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Please introduce yourself and where you work.
Hi! I’m Jayson DeMers, and I’m the founder & CEO of AudienceBloom, a Seattle-based content marketing company.
How do you think SEO has changed over the last 10 years?
This is a huge topic! I’ll try and keep it as brief as possible, but everything I’m about to mention can be broken down into far more detail. High-quality content has become far more important, keyword density and specificity has become less important in favor of semantic and contextual relevance, link building has evolved to focus more on quality guest authoring, local SEO has been completely reworked, and of course, mobile optimization is a necessity that few would have imagined back in 2007.
How did you get introduced to digital marketing, more specifically SEO?
While attending the University of Washington, where I majored in Business Administration, I took a job as the manager of the campus bike shop. The shop had run a budget deficit for almost every year of its existence, and I was determined to be the manager to turn that around and make a profit. I conducted a survey of students to figure out what the problem was, and concluded that awareness was the main problem; most students with bikes simply weren’t aware of the existence of the bike shop.
I figured that the most cost-effective way to fix that would be by building and marketing a website for the bike shop, which was my first order of business. After building the website, I needed to figure out how to get eyeballs on it. I knew that if I could make it appear at the top of Google search results when students around campus typed “bike shop” or something similar, I could dramatically raise awareness, and thus, sales.
I discovered that the process for doing so was called “SEO” and thus began my studies into the world of SEO.
I managed the bike shop for about a year and a half, and we did, indeed, turn a modest profit, thanks to our SEO effort as well as various other marketing efforts.
I figured that the most cost-effective way to fix that would be by building and marketing a website for the bike shop, which was my first order of business. After building the website, I needed to figure out how to get eyeballs on it. I knew that if I could make it appear at the top of Google search results when students around campus typed “bike shop” or something similar, I could dramatically raise awareness, and thus, sales.
I discovered that the process for doing so was called “SEO” and thus began my studies into the world of SEO.
I managed the bike shop for about a year and a half, and we did, indeed, turn a modest profit, thanks to our SEO effort as well as various other marketing efforts.
What are the services you provide to your clients?
Our goal is getting our clients more traffic (and more conversions). The main way we do that is through link building services and reputation building services that fit into Google’s strict modern vision for web quality.
That leads to higher search rankings, referral traffic, and brand visibility all in one swoop. We also offer blog content writing, social media marketing services, and other peripheral digital marketing services.
That leads to higher search rankings, referral traffic, and brand visibility all in one swoop. We also offer blog content writing, social media marketing services, and other peripheral digital marketing services.
What strategy according to you will prevail in 2017 for SEO?
Content has been king for many years now. It remains king, but now every business in the world is using content to compete for attention, making it tough to stand out. So the prevailing strategy for 2017, I think, will be niche-targeted content—that is, highly unique content that’s high-quality and intended for a narrow, specific audience. Differentiation and personalization are the driving forces that will determine content success (in addition to pre-existing qualitative factors).
What would your advice be to people who are looking to take up digital marketing as a career choice?
Join us! Digital marketing will be around forever, and because it’s always changing, it never gets boring. My advice is to learn as much as you can from different people—who can offer you different perspectives on what’s most important in the digital marketing world. There’s no one right answer, and you’ll need to be adaptable if you’re going to succeed in this field.
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