learn SEO and digital marketing from the experts

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

I started my internet marketing career way back in December 2012. I stumbled upon one job offer in Onlinejobs.ph and it caught my interest that time. The job description stated that the company needed an SEO professional who knew about keyword research, keyword density, writing, use of SEO tools, and other SEO activities. Since that time, I was working on some freelance writing projects, I applied for that position (SEO) even though I didn’t have any background with link building and SEO activities (but I knew that writing is a must in SEO).

After two months, I was fired by the company and wait for several weeks to apply for another SEO job. While waiting, I enhanced my SEO skills (more particularly in the marketing and writing sides of it) through reading tons of books, articles and resources that I could download online.

In April 2013, I started my own SEO blog where I share a lot of things that I learned in the SEO industry (mostly about link building). I tested different marketing tactics that I know will be effective to market my website and will be worthy to share to my blog audience.

That is where my SEO journey started.

 If you want to learn more about the latest updates in the local industry, you can check out my post about the current state of SEO in the Philippines.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did get there?

I can’t answer that question, sorry for that. 😀 

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

If you don’t have a very big budget for your marketing campaigns, then start doing SEO/search marketing for your new website.

Our SEO process starts with analyzing our competitors’ websites and getting insights from their work.

Competitor Analysis

Learning from your competitors and from the industry you’re working in is a good starting point in search marketing. If you can determine the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, then you can create an effective SEO strategy that can help your site win over theirs.

When you do a competitor analysis, there are data that you should get from your competitors and they are stated below:

Pages/sites linking to your competitor’s website which you can potentially target to get links for your site. Look at the site’s backlink profile using Ahrefs and Cognitive SEO. See how they got links. Did they guest blog? Sponsored an event? Reached out to get some product reviews? Basically, the point is you must understand their link building techniques that they used to get backlinks in the past.

List of keywords. Go over to Ahrefs and grab your competitor’s site. See Anchors in the Inbound Links tab. You will discover keywords/terms that are related to your industry that you can also target for your own link building campaign.

Call to actions (for CRO). Aside from SEO, conversion rate optimization or CRO is also essential in getting leads and sales for your business. SEO allows you to get some traffic from search while CRO helps you convert those traffic numbers (visitors) into customers/clients.

To get some ideas for your call to actions, you can simply look at the site’s web places: optin form (subscription box), resource page, service pages and their other landing pages.

Content assets. They may have a content asset that has managed to acquire natural links. By looking at your competitor’s blog content, you can get inspiration from their content pieces and use it for your own content marketing campaign. Use Topsy and Buzzsumo to find their best content assets (those that gained a lot of shares).

One good quote:

To educate is to sell.” – Jason Acidre

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

I commend Dan Shure for this technique in finding profitable keywords. Here is how it goes:

Grab the URL of your competitor’s homepage or its top landing page and paste it in Google Keyword Planner. Then click, Get Ideas. And bang! You now have a list of keywords that you can target for your website (these are the terms that your competitor may have been targeting for his business). Take it to your own advantage.

Then use SEMRush to see potential profitability of the keyword and Google Trends for its seasonality.

You can also get a list of keywords from your competitors’ FAQs pages. Most of the time, they include their target keywords and questions that their customers are frequently asking for about their services/products.

By skimming on the FAQs pages, you’ll be able to discover profitable keywords that you can use for you own SEO campaign.

What do you think is the best link building strategy that you also practice and would surely recommend?

Content driven link building strategy. People should often link to your content and not to your homepage.

And if you want to acquire natural links for your brand, then you must have linkable assets placed within your website. Linkable assets are content pieces that can passively attract natural links over time because of their inherent values (e.g. information) that they provide to their users.

Here are some resources that you might want to check out:

• The Most Actionable Link Building Tip
• Link Building Resources
• How to Promote Your Content
• Creating and Developing Content Assets Like a Pro

Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients?

Start a blog.

Big companies want to see first how you perform your SEO strategy before getting your services and you can only share it through blogging. Start small with your blog. Share all the things that you learned within the week and along the way, add some resource pages that include unexpected hooks and will certainly generate leads as you go promoting them.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

Maki. It’s a Japanese cooked vegetable rice that you will often see in Japanese food stores. If you love eating Asian food, then you would love Maki as well. 

Can you name top 3 internet marketing pros that you are following? Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

Jason Acidre  – How I do linkbaiting on @kaiserthesage.

Ross Hudgens – Content Marketing in Boring Industries

Brian Dean – Google’s 200 Ranking Factors 

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

Never give up.

There will come a time that you will do your experiment for a certain technique/element, and you end up failing over 10 times. That time you fail, never give up. Trust God, trust yourself and do what it takes to reach your goal.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

Fervil, sure. Thanks for having me. Prior to getting started in Internet marketing I was just like any other kid, interested in making a buck and finding new ways to keep myself entertained on the web. I really got into SEO & Internet marketing in high school. I took a class at the local junior college and met someone who sparked my interest in becoming a SEO. I wish I knew where he was now so I could thank him 🙂

My curiosity took off from there and that’s how I got to where I am today.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did you get there?

I don’t discuss those numbers as I don’t really think they are relevant. How I got here: lots of hard work and some luck 🙂 .

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

Learn all the tactics and focus on a strategy that involves content promotion and conversion optimization. I think those are the two elements people often overlook.

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

There honestly isn’t a secret strategy. I am a firm believer that the keywords are out there and your ideal customer is using them to get their intended results. I think competitive research is something that definitely should be prioritized if you want to find the right keywords. I myself prefer going after a long tail strategy through content marketing.

What do you think is the best link building strategy that you also practice and would surely recommend?

I think creating natural links via content marketing is always your best bet. I would suggest everyone utilize that strategy if they want to succeed in 2017 and beyond.

Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients?

My only tip would be to ask what their budget is and figure out their core strengths and weaknesses. It’s easier to pitch a client a higher budget when you and they know the results are attainable.  Also focus your pitch based on ROI. Most companies won’t have a problem paying you a million dollars if you can prove that you can make them $10 million.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

( The answer remains a mystery as Neil wanted to keep it as a secret. )

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

I would highly recommend checking out Hubspot, SEOMoz & Search Engine Land. All the articles on those sites are helpful and great with actionable tips. I continually read those sites on a weekly basis.

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

Just go for it. People often get caught up in the minute of all the processes. I think anyone interested should just start blogging and creating great content.  

Hi Sam, Thanks for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me Sam. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO create an impact to it?

Thank you for the opportunity and your kind words, Fervil. It’s quite flattering.

You want a sneak peek into my life? Hmm… Well, I live in Burbank, California, with my wife, Gie. We’ve been married for two-and-half years and spent our first two years as a married couple in Metro Manila. We moved back to the U.S. at the end of 2013 and this year has been full of many exciting first experiences like teaching my wife to drive and moving into a new home.

SEO had a huge impact on my life, because without SEO I would’ve never met my wife! We met through work and she is my best friend and partner for life.

What was the most unforgettable project you had in your SEO career?

Back in 2010, my team and I were focused on building links through blog sponsorships and giveaways. Although we had good initial success doing blogger outreach, we found the process to be very time consuming. Many bloggers didn’t understand what type of promotion we wanted to do with them and often they didn’t reply for days, weeks or even months.

I came up with the idea of creating a social network for bloggers called GiveawayBlogs.com and ranked the site #1 for the search term “Blog Giveaways”. This network naturally grew to several thousand bloggers. The bloggers would sign up to do promotions in the form of product giveaways and sweepstakes. We recruited many other companies to offer sponsorships so there would be a variety of sponsors and promotions for bloggers to choose from.

The bloggers would already understand what type of promotion we wanted to do and they would also help each other promote their giveaway posts! This meant the bloggers were now reaching out to us instead of the other way around. They were also building links to the posts that contained links back to our sites through their social promotion. I’m sure you can recognize how effective this was for our link building.

We ran this program for two years and ranked thousands of high-competition keywords, but in 2013 we realized it wasn’t a good long-term strategy. For the past 18 months we have focused heavily on content marketing as the backbone of our SEO strategy.

How do you foresee SEO in developing countries like the Philippines?

I’m very excited to see the growth and changes in the Philippines SEO industry. The community is slowly evolving away from Adsense-focused SEO towards professional consulting and freelancing. This shift changes the conversations within the community away from individualism and towards cooperation. In 2014 we saw two new SEO events – GDI and SEO Summit, which were both very focused on sharing and teaching. I’m excited to see how the industry grows over the next few years.

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign Sam?

Measuring success depends on your goals. For an e-commerce company like my own, we look at Y/Y growth of revenue from organic traffic, but we index that against the trend of total search volume within our industry and our market share of that search volume. The unique keywords Google users are searching for are constantly changing based on consumer trends.

For example, ranking first for iPhone 3GS in 2014 brings only a fraction of the visits it used to because user demands have shifted to newer products. It’s important to remember your rankings are part of a bigger ocean that is constantly shifting from high tide to low tide.

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? What are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

First, you need to have a great product. You can’t win a race against a Porsche if you are driving a Toyota Vios regardless of how well you drive. Promoting a bad site or product is so much more difficult than promoting a good site or product. You need a unique selling proposition that compels people to become believers and fanboys and fangirls!

A compelling proposition allows you to fully leverage Pinterest, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and other social sharing sites to bait backlinks and drive traffic. This marriage of social, content and SEO is the reason the industry is shifting from the term SEO to Inbound Marketing. The new label helps us experience a paradigm shift.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

Tough question! I love food so much. Actually, I believe each mood, season or experience is best complimented by a different type of food and beverage. If you make me choose right now, I would say Dduk Bo Ssam (떡보쌈), Korean BBQ Brisket wrapped with veggies in rice paper wrapper. It is a fusion style of eating Korean BBQ influenced by Vietnamese cuisine.

Who are your top 3 SEO influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share with us?

Three? That is just too hard to choose. I’ve benefitted from too many influencers to count.

I’ll answer this question in a different way. A majority of SEOs swear by the advice of a few SEO gurus, but I believe that isn’t conducive to learning. In reality, we can learn from SEO Gurus and total newbies alike. The most important thing to remember is SEO is a constantly changing environment and everything should be challenged and tested before you accept it as truth. Also, remember that those who are new to the industry are often the ones who can challenge the status quo and introduce new ground-breaking ideas.

Could you give us some good tips on how to learn SEO, leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry?

1)      Find a mentor. Your mentor should be an experienced business professional, but doesn’t have to be an SEO specialist. None of my mentors are SEO professionals, but their guidance has helped me become a better marketer and SEO. From them I learned to manage a team, establish processes, communicate with board members and much more.

2)      Be humble and network with like-minded professionals. Like I said earlier, you can learn from SEO Guru’s and newbies alike. The number of years someone has practiced SEO shouldn’t be an indicator of how much you respect them or what you can learn from them.

3)      Be analytical. SEO by definition is the study of a mathematical algorithm. Learn to test and analyze. Becoming an Excel Ninja is easy when there are thousands of YouTube tutorials. Learning statistics is easy when Coursera offers free online classes!

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

Well hey, I used to be a wedding singer and a technical specialist in Hewlett Packard (HP) before I went into SEO. It didn’t make much sense for me to stick with HP because I lived in Paranaque and I had to commute to my office in Ortigas while earning the same salary I was making from my SEO work from home job.

To top it off, deducting the tax, PhilHealth, SSS and other legal stuff from my HP salary just made my SEO gig more sensible for me to pursue.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did you get there?

SEO Hacker is earning a gross revenue of $17,000 – we’ve actually published it on our blog and you can subscribe to our next series on how we got there through the form after every blog post.

Here’s how it actually looks like:

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

Check out how Venchito Tampon does it in digitalphilippines. I think he’s doing a swell job as a new player in the scene – attracting attention in a short span of time.

Some things he did well (among other things) are:

• Crowdsourced knowledge and expertise based entries
• Interviews from prominent niche personalities
• Guest posting on other authoritative websites

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

Keywords highly depend on the client’s business strategy and core competency.

We focus our keyword targeting on those two things. I think that if you don’t base your keywords on those 2 things, it would produce a meaningless campaign with minimal to no results on your SEO efforts.

How I get my team around the business strategy and core competency is that we have open lines of communication with the clients. We exchange ideas, review their inbound organic keywords, check out their keyword verticals, etc.

Basically it’s all about communication and a close study of the client’s business.

What do you think is the best link building strategy that you also practice and would surely recommend?

Everything that’s not in the mainstream. If guest post is making the news and blogs, pause. Go with another form of linkbuilding first such as broken linkbuilding. And vice versa. I wrote the Untold Secrets of Linkbuilding here.

Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients?

Build your brand. Document your company’s history, success, clients, team, know-how’s, etc. This should shoot up the market’s confidence in your SEO company, and consequently, attract high paying clients.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

Pepperoni Pizza!

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

Brian Clark of Copyblogger – building a huge SaaS company from a single blog

Alex Turnbull  of Groove – his recent ultra transparent Groove blog and how he started out is extremely motivating for me as a bootstrap entrepreneur

Jason Acidre – because he’s a brilliant strategist and is extremely generous about it at his blog. Need I say more?

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

Thanks! May the Lord and His work be your ultimate inspiration.

Keep pushing. Things can get really tough (In fact, it still is for me). Laser focus on one main product/service/strategy can mean the tipping point for your business.

You don’t need a lot of know-hows and product offerings to succeed. You just need a really awesome few – and a great team to back you up.

Hi Sef, thanks for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO create an impact to it?

SEO did make a lot of changes in my career and my personal life. Back in 2010, I could say I was not on the right path of success. I was employed but the career growth seem to be unreachable, in a normal day job like we have in the Philippines, it is almost impossible for “staff level” employee to live his/her life like a  boss for several reasons:

• Taxes are killing you slowly and plainly
• Compensation isn’t competitive and isn’t enough to live a happy life
• Stress is everywhere – deadlines, workloads, policies etc.
• Repetitive tasks that could make you go insane to take a bottle of beer or a cigarette

So when I learned about the search industry; it opened me the light towards something I was looking for. Things that I didn’t find in the “staff level” career such as:

• Challenging role and responsibilities
• Higher compensation and earning possibilities
• You can meet like-minded enthusiasts which you can exchange knowledge with
• And most surprisingly, SEO makes me read over and over again which is kinda strange because i’m not a fan.

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign? 

I look at the impact of the SEO campaign to the business/website.  The main objective  of  an SEO campaign on a website in my opinion is to help compete, get noticed and discovered, increase traffic  and conversion in the long run. Those are the metrics I will mainly look at after I launched an SEO campaign.

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? what are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

I would look at the main key elements that a website should have to help it compete in the long run such as:

• Pagespeed
• Meta Data
• Site structure
• Keyword placement, LSI
• Content usage
• Sitemap
• Robots.txt  etc..

These are the most important factors that I need to consider before start marketing it to its target audience because if you missed establishing the back-boned of your new website, you could lose a lot of opportunities that you can acquire if you did everything right from the very start.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

The food I ate in GDI event, Pampanga’s delicacies – not sure if those were but I would definitely want to try them again when I go visit Pampanga. 

Who are your top 3 seo influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share 

Jason Acidre – The guy who always kick-asses whenever he posts something on his blog.  There are couples that I can share but this one truly made its way to the top, the test he did for ManyContacts and how he increased his email subscribers for 532% in one month! That is phenomenal. – http://kaiserthesage.com/email-list-building/

Glen Demaandal – He wrote something about 9 writing tips to improve business blogging. This post has actually thought me a lot of things from  do’s to don’ts. – http://www.glendemands.com/nine-writing-tips-to-improve-business-blogging/

Gary Viray – Once in a while, I visit Gary’s personal blog where he documents and shares their experience in removing site penalty. I believe this particular post from Gary really need to be seen by other SEOs to know how awesome he is. – http://www.garyviray.com/google-penalty.html

Could you give us some good tips on how to learn digital marketing, leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry?

Explore, Test and Read.

In order  to survive in this fast-paced industry, we need to come up with better ideas, adopt with the changes and always explore new things for improvement since the big boss isn’t gonna let us control our way to the top of search results and they will always make changes in organic search and how they evaluate a webpage to rank, being able to respond  with these changes is the key to success.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

I’ve always had an interest within digital marketing and taught myself to code basic HTML/CSS from an early age. I went on to do a degree in business and management where I specialised more on the e-business side of things and this really got me digging deeper into SEO in particular. As a result, I started testing out link building strategies and run a few personal projects to help fund my university social life! After some steep learning curves, I moved into a local digital agency to head up the SEO and social side of things. This really was invaluable experience and gave me a remit to test out my ideas on a larger scale, which was great.

Now, I oversee digital strategy at Wyatt International, a heritage UK marketing agency and I work with some of the biggest brands in the world. Alongside this, I’ve do a lot of consulting and mentoring work for business owners and marketing professionals to help share some of my knowledge and advice with them.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did get there?

That one thing I prefer to keep to myself, I’m afraid 🙂 Having said that, I can share that one of the biggest boosts in my income has really come from putting in the time to establish myself as a voice within the industry. I don’t like to brand myself as a guru as I hate the word, but I like to think that I have enough experience of running successful digital campaigns that I can actually share valuable insights with others. The largest majority of leads that I get come from when I write actionable articles, usually focused around content marketing and SEO.

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

This is a dilemma that a lot of business owners face. There are a number of ways you can approach things, but you really need to go back to basics first. If you don’t actually have a good product/service then you’ve fallen at the first hurdle. If you want to go in and offer another me-too product that doesn’t really differ from others on the market, then you’ll likely need to win by spending more. If you’re offering is good and unique then my advice is that you spend as much time as possible building relationships with the press. These are the guys that can help catapult your business online. Make sure you understand what they want from you and how you can give it to them. Content is everything here, so make sure you’re getting this across when contacting them.

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

One of the worst kept secrets for finding really profitable niches is through using Long Tail Pro. This is my number one tool for identifying quick opportunities to capitalise on.

What do you think is the best link building strategy that you also practice and would surely recommend?

My approach is to focus more on developing big content assets that can be used to bring in high end, top tier links. Not only that but they will last the stretch of time. Investing in the development of a big piece of content can be scary sometimes, but the results that you can get from it are incredible. Forget churning out loads of links to low end blogs. Forget directory submissions and web 2.0 links. Think big. Think editorially earned links from the likes of BuzzFeed, BBC, The Guardian, TIME, etc.

Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients?

Practise what you preach. You could be the best digital marketer in the world, but if you’re not showing it then how will anyone know? Spend time on developing your reputation and sharing knowledge within the industry. Once you’ve built a following of people that want to listen to you, you can charge a premium for your time.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you’ve ever tasted?

Without a doubt, it was the Massaman curry that I had when I was in Koh Phi Phi, Thailand. I even remember the name of the place I got it: Papaya. If you’re ever around there, make sure you visit!

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

1. AJ Kohn – http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/build-your-authority-not-your-author-rank

2. Justin Cutroni – https://cutroni.com/blog/2013/02/18/a-pr-dashboard-for-google-analytics/

3. Matthew Woodward – http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/how-i-built-a-top-100-blog-in-12-months/

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

Firstly, I really appreciate that 🙂 I think that the biggest advice that I could give is to read as much as you can and then actually test things out yourself. Buy a domain and get it hosted (just buy a basic WordPress template to go within it) then start seeing what works to rank the site – this really is the best way to learn.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

I am Louie Sison. I’m from San Fernando, Pampanga. I currently work as a Sr. Associate Manager of a Global BPO company in Clark Air Base. I am basically in charge of managing a department responsible for the reports and analytics of the business.

I am a proud father of a 7-month old baby girl and happily married for two years. My relaxations are basketball and reading. If I were given a change, I would like to be a mix martial arts contender.

My story in internet marketing started in November 2009. I was a part-time web developer back then when I met a blogger client who wanted me to create a WordPress theme for her new blog site.

She showed me one of her blogs where she earns passive income from Google AdSense advertisements. I got really interested with the opportunity so I tried it myself. I started blogging with a Blogspot.com platform to test it out for free before I really jump into it.

Soon enough, I bought my first ever domain name and set up a self-hosted blog site. However after a year, I had to abandon the blog because I got exhausted gathering contents for my posts. I was still inexperienced back then and didn’t have a clear planning and direction to where I want to set my blog’s purpose.

I didn’t stop learning about blogging. In fact, I even dug dipper to understand how to passively make money online through blogging.

To date, I am maintaining three websites:

• pampangadirectory.net
• louiesison.com
• oneminuteplus.com (New)

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did get there?

I don’t usually disclose, but I don’t want you to get disappointed either. (wink)

My monthly AdSense income from pampangadirectory.net alone averages $100 to $130. It’s not a huge income compared to other internet marketers, but for me it’s just adequate considering that my online work is a supplementary to my main job.

In addition to that, blogging in particular has become my passion. I enjoy connecting with other people through my contents. An avenue to express my ideas and an opportunity for my voice to be heard. That’s what rewards me the most.

How did I get here?

There’s one thing I didn’t regret doing – that is not stopping after my failure. Just continue doing what you believe is true and beneficial. Eventually, you will learn the ins and outs the system if you put your heart in it.

Always be determined to reach your goals, short terms and long terms. Collaborate with people with your similar interest. Be a disciple and a mentor at the same time. Lastly, just enjoy what you do.

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

This is not new to me. In fact, I don’t pay a dime for any online marketing campaign for my sites because I do it myself, although I completely recognize the potential growth of income if I set aside budget for marketing.

My advice on how to market a new website based on my experience:

a)      Start with your content. Make sure that your content is with great quality, consistency and relevant to the need of your target audience.

b)      Do a thorough research regarding the demographics and persona of your market. In that way, you can point out accurate requirements for your content.

c)       Learn Search Engine Optimization so you can do the campaigns yourself.

d)      Build a loyal community from online trust and branding.

e)      Utilize free marketing mediums such as networking sites and micro-blog sites.

f)       Join groups that provide helpful insights that will empower your marketing campaigns.

g)      Do a test of your site’s user experience and request honest commentaries from actual users.

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

In my own experience in keyword research, I always aim for specific and highly targeted keywords because it delivers more relevant traffic to my blogs. A well targeted traffic can lead to potentially higher profit.

With regards to niche targeting, I always follow my purpose and passion. I make sure that the niche I target has a connection with my expertise or advocacy. In this way, I can easily relate to the potential problems and concerns – making it easier for me to create relevant contents.

What do you think is the best link building strategy that you also practice and would surely recommend?

When I build links for my website, I always keep in mind that the following aspects:

• It should be placed where the link is more likely to be clicked
• Anchor texts should be descriptive or the one that will invoke high click-through percentages.
• The link should be planted on an active page

The best link building strategies for me are:

a)      Create high quality content that solves persistent problems or answers frequently asked questions. People who will find your content to be very valuable will most likely refer you.

b)      Develop high appealing content assets such as infographics, video and images.

c)       Regularly contribute contents to high-traffic publication websites.

d)      Produce a collaborated content from authority personnel/sources such as this interview blog post.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

There are actually a lot because I love to eat. But let me just tell you the one I tasted when I was in India. The dish is called chicken Biryani.

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

I was able to interview 3 of the top SEO Filipino practitioners. I would like to share their insights from my publication instead:

a)      Jason Acidre – How to outline a basic SEO campaign plan

b)      Sean Si – How to get top position or ranking in SEO: Newbie’s standpoint

c)       Benj Ariola – If links are important in SEO, how do I get them?

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

Thank you for your appreciation. I am honored that you consider me as one of your inspirations. Here are my advices to:

To the beginners –

Make sure that you know what your purpose is first. And then have clarity on the processes and to the campaigns you plan to take. Everything might seem hard and impossible to achieve in the beginning, but don’t stop. Keep pushing yourself to learn the basics and become an expert of doing it.

To the SEO aspirants –

There are a lot of resources where you can learn Search Engine Optimization. Don’t get yourself overwhelmed with the information. Master each techniques one at a time so you can measure your development. Above all of your learning, execution is the key to become successful in this field.

Hi Jomer, Thanks for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me man. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO/online marketing create an impact to it?

Thanks for the interest too, its my first time actually to have an interview like this. SEO/Online marketing is my main business/source of income since I risked my life going full-time as a freelancer last 2009. And I never looked back. Thanks God for giving me the courage to do so.

What was the most unforgettable project you had in your SEO career?

Probably back in the good old SEO days (you know what I mean). We developed a model in which we need to rank a newly registered domain for 60 days or less and our method worked like a charm until the Penguin last 2012. I think most people will agree to me that SEO these days has really change drastically.

How do you foresee SEO in developing countries like the Philippines?

I think SEO in PH right now is slowly gaining grounds. With lots of Pinoy SEO and Digital Marketers that are well-known in the community and conducting seminars/events, its just a matter of time before it will become more popular.

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign?

Online reputation, Social media presence, Targeted traffic, rankings, and of course conversions.

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? What are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

The main thing that I will need to focus is the creation and marketing of linkable assets. If you have a linkable assets that are unique and actually useful, then attracting organic links for your website (though in competitive niche) will be rather not very difficult. You need to ask yourself since this is competitive niche “how can I differentiate myself to the 100’s website out there”?

Simple, create unique and actually useful linkable assets that are worthy for the rankings you are craving for. Because, lets just say that you ranked for a particular competitive niche and people will find your site in Google but they are not satisfied with your content. Chancers are your bounce rate will be super high and your rankings are almost useless. So focus on satisfying the user intent first before anything else. I think that’s what Semantic search works and heading in the future.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

Mongo! I am 100% proud bisaya.

Who are your top 3 SEO influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share with us?

David Amerland is the only person I really admired when it comes to Semantic SEO. I suggest you buy his book on Kindle, I really learned alot on that book and applied his principles on our own website and I actually witnessed what he is talking about on our site.

Joe Pulizzi is my 2nd influencer when it comes to Content Marketing. I also have his book “Epic Content Marketing”. Whether we like it ot not, content marketing is slowly gaining ground into everyone’s game. We actually added content marketing in our own semantic SEO service.

Perry Marshall – although not an SEO expert himself is my ultimate mentor when it comes to sales, marketing and conversions. I actually have his 2 books on hard copy for Facebook and Google Adwords. His recent book 80/20 Sales and Marketing is also my latest book from him in Kindle. He is the real deal guy when it comes to really growing your business and 80/20 mastery.

Could you give us some good tips on how to learn SEO, leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry 2017 and beyond?

This is hard! Haha, as I have said earlier. SEO has changed drastically in the recent years and I think these tips can help us survive and hopefully thrive in the years to come.

Change your mindset – I think the first and most important thing to do these days is to change our SEO mindset. You know back in the day our focused is primarily technical SEO and backlink acquisition (link building is still as important as before). But right now SEO does not rely on these 2 alone, we need to think big and outside of the box. We need to understand the business of the clients and create a tailored SEO strategy for them, I call it “holistic SEO”.

Focus in satisfying user-intent – One of the most exciting things about SEO right now is that it does not revolve only to some technical factors. It also involves some human element such as the need to really understand the user-intent of your prospective customers or clients when they hit your website. You want to make sure that your linkable assets or contents satisfy their intent and actually give them the information that they crave for which ultimately will result to amazing user-experience.

Read more and slowly apply semantic web optimization – SEO influencers and authorities today are now writing articles, contents and even creating Google hang-out about the Semantic Web. I think its time for us to move forward and if you are not familiar with it yet, read more books and follow semantic evangelist such as David Amerland. Of course at the end of the day, if there’s no action then there’s no opposite reaction. So read and apply what you learned to become a semantic web optimizer.

Hi Jason, thanks for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO create an impact to it?

Thanks, it still feels surreal actually – and I still can’t believe that I’m inspiring and influencing some people in our industry (whether here in the Philippines or abroad).

Perhaps, it’s because that this part of my career was something I really never intended to have. And just like what I mostly say when asked about how I’ve done it, I was just really lucky to have the right mindset at right place and at the right time.

Right now, I don’t think something really big has changed in my life. I’m still doing the things I enjoy doing (mainly challenging myself). I’m still the loner, quiet, care-free, easily-contented, and optimistic type of guy.

The only change that I can really think of is that SEO really made me a better person in the past 4 years. And of course, being able to meet and exchange ideas with a lot of smart people!

What was the most unforgettable project you had in your SEO career?

Affilorama! I learned so much from that experience. Working with them made me a beast in what I’m doing right now (not just in SEO, but in being an entrepreneur as well).

Kaiserthesage and Xight interactive are definitely part of the list, though both are still a work in progress. They’re both unforgettable to me, given that the continuous challenges I face working on these two projects really influenced how I think things through and have given me so many opportunities to grow and improve myself in such a short time span – and I don’t think that I’ll be able to achieve that anywhere else.

How do you foresee SEO in developing countries like the Philippines?

For SEO service providers, as an industry, it really has a big potential – especially in competing in the international market. We already have the skills needed, and many practitioners here are already proving that we can really compete (like Gary Viray, Glen Dimaandal, Sean Si, and the guys at Digital Room Inc. to name a few).

But for local companies to consider SEO as an integral part of their overall marketing campaigns, I think it’ll still take a couple of years or more before they start to realize how search can really impact their business as a whole.

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign?

It really depends on the business’ goals – if they’re investing in SEO to build more awareness for their brand or to generate more revenue for their business.

If the campaign is able to directly affect how the business is achieving its objectives, then you can certainly say that the campaign is somehow successful.

So in measuring, it’s really important to see if what you’re actually doing translates into the goals that you’ve set when you started the campaign:

• Is the site getting more conversions from search?
• Is the site getting more returning and highly engaged visitors?
• Is the site able to get more natural links and mentions (people genuinely talking about the website)?
• Does the site look more trustworthy and authoritative compared to the time when you started out with the campaign?

You can generally see the improvements (or the areas you need to improve on) by just simply asking yourself these questions.

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? what are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

I’ll probably just replicate the things I did for my own blog/brand (considering that digital marketing is a very competitive space as well) to grow their new website.

As for the factors, I’d focus on these things:

• Make sure they’ll have content assets that won’t be seen anywhere else in their industry’s online space.
• Build the right relationships, alliances and associations for them to generate better brand signals.
• Implementing consistently on these two core factors – content and relationships.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

It’s a triple tie, between bacon, crab and steak.

Who are your top 3 seo influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share with us?

• Wil Reynolds – #RCS
• Ross Hudgens–A model for link building – beyond “great content”
• Kirby Ferguson – he’s not an SEO, but his works did influence my thinking a lot about SEO: Everything is a Remix

Could you give us some good tips on how to learn SEO, leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry?

Never stop learning. Read. Test on your own. Write about the new things you’re learning. Knowledge is the core of our business (in this industry) – invest on it.

Hi Grant, Thanks for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me man. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO/online marketing create an impact to your life?

Hahaha, first off, your not small mate and it’s a pleasure to be a part of it. I actually think that it was a mixture of both my family being around computers since the old Commodore Computer days, my brother and Dad were always hands on – so I knew a bit about computers. Then mixing that with my passion for Entrepreneurship and understanding the concept of most businesses failing due to issues with their marketing – I think SEO / Online Marketing was just a natural fit with what was surrounding me and my passion for business.

It wasn’t until around 2006 that I really started to see the impact that SEO can have on my friends and university mates businesses. And that is when I really took a real interest to the whole online industry from web design / development, social media, content, SEO, paid advertising, etc. 

What was the most unforgettable project you had in your SEO career?

I have been fortunate enough to have my eyeball on over 600+ start-ups from my days at university, to talking at business schools, one-on-one consulting, SEO account manager, consulting to SEO firms, etc. And I will be honest, the most unforgettable projects are the ones that make the biggest impact to a business owners life. When you receive an email talking about where they have come from, the impact it has had, the results they are getting and everything in between makes any project unforgettable.

My mantra is that: “I will NEVER make any suggestions to a business (whether in SEO, conversion, business improvement, etc) that I would not do myself if I was in their situation”. As an example; any SEO work that we do for clients MUST be at the level that I would expect the team to do on my businesses. Actually, we get the team to work on some of our businesses as well so that I have the same passion / interest a client would have. 

How do you foresee SEO in developing countries like the Philippines?

This is actually a question I do know a lot about. There are two parts to countries like the Philippines: “Asian Culture” and “Economic Situation”

Asian Culture:
At the moment, I know SEO firms offering their products within Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Their toughest challenges are:
– They usually need to personally meet with the companies (rather than just emails or phone calls) to get sales
– Almost every company needs to be educated about what SEO is, how it can benefit them, etc (very different to countries where businesses are demanding SEO)
– The lead times from initial contact to becoming a client can be quite long in some cases (this seems to be cultural)

Economic Situation:
As we see countries like the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, etc grow with the global economy there will be a lot of changes that impact SEO:
– A lot of E-Commerce stores will open as credit cards / payment facilities become mainstream
– Infrastructure will allow services / products to be provided to multiple regions within the countries
– Marketing to potential International Clients will become a lot easier as the Western culture learns about the quality of work and creativity of these countries. 

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign?

A lot goes into measuring success of an SEO campaign, we tend to break it down into section:
Clients Goals:
– Are they making more money or getting more leads each month from when they started with you?

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE

Measuring the Campaign:
From an individual / team / campaign level, we always use competitors as our benchmarks (we don’t communicate these achievements to clients, as we live by our motto of “Tell me less of how it came to be and more of what it means to me!”)

– Content: Do we add more value, have better resources, greater structure and longer content than all other ranking sites?
– Links: Are we outreaching to enough sites with a good response rate to grow past our competitors? (KPI’s from emails sent, response rates, live links, DA quality, varying link placements, etc)
– Technical: This is just a checklist of elements that must be done.
As work is always being provided to our clients, we have never seen a campaign not improve month to month, so ranking growth, referral traffic increase, traffic improvements and lead / sale growth are the keys.

Naturally we could talk forever about it but just check out Gary Virays KPI’s presentation for the best insights. 

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? What are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

Definitely start with Guerilla tactics, ambush them from areas that the big players aren’t interested in / due to their size cannot play in. For example, it can take weeks to months for the big companies to approval a single piece of content to be uploaded to their site. Good luck to their SEO Company to compete with us for long tail keywords.

It would be a key play around long tail keywords on the clients blog, interviewing experts in the key areas to get social impact / influence and grow the campaign from the bottom up.

You don’t need the client to sign a $10,000 a month contract to go for ‘health insurance’, instead, start off with a lower amount, say $2,500 or $5,000 a month with the target of these long tail keywords, these traffic goals, these referrals and get the client invested into it. Then once you have proven your strategy, they will be a lot more invested in the campaigns and grow along with your strategies to get to the $10,000+ mark and never leave. 

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

Ha haha, do I get in trouble if I don’t say: Cebu Lechon? 😛
It would have to be that or my Mum’s Lasagna

Who are your top 3 SEO influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share with us?

Top 3 SEO Influencers, that is a great question. I am a big on being influenced via key people through ‘friendship’, people like Brian Dean, Brian Clarke, Ross Hudgens and Will Reynolds provide great content all the time BUT it is very rare that you can ask them that PROBING QUESTION that impacts your business / SEO strategy right now (unless you filter through the thousands of words they provide).

So, my biggest SEO influencers are people who I have been able to email direct strategy questions to that and there is no censorship / worry that the insider secrets might be leaked:
1. Jason Acidre (Kaiser The Sage): Not only is he a close friend but he is just an absolutely GENIUS when it comes to content strategies, link strategies, reviewing top company tactics and the best band manager I ever did see.

His best post would have to be his plans for 2014: http://kaiserthesage.com/link-building-2014/

2. Jon Cooper (Point Blank SEO): Though we have only become kind of close recently, he has opened the book on tactics that he doesn’t write about, cover, etc and we have had some quite extensive emails about how to slightly improve outreach response rates and ultimately the extra benefit that link builders can get from adding an extra 5 minutes of work to what they are already doing.

His best post would have to be the well known: http://pointblankseo.com/link-building-strategies

3. ZephSnapp (Altura Interactive): Every time I talk to him, all I can do is laugh really. He’s so down to Earth but is great at bringing SEO back down the base level, rather than going for the high in sky strategies that are not scalable for a business.
His best post is all about personas (which nobody does): http://alturainteractive.com/using-personas-to-improve-spanish-digital-pr/

Note: I always try to add 2 times the value that they add to me in any part of their life. Too many people ask, ask, ask from these guys, instead of adding value that they might not have access too but might need.

Could you give us some good tips on how to learn digital marketing, leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry?

The best suggestion I can make is to process everything, I have built the Ultimate Process Guide for business owners.

A huge issue with SEO individuals, teams and agencies now is that they spend years learning about all of these strategies but never do them, or try them find out it is hard (because they don’t test Automation) and they just give up! With everything being processed, you can see the resources required, the cost of the resources, the success they are having BUT most importantly, you can alter these processes as Google changes / updates their algorithm or guidelines.

Hi sir Gary, thanks for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me sir. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO create an impact to it?

SEO awakened the marketing guy in me. Ever since I was a kid, I have already been marketing and selling concepts and whatnots to other kids to the point of generating sales/revenue that I used for my school budget. I knew I was good at it. I could market virtually anything. However, over the years, I wasn’t able to use such skill because I focused on other things. I focused on Math and numbers. I am glad that SEO took the best of both worlds of my passion – Numbers and Marketing, rolled into one.

Is SEO impactful to me? What do you think? =)

What was the most unforgettable project you had in your SEO career?

Try to read, So the Boss Gave In and We Won Against Google Panda 4.0 and of course, Search Opt Media itself which is an SEO company based in the Philippines and is now about to become a full-service digital marketing agency called Propelrr.

How do you foresee SEO in developing countries like the Philippines?

Philippines will be on the map sooner than we think as one of the best providers on SEO globally although there’s still a huge need to re-educate SEO practitioners that the old habit of doing things is no longer a viable option in order to further their careers. Every SEO practitioner in the Philippines must fight abusive entities that simply use them as drones, back office link builders, and whatnots.

SEO is a marketing profession. SEO is marketing. It needs solid strategies to resonate any brand’s DNA that search engines consume. It needs strategic thinking & creative individuals which I think abound in the Philippines. If we can position ourselves as what I’ve mentioned above, we’ll be taken seriously as real marketers online.

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign?

SEO success is always based on defined KPIs and Targets. Every company is unique in terms of measuring its success. Maybe I can just simply share you my presentation on Slideshare entitled, How to Set Straight your Online (SEO) Campaigns with killer KPIs.

So again, how do I measure success on SEO campaign? It is based on set KPIs and Targets.

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? what are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

For competitive niches, I usually look for gaps where competitors are somewhat weak. Doing SWOT analysis works well any time any day. There’s really no silver bullet that you can use as your template for all industries. But let me share you the ff:

1. Identify Content Gaps by looking into the buying cycle, interest, and users’ behavior.

2. Find those long tail keywords where there’s less competition in order to increase market share.

3. Do brand association with bigger brands. Align your client’s brand with those bigger brands by making it appear that they are of equal footing.

4. Compete on verticals where you can get better chances to win. This is where you can first set your anchor to gain initial traction from where you can slowly build the brand moving to the most competitive verticals or keywords in your niche.

Million dollar question: whatís the best food you have ever tasted?

Kobe beef from Kobe, Japan.

Who are your top 3 seo influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share with us?

Jim Boykins – Just head on reading Jim’s blog

Bruce Clay –  SEO Siloing: How to build a website silo architecture

Rand Fishkin – All white board Fridays by Rand Fishkin.

Could you give us some good tips on how to learn SEO, leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry?

While we are simply focused on SEO on this interview, you need to leverage your skills to expand further into learning other channels. Being holistic in your digital marketing approach gives you better chances moving forward. Having a tunnel vision set on SEO alone is fine but then, that is not how I see things. SEO will never be dead for sure but if you hinge your SEO skill set to the broader spectrum of brand building and digital marketing, it will be a whole new game out there for you. Try reading something about brand engagement from a brand person’s perspective and you will know why there’s a need for you connect your SEO-fu to something related to branding and real marketing.

Hi Floyd, Thanks for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me sir. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO create an impact to it?

Hello Fervil, thank you very much for this opportunity to share what little that I know of about SEO with you. And I am flattered that you find my work inspiring as well. The impact of SEO in my life is very positive, as I can have more time with my loved ones and have the opportunity to earn more. I also get to meet great minded people like you and events like GDI. I totally have no regrets in learning SEO.

What was the most unforgettable project you had in your SEO career?

The unforgettable ones are the ones that doesn’t pay! But perhaps the other most unforgettable one is the penalized website I handled back then. We paid a lot for the link detox only to fail in the end I guess it is not for everybody.

SEE: How Are We To Know If Your Disavow List Has Already Been Honored By Google?

How do you foresee SEO in developing countries like the Philippines?

I think I mentioned it before with other SEO’s in the recent GDI event that the Philippines have a chance to be the best SEO service provider in the world.  But we need to help each other and be united towards a common goal and that is to strengthen our knowledge of SEO so we can command better pay from clients abroad, and better the quality of future SEO’s in the country.

I am going to write more about this in my blog soon.

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign?

I have a read a lot of differing opinions on this but for me it really depends on the KPI of the site. I usually just look at the price of each visitor going to the site and the price of what I am selling online.

For example I wrote in my article: Ways To Monetize Your SEO: Updated Regularly

Determine what particular business pays more for a particular service, a roofing company will pay more compared to a dog grooming one as a single sale from each differs a lot. If one dog grooming costs around $25 while one roof costs around $1,500 don’t you think it would be better to invest in getting the roofing company to buy their leads from you?  

Other than that rankings and traffic are other factors I look into plus the consistency of visitors and new visitors to the site.

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? What are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

It really depends on the budget of the client, but then on-page optimization does a lot of wonders! I always tell my clients to invest heavily in their content for the first three months. That’s it! Invest in great content and then the other three months do the link-building. It is definitely guaranteed that you will make a great impact in the search engines.

But if for example the niche is very-very competitive, then the approach will be more of getting a lot of authority links from .gov and .edu sites. It just depends on the SEO on how they will approach it.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

I would have to say the Lechon of Jagna, Bohol Philippines. It’s just pure heaven! Better have one Fervil asap!

Who are your top 3 seo influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share with us?

Hmm… this is a very hard question as SEO is very complex.

I would say as of the moment they are as follows:

1. Michael Port

2. Jeff Walker

3. Paddy Moogan/Alex Becker/Glen Allsopp (have to really add them here hehehe)

Could you give us some good tips on how to learn SEO, leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry 2017 and beyond?

SEO opens up a whole world of opportunity to everyone, but always remember that there is a big difference between making money (income) versus accumulating money (wealth). Leverage your SEO skills by focusing on product creation and selling it online. You already got the skills now translate that into wealth creation.

SEE: Ways To Monetize Your SEO: Updated Regularly

(Play audio file for David’s answers)

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

A friend and I created a study guide for a charting package called the MetaStock Programming Study Guide. It sold really well in our immediate community but then beyond that, it was hard to get the word out.

We knew we had a great product; we just needed more people to see it. So I got interested in marketing. I started with some offline marketing and then moved into online marketing and then SEO.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did you get there?

It’s always hard when comparing wealth from country to country since the cost of living is very different in Australia when compared to other parts of the world as well. I’m not too sure how helpful this would be? As far as “How to get there”, it was just a one step at a time and growing things overtime. You make your first dollar online then you go for two and then three. Selling good products and services that help solve people’s problems.

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

Basically one of the methods that we’re doing (which we’ll talk about in our upcoming workshop – the SEO method 4) is running mini-workshops. Recording it, editing and chopping that up into bits – repurposing the audio, transcripts, and articles and syndicating it out across the web. It’s a great way to position the business and business owners as industry leaders.

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

What I try to do is identify where markets are merging, what niches and spaces are expanding rather than contracting and trying to getinto those. By picking the right space you can do quite well. Finding the right keywords is just thinking about what people are actually looking. We do a lot of targeting geographically because that is a good way to get quick wins.

What do you think is the best link building strategy that you also practice and would surely recommend?

I mentioned creating high quality content and syndicating it out. That works incredibly well! Some other ways include recording testimonials about different products and services and then sending those off to product/service. More often and not, they will post the video and then also a link back.

 Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients?

It’s about positioning yourself as the expert, the premium provider and then making relationships with those people who already have your target market. Work with some small clients and get some good results and then you go slightly high and get good results.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

I have tried a few different things while traveling – everything from cockroach in Thailand and raw horse in Japan! As far as my favorite though… yeah, there are so many good food out there.Maybe my wife’s spaghetti Bolognese.

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

As far as the “Top 3 favorite SEO and IM pros in the whole web”

I don’t really follow “popular” SEOs or IMers. I learn by doing things in the field. I do have a few people within my circle but they’re not really out there.

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

Always focus on your clients and delivering great value – don’t sell products or services you don’t believe in.

Hi Brian, I’m actually excited for this interview. I’d like to know a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

I actually studied nutrition (of all things) in college. Fortunately, I came across an incredible book, The Four Hour Workweek, which got me out of the 9-5 mindset…and into entrepreneurship. SEO and internet marketing naturally followed.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did you get there?

Backlinko is a private company so I rather not reveal earnings. So I’ll just say that the site nets 6-figures annually.

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

The most important thing you can do is focus on creating ONE amazing piece of content to start out with. Most people fritter away precious marketing dollars on mass quantities of “me too” content.

The ROI of one epic piece of content is 100x more than 50 mediocre blog posts. Although an epic piece of content takes a lot of time, it’s not necessarily expensive to create and promote.

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

If you want to find a profitable niche, follow the money. Head over to sites like ODigger and OfferVault.com to see what types of leads (and traffic) people are already paying money for.

I usually start my keyword research by finding “niche clouds”. As I describe in excruciating detail here, niche clouds are basically smaller niches that make up your larger niche. For example, if you sold organic coffee, your niche clouds would be things like “healthy foods”, “green living” and “gourmet food”.

Once you identify a few niche clouds, head over to forums where the people in those niche clouds tend to congregate.

On forums you’ll find not just what problems your target audience is having…but the EXACT way that they phrase those problems.  That phrasing is usually translates into keywords that they type into Google.

What do you think is the best link building strategy in 2014 that you also practice and would surely recommend?

Definitely email outreach in some format. To build links that work in 2014, you need to get natural, editorial links from relevant sites. And there’s no better way to do that than with email outreach.

Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients?

Connect with a web developer. Most web developers HATE SEO and are more than happy to pass their development clients onto an expert (for a finder’s fee of course). I actually started my SEO agency from scratch using this approach. 

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you’ve ever tasted?

Good one! I had a piece of chocolate cake in Paris last year that’s definitely up there.

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

Neil Patel (Quick Sprout)

Noah Kagan (OkDork)

Glen Allsop (Viper Chill)

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

Thanks!

SEO is much easier when you build and promote an amazing site.

Focus on that and the job of SEO suddenly gets (relatively) easy.

Sir Benj, as many of us Filipino SEO’s address you, thank you very much for gracing this interview. You inspire many small people like me. Instead of asking you about how you started in online marketing and SEO, we’re excited to have a sneak peek on your life now. How did SEO/online marketing create an impact in your life?

SEO was a career direction changer. It has also given me the opportunity to be a thought leader where I speak at various international conferences. It is only in SEO where I won several international competitions winning cash and also a brand new car. It has opened doors to many options from working with an agency, or being the in-house SEO guy of a company or earn from affiliate marketing and ad publishing on my own and it was pick and choose the direction I wanted but the other doors are still open shall I want to try something else.

Since I tend to get bored once I learn how to do something, it does get old working. But in SEO, there is always something new about it all the time, so it keeps the boredom away and there is always something new to think about.

I would not say I am financially free just yet, but definitely SEO has been placing me at a good comfort level where my family is also comfortably happy.

What was the most unforgettable project you had in your SEO career?

I would give three answers for this: (1) My first client, (2) the most successful client, and (3) the worst client.

I worked with tons of sites, companies big and small, Fortune 1000 companies, worldwide brands, mostly in the agencies I worked at, but the unforgettable ones are still the ones I worked on as a freelance SEO guy. Simply because I did all the work on my own, it was very hard to fulfill, very challenging, but at the same time very rewarding.

The very first site I did SEO on was so successful that the site owner told me to “turn it off” because he was getting to much leads from his service business and was having trouble serving them all. He earned so much that he sold the business and use the money shift into a real estate business.

My most successful campaign was for a car dealership. It was so successful that they gave me a second car dealership, and was planning to add in a third.The funny part was I was paying them monthly installments for my car, but they were paying me higher monthly for SEO services. So it felt like the car was free and I was still making money from their SEO.

The last unforgettable client was the worst one, it was an ORM client that wanted to clean up their names but they whole character was not clean at all.Because of their undesirable traits, they would continue to offend numerous people. So even if I am cleaning up their name online, improving the SERPs with good results, every now and then a new complaint from out of the blue would appear and causes a new problem again. When that happens, they call me up again on the phone and a bunch of expletive words come out telling me my ORM does not work, but in reality they just have a problem of not fixing the nature of who they are so there will always be something bad out there all the time.

Even if he was one of the biggest projects I had, and was paying almost the same amount as my salary then. I only spent about a total of 30 hours total every month earning the same amount as what I make in a month at my job. But the high price of the project was not good enough for me to handle the stress, and also some kind of moral guilt. I had a feeling that I was hiding something bad and making it appear as something good online.

How do you foresee SEO in developing countries like the Philippines?

When doing SEO in a specific country, sometimes the objective of your SEO efforts is to target audiences within the country for a local business. In other cases, SEO in the Philippines can be an offshore project where you are targeting international audiences in other countries, often the United States, the country of online consumers. We already know the Philippines is constantly increasing in taking SEO deals from North America, Europe and Australia.Sites like Freelancer, Elance and oDesk has tons of workers in the Philippines.

I personally know some companies in the US and Australia just flew over to the Philippines to set-up offices there to manage people better. Just like any other offshore outsourcing, the advantage is lower labor cost in the Philippines but still relatively high for the cost of living in the Philippines. I’m sure the situation is probably similar in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia when looking at the advantages of offshore outsourcing and I foresee it  increasing further.

As for doing SEO for companies in your local country, I also foresee this increasing in the Philippines. This is always tied to the adoption of Internet technologies of the consumer audience. The more people use the Internet, the more there is an online target market to attract. And we already know there are tons of Facebook users in the Philippines, Twitter users. Google and Yahoo have their own offices in the Philippines is also an indicator of the presence of an online target market.

Since SEO is a combination of technical knowledge, marketing knowledge and content writing, outsourced offshore countries may have difficulty on the marketing and writing task just due to cultural differences and how this boils down into how to write English content. And this is not always about spelling and grammar, but more about the many minute differences on how things are said from one culture to another, including idiomatic expressions, slang, and used conventions within a country. Having said that, when outsourcing some companies may be limiting what they outsource. Only handing off task that will not be affected by cultural differences. These task tend to be procedural tactics rather than a real complete SEO strategy.But this does not apply of course to all Filipino writers, but it does take a while to find the right person and this serves as a challenge.

My first speaking engagement in an SEO conference in the Philippines was in 2007 at FMI’s SEMCon, my last one was March 2014 at JCI and SEO Hacker’s SEO Summit. In 2007  there were 2 guys from the US that were in the audience that had offices with some staff in the Philippines. This year, there were several more people from the US and Australia, all with offices in the Philippines and their own Filipino teams in attendance. I foresee more of this happening in the Philippines since it bridges the gap on cultural differences and challenges with management and time zone differences.

How do you measure success in an SEO campaign?

We measure many things and it depends on the client’s goals, but most of the time it is conversions from organic search as the main KPI. But depending on the client, we might be even more specific on the type of conversion. In some cases some businesses are just concerned with traffic than conversions, some are more concerned with how much walk-in traffic SEO generates going to their physical store location.

I know there are some companies that use keyword ranking as the main measure of success. We still do this too but ranking is not the primary measure of success for us and there are many reasons why.

1. Ranking is inconsistent in different situations from differences in browsers, personal behavior, location, etc.
2. Good ranking does not always give great conversions. And if no conversions come in, this can mean an adjustment in keywords may be needed that have better search volume and relevancy, or better title tags and meta tags are needed for better click through rates, or better landing pages are needed for better conversions on the page. And if the conversions do not come in, the SEO client may not be willing to spend more later on in the campaign.
3. In more competitive markets, where ranking for a main 1 to 2 word term may be very difficult but ranking for 10,000 long tail keywords is relatively easy, the 10,000 keywords may help move the needle in terms of conversions and profits, but the main 1 to 2 word keyword phrase can still not be ranking at all near page 1. If you are staring at keyword rankings for a fix set of terms and do not see any ranking improvements, you might think the campaign is not successful but in reality you might be adding tons of dollars in terms of additional sales coming from total organic search traffic that has improved from doing SEO.

There are many other things SEO professionals measure like amount of links, Google PageRank, percent contribution of organic search in a multiple touchpoint conversion, and many others, but I do not usually look at them as measures of success. They are more like guides that you analyze for further optimization.

You’ve been in this industry for quite some time sir. We’d like to know your secret sauce in managing and handling SEO campaigns.

Build a team of leaders

Managing multiple SEO campaigns well relies heavily on your team to scale your business. Choose your members well. Having prior experience definitely helps but pay good attention to their past experience since some may be stuck with old bad SEO habits that are no longer applicable today.If they are not experienced but really show signs that they are teachable, trainable, then they may still be a good member to have on your team.

You want a team of leaders, you want them to also know the same as what you know or even more than what you know. And if they know less, then you make it a point they start learning more than you do. Some leaders feel intimidated by situations like this where they feel the main boss should know everything and the team members should not know more than the boss because they are afraid of losing their position which is a wrong way to look at it. You will be overworked training people, what you want to have is self-starters, that will not only learn, but help teach others.

 Make SEO training a habit

It is everyone’s responsibility to always be up-to-date in SEO. And this is where we leverage the knowledge of every team member. We conduct weekly trainings where each member is required to present something in one of the weekly meetings to keep everyone up-to-date. We also do cross trainings with the social media team, content marketing team as well as weekly company meetings so we also learn from the other departments.

Come up with the standard operation procedures

Put it in writing, how the different tasks are done and standardize it. It also makes training of new members easier.

Use a good collaborative project management system

There are many out there, choose one that is within your budget and also is sufficient for your specific needs.

Sir Benj, how do you do your SEO reporting to clients?

This is somewhat related to the measures of success. It all starts with the goal of the client and from that we check what can we measure and this leads into our key performance indicators (KPIs). We then record the performance of these KPIs and that builds up the report. Now depending for who the report is intended to, sometimes it can be more detailed or less detailed. Executives normally just get the high level view without the dirty details while the marketing personnel gets more details.

There are metrics where we look at often but reports normally come out monthly. The metrics thought are often compared from a year over year perspective than month over month. So for any report for a given month, we will be comparing this with the same month the previous year. The reason why we do this is to take in consideration annual seasonal trends. Depending on the contracted work, some reports will be in Excel, some in PowerPoint, some are given login access to our reporting platforms, etc. Sometimes it also depends on the level of knowledge of our contact person in need of the reports.

What do you think are the most important metrics that an SEO should get in Google Analytics?

Revenue from organic search traffic and that is if revenue tracking is configured properly or if it is even applicable to track. If that does not exist or is not applicable, the next best metric for me is organic search traffic.

If you would market/SEO a new website in a very competitive niche, how would you do it? What are the most important factors that you think you need to consider?

First is client discovery, we really have to understand the client well, and we will ask what are their key differentiators, what is their unique selling proposition (USP), what barriers to entry they have that serves as their competitive advantage. Basically it is what makes the company awesome, why they rock. And once we see it, we try to make that advantage popular, it is the main voice, the main message that has to get out and recognized by the world. 

To speed up the spreading of the news, this is where content marketing comes into play, coming with great awesome content that is very compelling, interesting, intriguing, that makes the people share it and when they do, it just increases brand awareness, it strengthens the brand which later on helps generate demand. Once you got this nailed down, everything else becomes easier.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

I am not good at answering questions like this. I just know I like some foods and I don’t like others. But I find it hard to think of a favorite.I just know I eat almost everything except okra and saluyot (corchorus) and I don’t eat many sweet foods like chocolate, cakes, ice cream (except vanilla ice cream), sweet candies, etc. Not because I am health conscious, not because I am diabetic or what, but for some crazy reason I just do not like the taste. 

I guess you can never go wrong with bacon. So let’s just make bacon my favorite.

Who are your top 3 SEO influencers? Any particular content from these people you wish to share with us? 

I’m old school, so I’d say Greg Boser where I was a longtime fan of the podcast SEO Rockstars of WebmasterRadio.fm although these days, it’s no longer Greg doing the shows, but I used to religiously follow the show, I play the podcast while working, on my ipod while driving, and I interact in the live chatroom show.

Second would be Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker, although more known for affiliate marketing and just making money online, he just has this natural marketing talent and is a highly technical person as well.

Lastly would be Jim Boykin, his trust baiting was of getting very authoritative backlinks is just something he has invested a lot in and really has it down into an effective repeatable, scalable process with a good well trained team backed with sophisticated proprietary tools. 

Could you give us some good tips on how to leverage our SEO-fu skills and survive in this bewildering industry 2014 and beyond? 

I’ll just tell you 2 things. 1^st is what my mom always told me:“Ang pinakamagandang puhunan sa iyong buhay ay ang iyong nalalaman, hindi makakanakaw nino man.” (The best investment in life is your knowledge, no one else can steal that away from you.) So in SEO, it will always be continuous learning and this is really important to survive. And 2^nd what my dad always said: “Everyday is continuous learning, what did you learn today?” So aside from continuous learning, it should also happen very often, almost every day.

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing?

I’m actually an accountant, but I have this passion about online marketing and web development even before I passed the CPA board exam in November 2004. I worked in a auditing firm while doing my online activities during the night. When I resigned from my day job, I concentrated on building my own blogs. I was blogging on the business and finance category ever since because this is my niche and where my accounting profession aligns. In blogging, SEO is vital to survive and succeed. Without implementing online marketing and SEO, your blogs will hardly beat the competition. That is the reason why I learned online marketing, particularly SEO. You can read my blog at Optixor for more of my articles and stories.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did you get there?

As a freelancer, you can’t really tell how much do you earn because there are times that you are not serving any client and you just want to take a long vacation or just have a happy-go-lucky life. However you can tell the market value of a SEO/online marketer by determining how much his client would pay per hour/day/month to get his services. You can tell his value not through the price he offers to clients but through the price his clients are willing to pay to him, as anyone can just easily price himself without really getting clients. To give you an idea, I got offers ranging from Php 50K-Php 100K (est. $1250-$2500) per month per project. However, it’s not a guarantee that I am earning since I will not earn if I will not accept the job. Since I am also working on my own projects (which are under development), I occasionally turn down clients, get no income, and just spend expenses on my own projects. Thus, I get loss instead of earning. 😉

How did I get there?

Raising up your market value is a matter of personal branding. You’ve got to be a thought leader in online marketing or SEO which is your field of expertise. You have to show that you have a successful websites or blogs. You have to show that you have exceptionally high-quality content that can drive tons of traffic and encourage tons of social shares. You’ve got to earn good testimonials from your perks and clients.

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

Marketing needs money, time and people. If you don’t have money, you have to put a lot of time and people on it. I recommend implementing integrated marketing, which is a combination of content marketing, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and relationship marketing. Your content will be the cornerstone of your marketing campaign. Your SEO, social media and relationship with your target audience will highly depend on it. Hence, you have to create or generate exceptionally high-quality content. When I say exceptionally high-quality content, it must be something that can beat your bigger competitors’ content. Create a blog post that is worth more than a blog. I mean publish a blog post that generates more traffic and social mentions than an entire blog. Have you seen one blog post that can generate a hundred thousand or even million of visitors? Well, concentrate your time and skills on having that kind of post. Moreover, create more posts like that as you many as you can.

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords?

The secret in finding profitable niches and keywords doesn’t lie on niches and keywords. It lies on the product, service or solution you can offer to your target audience or customers. You can be in a profitable niche and you can rank in a profitable keyword, but if you don’t deliver what you’ve got to deliver, you will still lose.

Most online marketers misunderstood the meaning of niche. Niche is not synonymous with field, topic or category.  Niche means a field, topic, category, job or and activity that best suits you. In other words, you are not in your niche if that field or activity doesn’t suits you or you don’t have a passion/expertise in it. If you want to find a profitable niche, find one where you’re passionate about or an expert of. You can always reject a client if his niche is not your niche. It’s just a matter of management and quality control.

Keyword research is an activity for customers or for our audience who want to search for our content. When online marketers do keyword research, it becomes a reverse engineering process. We do that to get feedback, study our target customers, research our competitors, and ultimately come up with the best product, content or solution. If you want to find a profitable keyword, find one where you can beat your competitors and ultimately provide the best product, solution or content to the related audience or market.

What do you think is the best link building strategy in 2014 that you also practice and would surely recommend?

The best link building strategy today is an integrated strategy. We have to earn high-quality and deep inbound links to ensure long-term SEO success. I always practice integrated online marketing strategy, which is a combination of content marketing, social/tribal marketing, SEO and relationship marketing. If you’re asking for a strategy, it is broad. But if you’re asking for tactics, here are my tactics:

• I start on assessing my expertise to ensure that I will gain trust from my target audience.
• Research for a topic based on my expertise.
• Check out my competitors to determine if I can create something that can beat their contents.
• Create the content which can stand out from the crowd (link-baiting is a good way to earn backlinks).
• Reach out influencers/authority bloggers whom you’ve mentioned in your content (they would link to your content to spread the news).
• Share your content on social media.
• Share your content on groups with like-minded people.
• Create friends on those groups (your friends will usually link to your content if it’s useful).
• If you have some extra bucks, try to buy ads for extended reach to make sure that your content will reach more audience who are directly interested to it.

Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients?

• Build a blog.
• Publish several awesome content that can wow your clients.
• Join professional groups or communities with like-minded people.
• Build your professional and personal brand.
• Spend time on making your landing page or service page attractive to clients. I got one client who wants to hire me because he like that way I described my services. So don’t be lazy on crafting the best words on your services page.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you have ever tasted?

Leche flan specially made by my mother.

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse?

Seth Godin – One of the greatest marketing minds of our time.

Neil Patel – We can learn both great SEO and entrepreneurship from him

Jason Acidre – for bringing Philippine SEO to the map of the world.

Hmmm. Any best posts from their blog? I guess you have to read all their blog posts. 🙂

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants?

My advice is to learn the whole thing about marketing. SEO is only a part of marketing. You cannot be good at one part if you don’t understand the whole thing. By getting the whole picture of marketing, you will be able to integrate all the marketing strategies, tactics and techniques to form a powerful SEO campaign.

Also, for beginners and aspirants I advise them to continue experimenting and getting meaningful experiences. Passion and momentum are not enough to bring you to success. The IM world is a very competitive industry. You cannot win with only passion and momentum. You’ve got to have a lot of experiences.

Hi Sir Glen, Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before and after you got acquainted with SEO and internet marketing? 

I’d say I’m a very average guy. I’m not particularly talented at anything and I’m not a natural hard worker. I’m like everyone else, but I’d like to think I make sensible decisions when they matter most.

I started out as a blogger for a small gaming site called QJ.net in 2007 and this is where I learned the basics of blogging and SEO. It was fortunate that SEO and content creation come hand in hand, which opened up opportunities for me later on. I was able to get a home-based SEO job in late 2008 and became an SEO supervisor in 2009. The rest, as they say, is history.

No beating around the bush, how much do you earn now? How did get there? 

Enough to feed my family. Not enough to retire early.:)

I got there by constantly improving my skills, adding little things to my writing ability and working hard when I need to. I also made it a point to satisfy my clients and bosses. One of the biggest keys was making a lot of good friends in the SEO industry, which is a definite plus in establishing credibility and gaining some mindshare.

Can you give us an advice on how to market a new website without having a very big budget?

Budget is very important when you want to successfully launch a new website. However, it’s certainly not the be-all and end-all of SEO. Getting the basics right is the first step towards good rankings. I would recommend focusing on the following items at the onset:

Make sure the site is technically sound – the website has to just plain work. Make sure that the build of your CMS is stable and that your hosting is reliable. Get all the right plugins installed and make sure your internal links are working. If you’re using Flash or JQuery or HTML5 for visuals, make sure that the graphical assets are loading correctly across different browsers and devices.

Have a Logical Content Roadmap – One of the most common mistakes that new websites make is writing content for the sake of having content. Simply writing page copy and blog posts based on target keywords is not good enough in today’s search engine landscape. Personally, I like building content that follows a core theme. I always focus on the things that give my audience pleasure and the things that take away their pains.  From there, I create assets like whitepapers, videos, blog posts, SlideShare decks, etc. I schedule their releases with an editorial calendar and I promote them with social media and partner websites.

It’s very important to make the content as original as possible. I’ve stopped hiring writers who regurgitate content from other sites and do minor spins on them. I hire smart people who can grow into subject matter experts for the websites I handle. This allows them to create content assets that competitors will not be able to easily duplicate. These content assets are also the reason why visitors would keep coming back to a site and these can be leveraged for email and social media opt-ins.

Usability – One of the most underrated parts of SEO is usability. Giving visitors an easy, no-strings attached experience when they’re trying to find content on your website is a key in attracting return visits. This works in your favor if you don’t have a particularly big budget. Smart user experiences are founded on simplicity and common sense. No need for fancy or expensive design work. Be as direct and as unintrusive as possible and you’ll be on the right track.

Let’s go discuss about keyword research and niche targeting. Would you mind sharing some of your best kept secrets in finding profitable niches and keywords? 

Finding a niche really isn’t a function of going through keywords and figuring out which ones to go after. If I’m starting a new website, I’m not going to focus my energy on finding a low competition-high traffic keyword that I may or may not be an expert in. To me, your niche is something that you come to the game with. It’s either you’re an expert on something or you’re not. Consider the things that you find interesting and that you have a lot of knowledge on. That will give you an idea of the kind of people you want to attract to your website. From there, you can list down the keywords in your field of expertise and use Google Keyword Planner to check which ones have the most searches.

In keyword research, I usually tell the people that their knowledge should drive the technology (in this case, Keyword Planner). If you’re doing it the other way around and you’re allowing the technology to drive the way you do business, you’ll find yourself in a difficult situation m moving forward.

What do you think is the best link building strategy in 2014 that you also practice and would surely recommend? 

It depends on the nature of the business, but generally these are the methods I still find relevant:

Building unique and compelling content – This really is the point of building a website: offering content and experiences that resonate with people. If you have a good asset like, say, Copyblogger’s whitepapers, people are bound to talk about it, recommend it and link to it.

Influencer outreach – Even before the guest posting penalty was introduced by Google, I have always been very selective with my guest posting prospects. I only guest post with sites that have a real, organic blog followings. You can tell if a site is influential in its niche by checking engagement signals. See how vibrant its social media presence is and check if their posts are getting a lot of sensible comments. When I guest post, I do it with branding and exposure in mind. The links that I get are a distant secondary priority.

Press Outreach – For big businesses that release unique products in major verticals, press releases are great. I’ve gotten links from sites like the New York Times, the BBC and TechRepublic after we put out press releases about our latest launches, events and product updates. In some cases, news sites and bloggers reach out to us for interviews and we leverage these opportunities to score some really good, natural links. Using HelpaReporter.com is a great way for getting noticed by news sites that need insights from people who are knowledgeable in a wide range of topics.

Facebook Satellite Pages – This is one of the best generators of traffic and natural links for us. The way most sites do social media campaigns is by creating branded fan pages that people don’t really recognize (unless it’s a major consumer brand). We took the other route and we create several generic pages dedicated to topics related to our product. For instance, I have a client who owns a website that offers guided tours to Americans visiting Italy. Instead of creating just a Facebook page named after the site, we created pages about Italy, Italian food, Italian cars, etc. These are things that people readily like and we now have about 80,000 followers combined. We just manage the pages and provide a regular stream of content to share. We promote our site’s content via these channels and we get a lot of visits to our pages because of it. It’s also a good way to connect with other bloggers since influencers tend to follow pages like these. That gives us linking and guest posting opportunities that we can’t get with regular email outreach alone.

Smart Twitter Hashtagging – in the Twitterverse, knowing what hashtags to use can help get your content noticed by your industry’s influencers. Follow them and see what kind of hashtags they use. Use the ones that make sense for your content and see what kind of traction you get. Some of our best relationships and linking opportunities can be attributed to posts that had hashtags which influencers constantly check.

Could you cite an actionable tip on getting high paying clients? 

I don’t think I have one, single tip for hooking up with good clients. This is a function of business savvy and your values. I do use the following principles to filter out good leads from bad ones:

•         Knowing the dollar value of my time and work – To make things simple, I decided on a dollar amount that is acceptable for me if someone will make me work on an hourly basis. This allows me to easily see which projects are worth my attention and which ones I’d rather pass on. The worst thing for an SEO specialist is to be stuck in a project that doesn’t feel like it pays enough. If I’m taking on a project, I make sure that the rates make me and my employees happy while giving the customer a high degree of value for their investment.

•         Client selectivity – I pre-qualify potential clients based on the industry that they operate in and their commitment to a possible campaign. If the budget looks small and unsustainable, those are red flags. If the campaign is doomed to lose because the financial backbone isn’t there, I probably will pass. If the client seems racist, condescending or paranoid, I politely tell them to take their business elsewhere.

•         Not racing to the bottom – A lot of SEO companies in the Philippines seem to think that lowering their prices and offering standardized packages is the way to attract clients. I don’t know if that approach works, but I have a different way of doing things. While the majority tries to kill each other by racing to the bottom of the price ladder, I price my team’s services according to our expertise level, the quality of our services and the value we provide to the customer. We don’t worry too much about how other people price their SEO. We worry about providing excellent, personalized services that are tailor-made for a site’s specific needs.

•         Project’s Potential for Success – As a team, we never go into wars that we think are impossible to win. We’ve turned down big prospects who had unreasonable expectations. Being selective in projects that you take on allows you to build a great track record. When these clients enjoy success with you, they’ll hire you for new projects and they’ll introduce you to other website owners who need your services. This is my secret on how I generate high-conversion leads without even having my own website. We strive to do our best work for our existing clients and we get referrals to new good clients as a result.

Million dollar question: what’s the best food you’ve tasted ever? 

Gummy bears. It’s not even close. If gummy bears could sustain a healthy body, I’d eat them exclusively.

Name top 3 of your favorite SEO/IM pros in the whole wide web. Any best post/s from their blog you wish to endorse? 

I have a lot of people that I respect in this industry. It’s tough to pick the top 3 but here goes:

Brian Clark (Copyblogger) – Writing ability is one of the most useful yet most underrated skills in SEO. If you know how to write good content and your site does a great job of persuading visitors to heed calls to action, you’re halfway home. Brian has excellent insights on copywriting and content marketing. He teaches in a way that’s simple, easy to grasp and entertaining even for people new to online marketing. I definitely recommend one of their classic whitepapers Copywriting 101.

Rand Fishkin – He needs no introduction. He’s the top dog in Moz and he’s one of the most revered minds in the SEO landscape. I don’t have a particular classic post from him, but I do recommend watching his Whiteboard Friday video series religiously.

Jason Acidre – Locally, I think Jason is a great example to follow. He proved that Filipinos have a place in SEO’s global stage. It made me realize we’re not just service providers for clients looking for cheap labor. We can be thought leaders, too, if we play our cards right. One of my favorite posts from his blog is his guide on becoming an influencer.

You’re really an inspiration to us. What’s the coolest advice you want to share to beginners and other SEO aspirants? 

Love what you do, always play to win and be as honest as possible. Think critically: don’t be afraid to challenge the rules if they aren’t serving your business needs. Finally, use SEO as a platform for positively impacting the lives of the people around you. Financial success and career growth is more satisfying when more than one person is reaping the benefits.