Wise Marketing Secrets Interview Series with Evgeniy Garkaviy

Evgeniy Garkaviy is an SEO consultant, Adwords certified specialist and blogger. Online marketing strategist, he is also the co-owner of www.temi.co.uk, MarchesHour Directory, Marches Hour

How did you start out as a marketer?

I started working in this niche I guess in 2011. A lot of things have changed since that time, but I’m sure I chose the right profession for myself.

I’m from Ukraine and internet technologies here develop very fast. Therefore, when I graduated from University, I decided to connect my professional life with internet marketing.

Looking back, what was your hardest struggle when it came to delivering results?

I think it was when Google released the Penguin update on April 21, 2012. Some of our websites that used to bring in very good traffic and money were affected by Penguin because they have many strong backlinks from directories with targeted keywords.

How did you get your first client back then, and what kind of service did you do for them?

To be honest, I’m still not sure that it is possible to fully recover from the Penguin update, but according to the most popular hypothesis; if you clean your backlink profile, the next Penguin update will allow you to recover site rankings.

This happened a few times with me, but not all positions ever recovered.

What do you find most rewarding about what you do?

I’m reading too much about internet marketing, social media, inbound marketing, etc. Something new happens almost every day in our niche and, if you are not in trend – your business can’t succeed.

We have a lot of readers who are bent on becoming freelancers. Aside from freelancing, how else can someone earn online, and what do you advise?

To be honest, I did not work as freelancer. I started immediately with my friend Temi Odurinde (founder of #MarchesHour) who gave me a lot of useful information.

But I can see that many very talented people appear today and start their own website/blog.

Then they promote it by writing very interesting case studies which help them get clients. For example, Robbie Richards or Brian Dean. They are very good.

If you were given the chance to build your career all over again, what would you do differently in order to achieve your dreams faster?

To be honest, there are many things that could have been done better when I look back. That is just life, though, and it is fine with me. I’m still learning something new every day.

Making mistakes is a learning experience, and I know that I will be making mistakes in future, too

How is your typical work day structured?

Currently, I spend too much time working every day. I can’t say that it has any particular structure. My typical day starts with browsing emails. Next, I handle my urgent tasks and then move onto my usual tasks.

Can you tell us about a time where you had to put in significant effort up front and then wait a long time for success?

Yes, I had one very big project. It was a person who lives in the US and was born in Ukraine. His site was affected by Penguin and it used to bring him millions of dollars every year.

After a Penguin penalty, the site almost dead. I think I manually reviewed thousands of backlinks and added them to disavow file.

After the next algorithm update, some positions were recovered and the website started to bring in money again. Sadly, it is still not as effective as previously before it was hit with the penalty.

Can you tell us about a past situation where you had to juggle multiple projects with competing deadlines?

My response would be very simple: these are situations where I must work harder. If I know that my clients are reliable and I do not want to lose them, then I need to find the time to complete each project by the deadline.

What recently developed marketing strategy, technique or tool interests you the most right now?

I like to participate in different expert roundups. I have created a few very successful rounds on temi.co.uk website (For example this about Twitter promotion). This is a very useful technique to get quality backlinks.

People get in touch with me and ask for my opinion. I can share my thoughts on the most trusted websites and receive good links to my business. 

Also, the skyscraper technique by Brian Dean looks very interesting to me. But I do not always find a time to promote my posts as he recommends.

What do you do to stay up to date with new marketing techniques?

My answer is the same as the response to a similar question previously: I spend a lot of time reading about my profession.

Can you tell us about a project you’re most proud of from your past work history?

Actually, I can’t narrow it down to just one. There are at least 10 such projects that instantly come to mind. For me, it is very important when people are happy with my work.

Even if the project is not very expensive and I don’t earn a great deal of money from it; if the client is happy with my work, then I am happy, too.

Which one book/blog post would you recommend every Marketer should read?

This is also difficult to name just one.  I would recommend joining sites like inbound.org or growthackers. There are many very interesting posts and case studies that appear on those sites every day.

In addition, gurus such as Neil Patel or Rand Fishkin use those sites.

What advice would you share with other Marketers who want to become more productive?

Don’t be afraid to try something new.

If there’s one Marketing Guru you’d recommend who and why. 

I can name a few who I have found to be quite helpful. They include Brian Dean, Rand Fishkin, and Neil Patel.