Olga & Natalie SEOSLY
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[00:00:00] Olga: Hi everyone, it's Olga Zarr from SEOSLY. This is SEO podcast by SEOSLY. Today I have a very special guest. This is Natalie. Natalie, how are you doing? SEOSLY. SEO Done Right. I'm Oga Zarr, an SEO consultant in SEO since 2012. Don't forget to subscribe to learn SEO for free with me. Now let's get into the show.
[00:00:28] Olga: Very well, thank you.
[00:00:29] Natalie: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:30] Olga: Yeah, I'm very happy that you agreed to come on the show because I've been like watching you for a long time. I've been watching your LinkedIn mostly. So I thought I could reach out and maybe have you here share some of your SEO tips, knowledge and your SEO story.
[00:00:49] Olga: So for people who don't know you, can you like give a one sentence introduction? Like, who are you? What are you up to in SEO?
[00:00:59] Natalie: I'm a freelance technical SEO consultant, and I That's, that's pretty much what I do
[00:01:06] Olga: on a daily basis. And where are you based?
[00:01:09] Natalie: Uh, between London and Preston in the Northwest of England.
[00:01:13] Olga: Okay. Cool. Cool. Okay. So I would like to first, go, to the past, like how long have you been in SEO and how your SEO journey started? Like what brought you into SEO?
[00:01:29] Natalie: Well, I've been doing a version of this role for about 15 years. I came into it, sort of, by accident. My, uh, my background was, I studied music at university and the intention was to become a professional musician.
[00:01:46] Natalie: I sort of went, at uni, sort of went from the performance side to the academic side, the research side of, of, um, my degree. Enjoyed the research, took a role as a website researcher for a hotel advertising firm who were doing a lot in the the area of SEO. And, and that's where I fell in love with it. That's everything about the data, everything about being able to make changes on, on a website.
[00:02:14] Natalie: And then, and you could often, in those days, 15 years ago, you could almost instantly see the results of your work. It was very rewarding from, Yeah, whether it was link building or whether it was actual just on page changes, we, we got results. Yeah, it was very good job satisfaction. And then from there, I went agency side and stayed agency side for eight years.
[00:02:37] Natalie: And then, then I went freelance.
[00:02:40] Olga: Okay, so when did you go freelance? I'm not good at doing calculations
[00:02:45] Natalie: on the fly. Oh, that's right. About five years ago.
[00:02:48] Olga: Now can you tell me more about, like, is it just you? Or do you maybe have someone to support you? Like, how do you now work?
[00:02:57] Natalie: It's mostly me. If there's things I don't do, such as content writing, there are freelancers that I can outsource stuff to. Um. I work with some digital PR specialists when required, but generally speaking, if a client is talking to me about an SEO strategy, most of that work does get done by me.
[00:03:17] Olga: Okay. And maybe a little bit more about your agency days.
[00:03:23] Olga: Can you share more about that? Like, was it like one agency, a lot of agencies? Like, what did you learn there? Did you like you didn't like like because everyone probably most SEOs at this point have some agency Background and I would like to learn about your experience with the with that part of SEO Sure,
[00:03:46] Natalie: I worked at four different agencies I spent most time at a, what's a sort of a network full, uh, marketing and advertising agency, McCann Manchester.
[00:03:58] Natalie: And, um, was responsible for the SEO team that started there as an SEO account manager and become responsible for the team. Um, There, it was all big clients and enterprise stuff, loads of e commerce, loads of big technical challenges. It was probably where I learned the most about the job. But even prior to that, I'd, I'd been running SEO teams at smaller agencies.
[00:04:25] Natalie: But that was where the great thing about that role was I was responsible for the whole team, but I still had accounts. So I still got, got my hands dirty and still was able to develop my skills as a specialist. Um. And I loved Agencyside. I love, I love pitching. I, I, the best things about Agency was coming together with other people and, you know, winning the work or coming out of a, a client meeting where you'd absolutely nailed it.
[00:04:53] Natalie: And, and they were really happy with the work. But, but that was some of what I probably I have very happy clients, sort of get a low level of, not low, a baseline level of satisfaction with the work, but when Yeah, in a kind of a pitch situation or a QBR, the thing about agency, I've always, I've always found that very, uh, um Exhilarating, exciting.
[00:05:19] Natalie: Um, I liked it a lot and I learned a lot. Um, and, and the only reason I, I moved away from agency cyber was I was in a role that, um, needed me to move away from being hands on with the SEO and I wasn't quite ready to let that go. Mm hmm. Mm
[00:05:37] Olga: hmm. So you decided, instead of looking for another agency that it's time to like become a freelancer, right?
[00:05:46] Natalie: Yeah, I had, I just had the opportunity. There was a, I was quite lucky in the, at the time I was about to leave the, the last agency position, my previous employer, needed support. So I had a, I had the ability, I had quite a significant contract position that I could go into. So it's sort of a part time, it wasn't like having to build a, a client base from scratch.
[00:06:18] Natalie: I had this part time role that I could go into to start off with, um, And there were other agency connections I'd made that were also quite interested in working with me on a freelance basis. It all just, it all just seemed to kind of fall, fall into place. I was offered another contract position at the same time, so I already, I was able to move straight from a full time job into two part time contract positions.
[00:06:44] Natalie: And then the sort of individual freelance clients then just started coming after that. Yeah,
[00:06:51] Olga: yeah, I had quite a similar story at first. It was like this transition period when I was still doing something part time until I was ready. Because this was, this is, this is probably the stage where most people who are thinking about becoming a freelancer are afraid of and, and, uh, If you can maybe share a little bit more about this transition from part time to just having your own clients, like how long did it take you to only have your own clients, and how were you getting them?
[00:07:24] Olga: If you can share some of that.
[00:07:27] Natalie: I can. I think it, it, it happened quite naturally, but obviously like it came off having built a network, having worked at agencies filled with digital marketing specialists who remember you and, you know, obviously still think favorably after you. So, so many of my clients in the first few years had come from a word of mouth referral from somebody I've worked with at one of the agencies.
[00:07:54] Natalie: So. That was, that was hugely helpful, but I was able to get referrals from people in the industry, simply from being active on Twitter and LinkedIn. Twitter was a great source of amplification of, you know, talking about SEO a few years ago, unfortunately it's become quite an unusable. platform. It used to have more of a community, you used to have more sort of good connections with people in the industry, people who knew who you were, um, less so these days.
[00:08:31] Natalie: LinkedIn sort of fills that, that gap, but, um, LinkedIn's still a very Good source of discussion and, um, and leads really. It's, uh, still a good platform, it's
[00:08:50] Olga: pretty good. And yeah, and what other platforms, ways were you using to network? Were you attending conferences? Like how many? How often?
[00:09:01] Natalie: Yes. So, I mean, that's probably the other, the other thing to know.
[00:09:06] Natalie: I went freelance about six months before lockdown. So I think I, so I initially was doing a lot of face to face networking, which I think was very valuable. And then face to face networking went away for a, for a year or so. Um, but there was sort of a perfect storm in that suddenly us as freelancers, I think our, our, um, Our services became much more in demand because it was just a shift from people wanting to work, work with freelancers instead of agencies, but I think I'd done enough networking before that.
[00:09:43] Natalie: So enough people knew who I was, um, I did fairly well during the lockdown period.
[00:09:54] Natalie: So in terms of attending conferences, yeah, I did a quite a bit of speaking before lockdown. So I think, and, and there were, there definitely were, uh, jobs that came off the back of that. Uh huh.
[00:10:08] Olga: And what, what, what conferences did you speak at?
[00:10:13] Natalie: There was the Optimizing Meetup in Cambridge and Some of the women in tech SEO.
[00:10:21] Natalie: I went to all the women in tech SEO meetups before it became the big conference
[00:10:29] Natalie: Bristol SEO, I want to say they're all kind of local meetups a Preston one Uh huh local meetups I would say have have been for me more in terms of actual revenue They've been better at bringing in leads than any of the larger events.
[00:10:50] Olga: I'll do that bit. Okay. Can you maybe share a little bit about your LinkedIn strategy?
[00:10:57] Olga: The, the bits you can of course share, because you said you have leads from LinkedIn, like how do you do it? I know you, you offer quite cheap videos with audits. Is it like part your, part of your SEO strategy or what can you share, regarding, LinkedIn since Twitter is not really doing what it used to do, right.
[00:11:19] Natalie: Um, I, so I, I launched this offer in, in December with, with the aim of trying to make SEO services a little bit more accessible to a different audience. So, um, and the idea was that it was a Christmas offer and, uh, kind of a goodwill. It's, uh, it's had an awful lot of positive feedback from the people that have received the videos.
[00:11:48] Natalie: It was at quite a, I mean, it was a low price point. It is a highly condensed kind of audit product. It's not like a, um, You're getting 30 minutes of me looking over a website. But, the good thing about that is that I spot a lot in those 30 minutes. It's not massively developed strategically. It's not, it's, so much of it is, your canonicals are wrong, your XML sitemap is missing, your titles are not optimised, you should do something about that.
[00:12:23] Natalie: Sometimes it's something really drastic. Sometimes there's absolutely loads to say. You know, because some, some people don't need an all singing, all dancing SEO strategy. They don't need to be spending thousands a month. They, they, and especially if they've got the resources internally to execute. I just, I just wanted to be able to offer that to, to see if there was, was an audience for it.
[00:12:49] Natalie: There was an audience for it, but weirdly, you, you've, you've pointed out that it was a low price point. Lots of people got in touch to ask for free advice, which was. Baffling to me. . Yeah, I can imagine. I wasn't offering it for free, I was offering it for, for a cost and you know, for some people it might be significant, but then yeah, it kind of, I, yeah, so I'm not pushing that one on social media at the moment.
[00:13:20] Natalie: I am still offering it. I still just a, a steer it. It's a 75 pounds, 30 minute video pointing out the most obvious things that somebody needs to do from an SEO standpoint. And as I say, it's very well received. I'm not pushing it because I don't, I don't provide a cheap service. I provide a good value, respectable, sensible service.
[00:13:47] Olga: So maybe you can now tell more about your services, like you, you, you mostly do technical SEO or tell me what you offer.
[00:13:57] Natalie: I, well, I, so I tend to specialize in technical SEO, but I, I am an all rounder and like my, my background is in content strategy. I started as a link builder. I, but, but I've, I've kind of erred towards technical SEO projects as I've, um, been a freelancer.
[00:14:21] Natalie: I enjoy website migration projects. I enjoy making sure everything is, is just so in that kind of situation and I, and I know how to do it and, and it's been very successful. Um, so my services range from that 30 minute, uh, health check kind of product to full service, uh, you know, stuff on a monthly retainer, doing everything that anyone needs from an SEO standpoint to, uh, consultancy.
[00:14:51] Natalie: I do a lot of project stuff. I do a lot of one off audits. Um, which can cover just technical, they go across technical content and links, whatever the client needs.
[00:15:02] Olga: Mm hmm. I'm also like an audit person, so maybe we can chat about auditing a little bit. Like, can you outline your process for auditing the sites?
[00:15:15] Olga: You said you do different kinds of audits, right? Right, like backlink, technical. Like what other types or do you do like, for example, a full, a full, , in depth SEO audit that covers just everything? Do you offer such things as
[00:15:30] Natalie: well? Absolutely. If, if the budget and the need is there to do a full audit, that would always be preferable.
[00:15:38] Natalie: Sometimes the budget isn't there and it's about, well, how, how can we add the most value for, for what the client's able to, to invest here. And then it will be, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes there's, um, Technical doesn't need attention because they've got someone else looking after it or, uh, links don't need attention because they already have an agency in place or something like that.
[00:16:02] Natalie: So sometimes it can be quite tailored. The ideal is always to do a full audit because then you see the full picture. You know absolutely everything about that site. You know absolutely everything you can do for them in terms of strategy. But if you need to be selective, if I need to be selective, I will be.
[00:16:20] Natalie: Um, it certainly
[00:16:22] Olga: depends. So,, tell me a little bit more about how you approach audits, like what tools do you use? Like, how do you do it? Do you work in Google, Sheets, Google Documents? Like, if, of course, as much as you can share. Yeah,
[00:16:36] Natalie: I'm, I'm more of an Excel person. I'm more, um, I now do use more Google Sheets and Docs for collaborating with others.
[00:16:45] Natalie: I see. See, it's, uh, see the appeal, um, but I've always used Excel for data analysis and data gathering. And, you know, you can, you can manipulate more stuff in Excel. Google Sheets falls over sometimes when, if you're dealing with lots of data, if you're doing a lot of keyword research, for example, um, you know, if you've been selected, if it's not loads and loads of rows, then Google Sheets is absolutely fine, but still, still, still team Excel on that side.
[00:17:20] Natalie: You're asking
[00:17:20] Olga: what sort of tools do I use? Yeah, what are your favourite SEO tools for audits or those checks? Generally your favourite SEO
[00:17:28] Natalie: tools. Um, Search Console you absolutely need. Screaming Frog, I probably, every audit starts with running the site through Screaming Frog or attempting to run the site through Screaming Frog.
[00:17:41] Natalie: Um, and if, if for whatever reason you start seeing that that's a, it's a much larger crawl that might be better served by an enterprise crawler. Uh, I'm finding that less these days, but, so, yeah, Screaming Frog always. Um,
[00:17:58] Natalie: SEM, Rush, or, or Ahrefs, it's entirely dependent on what, what the client prefers. Often my clients will, will have a subscription to one or the other. And if they have a preference, I'll, I'll go with that. You know, it's, it's all keyword data. It's, uh, it's all linked data. I can, can work with any of it. Um, in terms of so much of the auditing, you know, you, you can use what comes out of.
[00:18:24] Natalie: Screaming Frog as a guide, or, or SEMrush, or HMS, whatever auditing tool you're using, the thing that just does the, the binary crawling of the thing to say it either is or it isn't. But, you know, you will know that most of the auditing work goes on in the brain. It's, um, But Scream and Frog is probably the best
[00:18:46] Olga: start.
[00:18:47] Olga: Okay. And how do you go about the implementation part? Are you the one who also does that or do you oversee the implementation?
[00:18:58] Natalie: Again, depends on the project. Sometimes a client will need me to execute everything that I've pulled, pulled out in the audit. So if I have CMS access, if I have the requisite access for any of these things, I can make those changes directly.
[00:19:13] Natalie: But then often you're working with clients that have. development teams or product teams or marketing teams who are going to be the ones executing on your recommendations. And I think most of, most of the work I'm doing at the moment is a case of do the audit and then see the work through with the appropriate
[00:19:32] Olga: teams.
[00:19:33] Olga: And do you have some tips and tricks on how to increase the likelihood of having your recommendations actually implemented?
[00:19:45] Natalie: Yeah. Um, it's It's a, the success varies, doesn't it? But the, it's usually it's deliver the audit in writing, present the audit in person to the stakeholders that need to know, um, if they're technical requirements, make sure that you're providing that requirement in exactly the kind of language and format that the developers need.
[00:20:14] Natalie: So if they, if they work with user stories, write it as a user story, you know, become. Become au fait with, with how they approach these things. If your SEO tasks need to go in a specific epoch, advocate for that. If, um, or if they're just ticking off bits as part of sprints, just learn what the developers and the development team's process is, so you're not just handing a load of random SEO recommendations and expecting them to figure them out.
[00:20:45] Natalie: Always prioritize. Um, and always just make, make sure you're, you're heard and understood. I, in, in some, some roles I've had to be quite relentless in that sort of banging the SEO drum. Some, some organizations are absolutely on board and they know, they know why they're doing this SEO thing. So they're, they're delighted to get the recommendations.
[00:21:08] Natalie: It's, uh, yeah,
[00:21:10] Olga: it's so very varied. Yeah, yeah, totally. And your favorite part of technical SEO, like, what's the part you like analyzing the most?
[00:21:23] Natalie: It's probably when you find something that's just absolutely causing a problem. Like, if you're tasked with, why has my traffic dropped off? Or, you know, what, what's going on here?
[00:21:36] Natalie: If you, if you happen across something that is one of the contributing factors or almost certainly the contributing factor, that's probably the most satisfying thing. So if you found the whole website is duplicated somewhere or. If you found they've inadvertently blocked certain things or, you know, if the code is somehow wrong or you see that it can't, you know, it's not rendering correctly, but those sorts of things are probably the most interesting things to find out.
[00:22:07] Olga: And can you recall some of the most spectacular examples of such things? issues you, you had like recently or?
[00:22:18] Natalie: Yeah, um, just, just a, there was a project I worked on where the, the requirement was to find out why there had been a, such a, a drop off in traffic and it transpired that it's, Often with these things, I find that a lot of them relate to legacy redirects or incorrect redirects or something, and the one that springs to mind was like, we don't understand why our product pages are no longer as visible, and it just wasn't an obvious thing.
[00:22:50] Natalie: There are other SEOs working on it. Many other SEOs working on it, and nobody, nobody has spotted what it was. It ended up being, firstly, yeah, it was, it was more a redirect chain thing, that they'd changed URL structure probably twice in the last 12 months. The most recent version of the URL was being redirected.
[00:23:13] Natalie: Previous version, the ones, the ones that had held all the authority, would, had just been left to 404. But nobody had done the analysis on the, sort of, the path backwards to find out what was going on there. So that was pretty satisfying.
[00:23:32] Olga: Yeah. And how did you, like, find the path backwards?
[00:23:35] Natalie: Think? If memory serves correctly, it would probably have been me taking a list of the URLs from analytics over a certain period, running them through Screaming Frog, and then discovering that that is what the file path used to be, that's 404ing, then running those.
[00:23:56] Natalie: Or then, then reviewing the link profile, sort of reviewing the most linked to pages or just, just getting a sense of, is my hypothesis that these all 404 is, is that the problem? And then there were examples in there of more authoritative product pages. I don't know where it had been missed, there was evidence, but for some reason, I think people were looking in the wrong place, or, you
[00:24:22] Olga: know.
[00:24:23] Olga: Yeah, yeah, very interesting example. Okay, so tell me more about like, your work day, how does it look like, like, how much time do you spend working, like your normal SEO day?
[00:24:39] Natalie: It's It's not, I don't have a, much of a routine, it is very varied, I, uh, like I, I don't, I most, I try to travel whenever possible. So I, I say I'm a digital nomad, I do have places I live, so it's not complete
[00:25:00] Olga: freedom.
[00:25:00] Olga: How often do you travel? Because I saw on Facebook, I think you were traveling across the US like some time ago, right? Yeah. How long did you travel last? About
[00:25:11] Natalie: Uh, that trip was probably three weeks. I, yeah, I took a train from Los Angeles. Well, I drove from New York to Chicago, and then I flew to Los Angeles, and then I got a train back from Los Angeles to New York, just because I could.
[00:25:28] Olga: And were you like working during that trip, or?
[00:25:32] Natalie: I really tried to. The, the problem was that there was not good internet connection on the train. My, my dream was, I've got five days uninterrupted, I can catch up on all my admin, I can, oh yeah, it's gonna be great, but yeah, of course signal was spotty, like, in hindsight, it was a silly, silly dream.
[00:25:52] Natalie: Well, I also thought there'd be Wi Fi on the train, there wasn't. American trains are not. are not, people don't tend to take them. So, um,
[00:26:00] Uh
[00:26:00] Olga: huh. Okay. Good to know.
[00:26:04] Natalie: Yeah. But I mean, that, yeah, that for the past, since after, um, COVID, I've, I've been traveling as much as I possibly could. So I've worked from so many places that I think I counted last year.
[00:26:17] Natalie: I've been in 70 different cities last year. Oh,
[00:26:21] Olga: okay. So you are okay working with just one monitor, one screen? You don't need, like, a huge setup? Yeah.
[00:26:29] Natalie: No, I'm, yeah, I've, I've probably been one screen since, since I left the agency. Oh,
[00:26:35] Olga: yeah. I wish I could do that, but I can't, I simply cannot, like, just, I need, like, a lot of space.
[00:26:41] Olga: And this is what blocks me probably from working more, like, somewhere, somewhere else. But
[00:26:49] Natalie: that's Are you, uh, Windows or Mac? Mac. Okay. And you? Windows.
[00:26:58] Olga: I was Windows for, like, many years. I switched, like, three years ago. So, a fresh Mac person.
[00:27:06] Natalie: Yeah, I think, I think it's just from the time I moved into SEO, when you try to run any SEO software on the Mac, and again, this is like 12 to 15 years ago, It wasn't, just wasn't that good, like running Screaming Frog on a Mac was, was a bit unusable.
[00:27:23] Natalie: But, um, yeah, now so many people in our industry on Mac, aren't they? I just haven't, yeah, anyway. You're
[00:27:31] Olga: okay, you don't have to, right? Okay, so tell me maybe more about how do you like learn new things? How do you stay updated? Like, do you take courses? Do you read the Google SEO documentation? Like, what do you do?
[00:27:46] Olga: Do you have your own sites where you do experiments?
[00:27:51] Natalie: I've not done much experimenting with my own sites. I've not really had the time, fortunately, but um, I mostly keep up to date with industry news via social media and search engine land, search engine journal. I think I have a good grasp on what the trends are from, from what everyone else is talking about.
[00:28:12] Natalie: And then in terms of learning new things, I think the biggest learning curve over the last year has been relating to. GPT, LLMs, how those things are integrated and, um, which has been a great, you know, it's, it's, it's made, it's made the job more interesting, you know, to be, be learning something different because so much of the, the job has been fairly similar with the, the exception of, you know, things like Core Web Vitals or, Is voice search going to be a thing or, you know, so much of it has just been a lot of the same for the past, past few years.
[00:28:52] Natalie: So, like, the, the threat of AI or whatever has been, been really, really interesting. So, there's been a lot to learn on that front. And, and it's, I mean, it's been good to be sort of looking outside my, like, SEO bubble as well, learning from people who are actually talking about AI and LLMs and stuff. That's.
[00:29:14] Natalie: That's probably the most interesting part. But the thing is, I'm studying for a degree, and have been studying for a degree for the past seven years, which is sort of taking a lot of my It takes a lot of my learning, um, energy, but, um, yeah, I think it's
[00:29:31] Olga: an
[00:29:33] Natalie: MBA.
[00:29:34] Olga: Is it like in computer science or?
[00:29:40] Natalie: No, masters in business administration.
[00:29:44] Natalie: Just the, just to ensure I have the credentials to, you know, I, the, the ironic thing is I've learned more about business through running a business than learning about it theoretically through, uh, through the Unicorn, but I'm absolutely determined to finish the course, so.
[00:30:04] Olga: I understand. Sure.
[00:30:06] Olga: And, talking about AI, like, can you tell me how are you using AI, ChatGPT or other tools now in your SEO work? Like, how do you, how are those tools helping you?
[00:30:20] Natalie: It's just think of a couple of use cases. I think it's Been really good for, so in keyword research, if you're working in an industry that you don't really know very much about the subject matter, when things are really super technical, or they're, you know, in the medical industry, stuff, stuff you don't know, and, you know, if you're working in e commerce, you know what shoes are, car parts, whatever, that's the thing, you don't need to think too much about the audience intent when you know the vocab, but if it's a brand new set of vocab, I've found that GPT has been really good at, so I've used, uh, extension in sheets to ask queries in bulk and I'll ask, I'll ask GPT to tell me what does this actually mean so I can have the definition.
[00:31:11] Natalie: of these things next to the keyword to make it easier for me to then group things and gain an understanding of audience needs and search intent. That's been quite useful. And I mean, you can get it to write meta descriptions for you. That's the, that's been marvelous. Um, also in analyzing link profiles, I've, I've been using it for like, again, trying to, if you're setting a link and you want to get an understanding of where Your client has already sourced links from it, or where their competitors have sourced links from.
[00:31:52] Natalie: I've historically always liked to be grouping those and categorizing them. And what I found was, uh, ChatGPT, if it's been trained on It will know actual, quite a lot of actual publications, it will know quite a lot of actual brands. If it's never heard of them, it's quite a good shortcut for working out whether this is, thinking you might want to steer clear of this in your outreach.
[00:32:19] Natalie: But I think, I just, I just experiment with these things. I, uh, there's a couple of things that are useful.
[00:32:28] Olga: Yeah, sure, and do you like use Google Bard or now it is Gemini, I think, called and Claude, there is also Claude, or like, are you a chat GPT person?
[00:32:40] Natalie: Still a GPT 4 person, really, um, I've been trying to use perplexity.
[00:32:46] Natalie: I think
[00:32:50] Natalie: it's, I think it's, that format is definitely the, the, the way it's going, um, the, sorry about this light, um, that's okay, I'm not sure how to turn it off because it's on a timer,
[00:33:04] Olga: but that's okay, I can see you very well,
[00:33:08] Natalie: um, Yeah, I think, I think the combination of, I think perplexity answers things much better than what I've seen with the, the, the beta of SGE, I think is, I still think that's got some way to go.
[00:33:28] Natalie: Um, but I'd say, yeah, generally in my day to day I'm still mostly using ChatGPT.
[00:33:32] Olga: Okay. So, a couple of last questions. So, what do you think now, as of 2024, what do you think is the area that SEO should be focusing on? Is it like AI or something else? What would you advise?
[00:33:48] Natalie: It's SGE, I think. I think we need to I, as I said, I've
[00:33:56] Natalie: I personally need to spend more time with it, I think. At the moment it's like, I just, I just don't think it's good enough. I don't think the results it's serving are good enough. But that does not mean that it's not going to suddenly become much more of a threat. Or, you know, much more of a risk to our traditional practices.
[00:34:15] Natalie: So, yeah, I think it's AI all the way, to be honest.
[00:34:19] Olga: So, are you afraid of AI taking our jobs? Or you are just seeing an opportunity in it to, to become like a different SEO ?
[00:34:32] Natalie: No, there's definitely, it's definitely an opportunity. I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not fearful. I think there's, you we're always gonna need people who know about these things.
[00:34:42] Natalie: Our, our roles are simply evolving and I think that that's an exciting thing. I don't, um, no, I'm, I'm confident enough that, that I can, I can pivot personally. I'm, I'm not scared. Yeah,
[00:34:57] Olga: cool, cool. And what tips would you give to people who are just starting out in SEO? What would you say to them?
[00:35:07] Natalie: Well, um,
[00:35:12] Natalie: there's a lot to learn. There's certainly a lot to learn now. Um, I guess most people starting in SEO is starting in a, you know, with an employer. They'll, they'll have a team around them. I'd say lean, lean on them. Be, be curious. Observe. See, see what others are doing. Learn from them. Read around the subject, but don't believe everything you read.
[00:35:40] Natalie: Um, you know, take, take, if you need a foundation course, there are some very reputable, uh, course providers. Um, I know that, uh, the Blu ray course is very good. I know that Mark Williams Cook's, uh, intro to SEO is very good. I know so many people in our industry have produced some really good content. But then you also have, you know, the internet has stuff that isn't necessarily true.
[00:36:07] Natalie: There's lots and lots of myths in our industry. Um. So I would just say, you know, be wary, question, question everything and be relentlessly curious.
[00:36:17] Olga: Yeah, cool advice. And who in the SEO industry would you like to give a shout out to? Who should we be following?
[00:36:30] Natalie: So many. Um, I know a person comes to mind who shared something brilliant yesterday was Hannah Smith. She's a, um, content and digital PR specialist, very experienced, very, uh, Knows what gets attention, knows exactly what she's doing in the world of content marketing and digital PR. Also, Giselle Navarro, very, very good on the digital PR side.
[00:37:00] Natalie: Uh, the owner of, uh, operations director at Neomam. Um, Everybody from Digital Marketing Union, that's a, that's a collective of freelancers that, that I'm part of, uh, run by Dan White. There's just, there's a load of us who, you know, we work in different channels, SEO, PPC. Social content, uh, email marketing, um, anyone, if you go to digitalmarketingunion.
[00:37:28] Natalie: com, I think, um, there's a great group of people
[00:37:31] Olga: there. Okay, cool. And finally, how can people find you, follow you, what's the best place?
[00:37:40] Natalie: Probably LinkedIn. So just search, search my name. In fact, search me on Google. There's not that many of me, I think. Uh huh.
[00:37:48] Olga: You mean the new surname or the old one?
[00:37:51] Natalie: New surname, Natalie Slater.
[00:37:53] Natalie: I think I, yeah, I'm definitely there for Natalie Mott, but, um, Yeah, my handle on Twitter is NJMott, my, my old name. But, um, yeah, LinkedIn's probably the best place. Okay. Do
[00:38:05] Olga: you have a website?
[00:38:07] Natalie: I don't. Oh,
[00:38:08] Olga: so you are that popular that you don't even need a website. .
[00:38:13] Natalie: I've not got round to it. I maybe someday Uhhuh
[00:38:18] Olga: Okay. Cool. Cool. So Natalie, thank you so much for spending, this time with me sharing your story. It is very, I think it's inspiring cool. So thank you. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Thanks everyone.
