Play ball! Why SEO is a team sport - Live from BrightonSEO

Mordy Oberstein:

It's the new wave of SEO podcasting. Welcome to SERP's Up. Aloha, mahalo for joining the SERP's Up podcast. We've put together some groovy new insights around what's happening in SEO. I'm Mordy Oberstein, the Head of SEO Brand at Wix, and I'm joined by the fabulous, amazing, the incredible Head of SEO Communications here at Wix, Crystal Carter.

Crystal Carter:

Hello everyone. Hello on the internet. Hello Mordy.

Mordy Oberstein:

Hi.

Crystal Carter:

It's been a minute.

Mordy Oberstein:

It has been a minute. A lot has happened since we last recorded.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, internet land podcast people, it has not been a minute. It's been the same amount of time-

Mordy Oberstein:

No, it's been a week.

Crystal Carter:

... it normally is because we just plan things and stuff. But in real life, it's been a minute.

Mordy Oberstein:

So much has happened. Yeah, things have happened.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. I went to BrightonSEO.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I went to New York.

Crystal Carter:

Yes.

Mordy Oberstein:

The Knicks won three playoff games, lost two.

Crystal Carter:

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Well, that's all right. That's all right. But yeah, we've been out in the world meeting people, talking to folks.

Mordy Oberstein:

I went on vacation. Well, not vacation, like stay-cation and a holiday.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, that's fine. That's when you get gardening done, that's when somebody gives you a list, they're like, "You know that shelf?"

Mordy Oberstein:

Gardening, that's where you kill plants, right?

Crystal Carter:

First you have to buy them. You buy them, and then you just-

Mordy Oberstein:

And then you kill them.

Crystal Carter:

... watch them slowly die.

Mordy Oberstein:

That's how it goes at my house. You buy the plant and then you kill it. Slowly. A slow death.

Crystal Carter:

I try. I have a cactus that's clearly…

Mordy Oberstein:

No, cactus does not count. You don't have to do nothing, it just sits there.

Crystal Carter:

I didn't do anything and it's dead.

Mordy Oberstein:

Really?

Crystal Carter:

It died very, very slowly, but it still looks like a cactus, but I know it's not. I know it's dying.

Mordy Oberstein:

I have a cactus, a giant cactus.

Crystal Carter:

Really?

Mordy Oberstein:

Like a desert cactus. Oh, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Oh, okay.

Mordy Oberstein:

In the garden, giant cactus.

Crystal Carter:

That's cool. That's cool. Is it like one of the ones from the cartoons with the arms?

Mordy Oberstein:

It does. Yeah, it has arms.

Crystal Carter:

That's nice.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah. I'll send you a picture.

Crystal Carter:

Cool. Thanks.

Mordy Oberstein:

Anyway, the SERP's Up podcast is brought to you by Wix where you can not only subscribe to our newsletter Searchlight each and every month over at wix.com/SEO/learn/newsletter, but where you can also use Wix Studio to work more efficiently with your team, with real time collaboration technology built right into the editor. Because as we all know, SEO is a team sport. And to help us explore how SEO is indeed a team sport, we took the show on the road to BrightonSEO's UK conference where Crystal sat down with Carmen Dominguez, Sukh Singh, Grace Frohlich, and the other Barry. So we won't have your snappiest of SEO news or you should be following this week on social media, because we were in the flesh, well, Crystal was in the flesh, I was on vacation, at one of the industries most prestigious SEO events of the year, BrightonSEO UK. So move over golf, cycling and non doubles tennis, because SEO is a real sport like baseball, football, basketball, hockey, and curling. On this, the 89th episode of the SERP's Up podcast. I left you speechless.

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I don't know how to jump in. I feel like you did everything you... I feel like you like mic dropped. I feel like that's great. That's a great intro. I'm going to be talking for most of it anyway with the guys.

Mordy Oberstein:

Yeah, I'm done. This is all you're going to hear from me for the entire episode because I could not make the conference.

Crystal Carter:

But it's all good because I think that certainly we as a team do a lot of stuff together. Obviously we plan out the podcast, we do all of that sort of stuff, and I think that the way that you work as a team will inform the SEO that you're able to do, and I certainly think that our approach was there in presence, even if you were not there at the moment. And it was a great conversation. And also shout out to the audience because we were flagship for this, I don't think anybody else is doing this, but if you come to a SERP's Up live broadcast, we might have one of these things that we do, which basically we give the audience paddles and the audience will give us their opinions on some of the questions. And we did this at BrightonSEO in San Diego.

Mordy Oberstein:

That was great. We went real heavy on the audience interaction. It was a lot of fun.

Crystal Carter:

It was a lot of fun. And then the people on the squads were asking questions to the audience as well, so some of our panelists were asking questions to the audience as well, which I didn't expect, but was a lot of fun. So it's great to get some feedback on how folks in the audience are feeling about some of the questions as well as some of the great insights from our incredible panel. It was a really, really great panel.

Mordy Oberstein:

So without further ado, I'll see you in the next episode, because here's that panel.

Crystal Carter:

Hi everyone. Welcome to this episode of SERP's Up live. This is the live BrightonSEO Spring 2024 edition of the SERP's Up podcast. I'm going to be joined by some incredible guests who you can see on my left and right for the people who are here. And also, members of the audience, we have some paddles there for you, which are basically for a little bit of interaction. So one side, green is yes, purple is no. So if there's any questions and basically you'd be like, I agree, I do not agree, then please make yourselves heard. We found this to be a little bit of fun, so we hope that you enjoy it as well. I'm going to get started by introducing my fantastic panelists who I have harangued to join me today. First up, all the way over on my left is Mr. Barry Adams, the founder of Award-winning agency, Polemic Digital, and he's a specialist SEO consultant for news publishers focusing on technical SEO, editorial SEO. His clients include many, many publishers including The New York Times, The Independent, lots of other folks as well. Thank you so much for joining us today, Barry.

Barry Adams:

Thank you very much for having me.

Crystal Carter:

It's always a pleasure. Barry may or may not swear so if you are sensitive to such things, I'm just going to warn you there now. So yeah, thank you for that. Hello. Hi there, David Bain.

David Bain:

Hey.

Crystal Carter:

Welcome, welcome. Welcome lots of other people as well. And so our next person that I'm going to be introducing is the incredible Carmen Dominguez who is joining us from Hallam Digital. She's the head of Organic at Hallam. I first met her at the Hallam Organic event, which was a great event that took place in Nottingham, and it was a warm day.

Carmen Dominguez:

It was. We had free ice cream though.

Crystal Carter:

It was, it was delightful and very well received. And it was lovely to have her there, and she spoke about some great stuff. And so I thought if we could get Carmen along, that'd be lovely. She has worked for agencies, she's worked in-house and led a team of many people. You've built a team.

Carmen Dominguez:

23 last year and 15 this year. There we go.

Crystal Carter:

Exactly. So she's got great experience in-house and also working agency side, and she's going to be sharing her insights as well. Thank you, Carmen, for joining us.

Carmen Dominguez:

Thank you. I'm super excited to be here today.

Crystal Carter:

And next up is Sukh Singh, who is from I Do SEO, and I've met him at BrightonSEO a few times over the last few years. And I was really excited to get Sukh along for this session, because Sukh has a great perspective from having worked as the head of SEO at an agency for many, many years and now working freelance, working with agency partners and other clients as well. So thank you so much for joining us, Sukh.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, thanks for having me. Awesome to be here.

Crystal Carter:

Thank you. And finally on my left is the amazing Grace Frohlich, fellow Californian, and she is joining us from Brain Labs where she works as an SEO consultant, and is managing clients and managing lots of different projects and has both project management experience and also SEO experience, and is a fantastic speaker and a big fan of The Parent Trap as well. And we are really pleased to have you here today, Grace.

Grace Frohlich:

Thank you. I'm excited. Looking forward to this.

Crystal Carter:

Wonderful. And then finally, it's me. My name is Crystal Carter. I am the Head of SEO Communications at Wix. I am currently working there, but I have a lot of experience working in agencies, working alongside agencies, working across teams, and I hope to be able to share those insights. And finally, there is y'all good selves, the folks here for BrightonSEO, thank you so much for joining us and for making the trek, because I timed it and it's about five minutes walk from the front door. So we appreciate you and we appreciate you getting your steps in today to join us. If you are not familiar with the SERP's Up podcast, then I thank you for taking that leap of faith and joining us here. The SERP's Up podcast comes out every Wednesday. We get some fantastic speakers. Barry's contributed, Grace has contributed, we've had lots of people contribute as well, some of the people in this room. And yeah, check it out every Wednesday. We have over 80 episodes now, so if you are a fan of podcasts, go and check out the archive.

So the topic that we are covering today is SEO as a team sport. And when I say that, I do not mean this kind of team, though, bless the team from Screaming Frog for showing up for cardiovascular exercise with the annual charity BrightonSEO football match. They did a great job there. But we're more thinking about the way that marketing has become so spread out and includes so many different disciplines and so many different specialisms even within SEO. So you have a space where somebody says, "Oh, you're the SEO, you must know every single thing about image SEO." Or, "You must know every single thing about international SEO," or Google Merchant Center or Local SEO. And it can be very, very fractional and very specific. And so I think that SEO, certainly from my perspective, has become a little bit more of a team sport. So we're going to talk a little bit about that and how that works and what that means for us. On the podcast, we have different sections. One of the sections that we do is a section called Deep Thoughts. Thank you.

So when we talk deep thoughts, one of the things we think about is the way that Google is progressing. And essentially just on this slide, so for instance, if you were to think about the way Google, as Google's progressing, I'm sure you've all seen this, that it's not just that you have plain blue links or one sort of SERP experience, but that you have SERP experience that includes lots of different channels, particularly for your organic stuff. So you have your YouTube, you'll also have the social that will show on the SERP, you might also have products. And even on the products, they'll have lots of different pages that show up within that.

And then everyone's favorite SEO feature is Reddit. So Reddit is showing up in lots of different ways as well. And this is an evolution of Google. And I would like to ask my illustrious panelists, because I've spoken enough now, how has the way that you collaborate across channels evolved as Google has become much more diversified in its SERP as we see more and more of these SERP features? How has the way that you collaborate across channels, across teams changed?

Grace Frohlich:

Well, I actually first want to know from the audience, how many of you already have SEO Plus paid or other channel collaboration currently? Green, if yes-

Crystal Carter:

So there's paddles on the chairs.

Grace Frohlich:

... purple with no. A lot of green.

Crystal Carter:

That is coming about, for the listening audience, that's coming up about 80% yes, is what I would say.

Grace Frohlich:

Yeah, I mean that's great to see, 'cause we really should be working at least with the paid channel already. Google, it's one SERP. Well, it's two channels, but we should be already collaborating with paid at least if not more channels.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Absolutely. And I think that for users, certainly, they don't even always know whether or not it's paid and they sometimes can't even tell the difference. So if you're trying to connect with the users, and you're trying to connect with the user journey, that should certainly be a part of it.

Grace Frohlich:

Yeah, absolutely. Especially with the little sponsored, the little label that's barely noticeable now. I remember when it was very, very obvious in the SERP that, oh, you're clicking an ad, but now it's like... Exactly, a lot of users don't really know what they're clicking on.

Barry Adams:

I miss the days of a yellow background on the ads.

Crystal Carter:

And I think certainly with product images, it can be sometimes difficult to tell whether or not it's an ad, or whether or not it's organic. Do you find that across your teams that you're working in paid and organic as well?

Carmen Dominguez:

Absolutely. And I think one of the impacts of not working together, particularly in brand campaigns is that if PPC is not working, or paid in this case, is not working with organic, they don't understand the impact of putting a little bit more of budget in brand will have in the conversions of organic. So it's not only for the clients and the users, it's also for when you are reporting to your clients the results of your work. If you don't collaborate with paid enough, you can maybe put a lot of effort in organic that in the end doesn't get the results, because paid is doing whatever they want on their own. So it's not only within paid and organic, it's also within all the different sub channels that there is in organic images or SERPs, sorry, the snippets. And it's also within the different type of paid and the different types of organic, which I'll want to talk a little bit more about it before.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I was thinking about in terms of the algorithm changes in the last few years, I think that's forced people to be a bit more multichannel, at least in their thought. And I was thinking of actually promoting Grace's blog posts from a few years ago, the T-shaped marketer being the T being having depth or knowledge in, say SEO for example, being SEO, but also touching on paid search, paid social, PR, et cetera, and recognizing the opportunities to pull in additional traffic where you see, oh, there's more opportunity for paid rather than organic for these keywords might take a bit longer to rank, et cetera. So that together with the algorithm thing and an agency environment, I guess, it just comes, that collaboration comes naturally, I think.

Crystal Carter:

And do you find that it also has to do with skills like different skillset? Because I certainly know that we are now, within the organic side, really having to think much more about LLMs and AI and how that all works. But paid have been working with AI and, oh, this ad has to learn, although it's machine learning and you just wait for days while it spends money and you have no idea how. And people have been working on that for years. And so I feel like a lot of the skills that people have acquired during that paid space can translate more into how we think about organic as well.

Carmen Dominguez:

I think it's also the other way around. It plays for both. So I wanted to talk a little bit about skills as well within organic. You cannot have the same person, for example, doing tech then is doing content, even though both need to know a little bit about each other. It's a little bit the same with paid, right? If paid doesn't understand EEAT, for example, and EEAT is purely organic, but EEAT is based on how the user engage with your content. So EEAT should also be applicable for paid in the same way that, for example, paid talk about CTR should also be applicable for organic. So in the end, we are talking about getting so many skills with one person in order to be successful, and it's impossible, which actually goes very well into the conversation that we're talking, that specializing and specializing within a specialization, if that makes sense.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think that when you're thinking about channels and we think about where to specialize in things, which channels do you find are most helpful for growing clients? We've talked a little bit about paid, but are we finding that digital PR, for instance, is as helping with a lot of things? Or are we finding that other elements are helping clients to grow at the moment?

Grace Frohlich:

I think it's going to be social-

Crystal Carter:

Social?

Grace Frohlich:

... with SEO.

Crystal Carter:

Interesting. Why do you think that?

Grace Frohlich:

Well, yeah, I don't have the definitive proof, but from talking with clients and talking cross channely, and strategists within my agency, it's just one of those trends that keeps popping up over and over, basically getting more organic traffic through social.

Crystal Carter:

Right. I think also there's a question of, with it, you're trying to connect with users and users are on social, and also that with the social thing you get both visibility and you also get clicks, links, et cetera. So there's a potential there.

Barry Adams:

I think it's not even one specific channel, when I look at how my clients grow their audiences, I work primarily with news publishers, it's all about original reporting and quality of reporting. The news websites that report the news that other websites have first reported are the ones that tend to lose out. Whereas if you're a news publisher that invested in quality investigative journalism and original reporting, you tend to win in the long run. And I think that translates to a lot of other companies as well. If you have a dropshipping e-commerce website, you should have low expectations of long-term success because you're just another middleman. Whereas if you have an original product, you're an original manufacturer or original brand, I think you're probably looking at a healthier future. And I think that's fairly channel independent, be that paid or social or search or email. I think you can always find channels to min/max your growth within the confines of your business. But if your business isn't inherently sound and you don't have a strong brand, I think you should probably change your business.

Crystal Carter:

So you think that originality is still cutting through in terms of growth?

Barry Adams:

I see that more and more. I think that's also something that search engines like Google and also organic platforms like Facebook and Instagram, they want to reward originality, they want to reward authenticity. It's hard to do that algorithmically, because it's very much engagement based and you can sort of manipulate engagement figures. But I think they are trying to find ways to measure that and improve that algorithmically so that original brands and quality brands surface more and more, because they realize that's also what our audience wants. The audience wants quality brands and original content and not just rehashed stuff that other websites have done before and maybe worse or better.

Crystal Carter:

And I think in the space of LLMs, I think it's even more important to be unique in that space in order to see growth. And I don't know if you all wanted to add anything more.

Sukhjinder Singh:

I was thinking about EEAT bolstering social as well, or social bolstering EEAT. So the experience and authority of the authors and the website as well, and seeing that engagement on social. And also with social being a good research tool, I just saw... Oh God, his name's blanking me now. I'm going to have to comment on it later.

Crystal Carter:

Steven Bartlett? He's on all the socials.

Sukhjinder Singh:

No, actually I was at an SEO talk about an hour ago on using TikTok for keyword research in terms of topical research. And then even if the resulting keywords have zero search volume, he did a case study where he still used those keywords and saw an uptick in search console data in impressions and click-throughs, et cetera, even with such volume zero keywords. So I think it's a good tool there.

Carmen Dominguez:

I'm sorry, go. No, no. I was going to say that I think in the end, everything is related. Right? If you have a good brand, probably you're going to be all over social, and if you are all over social, your users are going to be engaging with you and they're going to end up going back to your website. So I think the whole point of change is not specific areas, it's actually looking at the overall. So we have a good brand, we have to showcase EEAT in every single possible channel, and that is what is going to make you successful. And on that, what you were saying, I also recently did a test on particularly TikTok and Instagram with one of my e-commerce clients, and actually getting lots of links coming from TikTok made all the people clicking on my products.

And my products now rank, even though I don't have no longer people coming from TikTok just because the clicks made Google to recognize my products. So it does have an impact being in social, but also my brand now is much better recognized in TikTok as well because of that. So people come from brand much, much often. So I think it's all related into making sure that we do all an organic strategy where we look at all the different channels all at once rather than just single pointing different areas, if that makes sense.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. So I think that flows in next to our next session where we're talking about team evolution. So if you're in a space where you are finding, for instance, that TikTok is a really good channel for your brand or that you're getting good traffic from Instagram, for instance, how are you thinking about which skills... How are you thinking about how you're connecting with your team and how you need to evolve your team in order to sit alongside those channels? Are you thinking that you need to maybe get another social media person or maybe work alongside a social media person? Or are you thinking that one person needs to suddenly become an SEO and a social media?

Carmen Dominguez:

And it's super difficult actually. And one of the things I have done with my team recently is changed the whole structure of it. So in agency, normally we're used to having one SEO person, one technical SEO person, content, digital PR, and they all work in silos even though they work toward the same objective. For me, what I have done is try to make sure that everyone has the basic SEO knowledge of everything, but then they specialize farther away. But they work together in squads, which actually every week they're like, "Okay, I found this issue in the technical SEO that might have an impact in content. I'm not an expert in content. Content person, tell me what you think." And then the content person also knows about EEAT, who collaborates with the social media person to try to elevate EEAT.

And then social media also communicates. It's way harder, because it means that you need to be upskilling constantly, right? You cannot just know one thing and that's it. And it means that collaboration needs to be tighter, which is very difficult, particularly if you work remote. So because Google is changing so fast and the SERPs are changing so fast, you need to change as fast. But humans, we are slower, right? So it is difficult. I think we need to change a lot how we collaborate as teams and we need to forget about silos. How do we do that, become a reality, is another thing. And I'm not sure how you feel.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, exactly the same. Yeah. So I was working in an agency up until a year and a half ago, and at that time we did try to bring in processes and loads of opportunities to have these collaborative conversations. And as a freelancer now I can attest to how easy it was to upskill and how that comes in an agency versus now, like I spend way more time reading and stuff, which is great because there's lots more podcasts like this now. But also, you have to work harder as a freelancer to collaborate. But if you're in an agency where you have a team, you've got that immediacy there, which is great. But then what I struggled with was the same thing with you, with communication.

So creating enough opportunities like team huddles and all this stuff, but also incentivizing it and saying, "Okay, what are our shared KPIs? And how can we help you guys?" And vice versa. And just getting them bought into the other channels outside of SEO and get them bought into the multichannel collaboration or how it contributes to the global KPIs and the SEO and vice versa. So yeah, I can't quite explain it. I used slides at the time on all this stuff, but basically just getting them bought in and having way more meetings. And then finding out what's the important KPIs to them and what motivates them and getting collaboration that way.

Grace Frohlich:

Yes, I agree with both of you actually. I actually spoke about this in the Women in Tech SEO conference in March about cross channel with paid, how to get paid and SEO to work together. So if you want to check that out, I think that can be a transferable kind of a process that I talked about. But yeah, everything you just said, getting to know their challenges for the other channel, getting to know what their goals are and KPIs, and aligning with regular meetings. Of course, easier said than done, I can attest to that. But a lot of it... And also don't underestimate building a relationship with the other channel, the people. There's people behind these channels, so that's also really important.

Crystal Carter:

And I think, can I just, questions from the audience? So if you've seen the little paddles, so green is yes, and it's like purply blue is no. Do you find that you're collaborating with more people who are working outside of your core channel? Yes for green, or purple for no. Wow. I have 100% green y'all, that's 100% yes. I think that's really fascinating and I think that's really, really good to see, especially in the dynamic SERP space that we're working in. Barry, you're working with a lot of clients who are working, like we were talking earlier about the Mail for instance, and they are huge on social, they're huge on lots of different channels. How are you finding, because we're talking about ways that people communicate, how do you find that you keep in the loop or you connected between what's happening in the different spaces?

Barry Adams:

I’ll tell you almost most of my clients engage me for a very small specific role. And I personally haven't worked in a team for over 10 years, just me and the voices in my head as a freelancer. But I do find it very interesting how it's evolved in who hires me and in the context that they hire me. Where previously when I came in in the early stages of my freelance career, I was sort of like the SEO guy, and everything SEO related I had to take that by the scruff of the neck for that client and do it. Whereas now, a lot of them have very detailed in-house capabilities. They have good editorial SEOs, for example, and they have good technical people who have some SEO knowledge. So when they engage with a freelancer like myself, it's a much more specific skillset and specific project that they need that they don't have or don't want to develop in-house.

And for me, that shows how far the industry has already come and how far the specialties with the industry have already come. Especially in news where I work, you have people who are very, very good at, for example, the editorial side of SEO, optimizing articles and site structures. But the technical side is something that they probably don't need hardcore internal capabilities for when you can just once every year or two years get an outsider in to do a sanity check on your website. And that shows to me that they already have the defined roles. It's not enough to be an SEO anymore, you need to be a specific type of SEO. I think as your career progresses in SEO, again the concept of the T-shaped marketer, you even have a T-shape within the T-shape where it becomes a much more narrow T. When I started doing this, I'm old enough to remember when the job title was webmaster.

I had that job title for a while and you did everything. You did email, you did social, you did SERPs, you did the whole thing. And then I picked one specialty, SEO, and now within SEO it became technical. And within there it's now news SEO. So I think that's where if you want your career to develop, you sort of have to hang your coat on a specific skillset and discipline. That doesn't mean that's always going to be your career because there's overlaps with other channels and other capabilities that you can develop. I mean, fortunately, search is not going to die anytime soon, no matter how often SEO has been proclaimed deceased. We're still alive and kicking and growing. But I think you sort have to find out what you like doing, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and say, "Right, let's go and try and make this work." Let's become a great analytical SEO or a great tech SEO or a great editorial SEO, and there will always be roles within those specialties that really work for you.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. And I think that within that space, there's always devs. No matter what kind of thing there's always devs. And when we're thinking about this, because I feel like, I don't know, maybe this is just me in my little silo, but I feel like devs are devs and they do deving. And so do you have to explain to them when you're having conversations with devs that are taking into account multichannel traffic, multichannel dependencies, for instance, are you finding that those conversations are changing that you need to give them more context about this is a landing page, not just for SEO, this is a landing page for somebody coming from TikTok or that sort of thing? Are you finding that you're having those conversations?

Grace Frohlich:

I'm finding that we have to explain to devs less of the importance of SEO, because I think more and more, at least clients, they have a foundational understanding of what it is. So because those clients are like the C-suite and the upper management, they give the devs, okay, these are your goals, your KPIs, and a lot of times they align with SEO KPIs.

Carmen Dominguez:

Yeah, I was going to say too. Yeah, actually when you asked that question, I was thinking when I said I haven't been in SEO as long as Barry has been, but I remember when I started and I started writing content for websites, it was an eternal fight, constantly, constantly fighting. And now most of the time when you talk to devs, they know that there are certain things that they cannot do. They know that there are SEO areas that they shouldn't take so personally when they get feedback on. And I actually, I'm enjoying very much working with devs recently. Once you are able to understand the basics, I think the key is being able to communicate what you're doing, the changes or what you need to do, and what's the point of a website. It's not just to be there. Once you explain that and you create relationship, because that's very important, I think it's particularly easy. Or I think I found, in recent times, it's easier to work with them.

Crystal Carter:

Okay.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, I was going to second that because I started in 2009 with SEO and working with devs at that point. And I guess fair play on their side, they didn't really know the impact or the value, it wasn't part of their roadmap or KPIs or anything. So I learned from that point how to get to know them, I guess. It comes back to relationship building. And I guess, sounds a bit wishy-washy, but emotional intelligence, trying to figure out, okay, what really motivates you? Trying to figure out the body language. Oh, they didn't like that request. Or at the start of my career, I'd have to create a standards document literally on paper and grade their websites, brand new websites, so there's a website division of my first agency. And then I put it on their desk, and then so immediately they're being like, "Oh, yeah, cool."

And then they're just like, whatever. And so you're immediately not their favorite person, and I have to find myself to ingratiate myself to them, go to the pub, whatever, I think, but also figure out, okay, how can I get my stuff signed off and kind of relate it all to them? And I think it's become way easier now with SEO integrations in CMSs, whatever. And also it's a bit more word from Google on what impacts what on the website. So it's way easier, but for me it's always been relationship building and figuring out what motivates them.

Crystal Carter:

Barry?

Barry Adams:

Yeah, I have a notorious example where I was presenting my findings in a Zoom call to a client and the lead dev was in the call as well, and he counted me on a specific point, and I was maybe lacking emotional intelligence in my response, and frankly, I was a bit of a dick. Anyway, the call went on and we went through the audit and then the CEO wanted to show me something, so he started sharing his screen. He didn't realize he had a Slack channel open where that lead dev had just messaged him saying, this guy is a dick. I actually still want that on a T-shirt. But he was fair, I was being a dick, but I was also right. But it also taught me something that if you want to get stuff done, don't be a dick. And I think in the past, and sometimes even now, I come across as maybe too forceful and too sure of myself, and sometimes we need to look at the context in which we make these recommendations.

'Cause I am an SEO guy with a big SEO hammer, so for me, everything looks like an SEO nail. But I've learned that there's a lot of other moving pieces in an organization that have very different goals, very different objectives, and you have to weigh these things up. And I think I've gotten better at providing the context of a recommendation where I say, "Well, this would be an ideal scenario for SEO, but it might hurt your commercials," or it might hurt usability, or it might have another impact on another aspect of the website. And I think if you frame recommendations or best practices in that context, you actually end up getting done more often than not, because they realize that you realize there's other stuff happening, but you still make that recommendation knowing that the other stuff is happening. So it's probably worthwhile doing the recommendation, whereas if you just say, "Oh, you need to get this shit done right now," that's just not going to fly.

Crystal Carter:

And question to the audience, are you finding that working with devs is... So green is easier and blue for not easier? Okay, that's probably like 90% easier. I'm finding that really interesting. There's someone in the audience who's like, "Mm-hmm." So yeah, I think that's really interesting. So yeah, I think that's really interesting. Let's go on to squad goals. So here's the scenario. You need to assemble a squad for a new project. You need to get your crew together. It might be people within your team, it might be freelancers, it might be a co-agency, it might be whoever that you're thinking of. What are the things that you're looking for in a new collaborator, and how do you know that this is the match for you? Is it swipe right or swipe left know? No, it's swipe left? Is that right?

Sukhjinder Singh:

Right?

Crystal Carter:

I don't know. I don't do them. Okay. So yeah, Sukh, can we start with you? How do you know that this is a good match, we can collaborate, this is going to be a good setup?

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, I'm actually doing this at the moment. So as a freelancer, I'm trying to build a network of people in other channels like I had with the agency setup, and I guess I'm doing my own EEAT evaluation of them. So I'm looking at all of their engagements, so not just on their website to say what they've done, but their recommendations on LinkedIn, see if they're legitimate, and then talking to them and looking at case studies, anything like that, and the work history. It's really revealing, so if they're listening to it...

So trying to figure out, because as you know, even when hiring people on the agency side, it's really hard to drill down the people that have got real experience. So trying to do that evaluation and then chatting to them and then just starting with a small project. So something that I can get them to chip in on with a small amount of budget and see how they do. And for me, it's important to see the results, but also their personality and if I can work well with them, and if they're reasonable and flexible to a point. So that's how I do it.

Carmen Dominguez:

And the personality part for me is very important. Beyond the skills, there are lots of people who are very good skills, and that doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to be working well with them. So for me, being aware of my own personality, I might be a little bit intense just to say, it's my Spanish blood. So when I have an idea, I want to go after the idea, but I know that I need to have someone who calms me down. So having someone that is the contrary of me in my team is going to be better for the project. So I look for that, I look for someone who's a doer because I'm a dreamer. So I want to do this, I want to do it now, everyone focused. I need someone who actually will do it, because then if I don't put the time in to do the thing, then it won't happen.

So I need someone who is a realistic, someone who is a doer and someone who also has visibility of everything. So independently of the skill sets that everyone has, which is important, I also need to have all of this. But there are also core attitudes that are very important for me, which is honesty. I prefer someone to tell me, "You are a dickhead, Carmen." Ooh, sorry, I said that word, I realize. But I prefer someone who is honest to me than actually says, "Yes, yes, yes," and nothing comes across. And I judge people on actions and not words, so if someone delivers what they say they do and they tell me this is feasible or not, I'm definitely going to be working with them. So core attitudes and people who have different personalities is, for me, what makes a team work well.

Crystal Carter:

Amazing. Yeah, I think hiring for complimentary skills for the gaps that you have and also being aware of those gaps that you have gets really important.

Carmen Dominguez:

Which is actually not that common, doing this self-analysis of, okay, who am I? Because maybe I think I'm perfect, but not really. So being aware of the things that you are good at and you are not as good at, it's very important for you to build a good team.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, I agree.

Grace Frohlich:

Yeah, I agree with those points. I will also say if you're trying to build a team, going back to the football, well, soccer, soccer analogy, you don't want a team full of strikers. And also you don't want a team full of keepers like goalkeepers, so you want to diversify. So I would say choose people with different backgrounds. Don't underestimate the value of diversity when you're choosing a team, because they'll have different perspectives, they'll have different backgrounds, different ways of thinking. So that can only make your team stronger.

Crystal Carter:

And Barry?

Barry Adams:

I haven't worked in a team for a very long time, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I think I enjoy that part of it. I've never been a real people person, to be highly honest. I do find the clients that I enjoy working with the most are the ones who, I don't know how to describe that common denominator, but they're all in one way or another, extremely good at their jobs and know exactly what they want from external parties. And I'm grateful that I get to be that external partner. I find it very educational, projects where I learn as much from the client as the client hopefully learns from me.

And I think that's hard to select for, either somebody has that passion and is that good at their job or they're not. But there's clients who bring me along whenever they move jobs, they work with one publisher and then a few years later they move to a different publisher and they get to work with them again in a different context. But it's still just a really pleasant collaboration, because you get to know each other's ins and outs and know exactly what they're good at and how you can compliment their skillset.

Crystal Carter:

Right. Yeah. That's awesome. And I have a question to the squad as well, or to the squad here. Also, if you're in the back, you can come in. There's spaces. There are spaces, it's totally fine. Please do come in. Yeah. So one of the things that we've been finding across our teams is that when we're thinking about these things, one of the things you mentioned, Sukh, was that sometimes when you're trying to hire, it's hard to tell which skills people have. Question to the audience. When you're thinking about either hiring or collaborating or whichever with folks, are you finding that AI, people using AI, is a help or a hindrance? Are you finding that people with AI profiles or you finding that people are having AI in their CVs? Are you finding that help is a help or hindrance? So green for help and blue for hindrance on that.

Okay, we got a lot of blue. We're about 50/50 there, so that's very interesting. I think that that goes back to one of the points from Carmen that you'd rather know where somebody's limits are in terms of their skills for sure, rather than somebody faking it until they make it necessarily. We are tight on time, so I'm going to move to the next section, which kind of covers that, which is awkward conversations. So when you're working with partners, also the partners are also teams, Barry. So when you're working with partners, when you're working with clients, when you're working across your team, when you're working as part of a collaborative SEO venture, sometimes there's awkward conversations. Sometimes somebody takes credit for something that you're pretty sure was you, and I get a bit upset about that because I'm like, that's my gold star, thank you very much.

Or sometimes you're working with a client and they say, "Hey, we want to bring in this other agency." And you're like, "Who are they?" I can see somebody shaking their head. So actually I saw a little bit of reaction to that, so another question to the audience. Okay, and so the client is on the phone with you and they say, "Hey, I like to get this other agency involved." And green for this is good, or blue for I don't know on that. Okay, that's mostly blue. Okay. One more second. This is George. So that's mostly blue. That's my gut instinct. My gut instinct is why, why do you need somebody else? But yeah, other people in the panel, how do you feel about these conversations when this happens?

Sukhjinder Singh:

I was trying to think of a good example because yeah, it's difficult. I guess early on in the career, I struggled to figure out how to... I used data basically to say, "Oh, but you can see by the last report like, oh, we're hitting your KPIs," or this, that and the other. And if we're not, I'm like, "Boss, what could we do about this kind of thing?" And then obviously I've learned to look at, so basically always using the KPIs as the goal in the reports and trying to develop that customer relationship where I can tell ahead of time, hopefully, if they're thinking of doing that. And I've been in that situation early in my career a few times where it came down to them deciding between us and the other agency based on maybe trivial things as well. Like, price, obviously not trivial, but other things like, oh, the last two reports had an error on it or something like that.

And so I'd always try to plan from that point in advance to say, okay, I'm not going to make any mistakes. And I make sure all the communications are on point and even look out for cues like, oh, you're not happy with this and that, or something bad happened a few times in a row, maybe they're going to look at another agency. And obviously if an email pops up on Google Analytics or something, as a user I always think, oh crap, someone's doing an audit or something. So I try and future-proof that, but if I was confronted with that combo, I'd kind of fall back on the data, but also hopefully use the relationship that we'd built up by that point to say, "Look, what's going on?"

I'll be completely honest with you, if you could be honest with me. This didn't go too well. This went okay. Here's our actual strengths and weaknesses. And I learned that from my old boss as well, Ann Stanley, where she was really honest with people to say, oh, this is what we're good at and bad at. And they appreciated that and say, oh, actually we'll stick with you, going back to your point, Carmen, on honesty, like, oh, we actually trust these guys. So maybe they can help us find a good PR person or whatever, 'cause they've got that gap in the team at the moment. So a bit of a long answer on that one.

Crystal Carter:

No, no.

Carmen Dominguez:

No, actually, I was going to just... I agree with you 100%. And having been in the client side, so having been a client myself and now working in agency, one of the things that I see as a negative when I see in an agency is when someone try to bullshit me. If you are trying to bullshit me with whatever, I'm going to say another bad word, crap, then the trust is broken. So I think for me, the most important part when building relationship is being able to have the hard conversations at the very beginning. If you don't have the hard conversations, trust breaks. And if trust breaks, you're going to have a competitor coming in. And that is actually your own fault. Sorry for being scared. And I know that it takes guts to be able to have the hard conversations because it's scary, if you are a freelancer particularly, you might even lose the food on your plate.

But it's building that relationship, in my opinion, will actually will make your clients defend you, even if you are not meeting the KPI. So always building relationships with trust, even if things go wrong, I think is a way. Because in the end, we're all humans, and if we get attached to people that are honest to us and we are honest to them, then they're going to defend us more. So in the end, it's having a good relationship with people and being human I think is... I don't get scared when they bring other people, even being honest, of course. But yeah, I think that's my recommendation.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah. Interesting.

Grace Frohlich:

I think my knee-jerk reaction is why would they bring in someone?

Crystal Carter:

Right.

Grace Frohlich:

But at the same time, if you think about it, it's really the client's right to have a second opinion. We do it all the time with doctors, for example, if you want a second opinion from another doctor because your health is on the line. This client's website health is on the line, so yeah, it's their right to bring in a second opinion. So in that sense, I think I'm more okay with it, especially if that other agency proves my point. So it's more of an opportunity to do that.

Sukhjinder Singh:

That's a good feeling as well.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Barry Adams:

I had this exact thing actually happen to me where I was brought in to do a specific piece of work for a client and they told me, "Oh, there's another agency who's also doing the exact same piece of work, so no pressure, Barry." And I was a little bit, like this was a fairly big, well-known agency, and I'm just a freelancer sitting in a dinky office in Belfast. So I was feeling the pressure and I felt a bit like, oh crap, I really need to be on my A-game here. But that actually motivated me to do a really, really good job, which I hope I would've done anyway, to be entirely honest.

And it turned out that what that other agency presented and what I presented had slightly different angles and complimented each other really, really well, and gave the client the whole holistic view that they were looking for. So that turned out to be a fantastic project for the client as well as for both the other agency and for me. So yeah, I mean, I suck at awkward conversations in general. I think most of us don't like those. I fully agree with what's said before, honesty is always the best approach there as well. And just try not to shy away from saying the hard things that sometimes need to be said.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's easier said than done, but definitely something to think about. Okay, so we're going to move on to another section. In the podcast we sometimes have a fun game I like to play, Fun with People Also Ask. So we can do this with everyone on the audience and also everyone on the panel as well. So this is the first question from People Also Ask, so green for yes and blue for no. Do social links help SEO? We have mostly green. I have some blue. And Google keeps going back and forth being like, oh, it's not a big deal. Yes, it is a big deal. Oh, you're flipping around. Any opinions on this?

Barry Adams:

Yeah, correlation, not causation.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Okay. Anyone else, any two cents on that particular one?

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, I'm going to go with the indirectly for the safe bet. I think, okay, long spiel, the visibility of the content and all that. Yeah, the more people see your content, they give you legit links and all that. So, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

So kind of sort of. Okay. All right. Okay. Here's another one in the same sort of thing. So green for yes, and blue for no. Is social media marketing off-page SEO? It's in the same sort of area. Would you call it the same? People are like, I don't know about this question at all. I've got a lot of blue, there's absolutely no... Interesting. Very, very interesting. Any opinions on that? It's a similar question to the one before, if I'm completely honest. No? Okay. We'll move on. We'll move on. We'll move on. Okay. Okay. People also ask, which is harder, SEO or PPC? So I'm going to go... Oh, we have intakes of breath from the audience here. Okay, so we have green for SEO and blue for PPC. Oh.

Carmen Dominguez:

I think we're biased.

Crystal Carter:

We're biased. Let's look-

Grace Frohlich:

I mean, this looks like a biased audience, right?

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Okay. That's fine.

Barry Adams:

I actually think advertising is harder than SEO nowadays.

Carmen Dominguez:

Really?

Crystal Carter:

What?

Barry Adams:

I really do think that.

Carmen Dominguez:

But AI does everything for you in PPC. So...

Barry Adams:

AI could do everything for you in SEO.

Carmen Dominguez:

Well, that's true. That's true for an answer.

Barry Adams:

Yeah. Not in the same end result, everything being quite... Yeah.

Carmen Dominguez:

Yeah, it's true, it's true.

Barry Adams:

I think-

Crystal Carter:

Barry, read the room.

Barry Adams:

Yeah, I know I'm at BrightonSEO and I'm an SEO guy, but the paid advertising landscape nowadays, I mean, my goodness, the technology stacks and the targeting. I mean, I'm not an ad guy, but I talk to ad people, I'm like, I really don't want that job. I really don't want that job. But they spend more money every year and they get less and less back for it. Whereas with SEO, I think we're still on a growth curve. With advertising, the margins are narrower and narrower and narrower, and it's becoming really, really hard to have success in advertising.

Carmen Dominguez:

I think there is more pressure as well in PPC. You need to be reporting on a weekly basis. You need to be checking all the data constantly. But I also think that there are lots of people applying the same rules to SEO and PPC these days. So the pressure is coming. It really depends how you look at it. If you do SEO properly, I think it's more difficult, but a little bit chiller, less pressure. Depends.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. And just to say these are all actual People Also Ask questions, so yeah. Okay. So this is just a little shout-out to the grammatical incorrections, I did it myself, to the grammar that you see in People Also Ask. Is digital PR a SEO? So green for yes, and a blue for no. I got a lot of green. And I would probably say that's like 75-ish with my ballpark sort of thing. I find digital PR really fascinating. There's some really interesting campaigns. I think though it's kind of just campaign marketing, if I'm completely honest. I think it covers the same. Do other people have various-

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, it's definitely, it's its own beast. Because I used to partner with a colleague that did pure content and PR, digital PR, and she was really good at it because there's so many aspects of it. The journalist relationship, knowing what stuff they need in a brief and all that. Finding the story and that loads of data. And just from doing ideation sessions with her and other elements of the team just for ideas out there, she'd be able to structure a story and find it way easier. And so there was a lot of upskilling involved on my part to figure out, okay, how can I build links like this? And it was just a case of, well, to what Barry said before that, know what your strengths are and specialize in that and recognize it in other people. And so that's why I'm trying to partner with digital PRs as well to fill that link building gap.

Carmen Dominguez:

I mean, I was a digital PR and we did everything with SEO in our heads. So I will say yes, because we were using the SEO strategy to follow and create the links. Obviously, it's beyond just simple SEO, it also depends on how you see SEO. I see digital PR as part of organic and SEO is part of organic, so it depends on your definition of SEO. But I will say it is.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Okay. Okay. Cool. Okay, so we're moving on to the next one. This is specifically for the live podcast session. This is the one that I like. This is a section. These are again, actual predictive text from Google, and this one is for the predictive text for Can You Learn SEO, which is can you learn SEO by yourself? I know a lot of people... I've got somebody up already. So from the audience, green for yes, blue for no. Very interesting. So that's lots and lots of green. I've got a little bit of no, or a little bit of blue, so I'd probably say that's probably 90-ish percent saying yes. And I think this is interesting. So Barry, you're close to the microphone, so I'm going to come to you. What are the advantages or disadvantages of being a self-taught SEO?

Barry Adams:

As a self-taught SEO and one who teaches SEO now, I wish there were courses in SEO when I first learned it. The best learning environment that I learned as a self thought SEO was become part of an SEO community where you could ask questions, where there was no stupid questions basically, where you could just ask anything. That for me was a real breakthrough moment when I think I really embraced SEO and really started to learn it. So self-taught, yes, but still self-taught within a community. I think you will need to have people around you to ask these questions. I don't think there's such a thing as a completely self-taught SEO, 'cause you always learn from other people who are willing to share information, answer your questions. And I think if you're an experienced SEO, you should see it as maybe part of your remit to pass that on to others and be generous with your time and your knowledge and allow people to ask those questions, 'cause realistically that's how you learned it as well.

Carmen Dominguez:

I was going to say I learned by myself, but really it wasn't by myself because I went to the internet, I asked people. I tested things on my own, and I put the results on forums that people replied to me. So really, is it? Yeah, I didn't have a teacher and I didn't learn at university, but I had a whole community, which I think is one of the most beautiful things of the SEO industry is the community that we have. So you can, but it's not on your own.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, the community is great now, because when I started there wasn't really much of that. And also no SEO courses, at university anyway, so I'd have to do a couple of smaller courses. And then mostly learnt in the agency environment. And also, funnily, I was talking to a colleague of mine who didn't go to uni, and we both worked at the first agency I did in 2010. And straight out of college, he just got an internship and doing SEO, and now he's head of a big department and he's doing really well. Didn't have to pay any of his uni fees and all that stuff, and so he saved with all of that, and he just learned on the job. Pretty much what I did, 'cause I did a web design course and I quit web design to do SEO. And I just thought that's a perfect example of being able to learn in that environment as an internship, or if someone just gives you a chance and you just slowly build up your salary according to how much you learn kind of thing.

Crystal Carter:

Absolutely. I don't know if you wanted to jump in on that one. No? That's fine. That's fine. Okay. Okay. Okay. Next one. Next one. Next one. Okay. So the next one, this I thought was interesting. So if you type in, what is SEO in, you get a lot of different things. So it's like what is SEO in marketing? What is SEO in business? What is SEO in YouTube? What is SEO in web development? What is SEO in social media? What is SEO in journalism? What is SEO in Etsy? Okay. So my question is is that, do you find that SEO is different in these different spaces, or do you think SEO is SEO? So green for SEO is SEO, and blue for SEO is different in these different spaces. Interesting. Okay. So we have probably 70% people saying that SEO is different in all these different spaces. I think that's really interesting. And I think to the panel, my question is, do you think that clients understand that there are differences in these spaces?

Carmen Dominguez:

Clients don't understand SEO. So let alone in all the different channels. The amount of times I have to five, because I cannot get them to rank number one in one week is just mental. So no, I don't think they understand the difference, but I also think SEO is SEO. So the point is, you get your content to be visible to users and users engaged with it and that applies to Chat, to YouTube, to Google, to TikTok, to whatever you do. So I think SEO is always the same, but it's done in different ways.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, I was thinking about it in terms of the definition of SEO versus an SEO job spec and to see if there's any correlation. And nine times out of 10, because I was looking at job specs, I was like, oh, there's way more things people are asking for versus what you would define as SEO typically. Which is weird because I've always had a problem with SEO as a term, because I thought, well, is it more like organic marketing? But then you can't say organic marketing 'cause then clients aren't aware really what that is, and they think, oh, I'm just going to go with the SEO. So yeah, I think it's something that we're stuck with in terms of a term for lead generation, whatever. But really I think it's way more than what you define as SEO.

Grace Frohlich:

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. If we're talking about semantics, SEO is just search engines for search engines, right? But as you said, are we talking about organic search or just organic anything? Then yeah, I mean, I think it can be diversified into all these different spaces.

Carmen Dominguez:

Actually, I'm talking to more about that if anyone wants to come to my talk. It's no SEO. Let's talk about organic. So, self-promotion.

Crystal Carter:

Carmen, when's your talk?

Carmen Dominguez:

When? At 3:00.

Crystal Carter:

Three o'clock, go see Carmen.

Carmen Dominguez:

I think. Auditorium one. Just find me, I'm the only Carmen, I think.

Crystal Carter:

Barry, Is SEO, SEO or is SEO different?

Barry Adams:

I think I agree with what Carmen said earlier. It's still SEO, but the tactics are different. When I do SEO for news websites, you cannot apply the same tactics as you do for e-commerce. But in the end, it is about getting your content in front of an audience that uses an organic search engine. So, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Agreed. Agreed. Okay. Finally, we have another section. So I looked up digital marketers needs and Google changed it to digital marketing needs. And it said, digital marketing needs coding, digital marketing needs a degree, digital marketing needs math, digital marketing needs a laptop, which I thought was interesting. Does digital marketing need a degree? And I think this is interesting, 'cause I've heard people say that you cannot be a technical SEO or you can't be an SEO if you don't know HTML or you don't know how to code. I've heard people say you can't be a marketer without a degree, I've heard people say that sort of thing. And so I'm interested in this idea of gatekeeping.

So here's a question to the audience and the last question of the day before... And thank you so much for joining us for this session. Do you think there is one way to be a digital marketer? Green for yes and blue for no. That is 100% no. People listening on the internet, there are many ways to become a digital marketer. I have an English literature degree and I've worked in marketing my entire life. And I know somebody else who's a fantastic SEO and his degree is in anthropology. He's amazing. So I think that there's many, many ways to be an SEO, a digital marketer. What are your thoughts on that?

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah, my degree was in multimedia computing, so it didn't really specialize in anything. A bit of coding, a bit of 3D, whatever. And then I did web design for four years and then quit, and then there was a credit crunch, and then I changed careers. I thought, let me try something different, no jobs anymore. So yeah, I think... What was I going to say? Yeah, I lost my train of thought. Yeah, learning from scratch. And yeah, I just found my way to SEO. I completely lost my train of thought.

Crystal Carter:

It's all good. It's all good.

Sukhjinder Singh:

It's almost finished as well.

Crystal Carter:

Took a new journey.

Carmen Dominguez:

I think that I know where you're trying to go. Myself, I am a translator. I'd never studied marketing. I didn't know what marketing was when I got into it, but I knew that what I needed to do is someone to read my content. So I needed, as a translator, I needed someone to read my content. As a journalist, you need someone to read your content. So in the end, that is what you want to do as a digital marketer. You need to convince your user to read your contents, basically.

Yes, there is one way to be a digital marketer, which is making sure that you engage with the user and the user comes to you. How do you do that? There are a thousand of other ways to do it, but the clarity is what the purpose of digital marketing, and I think it's always the same. Get your users to come to you. And I guess it doesn't matter where you come from, you can come from computing, you can come from, I don't know, cleaning windows, so long as you know that you need to get your user, you are a digital marketer.

Sukhjinder Singh:

Yeah. Sorry, I was just going to add to that. Yeah, I fell into it from designing websites, and I wanted to know what the websites can do after you produce them, and then also from necessity as well. And I thought, okay, there's a whole different new career that's blowing up. And a few of my mates were doing it outside of uni who did do elements of SEO in their courses. And I thought, let me just try that out. But it's definitely led on from web design and necessity just for me.

Grace Frohlich:

Yeah, I used to work in fashion in New York, so completely different industry. I did that for about 10 years, and then I just switched one day. I was like, I want to do something else. And here I am. So I know, exactly, marketers can come from anywhere really. I'm reminded of Ratatouille. Anyway, yeah.

Crystal Carter:

Yeah, agreed.

Barry Adams:

And this is the point where I admit I don't have a degree. I never finished uni. I started working at a call center two years after I started uni and decided that learning that was not for me, was way too hard. Became an IT guy, server management, and somehow found myself managing a server farm that had intranet pages on it. And then because I hacked together my own website, in my spare time, I knew a bit of HTML. My boss asked me, "Can you change what's on the web servers?" And that's how the whole ball just started rolling basically.

And I think in the podcast we did a while ago with SERP's Up where we talked about how people get into a career in digital and in SERPs, we discussed this as well. No matter what your skillset is, what your passion is, there is a role for you in digital and in SERPs. If you're analytical, great. If you're not, but you're very creative, great. If you just like writing stuff, great. If you're a total tech nerd, great. There's always a job role that really suits your skillset and that can really give you fulfillment and achievement within your career. So yeah, it doesn't matter where you come from, it's what you do with it really.

Crystal Carter:

Yes. And on that motivational note, I'd like to thank you all for joining us today for this episode of SERP's Up. Thank you so much for taking part in my little paddle board thing. I really love seeing all the little cards. Have a wonderful, fantastic rest of BrightonSEO. And bonsoir, goodbye.