SEO Interview – Paul Rogers
This post is part of a series of posts which were partly inspired by the Young SEO of 2011 vote run by Dan Taylor on Search Bloggers. I’d been thinking of doing some interview style posts for a while and this gave me the idea for an angle.
Basically I’m looking to get some insights from young SEOs who are doing SEO day to day in their roles. So here is the first interview which is with Paul Rogers of GPMD.
Tell us a bit about your background, how did you get into SEO?
When I left education, I worked in an in-house marketing/PR role which required me to work closely with a web agency called GPMD (the agency that I currently work for), who taught me the basics principles of SEO, which I loved! Following a relocation to Warwickshire, I left this position (after just 7 months) and went to work in a copywriting role for a PR agency, who ignored my frequent suggestions of providing online PR and SEO services to our clients – so I began searching for an in-house SEO role where I could develop my understanding of the industry.
After around 8 months working for the PR agency, I was offered an E-Marketing Executive role in a small but ambitious outdoor toys and sports equipment retailer based in Oxfordshire. Having been offered two roles on the same day, I chose to take this job because they offered me freedom to do what I wanted (SEO-related) with their 10-15 ecommerce websites.
In January 2011, the agency that I worked alongside in my first job (GPMD) contacted me and asked me if I wanted to come in for an interview, as they were recruiting for a new Online Marketing Specialist – I then accepted their job offer the next day. I am now working for GPMD as a Senior Online Marketing Strategist, having been promoted in August 2011.
If you could go back in time to the start of your SEO career and tell yourself something you know now, what would it be?
Do fewer projects/campaigns, but spend more time reaching out in the right way to the right people. Also, think more long-term with strategies and only work with people that are fully behind what you’re doing.
Lots of SEOs have the problem of balancing client work and learning new skills and keeping up with blog posts, do you have any tips of making sure you find the right balance?
I have learnt a huge amount about SEO over the last 12 months, mostly because I’ve spent more time following blogs, paid closer attention to Twitter and attended conferences and meetup events more frequently. I would always recommend getting your colleagues on-side early on – justify spending that 15-30 minutes every day following what people are saying, and explain how it will ultimately influence the ROI that you provide to clients.
In addition to this, I would also advise any SEO to dedicate a similar amount of time to learning and developing their skill-set in their own time – this could be learning to code, conducting SEO-related experiments, blogging or even just talking to people.
When someone asks you what you do for a job, what do you say?
Once we’ve got the whole “what’s SEO?” thing out the way, I will generally say something like “I make websites more visible within search engines and generate more traffic and sales” – although I do often try to talk about it in more detail, but people tend to get bored pretty early on.
What advice would you give to an SEO who is just getting into the industry?
Whether in your own time, lunchtimes or at work – speak to people and ask lots of questions (on Twitter, at events/meetups in the SEOmoz community etc), identify and follow the right blogs, make your own blog and dont get too worked up if you don’t see results straight away (something I was definitely guilty of).
A non(ish) SEO question, what tips do you have for working better with clients?
I have taught all of my clients the basic principles of SEO, and have tried to get as many people as possible involved in link-building and content-writing – so they can see what I’m doing. Not only does this help to keep them on-side, but their experience and existing relationships are great for generating links and linkworthy content.
I also find that if I’m honest with my clients, ask their opinions on things and make sure they know what I’m doing, they’re more open to investing additional time and money into new projects and strategies.
Finally, how do you see SEO changing over the next few years? If at all.
I would like to think that some of the less natural techniques that people apply will become less effective – as I frequently find myself battling for number one spots with websites that don’t have a single decent, related link. I would also like to see Google using other signals to determine brands and putting less emphasis on exact-match keyword domains.
Thanks a lot to Paul for taking the time to answer these questions, you can follow him on Twitter here.
Paddy Moogan
Paddy is an SEO Consultant working for Distilled in the London office.
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September 28th, 2011 at 9:01 am
Paul – I hope you get your wish with the less natural techniques having less impact. That would be wonderful! I do think Panda went a long way to getting rid of some of the crap but there’s a long way to go yet!!
And yes – exact match domains are the bane of my life too!!
September 28th, 2011 at 9:15 am
Good Answers Paul… one thing was very important in your answers and I am glad you said that following the right blogs, right people is very important… there are many misconceptions and misunderstandings in the sphere and if you started to follow the wrong people and wrong communities then you will possibly having the dirty picture of SEO.
Thank you Paddy Moogan for sharing the interview…
September 28th, 2011 at 9:23 am
Excellent interview. Being relatively new to SEO myself (despite being 35!), there’s some good advice to ‘newbies’ there.