About the Founder
Muhammad Shakeel — SEO Expert & Founder of Rank Rays
A business graduate from Lahore, Pakistan, working in SEO since 2013. HubSpot certified, Semrush certified, and the strategist behind 300+ Upwork jobs and $200k+ in client earnings.
The short version
Muhammad Shakeel is a business graduate from Lahore, Pakistan, who has worked in search engine optimization since 2013. He is the founder of Rank Rays and a certified SEO expert — HubSpot certified and Semrush certified, with more coursework behind him and a decade of client work in front of it.
His work covers both halves of search: the on-page and technical fixes that hold websites back — 404 issues, broken 301 redirects, weak headings, heavy images — and the off-page outreach that earns authority: guest posts, resource links, and niche edits pitched to real editors, never bought from lists.
He also works the modern layer of search — AEO and GEO, the tactics that get brands cited inside AI-generated answers. The track record: 300+ Upwork jobs, $200k+ earned there, and 500+ clients served overall, many of them repeat customers who keep coming back for the next project.
The journey: from oDesk to modern SEO
Thirteen years in this industry teaches you what textbooks cannot: which tactics survive every algorithm update, and which ones quietly die.
- 2013
Starting on oDesk
Muhammad began client SEO work in the oDesk era, when link building meant blog comments, forum comments, profile links, and Web 2.0 properties. He did all of it at volume for clients worldwide — learning, placement by placement, what actually moves rankings and what only creates noise.
- The shift
Dropping what stopped working
Comment links and mass profiles lost their power. Instead of defending old tactics, he retired them. The strategy moved to manual outreach: real websites, real editors, real relationships — slower, harder, and the only approach that kept working.
- The outreach era
Guest posts, resources, niche edits
Guest posting, resource-page backlinks, and niche edits became the core of the work. Every link earned through a pitch and an editor's yes — never bought off a list, never placed on a farm.
- Today
Authority links plus AI search
High-authority backlinks built through systematic outreach, layered with the modern discipline: AEO and GEO, so clients stay visible in AI answers as well as the classic results.
Certified, not just experienced
Years in the field matter. Formal training keeps those years honest.
HubSpot Certified
HubSpot's SEO certification: how search, content, and conversion fit together.
Semrush Certified
Certified in the Semrush toolkit: keyword research, audits, tracking, and backlink analysis.
Certified SEO Expert
Formal SEO certification on top of a decade of client work — confirming what 300+ Upwork jobs taught in practice.
Business Graduate
A business degree means every recommendation gets weighed against revenue — rankings are the means, not the end.
On-page SEO: the errors he fixes
Before a single backlink is built, the site itself has to deserve to rank. These are the on-page problems Muhammad hunts down on every audit.
404 error cleanup
Dead pages found, mapped, and restored or redirected — no dead ends for visitors or crawlers.
301 redirect repair
Chains, loops, and wrong-target 301s untangled — link equity flows where it should.
Page-by-page optimization
Titles, metas, URLs, and content tuned so each page targets one keyword cluster and answers its intent.
Heading structure
One H1 per page and a logical H2/H3 hierarchy that readers and search engines can follow.
Image optimization
Compression for speed, descriptive file names, and real alt attributes.
Overall user experience
Layout, readability, and navigation reviewed as a visitor sees them.
Google Search Console: the issues he resolves
Search Console tells you something is wrong. It rarely tells you what. These are the coverage problems he diagnoses and fixes.
Indexing issues
Pages Google refuses to index get a proper diagnosis — the cause is usually technical and fixable.
Crawl budget waste
Faceted URLs and parameter spam that burn crawl budget get blocked or consolidated.
Crawled — currently not indexed
Google visited but would not index — a quality signal problem, fixed through content depth and internal linking.
Discovered — currently not indexed
Google knows the URL exists but never crawled it — a priority problem fixed through sitemaps and internal linking.
Off-page SEO: outreach services he personally runs
Backlinks have been his specialty since 2013 — and every service below is manual outreach, pitched by a person to a person.
Link building outreach
Manual prospecting and pitching to real, relevant websites.
Guest post outreach
Pitches to editors, written articles, and published posts with contextual backlinks.
Niche edit outreach
Placing your link inside existing, already-ranking articles.
Resource page outreach
Getting your best content listed on curated resource pages.
YouTube outreach
Creator partnerships: descriptions, pinned comments, and mentions that pass referral traffic.
TikTok outreach
Creator collaborations: bios, captions, and video mentions.
Influencer outreach
Finding voices your audience trusts, and building the relationship first.
Sponsorship outreach
Newsletters, podcasts, and events — sponsorships negotiated for links and exposure.
Email outreach
Researched prospects, personalized pitches, and follow-up sequences — sent from your brand email, never a generic Gmail or Yahoo address.
The outreach playbook
Outreach fails when it is random. His process has three steps, in this order, every time.
- 01
Study the competitors
Before a single email goes out, competitor backlink footprints get mapped: who links to them, which pages earn those links, and where the exposure comes from.
- 02
Find the gap
The gap between a competitor's link profile and yours is the opportunity list. If a rival gets real exposure from sources you are missing, those sources become the outreach targets.
- 03
Outreach from a brand email
Pitches go out from your domain, never a free mailbox. Editors open emails from real brands; generic Gmail and Yahoo addresses get ignored — the data settled that question years ago.
The person behind the work
Muhammad gets up early every morning, starts the day with yoga, then commits fully to the work. Discipline here is a schedule, not a slogan — clients see it in response times, reporting, and follow-through on every promise made.
He is a family man with an office in Lahore, where a six-person team works under his direction: researchers, link builders, on-page and off-page specialists, and outreach staff. It is a real culture — corporate tours, team dinners, and people who have grown with the agency for years.
A founder who still does the strategy himself, backed by a team that executes it daily — that is why so many clients become repeat clients.
Early riser
Up early, yoga first, then full commitment to the workday.
Family man
Grounded at home, steady at work — the two reinforce each other.
Lahore office
A real office in Lahore, Pakistan, not a virtual PO box.
Team of six
Researchers, link builders, and outreach specialists under his direction.
