Wise Marketing Secrets Interview Series with Nabeel Tanveer

Nabeel Tanveer has over 6 years of web marketing experience & is the founder of Search Engine Lead, a blog covering search news and web marketing tips including SEO, PPC and conversion rate optimisation strategies.

In this interview he will highlight his ideas on the future of SEO.

There has been reports of Google not being moral see: http://www.seroundtable.com/google-ethics-penalty-18489.html for penalizing webmasters what is your view on this?

Answer: I think Google has been pretty fair. The problem is that SEO community was too much obsessed with traffic from Google.

Everyone of us (including me) forgot that marketing has been in business long before than Google came into prominence so eventually many, if not all of us are now figuring out different ways to land traffic.

Let me conclude it this way, Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket.

It would seem that nowadays businesses that has a bigger budget has more chances of ranking in Google based on the recent linkbuilding survey of Skyrocket in Moz. How do you think businesses with very small budgets approach this dilemma?

Answer: I’d tend to disagree with that. Large businesses may have an overwhelming budget to spend on their campaigns but small businesses should do whatever is in their own might.

As I emphasized on thinking beyond Google in my first answer, I’d reiterate that there are plenty of channels one can explore depending on business niche.

For instance, A web development company had better look into communities like webmasterworld, warriorforums etc to get some business rather than getting obsessed to rank on Google for some highly competitive queries.

At the end of the day, money is what everyone needs, not rankings!

If you were given the chance to head the spam team of Google what would you change or improve upon?

Answer: I’d be more open to changes my spam team is going to make. I don’t see many of their algorithmic or other changes coming out with a clear tone.

Everything the head of the spam team (Matt Cutts) tells us is probably half of a puzzle. I’d just do my best to speak of it till the last piece of puzzle so that people can cope with it.

For instance, A lot of folks are still not very clear on how to get an escape from Google penguin or if the link disavow tool really works?

How do you see yourself 10 years from now?

Answer: I’d love to have my own digital marketing agency built on the principles of ethics and transparency. 

What is the major flaw of SEO’s nowadays?

Answer: Good question! I honestly think the major flaw is that everyone thinks he’s a guru or specialist at everything, let it be writing, technical SEO, building links or content marketing.

Another common mistake I see is that SEO’s sometimes aren’t transparent with their clients which may earn them some money but it ruins whole community’s reputation too.

If you weren’t an SEO what would you be today?

Answer: A footballer maybe if I hadn’t suffered a serious knee injury in mid teenage.

Google is leaning more towards Mobile SEO with the disappearance of author photos in searches, how should SEO’s nowadays approach SEO given its more competitive nature to begin with?

Answer: I think its not about Google, its about convenience of your audience.

If your target audience is highly inclined to browse through your website via phone then its a must-have thing to get mobile friendly website too.

In fact, it is highly recommended to get a responsive template regardless of your business niche. You never know what’s coming in your way so its better to prepare than to repair.

Can you suggest any book, video, person, website that keeps you inspired in doing SEO?

Answer: Seth Godin is truly an inspiration for me. Apart from him, there are a few people I read and talk about a lot in my training sessions.

Rand Fishkin, Bill Slawski, Neil Patel, Ann Smarty are a few names I find inspirational but the list goes on! As far as books and videos are concerned, I recommend Whiteboard Fridays and Tedtalks specially this one. 

With regards to Social Media just how much power do you think it has to replace traditional link-building techniques?

Answer: I believe the future belongs to PR. In general, the difference between good and bad digital marketing agency would be PR and outreach skills.

Social media is already being used as a medium to outreach so agencies are going to rely more on it in future. However, I don’t see link building getting diminished in near future.

They are counted votes and i believe they can’t be replaced! So my conclusion is that Link building and social media both are going to be an integral part of future marketing campaigns that eventually lead to ‘promotion’.

Could you give me a list of SEO tools that you can’t live without?

Answer: Too many to mention here. Let me share a few of them below:

MajesticSEO, Seotools for Excel, httpstatus.io, ScreamingFrog, SEMRush, Google Analytics and Webmaster.