Utyl Business Platforms
A freelance gig that taught me SEO is basically dark magic - but dark magic that works.
The Project
Built a client website for a prominent player in the Brazilian medical industry. Can’t disclose the specific client, but let’s just say they’re a big deal in their space. The site’s main purpose was selling online courses - educational content for medical professionals.
The SEO Challenge
The client’s existing online presence was… not great. They were buried in search results, losing potential customers to competitors with better Google-fu.
My job wasn’t just to build a pretty website - it was to build one that Google would actually show to people.
The Result
Ranked #1 on Google for their target keywords.
Not page one. Not top three. Number one.
SEO success isn’t guaranteed, but understanding the fundamentals - proper semantic HTML, fast load times, mobile responsiveness, strategic content structure - gets you most of the way there. The rest is patience and iteration.
Platform Integration
The site integrated with an online education platform for course sales. The flow had to be seamless - visitors browse courses, get interested, and purchase without friction. Any hiccup in that journey means lost sales.
What I Learned
This project hammered home that a website isn’t just about looking good. It’s about being found, loading fast, converting visitors, and actually serving business goals. All the pretty designs in the world don’t matter if nobody can find you.
The Startup That Wasn’t: Lyst
Utyl wasn’t just client work. We also tried to build our own product: Lyst.
The idea was solid: crowdsourced supermarket prices. Users scan products, report prices at their local stores, everyone benefits from price transparency. The app would optimize your shopping list by price AND location - “buy milk at Store A, bread at Store B, save $X total.”
We built an Android app with Java, Sugar ORM, the whole mid-2010s stack. The tech worked fine.
The business didn’t.
We tried partnering with supermarket owners. Turns out, they don’t want price transparency. When your competitor across the street charges less for eggs, you’d rather customers not know that. Our value proposition to consumers was a threat to the retailers we needed to partner with.
Classic startup mistake: building something users want but the market structure doesn’t support. The idea was ahead of its time - nowadays price comparison is everywhere - but we didn’t have the runway or the strategy to make it work back then.
Still think it’s a cool idea. Maybe I’ll revisit it someday.
Related
- SEO - The main challenge
- HTML - Semantic markup matters
- CSS - Visual design
- JavaScript - Interactivity