--- title: "How a Seobility Report Led to a Ten-Year Partnership — isla Studio" url: "https://isla-stud.io/projekte/ck-voice-lessons-zehn-jahre-zusammenarbeit/" date: 2026-09-05 --- # How a Seobility Report Led to a Ten-Year Partnership When Carl Keaton first called me about ten years ago, he knew me only from my website at the time. He had a Seobility report for ckvoicelessons.de and wanted to know which of the many suggestions would truly help improve his existing WordPress and WooCommerce site. He hadn’t even hired me at that point, yet we were already in the middle of a detailed consultation. Shortly afterward, he sent me the report—and gave me the points we’d discussed to implement right away. What Was Really Important on the Long To-Do List --------------------------------------------------- An on-page report can very effectively highlight where a website stands out in terms of technical aspects or content. However, it knows nothing about the business behind it. It can’t decide which change should be addressed first, how multiple issues are interconnected, or whether a recommendation makes sense for this specific website at all. So I didn’t just work through the list from top to bottom. We sorted out what was technically holding the website back, where content and page structure were getting in each other’s way, and which changes were actually relevant for visibility. By the end of this initial optimization phase, the areas of technology, content, and structure—as measured by Seobility—all received an „A“ rating. The Google PageSpeed test at the time also achieved an “A” rating; depending on the keyword, important search terms ranked in the top 3 or top 5. After that, new questions kept coming up. Some could be resolved with a targeted technical change, while others required a content-related or business decision. Carl began bringing me in earlier and earlier—not just when something was broken, but even when he wanted to know whether an idea would work for his company at all. So, little by little, individual optimization projects turned into a collaboration that is now an integral part of his business. At some point, the website no longer fit the business ----------------------------------------------------- Carl had built the first CK website himself: using a rather cumbersome theme and many plugins, each designed to perform a specific task. He’d come a long way with it. Over the years, however, the Voice Academy continued to grow, while the website became increasingly difficult to modify. We therefore completely reimagined ckvoicelessons.de. I developed the website concept together with Carl, brought in one of my design partners for the visual design, and implemented the entire technical system. We also set up a dedicated server, configured to match the installed application. I continue to maintain the website and server to this day. WooCommerce has been a central part of the system since the beginning of our collaboration. Today, users can book various lesson models, trial sessions, and gift certificates through the website; the Academy operates both in-person and online. Multilingual support, forms, content, booking channels, and the integrated marketing tools must be able to evolve without a change in one area inadvertently causing issues elsewhere. Just how deep this work sometimes goes became apparent during a later maintenance session: the same background process kept ending up in a WooCommerce queue over and over again. I was able to trace the cause back to WooCommerce itself, reproduce the error, and report it as a [public WooCommerce issue](https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/63786). I also submitted a fix along with regression tests. A WooCommerce maintainer confirmed the diagnosis; the bug was subsequently fixed with [pull request #65450 in WooCommerce Core](https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/pull/65450). For CK Voice Lessons, this wasn’t a new feature that could be admired on the website. It simply meant that the system was working properly again behind the scenes. These are exactly the kinds of tasks that are part of maintaining a website that isn’t just meant to be online, but is intended to reliably support a business for years to come. The next project doesn’t start in the WordPress backend -------------------------------------------------------- These days, the website, server, WooCommerce, multilingual support, ad campaigns, search data, and content are all closely intertwined. For example, if we improve an ad’s click-through destination, a prettier landing page isn’t enough. The page must match the ad, load quickly, be easily analyzable, and forward the inquiry in a way that Carl’s team can work with. That’s why we’re currently focused on the question of how to manage prospects and customers in a clear and privacy-conscious manner. Inquiries from the website forms and from Perspective Funnels are currently being routed to Pipedrive; HubSpot is also integrated. Carl has tried out various solutions for this. The result is a chain of tools that fulfills individual tasks but, as a whole, feels piecemeal. Developing our own CRM system tailored to the actual workflow is therefore the next major project. Before we can design an interface for it, we need to clarify which data arrives where, what Carl’s team actually needs on a day-to-day basis, and which pieces of information reliably belong together. At the same time, we’re optimizing his ad campaigns and their click-through targets, working on the click-through rate in Google Search, and keeping an eye on visibility in AI-generated responses. For Carl, the value of this collaboration lies above all in the fact that he doesn’t have to figure out the connections on his own. I explain to him in clear terms what I think makes sense, what I would advise against, and why. We make decisions with his business in mind; he doesn’t have to handle the technical implementation himself afterward. Carl describes it this way: > “I’ve worked with many service providers—including highly specialized experts in SEO and SEA—but no one explains to me as clearly as you do what works and what doesn’t, and above all, why something is good or bad. You’re always right on top of the latest trends, no matter when I’ve consulted you on any topic. That’s extremely rare, and I’m very grateful that our paths crossed.” > > Carl Keaton There’s now another Carl working on the project -------------------------------------------- In addition to Carl Keaton, there’s now an AI copywriter on the CK project who’s also named Carl. This is less confusing in everyday life than it sounds at first: Carl Keaton runs the Voice Academy and is my client and sparring partner. The second Carl works exclusively within the project on content tasks. I set him up as a project-specific AI agent based on my Bianka Pattern. He has a clear employment contract, is familiar with the project resources approved for CK Voice Lessons, and has his own memory as well as fixed approval limits. Under my guidance, he identifies strategically relevant topics for the blog, conducts research, and develops drafts. He is not permitted to publish anything. Carl thus has a clearly defined role: editorial preparation. Topic selection, strategy, technical review, and publication remain the responsibility of Carl Keaton and me. In other areas as well, project-based agents help me keep track of signals from ad campaigns, Search Console, AI Visibility, technology, and security. I describe the basic idea behind this in more detail in my [Agents Brain Workshop Series](https://isla-stud.io/ki-b2b/openclaw-abgeschafft-was-vom-ki-team-blieb/). Since our first phone call, the tools have changed several times. Nevertheless, our collaboration still follows the same principle: Carl can come to me with a question that’s still unformed, and I help him figure out what decision needs to be made based on it. Sometimes that results in code, sometimes in a better campaign page, and sometimes in a conscious decision against adopting yet another tool. [Preparing technical decisions together with management and teams.](https://isla-stud.io/beratung/#sparring) On ckvoicelessons.de, visitors should notice one thing above all else: they’ll find lessons, coaches, and a direct path to a trial lesson. The complexity behind the scenes doesn’t have to get in their way. Nor does Carl have to shoulder it alone. [View CK Voice Lessons](https://ckvoicelessons.de/) Sources ------- - [CK Voice Lessons – Voice Academy website and offerings](https://ckvoicelessons.de/) - Seobility project reports for ckvoicelessons.de from 2017 (internal project documents) - [WooCommerce Issue #63786: Background process submitted multiple times](https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/issues/63786) - [WooCommerce pull request #65450: merged upstream fix](https://github.com/woocommerce/woocommerce/pull/65450) - [Agents Brain: What Remained of My AI Team After the Tool Switch](https://isla-stud.io/ki-b2b/openclaw-abgeschafft-was-vom-ki-team-blieb/)