Get your Free Website SEO Audit now from Growingsearch.com, a next-level SEO Services Agency that helps your website be more visible, engaging & effective. George Konidis, founder of Growing Search will be sharing more details with us in this interview.
Please tell us about yourself?
I’m George Konidis, an SEO expert and founder of Growing Search.
My online career launched with a Canadian ecommerce website. Their success got me excited about scaling businesses through better content, and improved exposure via online, video, and social. I also managed a SEO team that optimized large adult websites, and we secured page-one results on Google for popular keywords.
What is Growing Search?
Growing Search is a digital agency with offices in Toronto and Montreal. We employ some of the best professionals in SEO, content, and online marketing.
What services do you provide?
Growing Search provides services that impact organic visibility. SEO is the core of our business, but we also provide consulting and strategic planning to startups, medium-size businesses, and enterprise-level companies.
Given that SEO is constantly evolving, we’ve added services that affect organic search. These include link building, content marketing, video optimization, site speed and performance optimization, and translation services for companies that are looking to expand overseas.
Our team has an average of 10 years experience in SEO, and we’ve working across many industries. We’ve worked with clients that range from hyper-local to international companies.
We approach each client campaign differently because there isn’t a single approach for everyone. Each client is unique, and the strategy needs to be customized for each campaign.
Our team has worked with some of the most-trafficked websites in the world. And we’ve been able to see the impact of our strategies almost in real-time. Whereas an SEO firm that has worked on smaller websites would not be able to see the impact as quickly. Therefore their learning curve can be much longer.
Moreover, our team is constantly A/B testing the algorithms. We don’t wait for industry news or blogs to tell us what’s working. We’ve got a proven track record.
Growing Search promises to get SEO results. How does that work?
There are a few reasons why.
First, our SEO experts conduct a lengthy analysis prior to starting any campaign. We do our best to understand the competitive landscape in a client’s industry. And we map out a strategy that is realistic in terms of growth. We are 100% transparent in terms of growth expectations, and help the client to understand that.
For example, a local car dealership will have a difficult time competing against nationwide brands or automotive leaders. This needs to be communicated to a client in order to set realistic expectations. In such a situation, we can work on long-tail keywords that are more relevant to a local dealership.
Explain your link-building services. How do you get results?
We don’t guarantee results with link-building services. It’s a red flag for any digital agency to do so.
We’re seeing major success with link-building because of our competitive analyses. We thoroughly assess what links will work for each individual website. Moreover, we increase the link profile as naturally as possible — by looking at things from a user’s standpoint. Asking questions such as, “Would a user read and share this content? Is it adding value to the end-user or the publication? Will users click through?”
We put a lot of care into our proprietary link-building methods. Although it does not add immediate value, clients start to see results after about five months.
Content is king. Tell us more about your content marketing service.
SEO has evolved. We gradually emphasized the creation of content as part of our overall strategy. It’s not enough to create great content. It needs to be visible.
Search engines love great content. But SEO professionals need to understand the relationship between great content and how users react to it. This goes back to the idea of writing great content that users will engage with and feel strongly about sharing, or completing an action.
For example, we worked with a major video-tube website and created an infographic based on users’ top searches in 2018. We were shocked at the top searches, and felt the data would trigger a strong response among audiences. As soon as the graphic got published, it got shared on the internet and created plenty of natural backlinks for our client’s website.
If our team hadn’t properly analyzed the data and understood how the content could impact other users, the campaign would not have been a success. With content marketing, it’s extremely important to know the target audience, and how content can trigger a reaction.
Discuss your translation services.
Growing Search’s translation services are geared towards clients who are looking to expand internationally. We work with local SEOs in different markets around the world. These local partners translate content and ensure that we use appropriate terminology based on keyword volume and user intent.
This extra step maximizes clients’ visibility in overseas markets.
How does Youtube SEO work?
YouTube has its own algorithm, and it’s actually the second biggest search engine after Google.
We work with content producers and help them to identify all major keywords that their video should be ranking for. Then we incorporate keywords in titles and descriptions. We also create relevant tags to optimize click-through rates.
Moreover, our team reviews the video content to see if changes should be made. We make recommendations from a SEO standpoint.
Tell us about your team and customer support.
Our team is comprised of SEOs that possess an average of 10 years experience. Each member specializes in different areas of optimization.
For example, we have an SEO guru that possesses a secondary specialty in speed and performance optimization. Another member contributes as link-building expert. Another member focuses on international markets (specifically in Latin America and Spain). A different team member focuses on competitive analysis and content marketing. And we have an editor who ensures that all content meet high standards.
The combination of these specialties enables us to adapt to ever-increasing algorithm changes.
In terms of customer support, we follow up with our clients at the end of each month via monthly progress reports. With larger companies, we interact directly with their internal teams through Slack or the client’s project management software.
With enterprises, we’re often used as an extension of their team. We’re essentially a growth-accelerator team that’s for hire.
What’s your advice on safe backlinks and other SEO practices so that businesses can follow Google guidelines?
In 2019, it’s getting increasingly harder to earn links naturally. A lot of companies are trying to cut corners to speed up the process. That includes purchasing links aggressively.
Although this approach can build up your link equity quickly, it can easily be flagged by Google’s algorithm and devalued. Businesses should avoid purchasing any backlinks, especially from link brokers who are curating lists.
Businesses should produce content that can trigger an emotion or create value so that users will want to share the content. An easy way to do that is to follow trends and try to build useful content around that.
For example, Pornhub Insights target major news or events and assess how these developments affect their site traffic. In January 2019, the porn site created an article and infographics detailing how the U.S. government shutdown correlated to increases in their website traffic, as more people stayed home and surfed on their computers.
It’s a highly-successful formula. Pornhub’s article received natural backlinks from more than a dozen news outlets with domain authority (DA) ranking of 80 and higher, including Yahoo!, Fox News, and Newsweek.
For more information, visit: https://www.growingsearch.com/
