Wise Marketing Secrets Interview Series with Adrian Wright
Adrian Wright, is an internet marketing consultant providing SEO in Warwickshire, UK.
Here he answers our questions about SEO and online marketing.
Hi, great to meet you! Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you became to be involved with the SEO industry?
It was a desire to break out of the shackles of paid employment that led me to discover SEO and internet marketing.
Back in 2008, working as a software developer, I found myself in the middle of big change at the company I worked at this made me re-assess what I wanted to do career wise.
I searched for “how to make money online” and that was to be my entry point into online marketing, and for the next few years I learned SEO and online marketing part-time.
I left my job in 2013 to go full-time as an SEO consultant working for myself.
How do you personally keep up to date with the latest in SEO? It’s an ever changing industry so SEO consultants by nature need to be on the ball – how do you achieve this?
Networking online is key for me. I’m a member of an SEO community where some of the brightest minds in SEO hang out.
It’s great being able to discuss the latest developments and trends in SEO with like-minded individuals on a daily basis.
There have been a lot of algorithm changes from Google over the last year. I am sure that you’ve had many potential clients come to you with ranking issues due to past SEO practices they might have undertaken. Do you have any top-level advice for people who have seen their websites take a dramatic hit recently, or incurred a penalty?
Get an experienced SEO consultant in. Find someone who has a demonstrable record of website recovery.
Don’t hire the big firms – the likelihood is they don’t have the depth of experience within their ranks to help you.
Most importantly, if your website has been penalized, stop whoever has been doing your SEO up to that point, to prevent further damage.
What sets your SEO practice apart from the competition? Are there any unique aspects to your consultancy that gives you a competitive advantage?
I offer personal service. I’m the person who does the work on my client’s SEO campaign.
If they have a query, they know they can speak directly with me, and not a call centre or account manager which is how bigger firms often operate.
If you were talking to client in your local area who was unsure about the benefits that local SEO can bring to a business, what would be the key components of your pitch to them in order to convince them?
Show them past results you’ve achieved always works for me. This shows the prospective client you know how to get a site ranked.
Also, showing competitors who are already ranking on page 1 of Google goes a long way to convincing them of the benefits of SEO.
For any beginners to SEO, what advice would you give them? It could be anything from how to set the business up, to winning business, or just some plain motivational advice.
Remained focused on one thing. It’s easy to get distracted in internet marketing. There’s always someone pushing the ‘latest and greatest’ SEO product.
Find a good SEO training community and immerse yourself in learning. At times, you’ll feel overwhelmed but stick at it and in time, you’ll surprise yourself at how far you’ve come.
During your career as an SEO consultant what has been your favourite or most interesting project that you’ve worked on?
I find all of my projects interesting. I choose my clients carefully and only take on new projects where I know I can make a positive difference.
This helps to keep things interesting as I know, with a high degree of certainty that I’m going to achieve good results for a client.
Are there any other websites or online projects that you want to tell our readers about – or perhaps any social channels or things you are working on currently?
My social channels are:
How do you view content in SEO as a leverage in providing relevant search results and as a way of doing link-building in the advent of the recent changes in Googles Algorithm and penalization of Ann Smarty’s MyBlogGuest?
Content is a crucial component for SEO. Google likes to see high quality, unique content and this also serves to keep your visitors to a page engaged for longer (which is another ranking factor).
I’m a big fan of video marketing too, as it’s getting easier to create and publish videos, plus again it helps to keep visitors engaged.
I tend to stay away from posting content on large blog networks. The bigger they are, the more likely they are to fly into Google’s radar, however unfair any action taken on them may be.
What do you think of Google’s approach to SEO? Are they being helpful by launching the disavow tool or do you think that this only gives more credence to negative SEO?
Something had to be done.
Negative SEO is an underhand tactic that had to be dealt with and launching the disavow tool was Google’s way of getting site owners to police any suspect negative SEO themselves.
What is the fastest way to generate backlinks?
Well the fastest way is using automated tools such as SE Nuke and GSA, but such tools are not recommended for your main site you’re trying to rank.
These tools still have a place need to be used very carefully.
What is the best quick fix way in optimizing your website for SEO?
Dilution of over-optimized anchor text backlinks and removal of duplicate content would be high on my list.
Then make sure pages have SEO friendly titles and content relevant to the search term you’re trying to rank for.
How do you measure your SEO success for a particular campaign?
Page 1 rankings and clients receiving phone calls and enquiries leading to an upturn in business for them.
And lastly can you suggest any book, video, person, website that keeps you inspired in doing SEO?
Travis Sago was one of the first people I followed when I started learning SEO and I am still subscribed his newsletters today.
He’s one of the good guys and an incredible marketer. The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson is a book that had a huge impact on and the way I tackle new challenges.