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Please introduce yourself and where you work.
I am Jeff Ferguson, CEO & Founder of Fang Marketing, a boutique digital media advertising agency based in Los Angeles, CA.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
SEO hasn’t changed much over the years. SEO has always been about creating relevant content on properly built websites that naturally attract quality inbound links… anything beyond that is a cheap trick that won’t stand the test of time. The only thing that has really changed about SEO is the search engines’ ability to catch people who are trying to rig the game.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
I started off as a Computer Science major in college during the early Nineties. At one point, I changed majors to Communications/Advertising because I couldn’t see myself getting stuck behind a computer for the rest of my life (irony!). By the time I graduated, they had changed the rules around the requirements for my first major, so I ended up graduating in 1995 with degrees in both, making me appear to be born to become an internet marketer… however, that didn’t really exist yet. My first job was as a “Webmaster” doing website design, server maintenance, and a host of other activities, including what would eventually be called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
What are the services you provide to your clients?
Fang Marketing is a full-service digital media advertising agency. We work with clients who arrive with an underperforming AdWords campaign all the way through new companies that have a product, a target audience, and a dream and develop full media plans for them to get started.
We also provide SEO services in the form of “Audit & Education” services. Like a few other companies, we provide full-scale audits for existing or new websites that walk our clients through the issues that may be holding their websites back from organic search greatness, but then take it a few steps further and help transform the company into a group of SEO experts that can keep their company on the right path.
Our vision is that one day “SEO” as we know it will fade away and just become part of the responsibilities of an entire company rather than something a few “gurus” treat like some form of dark art that mere mortals can’t understand.
We also provide SEO services in the form of “Audit & Education” services. Like a few other companies, we provide full-scale audits for existing or new websites that walk our clients through the issues that may be holding their websites back from organic search greatness, but then take it a few steps further and help transform the company into a group of SEO experts that can keep their company on the right path.
Our vision is that one day “SEO” as we know it will fade away and just become part of the responsibilities of an entire company rather than something a few “gurus” treat like some form of dark art that mere mortals can’t understand.
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2018 for SEO?
I think over the next few years, you’ll see more and more SEOs will continue to drop the concept that search engines are something to “trick” and instead embrace the fact that great SEO is really great marketing and site development best practices that you should be doing anyway. It will always come back to creating great content that attracts your target audience with insightful information, housed on a properly built website that attracts relevant inbound links.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
At this point in its evolution, I would advise them to focus more on becoming a better marketer than just a digital marketer. The concept of a person specializing in a single media type or tactic will fade away and instead what we call digital marketing will be one of many options marketers will use to obtain new customers.
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