishes a public author page that Google indexes. Zero exploit required. Turn OFF author archives if you don’t use them. Most Filipino sites don’t have multiple authors — the archive pages just leak attack surface. Yoast can noindex them in one click. Layer your defenses. No single tool catches everything. reCAPTCHA v3 catches known bot patterns. Wordfence catches behavioral anomalies and brute force. Together they block ~99.5%. Audit quarterly. Even with defenses in place, new bot patterns emerge. Set a calendar reminder every 3 months to re-run the user export + spam-domain check. Back up before every mass operation. UpdraftPlus is free. There is no acceptable reason to skip this step. Want help with your own cleanup? If you run a Filipino WordPress site and want a second pair of eyes on your user database, drop a comment below or message the PinoySEO team on the pinoyseo.ph homepage. We’re happy to share our spam-domain list, the cleanup plugin, or walk you through the 7-step playbook on your own site. And if you want to master the SEO fundamentals that make spam like this feel obvious the moment it appears in your Search Console data — from indexing hygiene to author archive strategy to defensive robots.txt — that’s exactly what the PinoySEO team teaches in the Pinoy SEO Bootcamp. Batch 41 is open now. Check the homepage for the current schedule. Have you run site:yourdomain.com yet? What did you find? Tell us in the comments. [...] Read more...
August 27, 2026One of the coolest things that happens during our SEO + GEO Bootcamps is when a student uses the training to launch a real business — not just polish an existing one. That’s exactly what Jenelyn “Jen” Tejada-Martinez did with MJM Digital Agency, her Davao City-based web design and SEO agency for service-based businesses. Jen just left a public review on our Facebook page after finishing the bootcamp, and it’s exactly the kind of thing that makes running this training worth it: “Attending the SEO + GEO Bootcamp with Coach Rene Leandro Padilla was a great learning experience. The bootcamp helped me to better understand how SEO and GEO can work together to improve online visibility, build authority, and help businesses get discovered across both traditional and AI-driven search. Salamat kaayo, Coach 🙏. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to know and stay updated with the evolving world of search plus the advantage of AI.” — Jenelyn “Jen” Tejada-Martinez, CEO of MJM Digital Agency What Jen built during the bootcamp The interesting part: Jen didn’t just take notes and hope to apply them later. She used the 4-week bootcamp window to actually launch her agency website live — mjmdigitalagency.com — while implementing SEO + GEO best practices from day one. Her positioning is sharp and clear: Tagline: “Beautiful website. Real result.” Focus: Service-based businesses that need strategic website design + SEO Location: Davao City, Philippines · serving clients across the country and internationally Services: Website design, sales funnels, lead generation, booking systems, e-commerce, ongoing maintenance Industries served: Real estate agents, dental clinics, spas & salons, car rentals, resorts & hotels, and more Experience: 5+ years in digital marketing before the bootcamp — Jen isn’t a beginner. She’s a working pro who came in to level up on GEO / AI SEO. Her portfolio already shows real launched projects for a car rental company, an e-commerce store, a trader, and a moving company — with public client testimonials on her site attesting to her professionalism, communication, and design quality. Why “SEO + GEO together” is the right frame Jen picked up on the single most important shift in search right now, and she called it out perfectly in her review: SEO and GEO working together. In 2026, you don’t get to choose between one or the other: Traditional SEO is still how you rank in Google’s blue-link results, get into local packs, and dominate search-driven traffic. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is how you get cited inside ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, and Copilot answers. The same content and technical foundation feeds both. That’s why the 4-Week Online SEO + GEO Bootcamp teaches them as one integrated system, not two separate courses — and why graduates like Jen leave prepared for the entire search + AI answer stack. Why Jen’s story matters for Filipino web designers There are thousands of Filipino web designers, developers, and freelance VAs offering website services. Most compete on price. A few compete on design polish. Almost none can honestly say “your website will also rank on Google AND get cited by ChatGPT.” That’s the wedge Jen just carved out. She now offers something 95% of Philippine web designers can’t credibly promise. It’s the exact repositioning that turns a “just another web designer” into a strategic partner clients pay a premium for. Three lessons from Jen’s approach 1. Use the bootcamp to ship, not just study Most students go through a training and think “I’ll apply this later on a project.” Jen went in with a real project — her agency launch — and used every module as immediate execution. That’s why she came out with a live, ranking, converting website instead of just notes. 2. Existing pros level up the fastest Jen already had 5+ years in digital marketing. She wasn’t starting from zero — she was closing a specific skill gap (GEO / AI SEO) on top of a solid foundation. That’s why her ROI on the bootcamp is going to be much higher than a beginner’s. If you already work in digital marketing but haven’t updated your skills for AI search, the bootcamp compresses months of self-study into 4 focused weeks. 3. Position around what search is becoming, not what it was Jen’s pitch to clients isn’t “I’ll design a website.” It’s “I’ll design a website that gets discovered on Google AND cited by AI assistants.” That’s a completely different value proposition — and it’s the direction every serious web professional needs to move in 2026. Check out Jen’s work If you’re a service-based business owner (real estate agent, dental clinic, spa, salon, car rental, resort, hotel, or similar) looking for a Filipino web designer who understands both design AND modern SEO + GEO, Jen is the real deal. Website: mjmdigitalagency.com Book a free strategy call: mjmdigitalagency.com/contact Based in: Davao City · Serves clients Philippines-wide and internationally Services: Website design · Sales funnels · Lead generation · Booking systems · E-commerce · Website maintenance · SEO + GEO optimization Thank you, Jen Salamat kaayo sa review, Jen. Ipadayon gyud ang MJM Digital Agency — Davao (and honestly the whole Mindanao web design market) needs more agencies that combine strong design with proper SEO + GEO fundamentals. Watching graduates take the training and immediately build real businesses with it is the actual reason I keep running the bootcamp. Want to be the next Jen? The next 4-Week Online SEO + GEO Bootcamp cohort details are always live on the PinoySEO homepage. Whether you’re: A working web designer looking to expand into SEO + GEO services An in-house marketer whose company needs someone who understands AI search A freelancer wanting a specialization your competitors don’t have A business owner ready to run your own SEO + GEO in-house …the 4-week cohort is where the current best practices get taught, with live coaching, real exercises, and a community that keeps sharing after graduation. Have your own PinoySEO Bootcamp win to share? Message us at pinoyseo2022@gmail.com. We love featuring real Filipino career + business wins — with your permission, of course. [...] Read more...

Read or watch Pinoy SEO student success stories:

Close Welcome Bar