Michael joins Commerce House with over 14 years of digital marketing experience across multiple verticals and channels managing client campaigns in excess of $10MM/year. He currently holds certifications in Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and BingsAds. Working with startups, large networks and agencies has given him a robust background in both B2B and B2C digital organic and paid strategy.
Please introduce yourself and where you work.
Hi all, I’m Michael Clark, Digital Marketing Manager for Commerce House in Dallas.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
Ten years seems like a lifetime when it comes to organic search. The shift from focusing on the search engine to focusing on the user made in that timeframe are pretty incredible. Content has—and always will be—king. That gets reaffirmed with every new update in algorithms.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
For me it came second. After redesigning the website for a financial services company, I was asked to help out with their paid search campaigns to see if we could reduce lead cost and scale lead volume. It was great for the short term, but as more and more advertisers jumped on the paid search bandwagon we had to develop a long-term sustainable solution for grabbing and converting search traffic while maintaining a reasonable cost per acquisition to meet business goals. SEO was the way to go.
What are the services you provide to your clients?
Commerce House is a full-service creative agency. Our clients come to us primarily for strategy and branding, creative services, digital solutions (website and application design), content development, and social media services.
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2017 for SEO?
This is easiest question you asked. And the most difficult. The easy part: develop a fantastic user experience by creating content users want to consume and give them access to it in any manner they want to consume it. There are plenty of statistics on mobile device usage, voice search, and social indicators. The hard part, incorporating all of these at once. If I had to stress one thing to focus on learning and implementing to grow organic traffic, I’d go with AMP pages. Mobile has been poised to take over desktop usage since before the first iPhone. Having email access in the palm of your hand marked the true impact of the internet for the masses. Now we can see it in the numbers. I see it with our clients. Some of who get up to 90% of their traffic from mobile. Google has repeatedly rolled out boosts for mobile friendly pages through algorithm updates.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
Be an avid reader and a great listener. We live in the information age, and it’s right at your fingertips everywhere you go. Consume as much content as you write. Follow the long-term players and learn from their successes and failures. And don’t try to do it all by yourself. There are so many areas in which to be an expert you can easily get burned out trying to chase them all and they’re constantly evolving.