Interview with Digital Marketing Consultant and SEO Blogger Alex Chris

Great news! We continue our series of interviews with SEO and Digital Marketing experts. This time we interviewed Alex Chris!
We created a list of interesting questions and interviewed one of the well-known SEO bloggers, author of The Complete SEO Course and Digital Marketing Agency – Alex Chris.

Alex shared his story of becoming an SEO specialist and web development expert. He also shared his knowledge and practical tips that helped him, and, more and more people to develop their business projects. To know more about Alex Chris’ projects, follow his Twitter page.

So let’s start! Spread your knowledge about SEO with Sitechecker and Alex Chris:

1. How many years of experience in digital marketing do you have?

In total it’s 17 years. I started with SEO in 2002. Spend 10 years working on my own sites (in the self-development and fitness niche). In 2012 reliablesoft became officially a digital marketing agency and I started working with clients as an SEO consultant and later as a digital marketing consultant.

2. What type of digital marketing you have the strongest skills?

Definitely SEO. When I started in 2002 there was no Facebook or any other form of the social network to use for marketing so my only focus was on Google SEO. Over the years I have developed social media marketing and content marketing skills. Since 2014 I’m also a Google Ads certified professional and a software/web developer by profession (studied Computer Science).

3. What projects are you proud of?

Over the years, I was fortunate enough to work with great companies and help them with their digital marketing campaigns but the project that I’m really proud of is my SEO Course. The first version was released in 2016 (as an ebook) and since then, it has been revised many times. I’m proud to say that the course now includes everything you ever need to know about SEO. It covers all topics from basic SEO to advanced techniques. More than 2500 students have enrolled so far, the course is highly rated and this makes me very happy and proud.

4. What do you do to further your own SEO knowledge and skills?

SEO is a dynamic discipline. While the main principles haven’t changed for years, new concepts emerge all the time (like structured data, AMP) and if you want to stay on top of the game, you need to know about these changes and test them out yourself to see their impact on SEO.

When there is a Google change or update, I test it on my website first to understand the impact and then apply it on a client website.

5. Is there any marketing or SEO blog you like most of all and why?

The blog that I read on a daily basis is Search Engine Roundtable (seroundtable.com). Barry does a great job of informing us of everything that is happening in the SEO industry. Whether there is a Google update or a change in Google’s documents, Barry will let you know. His posts are very specific and to the point and extremely helpful for SEO professionals who need to know how the SEO world is changing.

6. What are the TOP-3 errors you made at the beginning of your SEO specialist career?

1. Spending more time on ‘thinking’ and ‘planning’ than doing – What I have learned over the years is that it’s easier for you to spend time on planning a new website, a product release or even a new blog post than actually doing the work. This was a big mistake because you lose valuable time on things that cannot get you better rankings or traffic. Working on your SEO, publishing new content, doing outreach campaigns is what matters most and this is where you should spend your time.
2. Spending too much time on web site design than content – Being a web developer ‘helped’ me spend a lot of time on the design on my websites while my focus should have been more on the content.
3. Building many small ‘niche’ websites instead of one strong website – Back in the early 2000s, it was a common practice to built small (niche) websites targeting specific keywords. With a couple of links, you could get high rankings. In the long term, this was a bad decision. It’s better to put all your energy into building one great website instead of many ‘smaller’ sites.

7. Your blog about SEO and Digital Marketing is among the most popular ones. What is the most powerful thing about your blog’s popularity? 

• The feedback I get in the comments and through emails from my blog readers is that they find the content easy to read and actionable.
• The fact that English is not my first language helps me into writing content in plain English that everyone can understand.
• I only publish content that will help the reader learn something new or how to perform a specific task and I avoid recommending tools or processes that I’m not using myself.

8. What SEO tactics do you think are underrated?

From my experience working with clients, two of the tactics that can make a difference but not utilized correctly are site structure and internal links.

If your site structure is not optimized and if you are not using internal links correctly, it’s more difficult for Google to crawl, index and rank your pages.

Most people spend time thinking about which color to use or which image instead of thinking about how to create a structure that is simple and easy to crawl by search engines. As a website gets bigger, structure and internal links can play a bigger role in rankings that what most people think.

9. Do you believe that backlinks are Google’s past? Is link building important for increasing the website’s positions nowadays?

Links are still important and they will always be. The idea of links acting as ‘votes of trust’ is what made Google a better search engine than others and they will always be one of the major ranking factors. The difference between now and 10 years ago is that not all links are equal. You need to go after links that are coming from authority websites and the links should point to content that ‘deserves’ high rankings. If any of these two ingredients are missing (content that satisfies the user intent and high-quality links), your chances of surviving for the next 10 years are minimum.

10. In your opinion, does the technical health of the website affect the ranking positions in search engines?

Yes, definitely. If you have issues with technical SEO and search engines cannot access your pages correctly or if it’s not easy for them to understand the context of your content, then this will have a negative impact on your rankings. Before doing anything else, the first step is to make sure that your technical SEO is correct.

11. We all know about the July update from Google. Some websites rose, some of them fell. What do you think about the new algorithm? 

The July algorithm is no different than other algorithms in the sense that Google is always trying to improve their search results and minimize the chances of getting cheated by black or grey hat SEO techniques. If you always play by the book and try to improve your website and content to serve the user better, you have nothing to worry about Google algorithms.

12. What are the main new rankings factors SEO and Marketing specialists should pay attention to? How do you stay up-to-date on the near-constant search algorithm changes?

Structured data is definitely something you should pay attention to. You should keep an eye on the changes Google is making to the appearance of the search results and stay informed of the supported schemas. Adding ALL appropriate schema info to your website and making sure that your implementation is correct, is the way to go.

13. In your opinion, does user’s behavior impact on website ranking in SERP?

Google has many times denied that but I do believe that user behavior does impact rankings. If the majority of users visiting a website from google search hit the back button, this is a signal that they are not satisfied with the results and that website will eventually lose its rankings.

14. What is your approach to developing an SEO strategy?

First, you need to get a good understanding of your industry and competitors. You are not alone and you cannot rank for all the keywords you want.

Then you need to create a realistic plan taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of both your website and main competitors.

Once you have the above in place, you will do your keyword research, set up a content marketing plan, work on your technical and on-page SEO, think about your outreach campaigns, social media campaigns and other ways to get your content in front of the people that might be interested in it.

Building a brand and not just a website is the best way to approach SEO today.

15. What services/companies/apps have inspired you the most this year?

Google Data Studio. I started working with Google Data Studio this year and I’m impressed with how easy it is to create meaningful SEO reports combining data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console. It’s a great tool and it’s free.

16. What are the most critical SEO mistakes you have ever seen in other companies? 

There are SEO companies that still believe that spammy links have value. I’ve seen cases where companies charge their clients for building links in comments, forums or even article directories and this is a big mistake. 

17. How do you evaluate web analytics to measure SEO performance?

That’s not an easy question to answer but to simplify it, if your organic traffic is increasing, it means that you are in the right direction. Of course, at the end of the day you are not only interested in increasing traffic but getting traffic that converts and for that, you need to take into account other factors besides SEO rankings and traffic.

18.  How do you see the future of SEO (in 5 years)?

• Structured data will become more important and possibly a lightweight ranking factor.
• Authority websites will keep dominating the search results.
• Google will be ‘forced’ to give more credit to publishers and make it easier for users to navigate to websites appearing on top of the results and not hiding this info in rich snippets or carousels.
• Youtube SEO (and having a strong YouTube presence) will become a necessity.

19. Which SEO or marketing tools can you recommend as a must-have for every SEO specialist?

I’m a big supporter of SEMRUSH. I believe it’s one of the most complete SEM tools in the market today.

20. What advice can you give for those who are just starting their career in digital marketing?

Avoid the mistakes I did and spend more time ‘doing’ rather than ‘planning’. If you have an idea for a new website or product, it doesn’t have to be perfect, start working on your content and you can adjust the plan and website design as you go along.

You don’t have to spend your time on searching Google to learn SEO or digital marketing, follow a course to learn the basics quickly and do a lot of practice.