May 28, Russia celebrates SEO Day

May 28, SEO-optimizers celebrate their professional holiday.

The first SEO specialists appeared in the late 90s of the last century, when the first search engines began to gain popularity, and the revenues of sites directly depended on their positions in the results of search results. Many years have passed since then, ranking algorithms have changed, but the main traffic to the sites still comes from the search. Therefore, today SEO is a powerful industry with multi-million dollar turnover.

Domestic SEO specialists have been celebrating their professional holiday, the Runet Optimizer Day, since 2006. The date of the holiday was chosen by voting on the Searchengines forum and
no binding or symbol does not contain.

Before this wonderful holiday, I decided to interview the SEO specialists of Summa Technologies and those who used to work with us in order to shed light on the interesting and many incomprehensible SEO profession.
Here are those who participated in my survey:

Roman Rublevsky, CEO and in fact the very first SEO-specialist of Summa Technologies

Alexander Sviridenko , formerly Head of the Technology Sums Promotion Department, is now developing a new branch of the company in Krasnodar

Alexey Korostelev , Project Manager, Technology Sums Promotion Department

Victor Dmitriev , Project Manager, Technology Sums Promotion Department

Anton Uryadnikov , in the past, the project manager of the department of the promotion of "Sums of Technologies", is now the head of the Internet direction of R & D of Planet Auto

The interview turned out quite voluminous, so the most interesting thing here.

1) Who are you by education and how did you come to the profession of SEO-specialist? What are the advantages of this profession?

Roman Rublevsky: The first experience in seo was accomplished in 2001-2002 and was associated with the development and promotion of the metallurgical portal. It was then that there was a need for traffic on this portal. As a matter of fact, there was little idea for what, but even then there was an understanding that search engines should search for it. Then taxied taxi. Yandex was not very popular then. Then there was an understanding of how to do it, what meta tags are, why write texts, how to use keywords. Of course there were magical things, there was no traffic, and then his bang suddenly became a lot.
Alexander Sviridenko: I am an economist by education. SEO began to engage in student time, made a site to a friend, then the question arose how to advertise a site, and then there was interest in SEO. Further, already began to appear small projects for freelancing. Benefits? Experience with different projects and business, and of experiments :)
Alexey Korostelev: He graduated from the Ural Federal University. Yeltsin is a manager in transportation and logistics systems.
I heard about the profession of an SEO specialist in 2008, and decided to try myself in this particular area. The advantages of this profession are many, but one of the most important is that in the field of search engine optimization there is always something to learn, learn and use new chips to improve positions and increase site traffic.

Victor Dmitriev: By education, EVMschik. I know everything a little that is connected with computers, collecting, networks, programming, etc. I came to the profession of SEO-specialist because it was my hobby. Then it was interesting to observe how the position of the site in the search results after your manipulations.
Anton Uryadnikov: I am a regional translator by education. I got into SEO by accident: I went to work in IT and they took me to study SEO. The profession is applicable to any modern business, everyone wants to see themselves in the search results.

2) The profession of SEO-specialist is relatively young. And few people know who are SEOers. How do you explain to relatives, friends and acquaintances far from internet marketing, what exactly are you doing?

Roman Rublevsky: Seoshniki - those who know how to capture the information demand on the topic and attract it to the desired site. How do I explain what we do? If we take specifically the promotion - we do so that their sites are found.
Alexander Sviridenko: I tell my relatives that I do advertising on the Internet, and most often people under the age of 35 already know that there is website promotion. Quite often you can meet on billboards in cities, we also promote ourselves. And 5-7 years ago, most did not understand when he said that I was a SEO.

Alexey Korostelev: I say that I am promoting websites on the Internet.
Viktor Dmitriev: In my opinion, now the profession of SEO-specialist can hardly be called young. Friends know what I do, and friends or relatives far from the Internet generally say that my work is connected with computers.
Anton Uryadnikov: I usually ask the question “ Did you look for something in Yandex? Seen in the first place site @ sitename @? I made it so that he was there. ”In most cases, this is enough.

3) What should be SEO (in terms of personal qualities)?

Roman Rublevsky: Seoshnik. I don’t really like the word at all, rather a search engine optimization specialist. The main quality is the tendency to analyze and scrupulousness. If the SEO is not an analyst, it is not a SEO. Ie, of course, you can stupidly act according to the regulations. Make it, this, this and wait for the result. Considering the fact that we cannot quickly influence search engines, and as there is no such thing in contextual advertising, that here you clicked a button, increased rates, the cost of a visitor increased, but traffic also increased at the same time. There is no such direct relationship in SEO - they are always hidden. Between any action of the SEO and the result, firstly, there is a fairly long time — from several weeks to several months; secondly, it’s not a fact that this result will happen. And therefore, SEOs should always look for the relationship between actions and results. For this you need to have a tendency to analyze. And a good SEO, this SEO who has accumulated experience of ligaments action - the result.

Alexander Sviridenko: Inquisitive and patient - perhaps the main thing. You also need to manage and control everything, have multitasking.

Alexey Korostelev: An active, purposeful person who knows how to work with a large amount of information, and the desire to apply this knowledge in practice.

Anton Uryadnikov: Depends on the specialization. But in general, he must be an extrovert, able to understand the motives of other people, have communication skills (unlike a programmer, for example). At the same time, he must be able to work with the data according to checklists. This requires perseverance, the ability to focus on the task and technical mindset.

4) The question that worries many: what do SEOs, and how to measure the results of their work?

Roman Rublevsky: Covers existing demand. Search engines are the main traffic generator, that is, search engines drive the main share of traffic to sites. As they lead, people search, they are shown search results, people click on the links in the search results, go to the site. Accordingly, each site would like to cover some existing information demand on its topic. To pick up these queries, make the site search for these queries, working closely with the site owner - this is the task of the SEO ... There are a number of metrics that can characterize the work: positions - aggregate indicator, visibility, more correct metric - search traffic volume, even more correct metrics, this is how this traffic is converted into the necessary actions and in what time frame it occurs.
Alexey Korostelev: You can evaluate the results of the SEO work on the basis of the tasks assigned to him. In most cases, this is of course: the growth of site positions in search engines, an increase in site traffic, an increase in sales from the site.

Anton Uryadnikov: Easy. There are qualitative and quantitative indicators of site visitors, they can be seen through Yandex.Metrica, for example. We need to consider them together, that is, if attendance has doubled, and the time on the site has fallen by half, it means that new visitors immediately left the site, they are bad, the work is not done. The standard Yandex.Metrica reports are enough to evaluate the performance of the optimizer.

5) Which SEO do you practice white, gray, black? How to distinguish a good SEO from a bad one?

Roman Rublevsky: Everything we do is supposed to be white.
To distinguish a good SEO from a bad one is easy enough. If SEOs tell you that you need to improve the site, not just rewrite texts and enter keywords there, expand the number of pages for the necessary requests, do not start with questions for which query you want to search for, but offers him a huge list of requests and says it’s boring to you search for these requests and does not limit the number of requests for which the site should be searched - this is the right approach. The wrong approach is the desire to force the site to search for ten requests that are not the fact that a business needs, but a business, for some reason suddenly thinks that it is necessary to search for them, to ensure these positions by influencing a group of reference factors is a bad approach.
Alexander Sviridenko: Miscellaneous. Seoshnik is a man. How to distinguish a good person from a bad one? .. You can distinguish a good work from a bad one. In our field, agencies and freelancers often throw dust in their eyes, giving out one after another, promising "gold tops." Check the work performed, read statistics, compare expectations.

Alexey Korostelev: Practicing only white SEO.
A good SEO should have solid knowledge of internal and external website optimization, be aware of all the changes, innovations in search engines, and achieve a high result of their work.

Anton Uryadnikov: A bad SEO is a person who does potentially dangerous and punishable job search. Sooner or later, the customer’s site will be punished for them, and damages will be released significantly more than saving time and money, just punishment may occur within a year or two after work is completed.

6) Advise newcomers: where do you need to start SEO training? Can there be any required sources (forums / blogs)?

Alexander Sviridenko: Google and Yandex to help you. There is a lot of information, start with primary sources - help for webmasters from Yandex and Google, for example.

Roman Rublevsky: From reading help of search engines. And of course, before that you need to read what you can not do in any case. This is what search engines consider not friendly to them. Text spam, link spam, non-original texts, etc.

Victor Dmitriev: Forums and blogs.
Anton Uryadnikov: For 10 years, I recommend http://tutorial.semonitor.ru for the beginning, Yandex’s requirements for websites, Google recommendations. Help.yandex.ru. And forums and parties, such as "Sercha" I recommend to visit very carefully. You need a really good understanding of the subject to separate the units of practical advice from tons of harmful. Correctly put them on your cases and use them for the benefit is very rare. But Devak is generally useful for general development.

7) Some tips for those who are looking for a contractor for search engine optimization of their site

Roman Rublevsky: This is a service. The quality of the service can only be understood by receiving it. Therefore, you need to collect feedback. It is difficult for a long time, but it is necessary to collect the correct feedback. Select two or three potential contractors from each contractor, find 3-4 projects about which you will collect feedback, find responsible persons from companies, promotion, whose projects you are interested in, ask them questions. Try to interview only those companies that have worked with the contractor for more than 1 year. Make a general rating and the influence of the factor "reviews" should be at least 60%, and the rest of everything: price, the term of the company in the market. And then there is less chance that you make a mistake.

Anton Uryadnikov: Look for those who are interested in your business, want to understand how strong you are and focus users on this. Who makes short, but capacious and efficient reports. Who takes less requests, but assesses their work at once by several parameters. Where there are only positions in the contract, only traffic, only a decrease in failures, there are enormous opportunities for fraud, fraud and falsification.

8) Your SEO predictions for 2016.

Roman Rublevsky: the 16th year has passed practically. If we talk about the general trend, what we see from the 15th year is the fight against the reference mass. Main trends:

• Search engines force us to engage in more quality site, improve its user properties. This means that more time will be spent on projects.
• lightweight tools go, seo costs will increase
• more traffic will be not only from text search, but also from search in pictures, videos, maps, etc.
• The battle for mobile search results continues.

Alexander Sviridenko: Nothing much will change.

Alexei Korostelev: Search engines will increasingly harshly treat poor-quality sites, and in this connection, the number of sites with useful and high-quality content will grow. An interesting and useful site for the user will always be in high positions.

Victor Dmitriev: I will say the general opinion of SEO specialists: the links continue to work, in some niches.
Anton Uryadnikov: Those studios that have managed to restructure themselves to work without purchased links will develop. “Black” and “gray” SEO are becoming less and less effective. Technical SEO generally ceases to exist. In 2016, the qualitative evolution of SEO will continue, aimed at traffic segmentation and content targeting. Interests and desires of site visitors will continue to increase their importance for SEO-specialists.

SEO experts happy holiday to you! Only high positions and good visibility for sites that you promote, only white optimization methods and adequate customers!

Elena Sivkova, marketing specialist, Summa Technologies.