Neil currently leads a team of seven covering all areas of organic search, including Technical SEO, Content Marketing and digital PR. He has been at Anicca for over three years, having been promoted from SEO Account Manager to Consultant and now as Anicca’s Head of Organic Search. Neil has an advanced theoretical and practical knowledge of all areas of SEO, and specialises in delivering SEO training in a simple, concise and accessible way. Neil has worked on a host of clients including national household name brands. Neil is a nationally recognised speaker on SEO having delivered talks at the regional conference, the E-commercial Conference, B2B Marketing Expo and has also guest lectured at De Montfort University.
Please introduce yourself and where you work.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
Whilst a lot of the ranking signals remain the same, we’re seeing more user-centric elements coming into play such as mobile friendliness, speed and user experience. These changes are helping to spread SEO, thinking beyond search engines and to cross over into other aspects such as user and mobile experience as well as conversion rate optimisation. I think this has prompted a revival in the technical side of SEO too as implementing the new technologies such as AMP and the development of true SEO-friendly websites crosses over far more between SEO and Web Development.
And obviously, content marketing has exploded but I’d say the last couple of years there’s been a real shift to looking at quality over quantity, which hasn’t always been the case. At Anicca, we’ve adopted a campaign based approach to content marketing that better enables us to assimilate with clients existing marketing activities as well integrating more effectively with other channels.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
What are the services you provide to your clients?
Of course, we also have SEO-only projects but even these are a tailored blend of technical SEO, content marketing and PR designed to meet the individual needs of each client and their specific objectives. A real growth area for us recently has been in supporting clients and their web developers with site rebuilds, migrations and relaunches to ensure smooth transitions and minimal loss of visibility and organic traffic.
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2017 for SEO?
We use SEOmonitor as our tracking tool of choice and this allows you to set keyphrases into groups around topics or subjects. This enables us to monitor a wider level of visibility as opposed to just at a keyphrase level. Single keyphrase rankings are far too narrow a measurement on which to gauge success or failure of an SEO campaign.
On the content marketing side of SEO, I think it’s about time companies really looked at the value and return they get from the content marketing work they are doing. Too often companies are stuck into a plan of posting a set number of pieces a week and thinking that is content marketing. This ‘post and hope’ approach all too often fails to yield any tangible results that help achieve business objectives. This is content but misses out the marketing aspect. You need to invest at least the same amount of time into promoting your content as you do into producing it. And if you don’t think your content is worthy of the time to promote it, then your content probably isn’t worth publishing in the first place.
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
There’s some basic things you can do to help develop some skills to get you started. Google Analytics will almost certainly play a role in any digital marketing role so work through the Google Analytics Academy courses and build up to taking your Google Analytics IQ exam. Having this will set you apart from a lot of other new candidates trying to get into the industry.
Also, you can’t read enough so get yourself on Feedly, follow some of the industry publications and set aside some time to read each day. Even if it’s just to help some basic knowledge or familiarise yourself with the industry, the different channels or terminology. It all helps when you come to the interview.
One great way to stand out is to build and market your own website. Nothing shows a real interest and desire than doing it for yourself and this will impress most employers. WordPress is simple to get started on and don’t think it needs to be anything overly fancy. Just pick a subject that interests you and have a go at building yourself a blog, even if it’s a blog about your journey trying to get into the digital industry.
And finally, there’s always work experience and intern placements you can look for. Don’t wait for them to be advertised, just approach an agency with a well-written email and a solid CV and you’d be surprised how many would be happy to offer a couple of weeks’ experience (albeit usually unpaid) and this foot in the door could be the foot in the door you need to get started.
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