Kyle Ross joined Passion in 2016 and is now one of the agency’s most established SEO Managers. He has experience in all areas of SEO, but in particular loves working on overall SEO and marketing strategies with clients.

What Does an SEO Account Manager Do?

As as SEO account manager, you’re in an intriguing position where you are responsible for the implementation of SEO work, communicating to the business you are working with and managing projects overall.

In smaller agencies it’s especially likely that you won’t have a large team working on a single client, with each team member an expert in a specific field. You simply won’t have the capacity to have an expert in log file analysis, another for internal linking, another for backlink analysis, a project manager, and so on.

Hence the need for account managers who have an in-depth understanding of SEO – these jacks of all trades will most likely have a solid technical understanding as well as an ability to communicate well with clients and manage the project overall. Having someone who can do all these three efficiently can be immensely helpful on smaller accounts when you don’t have the resources for three or more SEO experts.

With this in mind, my three tips for SEO account management are:

• Be comfortable with technical SEO

• Communicate effectively with the client

• Manage projects with care but don’t overly commit your time

Be comfortable with technical SEO

You’ll be tasked with speaking to developers, business owners, PR managers, in-house SEO teams, and others. So one thing is for sure – know the foundations of Search Engine Optimisation and how it works. Understanding the principles and technicalities of SEO and being able to easily explain it to someone who knows very little – or very much – about the subject is a skill that will benefit you immensely in this trade.

Communicate effectively with the client

It’s important to be clear with the person you’re speaking to from the business. They may not have a firm understanding of the principles of SEO, so it’s up to you to show them how this helps and fits into their overall marketing strategy. SEO should, after all, integrate with all marketing aspects; it’s not a channel in itself, and so should pervade into their PR, content marketing and paid work. Communicating well about what’s working and what isn’t is an honest and helpful conversation to have with clients.

Having regular catch-up calls and sending summary emails of the work that’s been done can be helpful for them to understand where progress is being made. If it’s a little daunting doing this at first, just understand that, as the expert in the field, you probably know far more about SEO than they do. It’s just about making it work for their business as well as possible.

If you provide monthly reports for your clients, it’s always a good idea to talk them through the results on a call or in a face-to-face meeting. This scrutiny will make sure that you always have a grasp of the overall direction of the campaign, and also allows them to ask you specific questions about the results.

Manage projects with care but don’t overly commit your time

Your time is likely precious in an agency environment, and even if you love the business you’re working with, you can’t dedicate a tonne of time to them. It’s simply not fair on your other clients.

You will likely have a project plan, detailing the time you should spend on each aspect of work. Make sure that you stick to this time, and try not to overcommit yourself to the project overall. Although this may initially build up goodwill with a client, it could lead to inflated expectations as to how much work you can achieve for their budget.

Be honest and realistic about timescales; remember, you are the SEO expert. When a client pushes for a task to be done faster, they may not understand all of the work that goes into it. As an account manager, it’s your responsibility to communicate this effectively.

Do you think you’ve got what it takes to be an SEO Account Manager?

At Passion Digital we’re always excited to hear from new talent. Take a look at our careers page for any current job vacancies, or get in touch with our HR Manager, Channing, to find out whether you have the makings of a Passionista!

Hi, I’m Kyle! I’m part of the SEO team here at Passion, a London-based digital marketing agency, and I’m here to tell you about my top three SEO trends for 2020.

Creating Content

This first one is getting more and more important: actually writing. This means creating useful and high quality content rather than trying to game the system by keyword stuffing and spitting out poor content just to rank better in search engine result pages. Google is understanding and analysing content better and better all the time – so just write naturally, write for the user and engage them.

Keeping users on the page is essential for rankings in the long run, as search engines monitor behaviour on the page and use these as indicators of the page’s relevance to the query.

Utilising Structured Data

My second top SEO trend this year is structured data. You might know this as schema. There are tons of different schema out there, and they’re there to help you mark up bits of data within your site that users will find useful and can be displayed within search results.

You can have schema for time, length of article, ratings people have given… pretty much anything nowadays, really. You’re trying to make the user’s journey as easy as possible, so using schema to display the content of your page or your video – whatever it is – is really useful.

Combining SEO and UX

My third trend for 2020 is getting SEO and UX (user experience) to combine in perfect harmony. It’s a growing factor, and rather than SEO and UX butting heads like they might have done in the past, it’s really important that they work together.

It’s important that users can find what they want on a page – and Google knows this more and more. Its algorithm is looking at things like dwell time, the number of pages users move through, the amount that users interact with the content, that sort of thing. Basically, if it’s really hard for the user to find what they’re looking for, Google will notice and your rankings will most likely go down in the long run.

Those are my three SEO trends for 2020! What are yours? Let me know in the comments!

Start your year off right by improving your SEO strategies with help from the experts at Passion Digital. We can help you improve the visibility of your website in Google’s organic search results and making it easier for your target audience to find you.

What are backlinks? Where do they fit into my SEO strategy? How do I get more backlinks? If these questions have been eating you alive and keeping you up at night, have no fear – all your questions are about to be answered. I’m Kyle, Passion Digital’s SEO Manager, and I just happen to know a thing or two (or three or four…) about backlinks. Here’s all you need to know about perhaps the most challenging part of SEO: earning quality backlinks.

What are Backlinks?

Simply put, backlinks occur when websites link to one another. For example, when an outside domain links to a page on your website, you get a backlink.

How Do Backlinks Play a Role in Your SEO Strategy?

Backlinks are undeniably an important part of Search Engine Optimisation and are an important tool in the arsenal of any SEO agency. When you receive backlinks from an external site (especially if they are from quality pieces of content on reputable and authoritative web pages), it’s like getting a vote of confidence for the page that is receiving the link. The more votes the page gets, the more that the Google search engine views it positively, which means it will rank higher in the search results. This will increase your webpage’s visibility, organic traffic and, ideally, conversion rates.

How to Get Backlinks

There are lots of great ways to get backlinks – however, there are lots of bad ways out there as well. It’s important to ensure that you are using the best SEO practices so that Google doesn’t penalise you. Here are five of my top suggestions on how to properly build links in a way that will hopefully have your webpage soaring through the rankings.

If you want links as badly as this kid, listen up!

1. Leverage Partnerships

One of the easiest ways to get backlinks? Just ask for them! Speak to your partners and other professional associates and see if they’re willing to add a link to you on their website. Since they already have a working relationship with you, it’s more likely they’ll be happy to pop you onto one of their pages – especially if they already have a list of partners on their site!

2. Love Your Long-Form Content

Make sure that you have at least one page on your website that is filled with a fantastic long-form piece. This page will have a static URL and will be available all year round. Make sure that it is genuinely useful (you should never create content just for the sake of content), well written and, as the name implies, LONG. If you have a PR or social team, it’s a good idea to get them to focus a lot of energy on promoting this piece. Good long-form content tends to correlate directly with very good backlinks.

For an example of this type of long-form content, check out our Wellbeing at Work page.

3. Create a Blog with Great Content

One way to naturally get backlinks is to write fantastic content that other people will want to reference. Blogs are a great way to do this. Make sure your blog posts are well written, properly structured, relevant to your industry and useful to the reader. You should also post on a regular basis.

Over time, your blog will likely gain authority and a readership and, ideally, you will earn links to your blog posts. When you create useful content, others will want to use it as an authoritative reference and link to it – which means another quality backlink for your page.

Remember that when you get a backlink to a blog post, you should make sure you funnel the authority you receive from the link into a key page (perhaps one of your website’s long form pieces). To do this, edit that post and include a link to a key page on your site. This will give your blog content maximum effectiveness!

4. Try Guest Posting

This one is also related to creating great content – but you will be submitting it to another website. This tactic is called guest posting; many websites allow you to submit content to them that includes a link back to your own website. However, it’s important to note that there are some base rules you should follow when submitting a post:

• Make sure that the website or blog that will receive your guest post is relevant to the web page to which you will be linking
• Make sure that the posts you are submitting are well written, useful, interesting and, as always, relevant
• Don’t just hype up your company – make sure that there is real substance to your article

Be their guest, be their guest!

5. Utilise the Broken Link Building Method

This is a tactic that involves finding broken outbound links, contacting the website that has the broken link and suggesting that they fix their page by updating the broken link with a link to one of your web pages. This technique will only work if the page you’re suggesting to them is a useful, authoritative resource on the same topic as the broken link. In short, it should make sense to the website editor to swap out the old link for yours. Not only will this help a website fix its errors and improve the experience for its readers, it will also get you an extra backlink – a win-win situation for all!

However, despite the mutualistic benefits of the broken link building method, there is one potential hurdle you’ll have to get around: finding the broken links. Luckily there are lots of great SEO tools to help you identify them (such as Siteliner and Ahrefs). Once you compile a list of websites you want to target, all you have to do is pop the URLs into one of those tools and viola – you’ll know where to start your outreach. Just make sure the emails you are sending are short yet sweet. You want to come off as friendly and helpful not just hungry for a backlink!

With these tips and tricks in mind, you can easily increase the quality of your backlinks and get some great content on your blog in the process. Good luck in all your future link building endeavours – you’ll be on the first page of the Google search results before you know it.

Want to up your SEO game but not sure where to begin? Passion Digital can help you with all your digital marketing needs… and that doesn’t just go for our clients! If you’re looking for the next step in your digital marketing career, we’re currently looking to hire some new Passionistas – check out our job openings today.

The role of an SEO specialist has gone through many transformations in its relatively short lifecycle. We are at the forefront of technological changes, poised to adapt to the updates of Google’s policies, constantly looking to innovate our techniques in order to get that sought-after page 1 ranking for our site.

However, despite the furiously changing nature of the web, there are consistencies that will always ring true for SEO specialists looking to achieve results in their work. Here are our three we’d like to share with you:

Write for humans (not penguins and pandas!)

We are at the mercy of Google’s algorithms. Adhering to Google’s penguin and panda updates are obviously something we must all take into account…

But – ignore at your peril the fact that everything you’re writing for is for humans. Are your meta-titles and descriptions so stuffed with your chosen keywords that they make the sentence difficult to read? Well, that’s a real problem. Humans are notoriously picky creatures, unfortunately, and will not click on something that does not make sense. We simply do not have time. Instead, write your titles, headings, descriptions, any content at all with the intention of being simple and delightful to read. If you are making sense to people, they will listen.

Experimenting = key

Try new things or be left behind. Quickly. Being dynamic in your work is very important, as you must recognise the techniques that work for you and apply them. Lethargic turnaround times will only make you fall behind on trends and consumer behaviour. A dynamic approach could be testing combinations of keywords on a new page, for example – did you see notable improvement following these changes, or did the results decline? With an improvement, you know you are going in the right direction. Continue refining your work.

For experimenting, it begins and ends with your data – you should be checking Google Analytics regularly to see your site’s performance. Create short campaigns, be vigilant to their performance, and collect the results – you will have tangible evidence to convince your boss that this work is going to good places…so keep it up!

Build them links! (respect the link-building strategy)

A wise (SEO) man once told me that the power of authoritative links is unquestionable. It is still and will always be the most significant factor in determining your site’s rankings in search engines. That is why a link-building strategy is essential for boosting your site’s SEO potential. Effective content marketing and outreach are key to successful SEO. The work itself may be more time-consuming, but you’ll reap the rewards ten-fold if you’ve gained a single, highly authoritative link.

Do you think you can write a guest blog that can gain a link back to your site? Or produce a piece of content that sites will host, sending their link juice back to yours? These are two simple examples of ways to gain a quality link. It may seem an arduous task, but persistence is important with link-building. Respect the process, crack on with the work, and be patient. This is a vital aspect of SEO that you can’t afford to ignore.

In conclusion, these SEO tips have all stood the test of time, and remained the bedrock of a solid SEO approach. There is so much more to SEO out there, however! For the experienced ones out there in the industry – they will know the benefit of each one of these techniques. For the newcomers, always have these in the back of your mind – they will be your platform of success.