SEO Q&A Week #3

MICHAEL:
Hi guys, Michael here. Do you want a second opinion on your SEO? Head to theseoshow.co and hit the link in the header. We'll take a look under the hood at your SEO, your competitors and your market and tell you how you can improve. All right, let's get into the show.

INTRO: It's time for the SEO show where a couple of nerds talk search engine optimization so you can learn to compete in Google and grow your business online. Now, here's your hosts, Michael and Arthur.

ARTHUR: Welcome everybody to another episode of the SEO show. I'm here with Michael and today we're going to be talking about What are we talking about today? I forgot.

MICHAEL: Five seconds into the interview and he crumbles. The interview. Oh man. The intro. Let's do it again. No, let's keep going. Why not? Okay. All right. Let's keep going. Sorry about that.

ARTHUR: Oh, it's Q and a week. There we go.

MICHAEL: Q and a week three. We're talking about today. Jeez. That's not a good intro. I hope the questions are good.

ARTHUR: They're good. We have a couple couple today that we want to go through.

MICHAEL: Yeah. And we enjoy doing these because, um, you know, the questions come in and it gives us cause to sort of think about things that we might not think about all the time doing SEO, you know, every day, you don't always think about things from this perspective. So, um, yeah, we're going to give it a go answering these questions and hopefully they're good answers. Hopefully they're better than the intro. Yeah. All right. Let's go. First question from Jared. Yep. Yep.

ARTHUR: You can read. Okay, cool. So this one's from Jared. I have been applying for some SEO roles and even interviewed at a couple, but so far haven't managed to get an offer. What can I do to improve my chances? It's a good question, Jared. It is. There's a bunch of things that you can do. I guess, you know, I haven't interviewed in a while, but I remember it can be very daunting, especially if you're, you know, fresh, you know, you're just trying to get your foot into the door, starting off at a, you know, starting your career. I think one of the main things is to show you have passion. So, you know, if you're interested in doing SEO, give the interviewer examples of things you have done, you know, websites that you have built or examples of any SEO you have done yourself in the past to show them that you actually care, that you are passionate about it.

MICHAEL: Because if you're coming in from the entry level, like we interview a fair bit at our agency. And where that's the first thing we always look for is like passion, like true sort of interest in the space. Not just sort of wanting the job because you want a job or you sort of heard, oh yeah, it's a cool industry to get into, but you're not really that interested in it. You know, you sort of need to show that passion. So with SEO, if you are an SEO or if you sort of even are interested in it, you should be tinkering with websites. Yeah. Playing around, building a site, trying to rank it. I think maybe turn to an affiliate site, something like that.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I mean, before I started doing SEO, I was always like back in the day, back in the Geocities days, I was building websites like every week, just random stuff, never ranking them or anything. But I had that interest in building forums and doing all these kind of, I guess you'd call it nerdy stuff that other people wouldn't be doing or wasting their time on back in the day.

MICHAEL: Yeah, because SEO is a nerdy by nature. Do you like what I did there? That was good. Nerdy by nature. Do you even know who naughty by nature are? Yeah. Is that way before your time?

ARTHUR: It's not before my time, but I know them. They're popular.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, SEO is a nerdy by nature. And by that, it means that they're typically not everyone, not, not in every case, obviously, but typically they'll like the techie things in life. They'll like computer games, that sort of stuff. They'll like building websites. So can you point to that as an interviewee? Cool. Yeah, cool. The other thing is when you're coming into an interview and you're talking about SEO and you're saying you're really interested in it and all the like, you need to know the big players in the space or the big publications. So search engine journals, search engine land, search engine round table, you know, the sites that sort of blog about going on is in the industry and you should be able to say, that you read them and why, what you read on there, what you take from it. Like you, you shouldn't have no idea what that stuff is, right? Exactly. Yeah. Cause you will get asked about it in an interview.

ARTHUR: Yeah. And it doesn't hurt to name drop a few, you know, influential people in the SEO world as well to show that you kind of pay attention.

MICHAEL: Podcasts as well. Definitely. Just drop the, you listen to the SEO show. That is going to carry big. That's an instant hire there. Yeah, absolutely. But not just SEO podcasts, broader digital marketing, you know, there's a ton of digital marketing podcasts out there. So if you listen to any number of them, I won't, I won't name drop any now, but like, well maybe I should. Authority hackers? Yeah. Things like authority hacker, for example, they, they teach you about, SEO and building affiliate websites, you should be listening to that stuff. If you truly do have a passion and interest in the industry to further your skills or your knowledge of the space and be up to date, basically be current with your knowledge. So often in interviews, you'll probably get asked about that. So just saying that you listened to, you know, a case file or, you know, true crime podcasts or stuff like that, probably not going to carry a lot of weight in a SEO interview. So.

ARTHUR: Unless of course the interviewer really likes crime podcasts himself.

MICHAEL: I've gotten excited when people mentioned that in the past. But yeah, what I'm really looking for if I ask about podcasts is digital marketing, SEO and that sort of stuff. What else? Analytics as well. Google Analytics.

ARTHUR: Yeah. No one expects you to be an analytical master, but doing the analytics course, getting to know the basics and, you know, maybe creating an analytics profile, adding it to a website and starting to figure out how it all works, how you can look at the data and, you know, manipulate it and read it. Definitely no harm in doing that. We use analytics daily, so it's definitely a big part of being an SEO.

MICHAEL: And having the qualifications be a big bonus. Yeah, definitely. And then things like courses, like there's a website, Udemy. Udemy? Udemy. Never know the right way. It's like the SEM rush versus SEM rush. Udemy. Udemy. I call it Udemy. Yeah, I call it Udemy, but then sometimes Udemy, but it would be, it reads as Udemy, U-D-E-M-Y. Bit off topic there, but. Yeah. But like that site, right. You can go in there and buy courses that people have put together for, sometimes it's like eight bucks, 10 bucks, like really cheap. doing that sort of stuff will show you're a self starter again, and that you're truly interested in the space. Cause if you're going for an entry level role, like you can't talk about your experience working in an agency or, you know, in the industry because you don't have any, but that sort of stuff shows that you're not just turning up and wanting a job. So you go on Udemy and look up SEO courses. There'll be a ton, complete a couple of them, talk about your experience doing them, what you learned from them. That's going to reflect well in an interview.

ARTHUR: Definitely.

MICHAEL: They're the main ones from an SEO point of view, you know, trying to get an SEO job. But the other thing that sort of is important in interviews is have you done your homework? Like, do you in an ideal world, you should know about the business that you're interviewing at.

ARTHUR: Yeah, exactly.

MICHAEL: So check out the about page on their site, check out their LinkedIn, Instagram, like get a feel for the place and particularly the people you you're meeting with. So you should know who you're interviewing with beforehand. Yeah. Do a little bit of stalking, you know, try and learn about them in the business. And there might be an opportunity to work that into the conversation. That's going to reflect well, most of the time.

ARTHUR: Yeah, just be prepared, you know, have a look at interview questions for SEOs and there's stuff online that you can be prepared, prepare yourself, how to answer these questions, do your homework. And yeah, first and foremost, if you have a passion for SEO, we'll share.

MICHAEL: So yeah. Cause we're just talking interviewing at the moment, but what, what we do at our agency and what a lot of other agencies do is a little test, like a skills or knowledge test. Sometimes it could be technical, like getting you to actually look at a site, audit it and give recommendations or feedback. Other times it might just be as simple as like a multiple choice thing, you know, like what's the most important H tag on a page, H1, H2, H3, H4, and then- Just basic stuff, like give us a recommended page title for this page, you know, stuff, really easy stuff.

ARTHUR: Someone that is junior should be able to, you know, take a stab at it and get it mostly right, so.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So prepare for that. Those articles you mentioned, like searching for SEO interview questions. I'm sure there's millions of articles out there in that. Learn the basics so that when someone throws a curve ball at you, you know, like, what do you think about breadcrumbs? Yeah. You're not, you're not thinking about breadcrumbs.

ARTHUR: I'm a massive fan of breadcrumbs. All right, well, Jared, I think, well, do you got any more? Just be confident, be confident in yourself. And, you know, I guess if it is a junior role, no one expects you to know the world about SEO, but just be confident in yourself, the way you speak, the way you carry yourself, and then you should do fine.

MICHAEL: I would add to that as well. Ask questions about them. Yeah, of course. Ask questions about the business, you know, where you're headed, what are your goals?

ARTHUR: What's the role day to day? What will you be doing? Who's your manager? Who are you reporting to? Yep. Stuff like that. Yep.

MICHAEL: So I hope that helps Jared. Also, you've only interviewed at a couple. You might not even be doing anything wrong necessarily. Jared episode today, isn't it? Yeah, well, like you just, if you've only got to, and haven't managed to get an offer, interview at a couple more and you might find that you get an offer. Well, hit us up, maybe we'll have a job for you. Yeah, well, maybe if you're in Sydney, head to the careers page and localdigital.com.au, we'll see what we can make happen. But look, that hopefully helps. And yeah, let's move on to the next question. We've got Matt here. He has asked, Is it worth focusing on other search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo? No. Yeah. I was waiting for you to say that.

ARTHUR: No one uses Bing or DuckDuckGo. Very little people use Bing, even a smaller amount of people use DuckDuckGo. I guess technically if you're optimizing for Google, you're optimizing for all the other search engines. So I wouldn't worry too much about, you know, all the alternatives. out there, especially DuckDuckGo.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So like Google owns in Australia, 92% of the research in the U S a bit less.

ARTHUR: So what would DuckDuckGo be like point something percent?

MICHAEL: Yeah. Like it is increasing a lot, but it's coming off a small base and it's the numbers just pale in comparison to Google.

ARTHUR: Well, I guess DuckDuckGo is used by people who are typically trying to be more private or not want to be tracked by Google. So you're not really trying to cater to those people.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Different demographic on DuckDuckGo, typically at the moment, like it will grow over time, but yeah. Bing, I would say typically is used by maybe older people or less tech savvy people. It's a default for whatever computer they're using.

ARTHUR: They don't know how to change it.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Or, or even know they need to, you know, so probably think it's Google. Probably. Or the number one search thing on Bing is Google. Yeah. So they're probably going to Bing searching Google and using Google, but anyway, ultimately no. Yeah. Ultimately the answer is no. Focus your efforts where the results are going to come from. That's Google. If you do well in Google, chances are you'll show up in those other ones to some extent anyway.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

MICHAEL: All righty, hope you like that one, Matt.

ARTHUR: Cool, we have another one here from Sam. White hat, gray hat, or black hat? What's the difference and what do you recommend?

MICHAEL: It's a good question. It is good. And the difference, because people categorize white hat, black hat, all different ways. Yeah. So we'll give ours. Yeah. So I'm going to start with black hat, the evil one. To me, Black Hat is, you know, they've got to set the scene. Yeah. A little bit of suspense. Black Hat's the evil one, the bad one, because it's, in my opinion, it's hacking other websites or doing like really dodgy stuff to get rankings in the search engines. Yeah. Being nefarious, like being dodgy with your behavior. So an example might be, WordPress, there's some sort of vulnerability where you're able to inject links into websites using that vulnerability. You as an SEO, make use of that vulnerability and inject links to your affiliate website into thousands of compromised WordPress websites. Have you tried doing that? No, I've never tried doing it. You know what? It'd be interesting. It'd be interesting, but it's also illegal. So it's probably not worth doing. Illegal? Yeah. By law? Yeah. What? To hack people's like compromised people's websites and inject stuff into it. Guaranteed. If you get caught.

ARTHUR: Yeah, of course. Yeah. How often did you get caught? I don't know, but I didn't think it was legal.

MICHAEL: I thought it was frowned upon, but I would say like forced by any sort of law, I would say putting content onto someone else's like website would be covered by some sort of law. Should fact check this later. Yeah. We're just speaking off the cuff here, but anyway, that's black hat to me. Some people think black hat is like building links, you know, going against what Google says. Yeah. There'll be a lot of people that would think that.

ARTHUR: Places I used to work at would strictly no link building just because it's against Google's guidelines and you can potentially get penalized, but- Paid link building. Paid link building, of course.

MICHAEL: Yeah, but to me, it's hacking other websites and trying to get your links in there to make money with an affiliate website. So all the Nike Air Max and Viagra and spam links that you see on websites, that's usually the result of Black Hat SEO.

ARTHUR: So- What's on the flip side, White Hat? You wanna go there? Okay. Yeah. So what's White Hat SEO? White Hat's boring SEO. It's basically just sticking by the book and not steering away from Google's guidelines whatsoever.

MICHAEL: Yeah. Google's book in this case, isn't it? Yeah. So White Hat SEOs will preach, just do great content. Content is king. Traffic will come. Yeah. Just, you know, write more in-depth articles, make your site way better than everyone else's and Google will reward you.

ARTHUR: which is somewhat true depending on the site, but to an extent, yeah. The point you made earlier is to me off, off microphone. But if you're a, if you're a plumber just starting out, you know, you're not going to get links the way a big website such as David Jones will or any sort of big brand because they get links naturally for various reasons. So they don't need to go and manually do the link building. And if you're a plumber just starting out, a plumber based in Parramatta, for example, how are you going to get people to link to your website? It's, you know, you might have some partners that you work with, or if you sponsor a team or something, get a link there, but that's not going to move the needle at all. So you have to kind of engage in some sort of link building, paid link building, which is, I guess, where we kind of step into the gray hat.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So Greyhat really is, in my opinion, it's doing what works. It's being a real SEO. It's like looking at what ranks in Google, how it's ranking, and then making sure that you're doing similar.

ARTHUR: Which can often go against Google's- Because Google doesn't want you to manipulate their search engine, their algorithm. Algorithm, jeez, butchered that. So obviously they're going to not tell you what works. They're going to tell you, you know, you can't do link building. it's black hat, that's not right. But in reality, it's what works.

MICHAEL: Yeah, and it's not black hat. No. As we've discovered, you're not hacking, you're not damaging other people's sites, you are doing stuff to your own site that pleases Google's crawlers, it's algorithms. and gets results. So things like paying for links falls into gray hat. Yep. Things like even private blog networks can fall into gray hat. Um, even, you know, Google don't want you creating, if you're a local service business and you create pages for the locations you service, they don't even technically want you doing that, but that stuff works, you know, trying to get local traffic. Yeah. So that's all gray hat. And typically that's where most, that's where the right mix of risk and reward live is in that gray hat zone. Cause if you feel like, let's say you run an affiliate website and you want to rank for like credit card comparison, you are not going to rank being purely white hat. Cause you're not going to get enough links. You need to go out there and probably pay for links to compete with all the other affiliates that are paying for links. So you need to be gray hat. And that's typically where results will come from for most businesses. Super big enterprise brands that get links because they have, you know, big marketing budgets on TV, brand awareness, PR, all that. They don't need to worry about links. They can afford to just focus on content and technical. Most other businesses need to live in that gray hat world. Agreed. Agreed? Yep. All right. Well, well said. Hopefully that answered your question there, Sam. Uh, what do we recommend? Well, Oh, Greyhat. Yeah, look, unless you're a big enterprise brand, then it's Whitehat. We don't recommend Blackhat. No. It just may or may not be illegal, but it's definitely immoral.

ARTHUR: I wouldn't even know how to start to do Blackhat SEO when it comes to hacking sites, so.

MICHAEL: Yeah, no, it's not a skill you want to learn. No. So let's move on. This question is a dumb one. Not even a question. I'll let you read this one out. It's an email. I am professional blogger. Actually, I have links on top PR websites with high Alexa rank for sale at great prices. Karen Jones. We've probably all seen these emails. Our inbox is flooded with them. It's just people selling links. Do you see these emails every day, Arthur?

ARTHUR: I see them. Yeah. Well, I don't know how they got my email. address, but they have, and it's annoying. So they've obviously scraped it from somewhere and found out that I do SEO. So I probably get, let's say maybe four or five, maybe six a day, random people hitting me up, asking me if I want to buy some super high DR sites with high Alexa rank to boost my SEO and rank number one. Ignore it. Ignore it. If I'll even go one step further is have a look at the sites that they're offering to you and then blacklist them and never approach them because if they're hitting you up, they're probably hitting up thousands of other people as well. And you can bet your bottom dollar that those sites are eventually going to get de-indexed and removed. Yeah.

MICHAEL: So we've put that in a bit tongue in cheek because obviously it's not a question, but it's just junk emails that we get all the time. And you as business owners listening to this probably do as well. Don't fall for it. Don't be tempted to engage with anything like that. It's just going to be put it. Yeah. Mark it as junk and mark it as spam. I'm constantly marking them as spam. You should see my list of blocked senders.

ARTHUR: Oh yeah. It's just like, you know, getting into like the, you know, thousands. Yeah.

MICHAEL: But the reason we've included that one is because it sort of ties into this next one, which is from Kevin. He says, what are your thoughts on outsourcing SEO overseas for cheaper? Now, the reason we've tied that in, those ones selling links are normally from overseas people trying to make a buck. Now, this question is just asking about engaging with overseas SEO for cheaper. The answer to that is could be awesome or it could be a nightmare, you know, depends on who you're working with and how you're working with them. Definitely.

ARTHUR: I guess the best way to answer it would be to kind of go through the pros and cons. Uh, obviously the main pro would be, it's probably going to be a lot cheaper than working with someone local. There could be good SEOs out there. Like everything, it's hit and miss. There's definitely going to be a lot of scammers out there that have no idea what they're doing. But amongst those people, you might find someone that's actually pretty decent. It could be that they live in a country where the cost of living is significantly lower than here in Australia, so they can afford to charge I don't know, let's just say I'll throw a number out there, $10 an hour or $15 an hour to do SEO and good quality SEO compared to someone here, which is, you know, no one would do it for that. It's way not enough. So they could get away with getting results for a lot cheaper. That would be the pros.

MICHAEL: Yeah. What else?

ARTHUR: That would probably be the two main pros. Yeah. If you can find someone that's good, then great. But I guess on the flip side, there are the cons.

MICHAEL: Just on that point of finding someone good, it is a bit like finding a needle in a haystack. The ones that email you cold, probably not good. So ignore them. Then you go on job place marketplaces.

ARTHUR: Well, you go on Upwork and a lot of the good ones are starting to cost a lot of money as well, arguably more than some of the people in Australia. They'll charge in USD. People know their worth. If someone's a very good SEO and they're not going to do it for $5 an hour, because they know they can do it for a lot more.

MICHAEL: The other thing I want to make on that point, there's the SEO, but there's also link costs. Like if you're doing gray hat and actually paying people for links, you can't avoid those costs. You can't, if you want to get the right types of links that are not going to hurt you or have the least chance of hurting you, you can't really avoid paying for them. So there is what you pay the individual doing the work on it, but there is like building a house analogy. You can't change the cost of the materials that go into building the house. Like at a certain level, it just gets it to a floor basically. That's the same with link buildings. It does depend what you're using this overseas SEO person to do.

ARTHUR: Yeah, if it's like keyword research and technical audits, on-site stuff, then if they're good and they're cheap and reliable, then why not? But when it comes to link building, probably not ideal.

MICHAEL: Let's chat about the cons as we see it.

ARTHUR: Yeah.

ARTHUR: So I think the main con would be depending on where they are, uh, the time zone. So, you know, so if you, for example, if you're based in Australia or someone in Southeast Asia, the time difference isn't too, too big. So you can kind of overlap. You can, you can have them start earlier, finish earlier to kind of match up with Australian times that works. We have a few people that we work with overseas, which is fine. If you're looking to go to Eastern Europe, then unfortunately it's pretty much flipped day is night, night is day. So you might find that there's only an hour or two a day where you kind of have that opportunity to engage with them and chat with them and, you know, meet with them. So you basically trust them to kind of go away and do their own thing. And yeah, so that would be, I guess the main, con for me.

MICHAEL: I would say on that note, you have to project manage them. So you need to understand SEO enough to deal with that person and keep on top of them and make sure that.

ARTHUR: Yeah, you shouldn't. Yeah. Because otherwise it can just go away, take your money and you have no idea what's happening. They could flick you an automated report every month and you might not see results and you won't know why. So you kind of have to have some level of SEO knowledge.

MICHAEL: I would say as well with them being in those different markets, they don't necessarily understand local places and things and vernacular, like the way we talk and that sort of stuff here. So it can show in the copy they write or the tactics they use or even like the tactics they propose around location pages and the like.

ARTHUR: Yeah. So it's if you're working with a Sydney client, they won't know any of the suburbs in Sydney or, you know, they might not know the capital cities of Australia. So basic stuff that a local person would know straight away.

MICHAEL: So, yeah. The other big ones from my perspective is there's no real legal protection. for you as a client, there's no repercussions to them really if they do the wrong thing.

ARTHUR: They can just disappear, decide not to come online ever again and that's it, you're never gonna hear from them or find them.

MICHAEL: And that happens often, they just get missing, leave you in the lurch. They also don't care about their reviews or reputation in the local market here in Australia. So again, just disappear, do poor work and you're left holding the bag, so to speak.

ARTHUR: Yeah. I guess the only kind of flip side to that is if they are using Upwork, then they do kind of rely on reviews. So again, it can be very hit and miss.

MICHAEL: Yeah. So I guess, look, we, although we work at an agency that services businesses here in Australia, we're not going to sit here and try and tell you that there's no use for using overseas people, you know, in certain circumstances it can be worth doing, But if you're an established business here in Australia, you're at a large enough size, you have a big enough marketing budget, you probably want to work with a local agency because you can pick up the phone and talk to them whenever you need to. You can go in the office and see them or have them come to you whenever you need them to. They care about their reputation in the local market, so they're going to want to keep you happy. There are legal repercussions available to you if things go wrong. You know, there's a whole lot of stuff, time zones, the exact same as you most of the time, like there's a whole bunch of stuff there that just makes the headaches of working with an anonymous person overseas more or less not worth it. So anything you want to add to that one?

ARTHUR: No, that's everything.

MICHAEL: Good to know. All right. Well, that's about all the questions we had for this episode. So hope you enjoyed that one. We will be back next week with another episode of the SEO show, but until then happy SEOing. See ya. See ya.