“Five questions with…” features SEO professionals and marketers of all experience levels.
To kick things off, we chatted with
1. How did you get into SEO?
I was an avid gamer and first learned about SEO by building websites for a Counter-Strike clan!
I discovered the idea of search engines in my mid-teens but only properly learned SEO from the ground up after joining a Germany-based SEO agency in 2011.
I’m pretty bullish on AI changing the game significantly—I foresee us moving away from classic search results to something less cluttered, with fewer but better results.
You know how it is with SEO projections, though. I could easily be wrong, and the opposite might happen.
Most SEOs start way too technical. This isn’t a problem if you have your own business or site. But when working with clients or in-house, you need to tie your recommendations to business problems and avoid technical speak—except when talking with certain teams, like engineers.
SEO is no longer the hacky, dark art that it used to be—yet too many SEOs still behave like it is. This holds them back from accomplishing more because they don’t get buy-in and funding for their recommendations.
Learn by doing. SEO is an applied science, meaning theory isn’t worth that much.
Start your own side project and test hypotheses that are informed by what you read or hear from others. Always test things out yourself. Did I mention testing?
Here is my best DALL-E sketch of a ghost. 😉
Learn more
Kevin is a former director of SEO at Shopify and currently advises SEO and growth teams at Snap Inc. and Ramp, among others. Find out more on his website.
Editor’s Note
This is a new series idea we’re testing, so we’d love your feedback. Was it interesting? Do you want to see more of these? To let us know or nominate someone for the series, send Rebecca a DM on Twitter here.
