Welcome to a new
Introducing
How did you get into SEO?
I am a passionate Digital Marketer. Years ago, I was really lucky to get an opportunity to join the Marketing Team at Travelgateway, a ferry booking agency. I became a Ferrysavers Marketing and SEO Manager there. I quickly became obsessed with all the Marketing Mix and SEO in particular. I was transformed from someone who hardly knew what SEO/PPC was to someone who now insists SEO has never been more relevant in the digital world and PPC is extremely important part of any digital strategy. Whoever knows me, knows well, that I am a huge SEO enthusiast and I believe it is one of the best investment any business can make with their marketing budget. In fact, I strongly believe, if you can afford it, you must implement all SEO best practices way in advance of many of your other marketing efforts, you certainly should not go live without having your site optimised when you launch your website.
I spent endless hours (that turned into my passion for years) of learning Search Optimisation techniques for driving positive outcomes for brands I worked for. Every single day I find something I have not come across before, SEO is such a fast paced environment, which keeps me on my tip toes the entire time. And I love it!
What is your favourite SEO task?
I love every aspect of SEO, but my favourite task is 'site migration'. Launching a new website or migrating domains is exciting – it can give the company web presence, brand identity and room to grow, allow much-needed updates to the back end and create a smoother user experience. But just one tiny mistake can result in devastating drops in the organic traffic and conversions. Creating a well-formed strategy is the key to success here.
For the website to be a successful project for both users and SEO, we need to cover all bases and give every stakeholder the chance to get their voice heard. And I really love this entire process from planning to successfully executing it.
What is your go-to tool or resource that you can't live without?
Screaming Frog, Google Console, Bing Console, Google Analytics, URLs Re-writing Tool, SEMRush and more.
What is something you learned in SEO that made you have an 'AHA' moment?
I've had a fair few AHA moments in my career. As we all know, websites rebranding and migrations are complex. Most of the time they involve collaboration between a lot of people, and they can throw up all sorts of curveballs and pitfalls. But in some point of my professional life I had to perform a Wordpress Site Migration without any developers involvement for the first time (I didn't know I could do it): from the start to finish. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to challenge myself and learn new skills. And once the project was successfully delivered, I felt massive satisfaction, especially after checking the site's performance and visibility metrics. But during this project, I had a few 'AHA moments'.
What is your proudest industry achievement?
I worked on several projects that I can be proud of, but one really stands out. I worked on a large website where the organic search traffic loss was just over 30% and no one knew the cause of the problem. I had just joined the company at that point, so my proudest moment was when I managed to allocate the reasons for the traffic loss, implemented fixes for the identified issues which resulted in successful disaster recovery. Within a few months, our traffic went from -30% to + 10%.
What advice would you give women who are starting out in SEO?
Don't be afraid to try new things. Find ways to challenge yourself and become the better version of you every day. If your current tactics aren't producing a positive ROI, explore the new ones. Things might go terribly wrong, and it is perfectly normal, that's how we learn our skills. Just remember to correct your mistakes. :)
Give a shout out to a woman in the industry who inspires you and tell us why
I get inspired by a lot of women in our industry, who encourage me to be better and do better, the list can be endless, but there are a few I really admire, such as:
Areej AbuAli: For setting up this amazing community and investing her personal time and effort to grow it bigger and make it better
Lily Ray: At the top of her game in SEO and brings so much energy and expertise to the industry
Aleyda Solis: A marvellous resource for everything related to 'international SEO'
Roxana Stingu: When it comes to regular expressions, google analytics, data studio and other areas of SEO expertise, Roxana is your 'go to information resource'
Camila Kaul: A neuroscience trained digital marketing strategist, an international speaker and a creative thinker, she is a Head of Sales and Marketing at Google, I have recently had an opportunity to take part in the QA session with Camila, where she proved to be a very knowledgeable and experienced strategic thinker.
Finally, what empowers you to be the brilliant woman you are?
I've been driven, encouraged, and empowered by different things at different times in my life. Nowadays, I take each day as an opportunity to learn something new. When we have knowledge, we have the power to achieve many things.
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Thanks Svetlana for a truly insightful interview, you can check Svetlana's website and connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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