Entrepreneur and Globally Ranked SEO Expert Helping Others Navigate Today’s Web Complexities

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Transcription

Host:
Welcome to Coruzant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive podcast. Welcome to the Digital Executive! Today’s guest is Zac Almeida. Zac Almeida is the CEO and Senior SEO Consultant at The SEO Hustler CEO, with over 20 years of experience in web marketing.

He is an expert in technical and enterprise SEO, as well as content strategy. Zac’s passion for data and research has helped him build several businesses from the ground up, and he has helped hundreds of clients increase their website organic traffic and sales.

Most recently, Zac reached the top 1% on Upwork and became one of the first SEOs expert-vetted at the platform. His current focus is driving growth for The SEO Hustler, his second SEO agency, while also developing multiple AI tools that will be a game-changer for SEO and content strategy.

Well, good afternoon, Zach. Welcome to the show!

Zac:
Thank you. Thank you, Brian.

Host:
You’re very very welcome. I’m glad we could coordinate our schedules and get on this podcast to have a little discussion so we can chip in and share your story. And I do appreciate it because I know that you’re hailing out of Brazil right now, so this is exciting. 

So moving forward here, Zac, let’s talk about your background. It’s an amazing background in marketing, web, search engine optimization, known as SEO. And now you’re the CEO for The SEO Hustler. Could you share with our audience what drives you and what is contributed to your success?

Zac:
Yeah, sure. I think love what you do. It’s one of the main things. Being passionate about data, about SEO specifically, is a very different field from what it was, for example, ten years ago. It’s not just doing backlinks anymore. Optimizing pages for specific keywords. It’s much more than that.

You need to understand your target audience and you need to understand search intent. You need to really be able to read data and extract insights from it. So loving data. I would say it’s one of the most important things and loving what you do.
There’s no magic here, obviously, but, yeah, that’s the most important point in my opinion.

Host:
That’s awesome. And you’re absolutely right. I think SEO has just come such a long way, even in just the last couple of years. But since the World Wide Web started and Google became kind of the predominant SEO expert, so to speak. Right? Kind of that bar, it’s been set really high now. So you’re absolutely right. So thank you for sharing that.

And there is a lot. It’s an art and science for sure. So, Zach, what are the latest factors and updates? Google is using to rank sites in today’s competitive online market.

Zac:
Yeah, one of the most important factors right now. This is not something extremely new. It goes back to August 2018 with the first major update about it. It’s E.A.T! Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

This is basically a way for Google to actually understand and see what type of content can be trustable what type of content will not be harmful for an audience. This is extremely important for the financial and health niches, but this is also important for eCommerce and other types of websites. So E.A.T is one of the most important things.

And if we can mention a second factor. Providing a really good user experience, understanding the search intent behind queries behind keywords, and providing the best possible user experience to your users. Google is really looking forward to offering the best possible results you search. It’s the major factor that will keep coming back. That will keep people coming back to Google and going back to Google. So those two factors are the most important ones today.

Host:
Thank you for sharing that. And that certainly gives some insight to a lot of our audience here who are entrepreneurs, work in startups, and senior executives. So thank you. So, Zac, what are some basic best practices to help companies optimize their site for searchability?

Zac:
I would say if you’re beginning, if you’re a small business, really try to really understand your target audience, try to really understand who will consume your products, your services, and understand their pain points. This is not specifically for SEO, so this is much broader in terms of a marketing perspective, but it will connect extremely well with any organic activities you are going to perform. So if you understand your target audience, you can produce content that they will be happy to consume. They will be happy to go back to your website frequently to see updates.

You increase your brand awareness with a nice blog. For example, targeting and exploring your target audience’s pain points and then really understand the search intent. So when someone is searching for your products, what they need to see, what they are looking to see in your product pages. When someone is searching for a question or a more informational query what they are looking to see in the content. Can you provide a short and precise answer, or do you need a longer article?

This audience research and market research. It’s extremely important for SEO, and it’s one of the most important and easiest things to do for someone that is a beginner. Obviously, you can always work with more complex SEO strategies. You can always work with things like natural language processing, complex algorithms to improve your website’s potential of ranking. But overall, the groundwork is really understanding the target audience.

Host:
I love that. I hear that message resonating through our conversation tonight and again it’s getting that message, that right message out to your target audience. Because like I said, the SEO work nowadays has really become very complex. So thank you for sharing that.

And then, Zac, the last question. Could you share something from your career experience that would be helpful for those looking to grow their career in either marketing or entrepreneurship?

Zac:
Yeah, I think here we basically go back to the first question. In order to be a successful founder, you need to love what you do. Growing a business, it’s basically or almost like taking care of a baby. You need to be on top of things. You need to love what you do because you need a lot of commitment, a lot of focus to make any business, progress, and grow today. If you love what you do, it will not be working. It will be a pleasure. And you are already in the path for success.

Host:
That’s awesome! Thank you again for sharing that. That certainly will resonate with a lot of our entrepreneurs and young startups. So thank you, Zac.

And Zac, it was a pleasure having you on today. And I look forward to speaking with you real soon.

Zac:
Awesome! It was a pleasure to be here, Brian, thank you for the invitation. And, yeah, looking forward. Looking forward to it.

Host:
Bye for now.