Ranking Revolution

Doug: Fernando, I'm excited to
get into our conversation today.

And I'm curious how you got involved in,
you know, SEO and marketing, just kind

of lay it out so we have an understanding
before we get into the details today.

Definitely.

Fernado: Thank you.

So I was involved in
different web projects.

I'm talking about like 15 years ago when
the only tools to build a website where

your imagination, a couple, a couple of
tools from Yahoo or from, uh, Google.

MSN, Hotmail, whatever
it was at that time.

And the websites that I had were
pretty bad, but good at that moment.

But I wanted to have more more visibility.

I wanted to be, um, actually, I
remember I wanted to be on Netscape,

uh, if someone remember what, what is
Netscape, but Google came, came out.

Um, I remember that that was a
game changer for the whole web

industry at that, at that point.

And I started to follow what is
happening to Google because it was

really interesting how they were.

So Google at the beginning was very
spammy with a lot of ads everywhere.

With time, they have
changed a lot right now.

They are very clean.

When you type google.

gov, it's a really clean interface.

It's nothing compared
with when they started.

So I was really fan of all those
changes in the whole industry.

Following what's happening with
Firefox, with the browsers,

what is happening with Netscape.

Look, Netscape died then we had,
uh, Internet Explorer, every

time it's slower and slower.

So Google was the big thing.

So being on Google was the big thing.

And one of my project, it
was related to to dating.

So yes, I, 15 years ago, I was
into the dating, um, industry.

And yeah, that was like, I don't know,
200, 000, um, sessions per, per day.

It was huge.

It was impressive.

But I, I didn't understand how
to monetize all the traffic.

Um, I'm following some Google, um, SEO at
that time was really popular techniques.

We've been building with
this keyword stuffing.

And understanding how I can get
more visibility, I got penalized.

So, being penalized, um, taking
down my website with traffic 200,

000 people, I understood, okay,
things need to be more clear.

And I entered with my first penalization
to go to the process to clean my

background, take this more serious, and
say, okay, I'm going to start from zero.

So, it was experience at the beginning,
and then I found out that, okay,

there's a great tool here that I can
see what are the links that are going

from my website to other website.

I can see even the rank that
I have, the Google rank.

I can see, uh, what are the
positions that my competitors have.

So that tool was, and it
still exists SEO Quake.

So, it was a toolbar pretty much similar
that from, uh, the Alexa toolbar, but it

was, uh, More, more impressive for me.

And I found out that they
needed some people to work

with that tool with SEO Quake.

And I sent my, uh, resume.

I was a sales guy who was really
involved into CRM databases.

I was working a lot with Salesforce
and they say, Hey, you are.

You're, you're good.

So we want to work with you and those
guys from SEOquake, they had this project,

this interesting project that it was
called SEMrush that it was starting.

So I'm talking, they were a proper startup
with no more than 20 people, all of them,

just developers, um, they were trying to
monetize more this project, this SEMrush

project, because SEOquake was a free
toolbar, uh, with, at that time they had.

About 5 million downloads right now.

They are like, I don't know, 65
million because it's a free toolbar

But SEMrush was just starting and I I
saw the potential of keyword research

That tool it was it was brilliant.

So you have all the keywords that
Uh, with all the metrics, with all

the, um, KPIs that you need for
your project, you can use that.

And you can select this, the websites
do a massive analysis about what's

happening in a, in a certain industry
just by following their keywords.

Uh, and I will, and I started
working with, uh, with them, trying

experimenting a lot with my own websites.

But then I got just 100 percent
full full time into growing the

SEMrush the SEMrush project.

At that time we were
20 people in the team.

Right now we are about two
and a half thousand people.

Uh, we have like 10 offices all over
the world that were HQs in Boston, um,

in one of the offices in Barcelona.

But, uh, you know, in the last 14
years being in SEMrush, we grew really

fast, like 100, 150 percent each year.

Uh, so I saw people coming, going
out, um, most of the people from

the beginning stayed till now.

And the project is right now really big.

We got public a couple of years
ago, so our stocks are in the

new New York market stock.

And the, the future for SEO as we
see is still there every single year.

We have, we have heard that
SEO is dying, or SU is, is

about to die this year with ai.

It's the same thing, but I have some
cool information, some interesting inside

information about what is happening
between ChatGPT or Gemini or other AI

AI models in terms of comparing with
the traffic that Google is receiving.

So basically that's the start.

I don't know.

It's, it's, it's a lot.

I know.

Doug: I know.

I don't know if we'll have time to dig
into everything here, but there's so much.

And I just want to make sure
I got a couple of things.

One, I, I used to use
SEO quake all the time.

I forgot.

I don't use it that much right now,
so it just kind of escaped me, but

it used to be a, you know, multiple
times a day I was using that.

And you've been at SEMrush for 14 years.

Is that right?

Fernado: Yeah, for 14 years.

Well, I started in, in, in 2011.

Okay.

A little longer.

13 years, 14 years.

Doug: Okay.

Great.

And your role there is a senior
market research, or yeah, so your

role is a senior market researcher
and you're an international speaker.

It looks like you do roughly one
talk per week all through the

year, so you probably travel a lot.

Can you talk about your role as
the, the senior market researcher?

Fernado: Yes.

So inside of SEMrush we
have different departments.

One of those departments actually the
second largest one is called a competitive

intelligence unit, and we are, uh,
developing more and more advanced features

related to competitive intelligence in
overall the traffic analytics space.

Uh, in this part, I take a lot of
examples, a lot of business cases

from our clients and I try to, uh,
model them to showcase how they can

use, uh, our actual, uh, our actual
clients and our potential clients.

The data that we, that we own, because
we have first party data and we have

also vendors, we have third party data
integrated to that, uh, how they can

use this data to maximize their profit.

So just let, let me give
you a couple of cases.

There is this company called La Liga.

Uh, so it's a, it's a football, um,
here in, in Europe is soccer, right?

So it's, it's, it's a, a football company
that they have is, uh, streaming videos.

From these matches all over the world
and with the help of our data, they,

they are able to analyze, uh, which
websites, which domains are doing piracy.

They have this, um, Pirate streaming
services and they gather all the

information and they go to Google
and they cancel those websites.

They take them down.

So that's one of the cases, right?

Anti piracy.

We have another case, for example,
is IKEA or any other e commerce.

They want to be sure that
their prices are the lowest.

Or they have much very interesting
differentiates from the competition,

right, in certain segments, it can be
Samsung, it can be LG, whatever, so

they, they take all the landing pages,
they have all these URLs with the

descriptions from the products, and they
do a comparison with all their, um, with

all their, uh, service providers, with
all their, uh, , can be marketplaces and

they check, okay, what is the fair price
for this country or for this region?

And they are, they, they are analyzing
massive amounts of data because we

are providing them, uh, with that.

So, this, um, unit, this department,
we call them unit, is working

more into the web traffic sources.

So, what is direct traffic?

Organic traffic, bait, uh,
organic traffic referral traffic.

So every source has an important
significance for our website visibility

and we are providing insights about well.

What is the best user that you can get
in terms of what is the, um, the buyer

persona that your industry, uh, have, have
right now in this precise moment, right?

Uh, so we are building user profiles,
we are building, building industries

profiles, and for any sector, we
are trying to identify all the

time who is the leader of a niche.

And understand what is the strategy using
these techniques, identifying what are the

sources of traffic and how every single
source is contributing to the success

of the overall project in this case.

Got it.

Doug: So someone could understand
what's going on in the market.

Some of the.

Lead competitors out there and hopefully
try to add their own spin to it But

kind of follow in their footsteps to
see what's effective especially with

like you said segments of the traffic
sources maybe People coming from youtube

convert really well, but people coming
from tiktok don't convert as well perhaps

Fernado: Yes in terms
of a recent experience.

So my wife she was looking for
an ai course from which are very

popular during this time, right?

Being, uh, an AI professional or
an AI prompt engineer is something

that is trending right now, right?

Um, in the market, in the online
educational market, uh, you

need to choose the company, uh,
the, the education provider.

which has the most
experience of all, right?

So analyzing the historical path of the
web traffic of a project, let's say I,

I'm looking, I'm searching on Google,
best AI from engineering courses, right?

And I have the three top, the three top
choices there, uh, which are paid option.

I respond for it because
they are doing their ads.

So I'm analyzing the three, uh, first
choices and I can see, Using these tools

that we call in the project Trends,
this is a section in Sembra that is

called Trends, I can see when they
have, they have started this project,

when they started to, uh, receive
traffic from the, from the internet.

And I see that the two first projects
they started like a couple of months ago.

So it's pretty new So all the information
that they say that we have all these

universities working for us They
are only two months in the market.

So it's the project's really new,
but I see other projects that they

have Three years in the market or
four years receiving some traffic.

So I can say, okay, these guys
are in the market for four,

four years for AI courses.

That's a lot.

Two months is like, okay,
new things are happening.

It's okay to start, but to trust
my, my personal location, I will

go with the ones who have, who has.

Some historical, um, historical data
information that I can use is the same

when you're trying to invest in some
project, let's say on a startup, you need

to see how, how good they are working with
their marketing, how visible they are.

So you go to this tools as well,
and you can see what is the, what is

the visibility they are receiving.

They are receiving more from the media,
from social media, they are doing SEO.

So you can see how well
they are performing.

So for doing an investment decision,
for analyzing what your next online

educational platform that you're
going to be using, or for working,

starting, you want to enter to a new
position, a new role, you're looking

for a job to see what is the, uh, the
historical information of that company.

Maybe they say, okay, we are the
top one in the hospitality service.

And they are not even visible on Google.

So you're going to be having problems
there because okay, you need to build from

zero something that they were promising
that is already there so you can Analyze

everything with the truthful word of data.

So data never lies perfect

Doug: So a lot of our listeners out
there They're either Solo operators,

maybe they're doing some SEO work.

Some are, you know, smaller
agencies with just a handful of

maybe full time, maybe freelancers.

And I want to go through kind of a step
by step example where let's say, for

example, they're not Some rush users
yet, but they've used a handful of

different tools kind of Frankenstein
together to do things, but they have a

client that they've been working with.

And the thought process here is like how
to increase the lifetime profitability

and revenue from a individual client and
continue their, you know, retention and

keep them on, on your client list there.

So If someone has such a client and
you can pick an industry that makes it

easy to have an example, but I'd like
to kind of go through this step by step

because as many people know that have you
some rush, there's a lot of information

in there and it can be overwhelming.

There's a huge, um, You know,
panel on the side with all these

different places you can go.

So what is the order of operations
for someone to just get started?

Because obviously you can keep
optimizing down the line, but where can

we get the biggest bang for our buck?

So it's very clear to the client that
you're providing a huge amount of value.

So they're, they're thinking,
Oh, it's just going to keep

getting better from here.

They delivered what they said
that they were going to deliver.

And I'll give you a second to
think, because I do want to go

through kind of step by step.

So someone has the
action steps to do this.

Fernado: Fantastic.

Yeah, that's the, that's the
kind of question that can give

us insight about what is, uh,
What's the plan overall, right?

So the plan to perform better than
your competitors or if you don't have

a project right now how you can go and
say, okay, where can I start, right?

To start, I will give you The first
five, let's do it in 10, 10 steps,

because I, um, pretty, um, motivated
to go with the, with the plan.

I was, um, I was working with
different teams inside of SEMrush.

So I'm here like, uh, so I told
you 14 years and I have been in

different groups and different roles
doing SEO, doing communication,

doing, doing basically everything.

And the first thing to start
a project is to define.

Your goals and define who's your audience
set, clear objectives, set what you need.

You want, what do you want
to achieve with your website?

Uh, you want to increase sales.

You want to generate leads.

You want to build a brand awareness.

What is the thing that you want
to achieve with your website?

What is it the what is the
main the ultimate goal that is

the first thing without that?

Well, you can do the rest but you're gonna
be building something that is not existent

that it is irrelevant The most important
thing is set your clear objectives

Sales or new users, whatever it is.

You need to have goals second
It's still very important.

It's still in the first stage is
you need to identify your target

audience, building your perfect buyer,
understanding who is your ideal customer.

Uh, that will give you a really
good idea what you need to do

and how you need to do it next.

So, first step, define your
goals and build your audience.

We can go to the next step if
you have that already resolved.

The next step is, okay,
you have a website.

You need to build your website.

You need to optimize that website.

And to optimize that website, well,
you can use different tools to do that.

I will definitely go with, um, a strategy
that is really important, which is SEO.

You need to optimize your
website for search and giants.

And to do that, well, things has changed a
lot in the past years, but using relevant

keywords, using question keywords, uh,
using links given, give a really big

emphasis on speed and of your website.

That's something that
is, it didn't change.

That's something that is, that,
that is still really relevant.

And the most important thing when
you are optimizing your website is

the content that you are building.

Follow, following the
guidelines that Google give us.

In terms of, um, E.

A.

T.

Um, so that your content needs to be,
um, needs to comply with the expertise.

Authority, authoritativeness,
and trustworthiness, so that's

something that needs to be there.

Your content needs to provide value,
uh, it needs to be informative.

It needs to be engaging so people can
address that to other people so you

can build more interest in different
audiences related to your audience.

So that's something that, uh,
will make your website more

visible, optimize your website.

The third step, I will say, is to go
more deep with your content marketing.

So you have your you have your goals,
you have your audience, you have the idea

to do SEO, but you need to go really big
with your content marketing strategy.

So the third part will be to start,
whatever the content you want to

create, a blog post, a blog, uh, or
doing guest posting, Or incorporating

video videos are really good.

Actually, they are the top of the notch
when you are trying to gain visibility.

Build infographics, uh, build some content
material around your service or product.

It's a really good idea.

So content marketing is the,
uh, It's the biggest strategy.

Then the fourth point I will say is
distribution, because you have already

the place where you have all your ideas
in one place, you have already your users.

You need to have some
kind of distribution.

Uh, you don't want to spend much money.

You don't have any money to spend.

You need to go with
social media marketing.

So social media marketing is a
great tool that everybody's using

because it's working and you need
to choose the right platform.

So once you build the buyer
persona, the user persona, you

are going to be noticing that.

Uh, most of them are depending
on the product, of course that

or service that you are selling.

Most of them are on youtube or most of
them are on reddit or most of them are on

tiktok wherever they are you need to be
there and you need to associate the the

um, the message of the product of services
that you are trying to deliver To their,

um, to their, um, to the right platform.

In this case, you need to
engage with them, share the

content that you have created.

You need to engage with
them in conversations.

So this is the social media marketing
part, where you need to respond, comment.

You need to send um, information
about what you have to offer to them

in different ways that this is the
interesting part with your creativity.

Okay.

Some marketer needs to be at the
top creativity, right message and

deliver it to the right platform.

Then I can say like this state,
uh, like the 50 step email

marketing is another channel.

So if you are a small business,
you need to start building

your database of, uh, users.

So.

Taking emails is something
that is still working.

It's a great channel to
deliver your messages.

And of course, when you have an email
list, well, that's something that is

a really great place To send messages
related to updates, offers, or any

valuable content that you can have.

At this point, if you have an email list,
if you can have at least 500 people,

1, 000 people in your list, or more,
Well, you already have some, you have

an asset already on your possession.

Next all till this point, every single
strategy of the biggest plan are for free.

So you are, you're just investing
in knowledge and in your time.

The next strategy is paid
because when you have.

Already all that working out.

You need to go definitely
with paid advertising.

You need to use Google ads.

You need to run social media ads in
order for people to find what you

are proposing, what you're offering.

You need to run.

Search ads or display ads and target
to different, uh, to, to different

websites that Google possesses, Google
owns, and target to your own website.

With social media ads, that's, uh,
pretty much the same thing, but you're

using a meta, all the meta platforms.

You are, you can use LinkedIn and
you can reach different demographics.

With social media, with social media
ads, uh, well, it's more, uh, Well,

right now it's not that cheap, that
cheaper in comparison with Google

ads, but it still is in some, some
cases, the main point is, is to have

more, more, um, platforms working for
you because you're paying for that.

The final three steps are related
to analytics and monitoring.

So you have your, you have built
your process, building your website,

uh, optimizing your website.

Doing the social media marketing,
the paid advertising, then you need

to go with analytics and monitoring.

So use Google Analytics, use third
party instruments like SEM Brush,

use, uh, A B testing tools, use, uh,
communication tools for providing more.

Uh, more interaction with your
team, like slack, for example, use

a CRM to, to work, uh, for example,
HubSpot or Salesforce, whatever.

So you need to have tools for,
um, analyzing how well your

message is deliberate and how
well that message is, uh, working

for you in terms of conversion.

Uh, the, uh, the sales
percentage that you have.

Uh, from a certain marketing budget.

Why you need to do this?

Because you need to adjust your
strategies to be more effective and

you need to improve your website
performance according to the message

that you are delivering and the reaction
the results that you are receiving.

Once you have done that, you
need to go to build backlinks.

So I I didn't touch the backlinks part
from the beginning, because that's a more,

let's say that's more expensive part,
that's more, uh, more into SEO pro part.

So building backlinks, uh, some SEOs,
uh, they, um, uh, they're saying that,

uh, backlinks are not working anymore.

Some others are saying that working.

In my personal experience, they
are still working, people are still

using business, are still using it.

So the quality link that is working
is the one who is targeting a quality

content, uh, from other website to yours.

So in order to do that, you need to
do link building outreach to, uh,

bloggers, influencers, other website,
build relation relationships in order

to earn those, uh, backings, which is.

A really great strategy, then
you can go still use directories.

You can go to listings from
different websites, submit your

website to relevant directories.

For example, 10 years ago, I remember I,
I added my website back link to Wikipedia.

And I have, I was earning tons of
traffic from Wikipedia, but in a

couple of years, they closed that.

You cannot do that anymore, but there
are several, several directories over

there, even from your local, um, from
your local government, the pages from,

uh, the directors from, uh, business
in this local area or from business

from, uh, a certain, uh, industry, for
example, in the healthcare industry,

the director of hospitals or in the
automotive centers, the, uh, Um, the,

the providers of a certain brand,
for example, uh, final, I will say

that you need to improve everything.

Start from the beginning, uh, thinking
about your website again, and start

from each step one by one all the time,
because this is a continuous process

that needs to be improved all the time.

You measure, improve, and go ahead,
measure, improve, and you go ahead.

Basically, that's that's it

Doug: Very simple.

But.

It looks like it would take a lifetime
to go through each one of those.

And I think one area to tease out here is
probably if an agency is working with a

client, they're doing some pieces of this.

So you listed about 10 different
items with some sub tasks in between.

And Again, there are a lot of
things that someone can work on.

Is there a good way to jump into a
process or jump into these steps?

Look at those metrics, look at the
analytics to figure out the weakest link

in where someone needs to fix things up.

So for example, maybe the content
is very good and there's a

backlinks, they're running ads,
like things are running pretty good.

But their site speed is clearly slow.

I'm, I'm taking that one
cause that's an easy one.

Cause someone could check their site
speed and see, we need to fix this up.

And it's a technical problem
that can be solved, right?

That's a pretty easy one,
but a lot of this gets murky.

So how can someone troubleshoot
where a specific client needs help?

Fernado: Yes, this is a good question
because, uh, here you are implying that.

Every process needs to be reviewed,
uh, time to time and that time

usually is, uh, every day for
some companies is every Monday.

And I remember when I have my, my,
my, when I had my own project and

right now I'm looking more into,
into Google Analytics, uh, 360.

Um, well now it's G4, right?

But I was looking more and more
into my site audit, uh, project.

So you can do a site audit and have it
running every single day because the

crawler of the robot that is checking
your website or, in any case, your

competitor's website because you can
crawl that as well is telling you Where

you are, uh, having some issues and
exactly which part say a backlink or

you don't have the, um, I don't know,
the meta description not in the right

place or something more, uh, technical.

The JavaScript is broken in some part.

You need to fix that or you have a broken
link that is, uh, going to a 404 code,

whatever the mistake is, you need to know
about that in time and having, uh, tools.

And the only way to do it fast, because
you can have, uh, like just another

example, some, um, some pages, some
really important pages, like for

governments, when you are about to
fill your taxes, you, you enter and

you see that horrendous, uh, interface.

where you do the click and
the click is not working.

You need to, uh, call them, you see, uh,
you want to receive more information.

But now, so it's the experience
there is really bad and you are

suffering a lot because of that.

So imagine, well, the government
was gonna take a part.

Imagine that's a business and you
are, you want to earn money of that.

People who are using that kind of
service, they're not gonna come, they're

not gonna, gonna come, come back again.

evermore.

They're just going to go to your next
competitor who are doing things right.

So having understanding about that
in the precise moment, in the right

moment, it's gonna, uh, it's gonna
save you a lot, a lot of money.

So the first thing is do a site
audit, a regular site audit, then do

a backlink audit, because the thing
with links is they can come really

fast and some of them, they can be.

Toxic.

Uh, so talking about toxic links
is something that it can give you

a negative SEO and we need to talk
about negative SEO, uh, telling that

your visibility can be ruined because
somebody else or a company or a

conglomerate, uh, they want to minimize
your visibility on the web search.

Or maybe sometimes just a mistake.

I remember a tourist website.

Back in then it was a tourist website
in Ecuador that was receiving tons, tons

of backlinks from a Japanese blogger.

And because of the language didn't
match, so it's Spanish in Ecuador

and Japanese in Japan, of course.

The language didn't match, so they were,
they were marked as toxic backlinks.

But, when you receive the translation
and you can mark that as well, you were

seeing that these guys were traveling
around Ecuador and they wrote a beautiful

blog post saying how good was their
experience with this travel agency.

So, it was not the toxic backlink,
but The thing is, Google didn't,

didn't knew that at the beginning.

So you can mark that and send
it to, send it to them to mark.

No, these are not toxic backlinks.

I'm, I'm, you're approving
them for, for example.

And in terms of, um, working
with links, you need to do that.

And, uh, link audit as well.

Having that in proper time, uh,
cleaning all the toxic links,

toxic links that you have.

And going more for link building resources
in this case, the same thing, uh,

directories, uh, partnerships, networking,
actually, networking is a really good

thing when you're in conferences, when
you're at events, when you are even,

uh, with some, um, friends, well, the
conference is send it and you go out

with, with them, for example, uh, it's a
good place to interchange, uh, backlinks.

I remember in some, uh,
conferences, for example, in the.

Brighton SEO is which is one
of the biggest one in Europe.

It's in the UK in Brighton.

There were like 50, 000 or 20, 000
attendees you can have the links exchange

moment with some of them related to
your industry So whatever, Site Audit,

Backlink Audit, and the one and most
important that I believe most of the

companies are, uh, they don't have it
working properly is the Content Audit.

So, if you have a content, a piece
of content that is not performing

well for several years, You don't
need to have it that there because

you are just losing your, uh, your
crawler, uh, your crawler budget.

Uh, so every, every website, they have a
crawler budget from, from Google's bot.

But if you are telling them, crawl
this, this web, this landing page,

you have a ton of words over there,
uh, and it's not performing well.

You have two choices.

I will, I will choose one of them.

You need to delete that piece of
content or you need to repurpose.

So give one chance, repurpose that
content, make it more interesting, or just

delete that part and create new content.

Creating new content is always a
good, uh, always a good choice.

Specifically if you, that piece of
content is, uh, not a single one.

And you have dozens or maybe
hundreds of pieces of contents

that are not performing well.

Deleting that part is sometimes
most of the times are a good idea.

Doug: I need to do that on my site.

It's been a long time
since I've done an audit.

It's one of those maintenance things
that it's easy to forget and then It's

a pain in the butt to go back to do it.