Paddy Moogan Blog

SEO Interview – Illiya Vjestica

10th October 2011 · Paddy · 1 Comment »

Next up in this series of SEO interviews is Illiya Vjestica.  I’m cheating a little here at Illiya probably wouldn’t describe himself as an SEO, which is why I asked him to take part in these interviews – its always great to get different perspectives on the industry.

Illiya Vjestica is MD at Smartdog Digital an Online Marketing Consultancy company based in Yorkshire, who specialise in Web Analytics & Paid Search Marketing. At 25 Illiya setup Smartdog digital, having previously worked for various digital agencies and web design companies in the Yorkshire region. With over 5 years experience in the online marketing industry, Illiya has worked with clients across all sectors from Retail to Engineering.

Tell us a bit about your background, how did you get into online marketing and social?

I have always been messing about with computers and technology since I was about 7 years old, this is the time I had my first Apple Acorn PC. I also have very fond memories of High School being the ‘go to’ Geek if anyone had a computer question or tech problem that they needed solving. It was my one special talent.

During my teen years, I dabbled in a bit of freelance website design work. It didn’t last long however as I didn’t have the patience for coding which was a real shame because there was one point in my life when I actually enjoyed it. As the age old saying goes ‘you can’t be good at everything’ and compared to my other techie friends I was a much more gifted designer, a talent that I still employ to today for my clients, personal work and when doing presentation design.

I got my first break at a Digital Agency in Leeds a few months after I graduated from Uni, funnily enough mere weeks before I had just been offered a rather good job in Bath to become a ‘Studio Manager’ at a Games Development Studio. I didn’t take the job in the end and I am glad I ended up in the online marketing industry instead! It is what I was born to do.

If you could go back in time to the start of your online career and tell yourself something you know now, what would it be?

Don’t believe everything you are told or read in a blog post, it isn’t always A: the truth or B: It might not work for your situation. When I started as an Account Executive, I would probably get through reading about 10-15 blog posts a day. Naively, I used to believe everything that was written as law, especially as I was an enthusiastic, keen, sponge for knowledge. I would tell myself to not to get carried away and test things more before trying out various recommended techniques that I had previously read about.

Lots of SEOs and online marketers 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?

Now that is one of the great questions to my life! OK, if I’m being honest with everyone there is no one way to combat this problem, it comes with the territory of the job. My best piece of advice is to try and read one blog post a day about something you don’t know and save the major learning for the weekends.

Twitter can be a great way to keep in contact with everyone in the industry but when I was using it regularly I found myself reading far too many blog posts. The key to juggling this is to put your priorities in order. Focus on your most important tasks first and when they are completed, then you can reward yourself with a bit of Twitter time or catch up with that blog post tutorial you were wanting to learn.

For people who are just getting into SEO and Online Marketing, the best way to learn is to actually throw yourself into the deep end on a client project and learn as you go along. If you are not confident that you can pick it up so quickly, then I suggest shadowing a Senior member of your team and absorbing as much as you can from them.

My first day at a Digital agency consisted with ‘Here’s your phone, account management, time tracking & scheduling software….off you go” it is a steep learning curve but if your passionate about marketing and technology, you will enjoy learning in your spare time, I know I do!

When someone asks you what you do for a job, what do you say?

This is fairly easy to explain to my friends in the industry, however for my ‘non-tech’ friends and family this is what I say. My job is basically like being a Forensic Scientist, instead of analysing crime scenes, I anaylse website data instead. If you imagine the website data as the heart of the website, I look at said data and help clients to measure their marketing campaigns more effectively, advising them what areas they should improve on their website and what traffic sources are generating the best return on investment.

I also help businesses make better business decisions because of that data by making the information easier for them to understand and more relevant to their marketing objectives.

A non(ish) SEO question, what tips do you have for working better with clients?

Here are my quick-fire tips for working better with clients:

• Manage expectations clearly at the ouset of the job.
• Always document your communication and outcomes with your clients.
• Try to educate your clients as much as you can.
• Look after your clients and they will look after you.
• Don’t always use e-mail for communicating, sometimes it is better to call.
• Sometimes you just have to say ‘No’. Don’t agree to do everything.

Finally, how do you see online marketing and social changing over the next 5 years?

Wow, what a great question! I could write a whole article on this myself, but for the sake of this blog post I’ll keep it short.

A number of businesses in the UK currently are still learning and understanding what online marketing is and how it can benefit their companies. Technology has moved on so quickly over the last five years, a lot of businesses are struggling to keep pace. Over the next five years I see this knowledge gap being reduced and more and more companies will be willing to invest their budgets into the Internet. This I believe, will bring with it a greater need for measurement and reporting.

In terms of social, I see it growing even bigger than it currently is. The last time I checked Facebook had 30 million active members in the UK alone and as more businesses and individuals discover the benefits of marketing their business on such communication channels it can only be set to rise.

I wouldn’t be surprised if e-mail and social begin to merge as Google and other companies push for a more integrated online experience, marketing on social media may well overtake other traditional online marketing methods such as paid search as the primary method for generating new customers and traffic.

With such emphasis on social, content is going to be a powerful asset for any business or individual that can ulitise it properly over the next few years. Visual media and video will also increase even further as services like Youtube grow as a viable alternative to researching products and services instead of search engines.

We will also have to be aware of growing online markets such as Russia and China, who’s own social networks and search engines are growing at a rapid rate. This could very much change the way businesses and marketers approach SEO and how they will get their content out to places beyond the UK & US.

Paddy Moogan
Paddy is an SEO Consultant working for Distilled in the London office.

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