Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Welcome to OMReport by Andre Alpar, your interview focus
podcast on topics from online marketing to internet startups.
So! Today's OMReport is with Aleyda. Aleyda, can you please
introduce yourself.
Well, I am Aleyda Solis. Hi! I am natively from Nicaragua.
I lived in Spain for 7 years where I started to do SEO.
I was previously a web developer. I work in agencies,
in-house, as a consultant, for other European and American
agencies too, so I have gathered some experience in the SEO
industry already and now I am working in Brussels for
WooRank as a Head of Digital Strategy.
OK, so how did you make the jump over the US? You started
blogging at MOZ and then other blogs, how did you make that
jump? It seems so far away from Europe sometimes to get
'reach' in the US? What do you think of that?
Yes indeed. The one thing that I remember is that at one
point I said 'I'm going to start blogging in English in my
own blog and also tweeting a little bit more in English.
But did you switched like a hard switch from Spanish to
English?
I started to balance. Nowadays I tweet much more in
English, I would say, than Spanish. In Spanish there's
much more interaction and sharing the really good stuff
that I've found.
And then in English you're just sharing the simple stuff,
and the good stuff you're sharing all in Spanish?
No, no, no! No but the thing is, and this is real:
unfortunately a lot of the posts that are published in
Spanish are just like copies or translations of the ones
that are in English, but there are a few insightful, really
unique, completely original types of content that really
deserve that type of visibility. So I try to push a lot
to help us with that.
So does the Spanish community still like to read your
tweets even though they're in English? Or do the sometimes
say 'OK well that's much more work for me, it's not my
native language, I'm not gonna look at it anymore'?
There's something funny: most of the SEOs in Spain, they
understand English. They might not be fluent like this,
but they understand English because at the end of the day
if you work with the web it's a must to be able to
understand these types of things. So yes they follow me,
and at some point I tweet in English and they answer
in Spanish.
Which is fine for you. OK, and then you started blogging
in English, then you tried to blog elsewhere as well.
Yes, I started on my own blog and then... I remember it was
2, 3 years ago when I met Bas, I asked him if I could start
collaborating at the State of Search in web content. So I
started blogging for State of Search, now State of Digital,
but actually I was at State of Search before MOZ.
OK, and then when I think of you, I knew you from more,
like, very technical, complex issues that would be
important in an enterprise SEO context like mobile SEO
topics, like international SEO topics which perfectly fit
with you having a technical background, and now you've
switched to WooRank, which is kind of focused on the local
Mom and Pop shop. How does that work together? Isn't that
kind of a different world? And who's adapting to whom now?
Indeed. Well I try to provide enterprise-level solutions to
a tool that is focused on a much more generic, low-level
audience of web consultants that try to really dig and sort
out SEO without really being experts or specialists in
that area.
So is there like a certain drain, because I mean they're
not gonna implement href lang or rel alternate for mobile
websites, or they're not gonna switch to responsive designs, so is there kind
of like a loss of things that you used to do? Or am I over exaggerating?
Yeah but no, because in some sort of ways they're in-house
SEOs too. You know, I'm head of Digital Strategy so I do
more than just SEO. But I help them to really improve in
ways that I did in the past with big companies... you know,
and for me also, what attracted me a lot, and one of the
reasons that I joined them, is that they are able to reach
so many people. So many people use their tool in some way
or another. So to be able to focus on a product where I
really understand the audience and I can really predict
or help them to build something scalable that is going to
be really useful in the future, that is one of my main
motivations, really.
All right. So the company language in Brussels will be
English then?
Well at the office we speak in English. I speak French...
because you know there is this Flemish-French type of thing
and we have also Flemish and French people... at some point
you hear a little bit of Flemish among the Flemish people
in the office, other times you hear French, other times
English. Other times you hear Spanish because one of the
founders speaks very good Spanish with me and he likes to
speak Spanish with me and there is another Spanish
colleague... So it's crazy, it's multi-lingual, you could say.
OK, OK. So... the kind of shops that you target these days,
or the clients that you target at WooRank, what do you have
in mind usually when you design a product for them. I mean,
because you are kind of in the edgy position as a speaker,
obviously, and then you know kind of... you always think
ahead. And then you try to think ahead with the
interpretation of what's happening in the big picture for
the local shops and the local small businesses. How are
their needs different?
Yeah, for example, the unique selling proposition really is
that it needs to be simple, it really needs to be instant,
it really needs to be useful and insightful but actionable,
in an actionable way so they don't get lost, they don't
need that much time to dig out, right? So you can see...
actually WooRank launched the responsive web design two
weeks ago, three weeks ago, so there's one right now.
If you enter any of the reports, they are responsive.
Totally responsive and friendly to any mobile device,
and that is one of a few things... We are also ready to
launch and to have many more different types of reports
that will provide insights at other levels and in other
ways to the audience. The project is evolving and it will
expand much more, not only to provide websites targeted...
types of reports specifically-targeted to one website, but
much more than that.
So when you think of SEO for these local Mom and Pop shops
or local small businesses I think, you know, bringing the
onpage knowledge and guiding them through onpage topics:
that seems doable. But when I think about this topic, and
I'm not active in this topic because my clients are usually
larger enterprises, I always have the problem of how to
explain to a local shop how to try to go for a good link or
anything that I could think of in a content marketing
context. The things that I can think of, they're so big,
they're much too big for them to swallow in a single month,
you know?
In fact for a few of them, for a few of these companies,
SEO is not the first answer. It might be only totally
local, purely local targeted strategy.
So you're just gonna optimise for Google Maps and so on.
Indeed, build your page there, build your presence there,
optimise... become really active on foursquare, create
giveaways and coupons on foursquare, get good reviews.
The idea with WooRank too, and you will see, is that it has
a multiple local tool, for mobile too, because at the end
of the day these are this type of website that are not
targeted to the main public to go and compete, but these
very specific type of companies, little companies that need
to earn the visibility as much as possible, not only for
SEO, really.
Let's jump to a different topic that I think we both like.
How would you describe to everybody the differences between
SEO in the States and SEO over in Europe? What do you think
are the biggest differences that you always try to highlight
to your friends in the US?
Yes, well in the US I would say that it's much more lean
building-focused. Really, I was very impressed when I
started going to events in the US and then working at SEER.
Of course, SEER is pretty well known for link building, for
doing great link building... So of course maybe I am also a
little bit biased because of that because that was my main
experience with a US agency. But yes, I mean they have
great marketers. I was really impressed to see their
creativity, you know, these types of brainstorms and
actions and tactics that they come up with to create links.
But at the end of the day, if you think about it,
for example there are some types of tactics that aren't
very doable because there are so many, let's say, high
schools out there who have blogs out there, and they are
updating them all the time. I've tried to extrapolate and
take that same type of tactic to Spain, and it's not going
to work because the landscape is totally different. So those are the challenging but at the same
time really insightful and great things about international
SEO because different markets behave differently and their
ecosystem is different. So because of that, I think, because
there is also a lot more competition, I believe that
the US market is much more targeted to building link popularity.
In Spain you can say that a lot of the issues have
come from the web development with design, words... so they
are much more technically-focused and also you don't require
that many links as in the English-speaking market in
order to rank. So yes, there are differences of course.
How do Spanish websites usually deal with the traffic that
they get from South America, because it must be like a
significant bunch? And what do they do with it? Do they try
to avoid it? Because I don't know.
No, no! I mean, there are a lot of websites actually and
businesses in Spain that target and now start leveraging
the Latin American market because of that because there's
a huge opportunity. And the Latin American market is like,
I dunno, four years behind Spain. So right now you can see
a lot of conferences and a lot of events and posts speaking
about community management, social media, blogs... It's the
boom right now! What we saw in 2007 here, it's crazy! Yes
indeed, so you can also predict a little bit how it will
evolve, so I will say that this is the time really to be
there because, for example, they have invited me for the
first time to go to speak to South America in June in
Chile. And I believe it's the first time they're going to
have a purely SEO-focused type of session, so that is great
because it's going to go really crazy from now.
Sounds amazing. All right. Thanks so much for your time.
Thank you for the opportunity.
OMReport and Andre Alpar would like to thank you for your
attention. You can get more episodes on www.omreport.com