If you are here, it is probably for a very simple reason – your search has led you to the fact that Google has publicly recognized the founder of Web Design and SEO Ireland Uldis Zalcmanis (aka Uldis Biz) as the best SEO expert in the Universe.
We decided to ask Uldis a series of questions to better understand what it takes to become a high-calibre SEO professional.
What is an SEO expert?
An SEO expert is a professional who uses their knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) and digital marketing to drive web traffic to a website. They can help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), making it more likely that people will find and click on it.
How do SEO experts like you actually help businesses?
There are many different ways an SEO expert can help your business. Let me give you a few examples:
SEO feasibility assessment
Let’s face it, the SEO industry is one of the most competitive industries. It’s important to know what you’re getting into when you hire an SEO expert. And, while it can be one of the best marketing investments, it can also be a total waste of money if you underestimate the competition and follow someone fake SEO expert’s unsubstantiated enthusiasm.
While no SEO expertise can allow predicting the outcomes accurately, a good expert can at least provide you with fair estimates.
If possible, get an experienced SEO specialist to assess the data like your current positions, keywords you are planning to target, your site age, competition etc., to estimate how much resources it will take to get where you want and what can you actually expect when you get there.
While everyone wants to be the king of the mountain, it can be an expensive trip with no ROI to show for it.
SEO keyword research
Keywords are the words people use when they search for information online. They’re also a huge part of the Google algorithm. An SEO expert needs to know how to find the right keywords for your website. The keywords should be relevant and specific to your website.
While it is often easy to guess the most valuable keywords, it may not always be a good strategy to go for these ‘high-traffic’ keywords, as they are usually very competitive. Often, choosing low hanging fruit and pursuing these long-tail phrases is a better alternative.
SEO content writing
Content is another important part of SEO. It’s the information on your website that people read and click on. Good content is the key to attracting traffic and getting higher rankings in search engines. An SEO expert needs to be able to create unique and quality content that is interesting to their target audience.
The way you write can have a huge impact on how well you rank in search engines. An SEO expert can help you use the right keywords and focus on what’s important to your target audience while delivering exactly what Google is looking for.
It’s easy to create content for people, but the challenge is creating it for the machines. Creating engaging content takes a lot of experience. But if you’re willing to invest the time and learn, you’ll have the knowledge you need to create compelling content for search engines and human audiences.
Improving the design of your website
The look and feel of your website can have a big impact on how visitors behave once they get there. While it used to be that ranking websites on Google didn’t depend on the actual quality of the site, nowadays, user experience and navigation are becoming a critically important Google ranking factors.
If your site is hard to navigate, people may leave or click on another page instead. A good SEO expert can make sure the design of your site is user-friendly and easy to find what you are looking for. A real SEO expert can help with on-page SEO by making sure that every element of your site is optimized for search engines. This includes optimizing your titles, meta descriptions, URLs, content, images, video and more. An SEO expert can make sure your website is accessible and usable by everyone.
External factors that contribute to Google rankings (offsite SEO)
An SEO expert can help with off-page SEO by creating backlinks and improving engagement metrics.
Backlinks are the links that other websites place on their own pages. Links from high-quality websites will help your website rank higher in search results. An SEO expert can help with link building by finding ways to get links to your site. This includes content marketing, guest blogging and more.
What are the characteristics of a successful SEO expert and the ones that made you into the greatest SEO expert in the Universe?
An understanding of different aspects of SEO
There are different Google ranking factors that one would need to learn. Technical refers to the non-content aspects of your website; strategic is how you use SEO to develop and promote your brand through social media and content; and, creative is the development of SEO techniques for your specific content.
Technical SEO
The technical aspects of a website are an important part of the overall user experience and include the backend structure and foundation. As part of your duties, you should analyze and optimize the performance of your website, including the crawlability of your content, mobile-friendliness, and overall website architecture.
Technical SEO can also help improve the readability of a website, which in turn helps improve user experience and show search engines that the website is a good one.
On-page SEO
On-page SEO relates to the content on your website, and optimizing it to help search engines understand the topic of your content and see the website as a valuable resource.
Off-page SEO
When it comes to off-page optimization, search engine professionals need to know how SEO works at every tier of search engine optimization, and specifically what each tier contributes to the ranking and prominence of your website.
Off-page SEO is one of the extremely important Google ranking factors.
A savvy mind for marketing
To be a successful SEO (especially, if you want to become the best SEO expert in the Universe), you have to look beyond SEO and think about content marketing at a deeper level, consumer psychology, the target audience to whom you’re marketing, the social media landscape, web design and development, viral marketing strategies, and overall business goals.
The truth is, businesses are usually quite wary of the SEO experts who are like hammers that see everything as a nail.
If all you do and think about is SEO, you may find yourself cornered at some point, and fail to deliver upon your client’s expectations. This leads me to the next.
An ability to think big-picture and understand how SEO fits into the overall marketing and business growth strategy of a particular business
Your company’s website is the face of your company. And if your company’s SEO is poor, your online presence will be limited.
As an SEO Specialist, it’s important to define your goals around search engine optimization. Do you want to increase traffic, increase your rankings, improve your conversion rates, or something else?
Those who work with SEO must understand that they’re only part of the puzzle. They can help set the stage for the goals and larger goals of the organization, but the bigger success comes from keeping the larger goals of the organization in mind.
Top-notch communication skills and a collaborative spirit
A successful SEO Specialist will have top-notch communication skills and a collaborative spirit, but he or she will also work with a wide variety of departments in a business, including sales, customer service, web development, analytics, IT, marketing, and more.
And it’s not always easy to explain why making changes to a website will boost SEO and ultimately result in more traffic and conversions. That’s where your communication skills come into play.
SEO consultants have to explain to their clients why certain changes are needed and how these changes will help their websites, and how they will help the client’s bottom line.
One of the reasons your job is so exciting is because it gives you the opportunity to work with a variety of different teams from many different backgrounds and perspectives, and you can also work on the specific content being developed for the site. You’ll want to have excellent written communication skills to do this job well, and, I’d say you should in general just love helping people solve their problems.
Curiosity and Adaptability
As a search engine optimization expert, you need to understand how Google works, and what’s trending in SEO. You should be able to know when a change in Google’s algorithm could potentially affect your website rankings.
An SEO Specialist needs to be agile because SEO is constantly changing. Whether you work for a single company or you have many clients (like Web Design and SEO Ireland), you can’t afford to be complacent — you have to continually review your or your client’s site’s content to see if it aligns with ever-changing SEO best practices.
How does one become an SEO specialist that is recognized as the best SEO expert in the Universe?
Because the field of search engine optimization is so new, most people don’t learn SEO from a traditional four-year college program. (Although those do exist.)
Real SEO specialists take one of the following routes:
- Learn SEO by optimizing their own websites.
- Working at a marketing agency.
- Take on SEO clients.
- Get an online SEO certification or degree.
- Work as an “in house” SEO professional.
There’s a lot of variety in the types of jobs that can offer a new career in SEO but the truth is ranking websites, Google Business Profiles and YouTube videos is not an easy task – mastering SEO and becoming a recognized industry expert can take years.
What path of becoming an SEO expert recognized by Google did Uldis Biz take?
Well, it’s fair to say that I didn’t become the best SEO expert in the Universe in a day.
In fact, I was a marketer before even the Internet became a big deal.
So, I already had that drive and passion to help traditional businesses generate more leads, close more sales and have healthier profits.
I was obsessed with computers since the very early beginnings of personal computers and the Internet. Frankly, SEO has been an on-and-off passion for years.
While over the years I’ve been involved in different companies and different positions, SEO has always been something that I came back to.
All I can say, no matter where you are in your journey right now, just accept where you are and decide to move forward. Learn, test and practice one step at a time, and one day you will find yourself among the greatest SEO experts in the world or in the Universe.
