The past few months have been rough as the infectious COVID-19 continues to plague the world. Countries affected are implementing lockdowns to prevent further spread of the virus and the economical effects are massive. Businesses are in crisis mode; some are able to continue to operate but with limitations while some have to completely halt operations.

A few weeks ago, I published an article on How the Coronavirus is affecting search and the negative effects of COVID-19 are evident for some industries. Due to companies losing profits, the service industry is massively affected and digital marketing companies are no exception

Fortunately, our team here at SEO Hacker was able to adjust accordingly to this crisis but I was curious to know how my fellow digital marketers are doing during these times so I asked them a few questions to further know how digital marketing companies are doing.

Work Setup

One of the advantages of working in the digital industry is that most of the resources that you need to operate are accessible through the internet. That is why most companies, as well as our team, have transitioned to working remotely.

David Langton’s team at Langton Creative Group Ltd makes use of various tools to make it easier for their team.

“We are set-up remotely with access to our server and catalog of past and present work. So much is available via cloud-services that working remotely is not as challenging as it once was. We meet weekly via Zoom to touch base and coordinate work schedules.”

Additionally, they also use some of the free time they get from working remotely to produce more materials. Langton said, “Currently, we are using this time to create new case studies, update our website and address some long-term marketing goals.” 

But working remotely is a huge adjustment for some companies that are used to having their team together in one office. Taylor Cimara, Principal and Strategic Director of Digital Third Coast said that communication takes the most adjustment needed.

“Our entire team is working remotely and has been since March 13th. While we let employees have flexibility in working from home, we’ve never had to have the entire team work remotely for an extended period of time. Communication is the biggest change – many more intentional touchpoints with the team, and more mindfulness with management and what everyone is going through individually at home.”

However, for some companies, working from home isn’t really new. Some digital marketing companies run their operations remotely even before the quarantine. For Juan Pablo Diaz, Founder of Krows Digital, business is just as usual.

“The quarantine didn’t have much impact on our day-to-day work as we have been working remotely since the early days of the company. We usually meet once or twice a week in a shared open space in Tokyo but now we prefer to do our meetings through Discord.”

Juan also sees something positive in the situation. Having their meetings online actually makes their meetings more productive. Juan said “In a way, it is actually a good thing for us as we tend to always talk about many things that are not relevant. Doing online meetings forces us to get straight to the point and to prepare our report presentations”.

Speaking of positivity, Graeme Barlow’s team over at Iversoft found a way to keep things fun and transition their office culture to their now fully remote workforce.

“We are fortunate to have a pretty fun culture in our office and it’s been absolutely amazing to see what people have done to bring that virtual. From pet photos to gaming hangouts to hosting video social hours, it’s been fantastic to see how we’ve translated the atmosphere from an open office to a remote equivalent.”

How Their Clients are Affected

The impact of the COVID-19 varies from one industry to another. Some may experience gains, but most industries are expected to suffer from the crisis.

According to Nate Nead, CEO of SEO.co, their clients that are in the retail industry were hit the most. Nate said,“Client budgets have definitely shrunk quickly, regardless of size. Clients hit the hardest have been local clients in retail, while larger, national clients have been more engaged, but are proceeding cautiously.”

The tourism industry is one of the most affected as well with people being forced to stay at home. Amy Draheim of ABD Creative LLC discussed that their clients are suffering from the crisis.

“Our hotel clients are experiencing extremely low occupancy. They’ve redeployed their housekeeping staff to high touch areas, and focus on deep cleaning instead of daily tidying for travelers who are still traveling (few and far between). Our restaurants are only offering delivery/take out services, and have laid off most of their employees as a result. Business is slow across the board.” 

Similar for Brogan Renshaw of Firewire Digital, clients are being affected across the board but their team was quick to react and give solutions to their clients.

“Approximately 30% of our clients’ businesses have been significantly impacted by COVID-19. A further 20% have been partially impacted by a drop in revenue. 

As the crisis was in its early stages we were proactive and offered all our clients the opportunities to pause and reduce contracts for a period of time. We wanted to be on the front foot and reduce any stress or anxiety for our clients. I would rather see clients come out the other side of all this and still be operating and for them to know we helped them get through it.” 

However, for Erika Thomas’ clients at Coveted Portfolio, there are clients that are looking to take advantage of the situation and are shifting their focus on transitioning to e-commerce.

“Some are experiencing a delay in launching their brands and physical locations in this current market, some are still “guns blazing” to take advantage of this very unique time for e-commerce. It really depends on who they are and what they can offer at this moment”.

Did They Lose Clients?

During these times, some companies are forced to cut their marketing budgets to allot the money for payroll and other operational expenses. This means digital marketing companies are in danger of losing contracts.

Aliza Sherman, CEO of Ellementa and Spark the Creative, has lost clients but made quick adjustments with their pricing to retain some clients.

“We’ve lost most of our clients. To maintain the ones we still have, we’ve reduced our fees drastically, looking at the long term relationship. We’d rather make sure we all stay in business than trying to gouge clients in the short term. If we can all support one another and weather this crisis, we’ll be stronger and thrive in the long run.”

I could say this is a good strategy because some companies are still looking to continue their digital efforts amidst the crisis. Those who can’t afford the same budget they had before may look for alternatives. Bernie Clark of Majux Marketing has the same thing in mind.

“We have had a few clients who have been forced to put projects or initiatives on a temporary hold.  We are lucky enough to have not lost any accounts so far, but we have been getting calls from businesses who had to leave their previous agency because of an over-reliance or singular offering of paid media. Nobody wants to dump tens of thousands of dollars into Google Ads or TV right now, so if that was your agency’s sole offering or the large piece of your previous agency’s strategy, you’re going to be looking for a new agency that focuses on a more balanced strategy.”

Some companies have handled the situation well. They didn’t lose any clients but contracts are put on hold. This gives them faster recovery once the COVID-19 crisis is over. Monica Smith, CEO of Marketsmith, believes that this is a time to have empathy for their clients and be good partners.

“We have not lost any clients at this time.  We are working with our clients to be the best partner we can be.  If that means extending their terms or allowing campaign shifts and pauses we are committed to that.  We specialize in bringing companies up during challenging times – we are working on strategic plans and initiatives for each client to make that possible”. 

What is Their Plan Moving Forward?

We don’t know for sure yet when this pandemic will be over but it is important to be positive and make plans moving forward. We’re also not sure yet how the world will look after COVID-19 but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be business as usual. 

Erico Franco, Senior Manager at Agencia de Marketing Digital, managed to negotiate with their current clients but they are still looking for prospects to keep their business going.

“We are cutting costs and negotiating with our already customer to see what we can do to help them and so not losing the account. We keep trying to prospect new customers even a lot of them don’t want to talk now. We don’t know how long this crisis will take but we are trying to prepare to the worst and keeping moving forward and in a positive way.”

Olga Gonzales, CEO of Pietra Communications, believes this is a good time to expand their agency’s capabilities.

“Our agency is known for our print and digital placements, but the virus really has taught us that digital is the basket to put more eggs in. Therefore, we will be looking into more ways to expand our capabilities, and continue to focus on growing editorial relationships here in “think outside the box” ways. “

On the other hand, Khaeleelah Jones, founder and CEO of Careful Feet Digital Agency is innovating that would allow them to tap more companies.

“We are in the process of creating a tool that automates many of our services, so we can offer our services at a lower price point, for companies of all sizes and budgets. It allows us to scale and democratize access while continuing to offering higher-cost boutique services for those companies that should need it.”

Because of the COVID-19 crisis, Clement Conor, COO of Smartboost, believes that companies will realize more the importance of having an online presence once the crisis is over.

“We would like to educate the market that a digital presence is now an essential aspect of the business. Transitioning your business to a digital platform now can be useful and will likely make your operations more cost-efficient. A lot of our clients will realize first hand that their ROI online is a lot better than you see with traditional marketing.”

Key Takeaway

COVID-19 has caught the world off-guard and I’m really glad to see other digital marketing companies are able to go through this crisis. It’s amazing to see that digital marketing companies are doing what they can to help their clients and I pray that we can all recover from this crisis. It is really important that we all stay positive during these tough times.

If you own or work in a digital marketing company, let me know how you’re doing in the comments and I would love to talk about it.

The post How Digital Marketing Companies are Affected by COVID-19 appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

It’s that time of the year where people in costumes roam the streets, children can eat candy all they want, and creepy tales are told all over the world. But of course, it’s not just about ghosts and monsters. Us SEOs have our own “Halloween” moments that give us scares and nightmares.

I asked SEOs on Reddit to share their SEO horror stories and it was a ride reading all of them. While some are relatable, some are horrible, right out of an SEO’s darkest fears. Check out these stories from the folks at r/SEO.

• The Website Redesign
• Mass Noindex
• Bad Sales
• The Classic Panda Update
• Ajax Murder
• SEO Karma
• Yellow Pages
• The Lovely Visitors
• Banned from Facebook
• Forgotten Landing Pages

The Website Redesign

From Reddit user: Obio1

“SEO Horror story” is another way of saying “website redesign”. Right?

A website redesign should not be as scary as it sounds, but in the wrong hands, it can lead to an absolute disaster. The SEO and website developer should always be aligned when a website is undergoing a redesign. You would never want a beautiful website with no visitors.

Mass Noindex

From Reddit user: imdblars (Lars from Damgaard Digital)

I had a client whose web developer noindexed the site when updating and developing new stuff. First time I experienced this the rankings were like the red wedding episode of Game of Thrones.”

Noindex is your best friend if you want to keep unimportant pages from the search results but putting noindex in the whole website? That is just a horrible misuse of it.

Bad Sales

From Reddit user: thedecanus (Dean from Daysack Media)

My old boss sold local SEO to 3 different skip hire companies all within spitting distance from each other. They were all from the traveler community so as not to be messed with by any means. We got all three businesses to the top of the SERP’s but 2nd and 3rd place used to call up complaining Long story short, one company (#3) found out, threatened us, told #2 and they both drove over 200 miles to our offices with baseball bats.

Lucky, that got resolved without any violence – the two companies stopped using us and I’m pretty sure the guy at #1 never found out.

I have met a lot of SEOs who take clients that are direct competitors with each other and 100% it turns into a disaster. Just don’t do it.

The Classic Panda Update

From Reddit user: kris99 (Krzysztof from Pulno)

One of the sites I was a co-developer dozen years ago was in the top 20 domains hit by Panda/Farmer update and lost 90% of its visibility in one day. As I remember it was a loss over 100k unique users a day.

This one is a real classic. I remember when it was initially released back in 2011. Thousands of websites had the same experience as this losing a huge amount of traffic overnight. Definitely not a good memory.

Ajax Murder

From Reddit user: Ann_Yaroshenko (Ann from Jet Octopus)

AJAX allows web pages to be updated asynchronously by exchanging data with a web server. This means that it is possible to load parts of a web page without reloading the whole page. Despite Google engineers have significantly improved rendering of JavaScript for Googlebot, AJAX got its bad SEO reputation.

About the website:

Real-estate website 1M+ pages 4,5 M monthly visits

What was done?

We analyzed log files to see where the crawl budget was spent. Logs showed that Googlebot sent 38 M requests during the month. 23,5M (!) requests were wasted on ajax content.

What recommendation we gave:

1. Check content that is provided on AJAX and evaluate whether it is worth being shown in SERP. 

2. Close content that provides no value in robots.txt for Googlebot.

Key takeaway

Before closing AJAX content in robots.txt, consider carefully what content is there. You can accidentally block the part of your webpage and the content can become meaningless for bots

This one is quite technical but it’s terrifying and it’s a story you can learn from. When you have a website with a million pages or thousands of pages, you would want to have that crawl budget spent on important pages. 

SEO Karma

From Reddit user: milosmudric (Milos from SEO Brainiac)

Were hired by a client, we managed to rank him number one in the country for one of the most expensive services and two not so expensive. Somehow we had an insider information that they had around 2 sales per month for this expensive service and after our campaign, they had 4-6. So they definitely had the ROI after a couple of months, but they were not satisfied, so they fired us and hired another agency (They didn’t even know about Analytics, and they were looking me like I’m ghost when I told them that they must have had more calls for those 3 services. They couldn’t believe I knew…). So, the new company suggested redesign (probably because that was the only thing they knew how to do), Totally changed the content, all the page elements, without any redirection, etc. They lost all their rankings and traffic.

Still, for me, it was more a comedy than horror

This one is also a classic. An impatient client who switched to a different agency and totally messed up. Karma strikes fast in the SEO world.

Yellow Pages

From Reddit user: emuwannabe (Rob from Purpose Driven Promotion)

They poach clients with unrealistic promises and never deliver.

I’ve won back a few clients from them over the years. In fact, I just got another back this month after being away for about 12 months. HE spent about $300/month and you know what he got for it? A placeholder page that says “future home of BUSINESS NAME” he’s almost broke now – hasn’t had a new client in months he told me.

BUT he’s willing to come back to me because he knows I can deliver. He was all over page 1 for dozens of searches – many in top 3. All that went away with YP

This is more of a redemption story, but SEOs look at businesses that pay a huge amount of money for directories with horror. Luckily for them, we SEOs are here to help.

The Lovely Visitors (Fictional)

From Reddit user: AtomicMandark

I’m on google analytics, checking my website’s traffic. Even if it only has a few people visiting it, I’m really happy that my website has visitors. But there’s one weird thing I’ve noticed – 1 new user is added every week. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I allot time every week to go out and try to meet at least 1 person that’s willing to listen to me ramble on about my website.

This has been happening around a year now. Ever since I settled in my house, I always kept up my habit of going out every week. And historically speaking, the 1 additional user every week hasn’t stopped.

I found a way to check where the users are coming from. I won’t go into detail how I found out, but I’m gonna do it right now…

That’s weird.

Most of my site’s traffic comes from the same place… It’s my house. But I shouldn’t be considered as a new user since I’ve always visited my site. Is someone breaking into my house every week just to check my website? That’s absurd.

That’s why I checked what my CCTVs recorded

The hallway camera is broken? It doesn’t matter. There’s only one room at the end of the hallway – my basement.

Here’s the thing, the basement is where I take the people I meet every week. Once they wake up as I cut into their bodies… I tell them the story of how I created my website from scratch. I can’t help it. I’m so proud of my website and I want more people to know. It doesn’t help that they scream every time I tell my story. Cutting off their tongues doesn’t seem to shut them up. But at least I got to tell them my story.

They were all so lovely. But they always died while I told them my story. They couldn’t be the visitors, right? That’s impossible. But if they are… I guess telling them my story worked.

This one is fictional but I love the creativity in the story, it was a roller coaster ride. Pageviews from the dead? No thanks.

Banned from Facebook

From Reddit user: hanouaj

Kept posting links to my website in many Facebook groups until Facebook completely banned the posting of any link to my website in whole Facebook.

Social media is one of the easiest ways for websites to get their name out there. For most new websites, it’s their main source of traffic. Getting your domain completely banned from the biggest social media platform in the world is just pure terror.

Forgotten Landing Pages

From Reddit user: lalapranpriya

A client had an epiphany that it would be fun to delete all the landing pages of the site. When we asked their development team about it, they suddenly had selective amnesia.

Landing pages are critical for any SEO campaign. Having a disconnect between SEOs and web developers is already scary but deleting the landing pages from existence? What a nightmare.

Key Takeaway

All SEOs have their own stories on the horrifying experiences they’ve had whether it’s a broad core algorithm, bad links, and penalties. We all can relate to them. At the end of the day, these horror stories give us valuable lessons that can further improve our work as SEO professionals.

Do you have an interesting story to tell? Leave a comment below and share it with us!

The post 10 SEO Horror Stories: Scary Tales from SEOs appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

It’s been a couple of years since I worked with Jason. We started out with SEO almost at the same time. He was looking for his way in the world at that time. I was looking for opportunities in business. Here’s the inside story of how Jason and I got to meet and work and his thoughts on SEO in the Philippines.

SEO Sojourners

I was working in Hewlett Packard at that time – somewhere in Ortigas. My shift was from 9am – 6pm. Since they didn’t mind me staying at the office until 12am, I did so – and worked on SEO Hacker. This went on for months. I grew the blog from a personal SEO blog where I put in my learnings and experiments about SEO – to a niche blog that talked and taught about SEO to newbies.

It all started when I got a tweet from a @kaiserthesage somewhere 2010. It’s just a short (heartfelt?) ego-boost he threw out.

@SEO_Hacker Hey Sean, you really are good with headlines
— Kaiserthesage (@kaiserthesage) August 24, 2010

We exchanged tweets and we decided to do a meet-up. I was a newbie, he was a newbie and we exchanged newbie ideas with each other. Hooray!

Sooner than we expected, we were doing work together. The tough thing about it is the coordination. We were 3 hours apart by commute. And Jason didn’t carry a mobile phone. Don’t ask me why.

Here’s a picture of our first ‘Team Get Together’ back in April 2011:

Jason is a brilliant strategist. A genius with beating the system and using loopholes to win. He’s great at what he does. And he is aware of his weaknesses – that’s what makes him very effective.

Some time and a handful of good SEO projects passed us by and we bid our farewell to each other as teammates – he had his own set of growing projects to take care of and I focused on scaling SEO Hacker. Our respect for each other’s work and character only grew from then on.

The thing is, I noticed Jason’s weak point at that time was that, in order to scale up, he needed a manager and someone who ran the operations well. I’m glad he found the right people for the job. He now runs a successful SEO company – Xight Interactive.

So here we are – 2 content marketing-centered SEO specialists with extreme care for our brands but with different approaches to our holistic inbound marketing strategies. We agreed to do a back-to-back interview of each other. I finished my questions first.

So without further ado, please give a round of applause for Jason “Kaiser” Acidre:

1. What do you think will be the case of SEO in the Philippines as an industry in the next 3 years?

Local brands and businesses will be more ready to and aware of how valuable SEO is as a marketing tool, knowing that digital marketing (especially social and mobile) are slowly being embraced by the bigger brands these days.

SEO is far more powerful, in my opinion, compared to those 2 other areas of online marketing when it comes to acquiring new customers, and in generating conversions/revenue.

I guess the only thing that’s lacking is how local practitioners can evangelize this marketing platform and somehow prove to local companies that SEO is a long-term investment that they should’ve started to invest in as early as now.

Another case would be the difficulty to compete with other agencies when you’re an SEO service provider. The practice will continue to get tougher throughout the coming years, and it’s possible that a high percentage of the current practitioners will most-likely quit and choose another career, which I believe is a better scenario for our local SEO scene.

Our industry is constantly changing, and it’s a survival of the fittest out there. The ones who really know what they’re doing and the ones who can really provide results to their clients will remain.

2. What is the direction you’re taking as an SEO specialist to affect that?

Personally, I still think that there are so many things that I need to learn (and I have no plans of stopping to learn new things and in challenging myself to become a better SEO and business owner).

But right now, my focus is to continuously establish myself and our team in the international SEO scene, to make sure that our country will be in the best position in the years to come (not just an affordable option, but a country who should be known to offer world-class service from highly competent people).

3. What is your vision for the SEO industry in our country?

First is to truly earn to be one of the top 5 destinations for online marketing services (alongside US, UK, Australia, etc…). Because the more foreign companies are investing their marketing budget to Philippine-based SEO companies, the more we can help strengthen our country’s economy (and more job opportunities).

Second would be for local companies (small and big) to start accepting inbound marketing as a viable investment that can help them grow their businesses exponentially.

4. What is your favorite food?

There are three actually (not in particular order):

• Bacon
• Steak
• Steamed crabs

This is certainly the best question in this list, haha!

5. What are some SEO tutorial sites/pages you would point out to when there’s a person who’s new to SEO?

I get that a lot. I usually point them to Moz’s Beginner’s guide to SEO – since it’s really the best one out there (and it’s free!). Even our new hires get to start with reading the entire guide on their first 3 days of work.

There are also other comprehensive resources that I’d highly recommend, such as:

• SEO Hacker School – which has helped many newbies learn SEO for the past couple of years now
• Brian Dean’s SEO that Works – which I personally reviewed late last month

6. What is the toughest linkbuilding strategy you’ve ever tried to go through?

A LOT! I’ve tested so many link building tactics/strategies for the past 3 years, so I’ve definitely been through a lot of frustrations and eureka moments.

But if I have to choose, the toughest one would be “link baiting”. It takes a lot of tests, research and implementations before you finally get the hang of it (especially when you’re working with clients from different industries/niches).

7. What are the things in your life that are keeping you busy these days?

Aside from my day-to-day work at Xight Interactive:

• I’m following this year’s NBA season games.
• Side projects (currently working on 3 new sites).
• Consulting (got 3 awesome clients that have been months with me now).
• Playing with my 2 kids (my son Seth, and our Jack Russell Terrier – Yuffie).
• Drinking with friends (3 – 4x a week, I think).
• Daydreaming, as always.

8. Let’s say there’s one teammate of yours that is not producing his/her expected output, how do you deal with it?

My leadership style is quite simple. I just lead by example – most of the time. I’m not that talkative, even in our office, and I guess my presence in the office and letting other members of our organization just see how busy I am working, is sometimes enough to influence them to do their best at work as well.

I’m the type of person who really loves having “Plan Bs” and Cs and Ds if necessary. So personally, I’m not that pressured when our guys don’t meet the expected output – although our managers do that part (giving them the pressure), but I believe my job is to inspire/challenge everyone to make use of their talent, exceed their current skills, and to be really excellent at what they do.

9. How do you train your people to conform to your SEO processes/strategies?

Our processes/strategies heavily rely on the basics. So we start with the basics, and aiming for everyone to really understand and master the basics of technical search optimization, marketing and entrepreneurship.

Luckily, our managers (and our director of search – Mark Acsay) are really good at teaching the basics, since it has been one of my weakest points (I only train our people for the advanced stuff).

10. Was there ever a time when you had a conflict with a teammate? How did you resolve it?

None so far, though with clients, a lot of times for sure.

It’s not about who’s right or wrong, as it always comes down to what’s best for the project/campaign. It’s important to understand what your purpose and goals are in the first place. If the conflict is irrelevant to these 2 and will only let the productivity suffer, then it’s not worth pursuing.

11. If given a million dollars to invest – would you put it in Xight interactive or invest it in another business? (Why?)

Definitely in Xight Interactive!

We’ve got a lot of plans for our company for the next few years, and our service-based business model will be just a part of our future plans.

Our company is already shifting towards a different direction – like starting our own web properties, scouting for local startups to partner up with (by trading in our marketing workforce for equity), including more firepower to our services (adding PPC, mobile app development, creatives, etc…)  and many other online-based businesses.

So that funding can definitely help us scale our upcoming departments, which I believe are also worth millions in valuation.

12. What do you say about the SEO companies in our country who are underselling their services and are providing low-quality black-hat tactics to increase their client’s rankings?

I don’t really have anything to say to them. Not that I don’t care at all, since they are somehow pulling the chance of our country to be in the center of the international scene (which is not that impossible).

But the thing is, our country still has those who are really paving the way for our country to be noticed and be respected as well in the industry. We can’t really do anything, but to just win over them.

I’m winning with what we currently have, maybe if they realize how much we’ve grown over the years with the principles and mindsets we believe in since we started, they’ll finally accept it and join forces with us, right?

What we need to do is to prove that we can compete in the international level and be one of the best countries in doing it. If they can’t, then don’t (we’ll still be here trying). But if they will, we can certainly achieve that.

13. Would you happen to have a plan against it?

Yeah, keep on improving on what we’ve been doing for the past 2 years. Become the best and just challenge everyone else to become greater than us.

That’s it!

13 questions directed to the man who has put the Philippines on the radar of the world’s most renown SEO specialists. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading his thoughts as much as I did. I will be updating this entry once Jason finishes his set of questions to throw at me.

The post Back to Back Interview: Jason Acidre and Sean Si appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.

Brent can attribute his success to his diverse portfolio and a unique vision, which combines a background in technology and real world experience that lends itself to some very unique content and management. As technology and communication mediums continue to merge, Brent continues to research new ways to get a customer’s messages across to the readers and intended audiences.

1) How did you stumble upon SEO and decide to make it as a career/business?

The year was 2001 and I was 21. Not sure what I wanted to be in life, I spent a lot of time trying a lot of different things and never found anything I really enjoyed (or was extremely talented at). Recently out of high school and it was the .com boom so I had no trouble finding jobs working for websites. Back then I was doing a bit of technical writing for security/malware companies, basically, it was writing up and rating vulnerabilities as they were discovered in the wild.

As the .com boom busted, it became increasingly difficult to find work in this sector, so starting to look around town for work, I found a software company and started doing some small tasks around the office and found the right opportunity to show I had some experience with html and php. In a matter of days I was promoted to a web admin and that quickly morphed into an in-house SEO position with perks! As soon as I got my first #1 ranking I knew I was hooked! I just did not know how consistent the work would be and had no idea I would ever succeed at starting my own business.

2) How did you start your SEO business?

Recently after I had moved back into Minnesota I started as a consultant. I found one of the biggest real estate agencies in our area who needed help with their web presence. I almost volunteered to help the pay was so low! But, it got my foot in the door and a whole heckuva lot of referrals after I proved myself. I still work for the agency today and they still get me referrals almost regularly.

After the first year, I realized that I was severely limiting my potential by doing everything myself. Obviously, it is a wasted opportunity not to be pushing a brand and creating an awareness for that brand. Now, we work with some of the web design agencies in town and have established an awareness for who we are and what we do.

3) What would you say is your specialty when it comes to SEO?

Usually, the typical answer here would be: “local search” or “real estate SEO” but what I am really good at (and force my employees to be too) is understanding what a business owner really wants and making sure we get to that point without breaking any rules or jeopardizing their websites. I have always been a good listener and have a big heart so we usually end up doing some fairly uncommon things to get the job done. Nothing in this industry is THAT difficult. It’s about making sites better and not about shortcuts. It’s about reaching goals. It’s not about what package you are selling. It’s not about us at all. In reality, a lot of SEO agencies really miss out on that point and may even miss a lot of opportunities because of that.

Another thing I believe strongly in is staying current. As soon as you stop learning, you become the dinosaur in the area. Google had 500+ updates to their organic search algorithm last year alone, now pair that up with Adwords and Google.com/Places, keyword tools, ROI tools, analytics, and so on.. it’s learn or get drowned in this industry! The short answer: we specialize in providing a robust and complete strategy to keep clients succeeding on the web long term.

4) What is your vision/mission for your company as an individual?

Well, this is something I have given a lot of thought to ever since I registered the name Optimize Guyz. If our business was a person it would be a toddler. We still have a lot of growing and adapting to go through. So, right now, my vision is to become scalable and provide our same quality of service to a great number of businesses. The demand is there but our resources are not quite there yet and we are not the type of business to sacrifice quality for dollars.

5) What would you say is the future of SEO in terms of business demand?

It is going to be huge. In ’08 Adwords recorded $20 BILLION dollars in sales alone. The real answer depends on the evolution of search. It won’t be booming like it has in the past year or two, but it will most likely keep growing and social media has had a big impact as well. Social media has had a big impact on business strategies and it’s still a relatively new technology.

There is already a movie coming out about Facebook! Twitter’s popularity is still very new, so it’s tough to gauge what is coming next or how users migrate to other technologies, but one thing is for sure, and that is almost everybody (and their Grandma’s) have come to rely on the web as day-to-day communication and wherever there are users — there is a need for internet marketing.

6) Are there any tips regarding SEO that you can give away to our readers?

Sean, you may recall that I recently won an award on Bruce Clay’s Small Business Discovery Contest for answering: “In a Short Article, How Would You Advise Small Business Owners about Internet Marketing?” and the article is a good SEO primer. So I would refer your readers to look it over and jump right in. The best thing anyone new to SEO can do is to learn the basics of why rankings are chosen the way that they are.

Google has given us these resources in their Webmaster channel on YouTube and the SEO Starter Guide. If you learn what Google wants, it is much easier to give all of the major search engines a reason to rank your sites towards the top. It is a lot of hard work and persistence so anyone expecting fast results will be disappointed. And anyone promising you fast results may be taking shortcuts that could jeopardize your reputation.

So, be careful who you hire and always research the company before you sign any contracts. Also, look beyond Google. Sites like Digg, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook are a great way to supplement traffic & leads and increase your presence.

Brent Rangen (@BrentRangen) is a consistent voicein the world of online SEO and internet marketing on the Web. He has been working on the cutting edge of SEO since 2001, and also worked extensively in the real estate, travel, and hospitality SEO industries, consistently producing results in the companies that he partners with.

Brent won the 2010 Small Biz Discovery Contest with his article, “SEO for Small Business: Get an SEO Primer” and has worked with some of the biggest names in the SEO and marketing industries.

The post A Peek in the Mind of an SEO specialist: Brent Rangen appeared first on SEO Services Agency in Manila, Philippines.