E32: Holly Carless

Richard Hill:
Hi, and welcome to another episodes of eCom@One. Now, today's guest is Holly Carless, who's actually one of our own. Works with myself and the team, and specifically the SEO team here at eComOne and SEO Traffic Lab. How are you doing, Holly?
Holly Carless:
I'm not too bad, thank you.
Richard Hill:
Brilliant. Now, Holly has got a really interesting story, which I'm sure we'll come to where basically she joined us straight from college. So, from school to college to the agency just over two years ago, and I thought it'd be great to get Holly on the podcast to give us an insight from a younger person's perspective getting into the industry and progressing through the industry, and also working on more importantly, a lot of e-comm stores. So, everything okay with you, Hol?
Holly Carless:
Yeah. Everything's fine, thank you.
Richard Hill:
Good, good. So, I thought it'd be good to kick off really and tell us a little bit about your journey from when you sort of started with the agency to today, what you've been doing.
Holly Carless:
Like you've said, obviously I came from college. So, I was only 17, which is so crazy as I'm 19 now, but basically, I don't think a classroom environment is a good way to show an individual. So I knew that college wasn't the right thing for me. I actually took art and design, which is completely different to what I do now, but I knew I wanted to do something creative. So, two years ago I decided to look at creative roles, which was when I obviously came for an interview at eComOne, and a very proud moment is that I actually got the job on the interview, which still amazes me to this day.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, it doesn't happen very often in this place to be fair, but when you know, you know. Yeah. So you've now been... Obviously that was over two years ago, you've been here just over two years, isn't it like I said, but in that two years... Obviously you've started off with, I guess, almost zero knowledge in the industry to today where obviously you're looking after and work very much with the account managers here with the agencies and their sort of backup, and creating and managing a lot of the workflow in the backend, but what would you say is sort of some of the aspects of the job that you like the most?
Holly Carless:
So I work a lot with outreach. So obviously, that means I get my own articles live. So even from the very beginning to now, I still get the same feeling of when I see my live piece. So even if it's something silly, like a meta title on a website, or literally a whole blog on someone's guest person's site, it's just still a great feeling to me, and I love to still boast about it to everyone.
Richard Hill:
You do, don't you? In the agency, we have what we call a stand up every day. So at 10 o'clock every day, we all get together as a team, wherever we are in the world sort of thing. Obviously, we've still got a lot of people working remote and that changes all the time, got new people, different offices and whatnot. But every day, we stand up at 10 and talk through for 30 seconds to a minute, each person within the team, and Holly's there every day and sort of saying, "Right. Well, we did this, we did this and this."
Richard Hill:
Then quite often every other day or so, there's an outreach piece that Holly's got live. That's obviously been a piece of work that you've... Or piece of the role as an SEO and working on SEO, that's a big part. So you really like the outreach piece?
Holly Carless:
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely a good part of my job, yeah.
Richard Hill:
And what would you say is some of the more of the challenging sides of the role as a digital marketing assistant?
Holly Carless:
Well, this is a bit controversial. So actually one of the challenges I do is outreach. So it depends. We have different sectors of clients that we work with. So, one of them is a business specialist and I've realized the more of worked in outreach, the more it's achievable to actually get guest posts on for that sector. So they work with SMEs and work in business and finance, and the type of guest posting, I think, want to promote information to help people. It seems to be very popular, but we have another client who is a survival specialist. So they sell knives and empower them online, which is completely the polar opposite to our other client, but it can be actually very difficult to achieve good outreach.
Holly Carless:
So when I try and search for them, sometimes I look into brand collaborations which have worked in the past, but a lot of them are actually pretty clueless as to how valuable blogs are. So I can go through about a hundred brands, which I have before, and not one has had a blog. So I can't actually achieve a good outreach piece, and it tends to be that a lot... If I do find any that are related to the industry that do guest posting, they tend to not be a great website or not a good domain authority or not worthy. So it can be difficult, but it is rewarding when I do find ones.
Richard Hill:
So you guys that are listening in, obviously what you're trying to do as an e-com store is to build relationships with site owners and marketers ideally in your niche for them to write about you, and what Holly does is reaches out to, in some instances hundreds of potential site owners to see if they will collaborate with our clients, and then we will write for them. But as Holly said, quite often, they don't have a blog or somewhere to put that content. So it can be quite challenging at times, but obviously in the same... On the other side of the fence I guess, is that when you do get a placement and it's a good strong authority site.
Richard Hill:
So when we say outreach them, what are some of the metrics you think that people should be looking for to find good sites to talk about them, good sites... From an SEO perspective, what are some of the things you think the guys listening should be looking out for?
Holly Carless:
From an SEO perspective, I would say even though it's becoming more controversial, but I think it's important, is the domain authority. So, Google won't like it if you're adding your site onto maybe a site that they think could be spam-worthy. So, it's definitely something to check. I also check the organic traffic monthly. And you could have a good domain authority, but if you looking and seeing that there's only three people looking at the site per month, then it's pointless because you do have to pay for links quite often. So it's not worth it if you're paying for links and then not get any reach.
Richard Hill:
So the big thing there, domain authority to a point, but more than that... Guys listening in, we're looking at organic traffic. So what would you say to the guys listening to find out what the organic traffic is to a site? What's the best way to do that?
Holly Carless:
Well, I use a tool called Ahrefs. So, I simply go on my dashboard. You literally paste in the URL of the site that you find, and it literally tells you the organic traffic monthly. You can look into that, but literally it's just a simple layout-
Richard Hill:
Copy-paste job. Yeah, tells you, "Right. Okay, 10 visits a month, domain is 70. Something's not right. Domain authority 70 or domain 50, but 20,000." You want to go for the one with 20,000 because Google's going to see that real activity, those real people on the site, that real organic, rather than domain authority, which I think what Holly said is it can potentially be gamed, can be cheated a little bit. I think for those more experienced SEO's listening, I think there are... Well, there is ways to game and to sort of cheat domain authority, and the ways to check that sometimes. Something I would add is you can go to archive.org, look at a site, look at a site now, Obviously, you go to the site now and see what the site looks like, but look at the site in the archive, and what archive.org does it takes a snapshot over time of a site, what a site looked like and what pages were like.
Richard Hill:
So if a site six months ago wasn't even on the same topic, then there's a problem. It's completely switched around just to try and game some things. You can click on the archive, look at six months ago, 12 months ago, 18 months ago, 24 months ago, three years ago, four years ago if it's four, five, ten-year-old old site. We can get a real feel for the history of that site and see if it's had a genuine progression in its business and its content, in its craft as an authority in the industry. So, I think some good bits there. Domain authority, definitely organic traffic, maybe adding that archive piece as well just as a double check.
Richard Hill:
So, e-com. Obviously, you're on eComOne podcast, where we have eComOne as an agency. Obviously the bulk of what you work on is e-commerce stores. What tips would you give to e-commerce stores wanting to improve their SEO specifically?
Holly Carless:
Well, a lot of the time when I've worked with e-commerce store websites is that they tend to have products, but the information either isn't there, so they have no product description at all or you'll find that it's copied. So just say, if you're searching for a product and you go, "Oh, I might try and find it a bit cheaper from somewhere else." You're looking on several sites and a lot of the time I see the exact same description on every single one, which can actually be really damaging to your brand because if you get found out you're copyrighting, and then that can potentially end your business.
Holly Carless:
So to make it unique, you need to add in your own flair, having your own content, but also look into keywords and key phrases. So what we like to do with content is look at a main keyword, which we like to add into our meta title, which can literally be an easy win. Also looking to secondary keywords. Secondary keywords are more for your content, so they can be long tail, they can be questions and they can be things that people are actually searching for instead of having phrases that you have in there and it's something that no one's looking for.
Holly Carless:
Because with keywords, you can actually find that no one's searching for the actual name of the product, but something that's abbreviated or slightly different can actually have a search volume of 1000 because people are actually looking for that. I also think it's good to have something that's easily scannable. So a lot of the time you might see a massive blob of text and you go, "I don't have time."
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. Can't be bothered. Too much!
Holly Carless:
So, even bullet point and then adding in key phrases, maybe questions as well. That can be actually a ranking second research can actually really helpful, and then a second thing is that the site speed needs to be fast because if you're trying to look for products and you can't even get onto the side or it's too slow, people are simply just going to bounce off. Where you can check your site speed is usually in something called GTMetrix. So literally what you do is simply paste in URL, make sure it's set to the country you're in, and it can tell you the factors that are slowing down your site, but it's definitely a flaw if you have a slow site, it's not going to work. You're not going to have them sales.
Richard Hill:
A lot of things there, Hol. Really good. So I think typically we do find that most e-com stores, they've done a deal with a product manufacturer distributor. They're happy. They've got these nice shiny products with nice imagery and nice maybe descriptions, maybe not. Sometimes they're quite good, but the reality are is that they are the same descriptions everybody else has got. If they've took them from a CSV and just dumped them in the backend of their website, or they've copied and pasted them.
Richard Hill:
And what you're saying now, Holly, is obviously that you'd need to go through, do the keyword research specifically for the key products. That's why we need the 80-20 principle... Can't get my words out today. The 80-20 principle that we talk about a lot throughout the podcast episodes. You're looking at those SKUs that are those top 20%, or even the 80-20 of the 80-20, the top 4% SKUs. Reworking them, rewording them. A main keyword with a title and then some secondary keywords scattered throughout.
Richard Hill:
But I think, again, that long copy that a lot of people do, it's a bit of a balancing act because you don't want no copy obviously, or one or two lines, but you don't want war and peace at the same time. Or if you have got war and peace or a longer form of copy, you've got to have that format, and like you said, you've got to have that... So it's readable and it's bulleted out, it's broken down, it's paragraphed out, it's bolded, there's maybe a link in there, maybe not. And then site speed, good old site speed. I think it's every project we have, isn't it? We do both of these side of things. And when we talk about metadata, you've probably written, what 10,000 plus?
Holly Carless:
Probably, yeah.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, at least I would say. Obviously said at the beginning, Holly's been with us two years. So worked on literally hundreds of projects and hundreds of different sort of keyword groups, and thousands in the keyword side of things. So every project... If you're listening, if you have a store, you might have read and heard about your products and site speed, and you will have heard of it because it's so important to do these things. I think they can easily be forgotten.
Richard Hill:
I think another thing with site speed is quite often what people do, they'll run their site through a tool, so like GTMetrix or Google's own site speed tool, but they'll run their homepage only through it rather than also running through their categories, their sub-categories, their product pages because those specific pages will no doubt usually always have the similar or same template around them, and if there's huge imagery around one of the category pages, no doubt that there's huge physical size of images around all of them. So all the category pages could be really, really slow.
Richard Hill:
So I think site speed is one that I think a lot of people do talk about, but they just probably put their homepage in and go, "Oh, I've got to be great. It's not too bad. Next!" But reality is what you're trying to rank for usually in search is from a lot more specific search terms, which are more like to be a product pages, your categories and sub-categories. Okay. So, when we talk about outreach, ultimately what we're trying to do is secure links. Is there anything specific that you look for when you're trying to secure links?
Holly Carless:
Well, I can't lie. My technique is constantly changing. It's a lot different to what it was when I began. So, it's actually now said that using the traditional right for us Google search term is something that you shouldn't do because in fact people can actually pay for these sites and bulk it up with the domain authority, add in a load of links and make it look a genuine site, but naturally it's just a tactic for them to actually gain money. So at the moment I mainly look into, like I've said, the monthly organic traffic and the domain authority, but I actually use a tool on Ahrefs called Link Intersect.
Holly Carless:
So I can actually paste in my competitor's links and then place in our own, and it actually shows the links that they have, their competitors have that we don't. So that's a really good way to try and find opportunities that we haven't gone for. What you can do as well is that you can look specifically as to where the link is. So you might think, "Oh, that's a good-looking site. Let's have a look where the competitor linked to," but then it links to a page that is non-relevant. But then at other times, you can find them and it's on a guest post. So, you know that their open to people wanting to have people in the industry that want to promote that kind of thing. So, that's my current technique and it does seem to be working.
Richard Hill:
So we're saying... There are some sneaky bits in there if you call that guys, because what we're saying is I think, was looking at competitors, comparing our sites to theirs, and we're seeing that they've got links where we haven't, and some of those links that we've got, we're going to go intersect those links and say, "Hey, We've got a better landing page for you than the landing page you've currently got," or maybe not quite as straightforward as that or straight to the point is that, or maybe in some cases.
Richard Hill:
We see that you're writing about X, Y, Z, we've just written an article about this, that, and the other that's actually up to date. It was just updated last week. That gives you guys a reason to update your articles, or your content, or your product, or your categories. Make sure they're very, very thorough. And then the people that are already ranking quite well, or already got really strong links from them are more like link to you as well. So, use the Ahrefs' Link Intersect for that. So that's two mentions for Ahrefs today. So, I'm sure they'll be tweeting us again next week. Great. So e-commerce and content marketing. So, how can an e-commerce store utilize content marketing, would you say, to make sales?
Holly Carless:
Well, firstly, I think you need to adapt to your audience. So, you might be quite a laid back brand, but then writing things that are too professional... Well, not too professional, but too formal and don't fit in with the brief of your audience. So to even start on your content marketing, you need to find out what your audience is and find that out, but then after that, I don't think a lot of e-commerce stores actually realize the importance of blogs. So there's different ways you can drive traffic to blogs. So you can push page against them, or even like social media promoting the latest blogs, but it's actually said that...
Holly Carless:
Just saying if you're going to promote one page of your site, well then, why not promote a blog that has five internal links to five different parts of the site that are relevant? So instead of trying to promote one area, you could promote five and that could support you to then actually get the sale. I'd also say that you need to have unique content like I've said, so adapt it to your audience, but also have it optimized for SEO. So like I've said before, including main keywords, secondary keywords.
Holly Carless:
So the main keyword will be perfect for the title and the meta title, and the secondary keywords are perfect for subheadings on the content. And then actually including search terms that people actually search for. So, with secondary keywords, they don't have to actually rank, but if it's something that you searched for and relevant things come up, then you can beat over your competitors, it means you can still rank first.
Holly Carless:
Also don't copy content, like I've said before, and highlight the key areas and also promote areas with your content that have to do with your business and don't make it irrelevant, and also a call to actions are a great way to try and get the sale. So for instance, if you're putting on a blog and at the end, you go, "For more information contact blah, blah, blah," or "For a product, go to here," then the person might go, "Actually, that's quite good." Instead of having to go, "Oh well, there's nothing to go on to the actual page, so I'm not going to bother."
Richard Hill:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think content marketing is always a... I think it's the bit where a lot of people struggle. There's a lot of things within SEO and online obviously where people struggle depending on their sort of forte, but I think quite often I definitely find personally... That's why I've got super smart guys working with us on the content side, like yourself, but where to start. So, you know we're going to be writing content for ourselves or the client, what would your advice be and a good place to start around topic ideation, things we should be writing about?
Holly Carless:
A good idea is to potentially look at search terms or look into the areas of your business that you have. So for instance, if you provide business advice, furlough advice, then you can simply literally search that on Google, look at the top search terms, see what their promoting-
Richard Hill:
So, see who's ranking already?
Holly Carless:
Yeah, and see how you can adapt that to make it your own. You might even find that it's not even optimized, but whereas you can optimize it. So you will find that you can easily rank number one for something that you didn't even know you could.
Richard Hill:
I think this goes back to that bit like what Andy said on his podcast. Andy Birkett, who's our lead engineer here. You're not trying to sort of beat Google, you're trying to beat the people that are already there. So if you're looking at the top 10 people that are doing well for a particular area of your business... You'd mentioned furlough there, or maybe a few months back, understanding furlough for a business owner or the different changes in furlough. No doubt a lot of content out there at the moment, but ultimately, there's people ranking 1 to 10 or 1 to 20, whatever it may be. 1 to 10 is obviously where you'd want to be, top five ideally. So they're ranking for a reason, what is that? So we're saying reverse engineer what is working for them.
Holly Carless:
Yeah, and the advice that they have that can actually potentially be better.
Richard Hill:
What questions they're answering.
Holly Carless:
Yeah.
Richard Hill:
What's the length, the size of the piece, how it's broken down, formatted. Is there a video content? How is it video embedded? Is it from a YouTube channel? Breaking it all down. Can we get some sort of knowledge box action from the Q and A side of the page? Yeah, so we are looking at what is out there already. I mean, would you say any other tips for sort of getting into the zone for writing as well, because I think... So, you've got your idea. You've gone, "Right. Well, these are the top 10. I'm going to write about this, that and the other, because this is what they're doing and I know we can do it better because I've spoken to the client, and I spoke to you, the e-com store who's listening and we know what to do, but I got to sit and write 800 words or whatever, 1500 words." How'd you get into the zen of doing the job?
Holly Carless:
Well even now, I do still get stuck sometimes of, "Where do I began?" So a good way to start is to actually begin with your subheadings. So, actually structure the article first without even having to write anything, even if it's just like a general brainstorm and it's just a load of gobbledygoop on the page. If you understand what it is, you can have that as your brainstorm and then write after that and make it more suitable for a blog. It's also good to try and focus on your audience, and maybe if you try to focus on one particular customer that you might have in mind and just making sure that you provide the advice that they would want and maybe something that doesn't sound great to you, but will be valuable to them.
Richard Hill:
Yeah, I think that sort of brought back a flood of a memory for me. Everybody who knows me very well, I do my best to surround myself with people that are just way smarter than me in the areas that I'm not, and there's plenty of them. There's some things I'm good at, that's for sure, but there's definitely more things that I've got some very, very smart people around me, and writing is one of them. Nine years ago I wrote a book, which everyone was like, "What? You wrote your book, Richard? Don't be ridiculous,' and the truth of the matter is yeah, I did write a book, but I did it using one of sort of Holly's strategy there in a way where...
Richard Hill:
To write a book is like, "Whoa, that's not going to happen," but come up with the idea for the book, which is around local SEO. I knew I wanted to write a book about local SEO. We'd just started the agency, so 10 and a half years ago or so. So right, I'm going to write a book on local SEO. For me to sit and write the 20,000 words that are needed for a book is literally like you may as well just shoot me in the face. It's not going to happen. So what I did with a friend of mine, we came up with 10 topics to talk about, and then we came up with six things on each topic.
Richard Hill:
So, we had 60 headlines, which is what you're saying there, but then each headline I spoke like I am doing now into a microphone, and we talked about the different elements of local SEO. Whether that's on page, off page, citations, Google My Business, all the different areas that I know inside out upside down over the years and definitely then, and then basically that was sent and transcribed, and hey, I had 27,000 words and I've got a book on the bookshelf still. And people are like, "What? You wrote a book?"
Richard Hill:
So I think you could also add that there, and to add to what Holly is saying, I would say for those that really struggle, you can dictate it. You can dictate it. Even I've got an app on my phone now. When I have sort of long phone calls with some of my team or various different people, whether that's some of the different sort of professionals that work with us, our consultants, our sort of trusted partners. Sometimes I'll say, "You don't mind if I just record the call, do you guys?" So then I can refer back to it.
Richard Hill:
I still have the app running. It records the whole thing, transcribes it all and then bangs an email to me, completely transcribed. So I can just check on that call to see if there's anything there, but if I was to sit and write notes from that call, or obviously write that thing up, it's quite challenging, yeah.
Richard Hill:
Okay. Right then. So obviously you've been with the agency well over two years now, and you're just in the process of finishing your apprenticeship. So apprenticeships, I think we get to touch on that because I know obviously a lot of people that are listening to them and will be sort of maybe looking at hiring apprentices, or becoming apprentices maybe. Would you say that's a good way to get a foothold in the industry?
Holly Carless:
Yeah, definitely. University was never something that I wanted to do and I always knew that. People said, "Why don't you just go for it anyway? And I said, "Because I don't want to." I knew it was something that I didn't want to do, but even when I was at school, I remember someone doing a presentation about apprenticeships and it was something that always stuck in my mind, but I never considered it because everyone just seemed to think, "Go to college. Go to university, and that's the way to go," but it's not. I didn't realize until I started to be an apprentice, how valuable it is and actually how much employees appreciate apprentices because... I don't want to sound me, but if I went to university, I wouldn't have the knowledge today that I would compared to the apprenticeship I've been at for the past two years at eComOne.
Richard Hill:
It's a very interesting sort of route to the industry because as you know, we've engaged with the apprenticeship program for probably five years now. Phoebe, who works with Holly, has been here five and a half years, I think. Started an apprenticeship, but on the same respect, we've got graduates that have started with us in a similar time and I've obviously spent five years at uni. There's nothing wrong with that track, but obviously there is a different track. There's no right or wrong. It's whatever fits that person. My oldest son, who's 15. He's going to hate me now when he listens to this. He was actually in class the other day, in business... He's really going to hate me now telling this story, and if you're listening to this, well done for getting this far.
Richard Hill:
He was in business, and the business teacher was talking about different media online, and my son said, "Oh yeah, and podcasts." The teacher's, "Oh yeah, podcasts are great. Da-da-da-da." And then he goes, "Yeah, my dad's got one actually." Everyone looked at him like, "Whatever." They thought he was fibbing, and then they're all Googling it, and he's like, "Oh, no way! That's your dad." So, he was getting a few high-fives, I think, or he was like, dying over. I'm not sure. I'm not sure, but he's got that decision to make. He's finishing school this year, it's his last GCSE year, and then he's got to either obviously stay on at college school or do an apprenticeship. It's not clear cut for him. He's not sure. I think he's experimenting up little bit. I think he's probably going to stay on and do A levels, but then will he go to uni? I don't know. I really don't know. And for me, I don't mind. It's like if he wants to go to uni, we'll support him 150%. If he wants to go apprenticeship route or whatever, absolutely fine.
Richard Hill:
So, obviously Holly is just about to finish apprenticeship. She's a couple of weeks away and then she's staying on with us, and she's going to be part of our SEO, initial PR team, and continue that journey, continue developing in there. So I'm looking forward to... Obviously, we'll maybe get you on the podcast again in a year and you can talk about this next year journey. So obviously through the last few years done a lot of training courses and spent a lot of time with different interfaces and tools and softwares and trainings and our own training days and things like that. So what would you say were some of the best courses that are out there? What sort of courses you'd recommend?
Holly Carless:
Ahrefs are going to love me, but I think it's Tim Soulo and he did a Blogging for Business course. It's quite heavy, but in a good way. So, I think I wrote about 50 pages worth of notes when I did the course, but it's a course where you actually get involved and you don't realize how much you mean to it-
Richard Hill:
Rather than just reading it and interaction.
Holly Carless:
Yeah, definitely.
Richard Hill:
Sort of tasks? Yeah.
Holly Carless:
Yeah. So basically it was highlighting the importance of blogging and how you can actually promote in different ways, but a certain part of it that actually stuck in my head was the spike of hope. So the spike of hope is basically when you upload a blog, you tell your friends, you get 10 views then it goes straight back down to.
Richard Hill:
Or your mates like it on Facebook when you shared it.
Holly Carless:
Yeah, and then three days later, it goes back to two. And he came up with ways on how you can stop it from spiking. So using SEO, also re-publishing the article, and support it on social media, also using channels like Slack, Reddit, Discord to promote them.
Richard Hill:
Like groups, and sort of... Yeah.
Holly Carless:
And just constantly promoting it and keeping it relevant, and it's just a course that really, really resonated with me, and I even had to do my first presentation here about the course. So, that's definitely something that stayed in my brain.
Richard Hill:
It's so true, isn't it, that spike? I think I say repurposing, reusing it. It's a bloody good article, and it should be. So you just put it out there that one time in the day after, or 10 minutes after you put it live, and then what, you're moving on to the next thing. I mean, that's such a mistake most marketers and SEOs make. They create this really nice piece, and then they spend two days on it or whatever that timeline is depending on. It might be a couple of hours, it might be two weeks on this mega piece. Push it live, move on to the next piece. I think something I always try and drum into our team, it depends on budget, but if we're spending a day creating something, ideally we want two days to then promote it, to get it out of there to push it, push it, push it, whether it's by some of the methods you said, or just to get it mentioned on a podcast, or it's to really push it out there.
Richard Hill:
So you're creating this piece, but there's not much point if no one's seeing it. You've got to have the resources and the budget to then be able to promote it. You guys listening in, if you do have a blog, or you have a news area or you're creating, it's so important that if you think, "You're right," and you spend all morning creating that blog post about the new products that are coming in for Christmas, or whatever that thing is. So what? You've got be able to get it out there. So I think some great ideas there, and I think that course was a paid course, but I know they did put it as a free course during the lockdown. So I think it still might be free. So we'll tag all that up in the show notes, and you might get lucky with that one guys, but I think it's normally $300, $500.
Holly Carless:
It is a very good course.
Richard Hill:
Very thorough, isn't it?
Holly Carless:
Yeah.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Anything else?
Holly Carless:
Not in particular with courses, but I do like to try and keep up to date using Digital Marketing Institute and Search Engine Journal. So keep up to date with the blogs. They also help inspire me to write blogs for our company page as well.
Richard Hill:
Yep, yep. Yeah. You can see a lot of Holly's blogs on our blogs, so eComOne Blog. SEO Traffic Lab is our sister agency as well. For those that are long-term listeners of eCom@One, we actually have a B2B agency as well as an e-com agency. We split our agency into two a couple of years ago, straight down the middle almost. So yeah, we've got our seotrafficlab.com/blog, but there's probably about 600 blogs on there from the last 10 years. I think Holly, you've written a nice few, haven't you? The last couple I'm trying to remember now. If I'm paying attention, you wrote a blog on basically around directories and whether they're still a worthy strategy and then... Oh God, what's the other one?
Holly Carless:
A guide to social media marketing, which is very relevant.
Richard Hill:
Yes. Yeah. Brilliant. So, as courses and then a few things there. So, tools to measure success of SEO. Where would you go there?
Holly Carless:
I just realized, I must have literally spent all my days on Ahrefs because... Oh, here we go, but to analyze backlinks, especially after I've done outreach, I like to look into the backlink tool. So you can look at new, older ones and lost. So I'll actually look at the date to see if the current ones have been added that I haven't added, and see if they are spam or things to be disavowed or removed. I also matched the link types. See if it's follow, do you follow. See if it's been added through content or through something that's maybe not very safe. I also like to look through using it by word or phrase. So, just say if you're writing about water bottles, if you linked to the word water bottles in your outreach piece, you can simply type it and you'll find all the articles you wrote.
Holly Carless:
If it's about a business, I tend to use their business name to then link to, so I'll simply type that in and I can analyze the traffic, analyze how it's doing. Yeah, it's just a great way to look through the backlinks, and also to see which ones are doing well and which ones are maybe not worthy of keeping.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah.
Holly Carless:
And then my next one is SEMrush, which I use just as much as Ahrefs. I like to use an organic research tool to monitor the traffic and popularity on our client's pages. So I actually specifically look especially on to the clients we do blogs for. So you can actually filter down the page search for their blog, you can search the actual domain, look through all the pages, but if you want something in particular, you can then filter it in format.
Holly Carless:
So, I like to look at the traffic, how it's being viewed, seeing if it's doing well and also analyzing things to see if maybe we could repurpose it, and actually when I had a look last time, one of our clients, actually their most popular page is a blog that I wrote. Bit of a promo, but yeah, it's good to always see the traffic and the metrics as well, because it's good to tell the clients to see where it's good to focus on and what people want to see from their brand. So it's definitely a good way to refresh, and also help your clients realize how important their data is.
Richard Hill:
Brilliant. Brilliant. Okay. So, the Ahrefs again. SEMrush. Lots of very good friends. Okay. So, we're going to throw a curve ball in there now. So, Holly took part in a sort of a ladies take labor day on the podcast about three weeks ago. For those of you that are regular listeners, you will have listened to it. So, we're going to ask a similar question or same question, what's your favorite cocktail and why?
Holly Carless:
Well, as a five days ago when I first tried it, it's actually a strawberry porn star. So, I saw someone have a cocktail tree. I looked over and went, "I want one." Literally, the best thing I've ever drank, to be honest.
Richard Hill:
Yeah. Wow. Strawberry. What's in there then?
Holly Carless:
Well, I think it's literally just like how a porn star martini's made, but without slices of the passion fruit, it's the strawberry. A little bit of strawberry on the side, yeah.
Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Right. Well, we're coming to an end, Holly. Thank you so much. You've been a guest on eCom@One. I like to finish every episode with a book recommendation. What would you recommend to our readers, Holly? Listeners.
Holly Carless:
Well, it's actually credit to Carrie-Anne, but actually it's called Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day by someone called Jay Shetty. So, it's actually using your life decisions with your values. So basically how you job, the people you surround yourself with, what you read and what you watch can actually impact life, and it's actually a topic that is very close to my heart. So, I do feel like it's a really good book to me, especially during these times because it is quite difficult. Especially just to kind of reset your mind, and just try and bring yourself up to your zen.
Richard Hill:
There's a finish for you. Well, thank you so much for being a guest, Holly. I look forward to inviting you back on in 12 months, and we can continue discussing the journey for apprenticeship to SEO and PR digital exec, to who knows in 12 months.
Holly Carless:
Who knows?
Richard Hill:
Thank you so much. Thanks, Hol.
Holly Carless:
Thank you.
Richard Hill:
Bye.