Fernando Angulo – Transcript

Q&A Session with Fernando Angulo @ SEMrush

May 20th, 2020

Hello everyone, ready to answer  any questions related to:

• SEO
• Influencer Marketing
• Public Speaking
• Content Marketing
• Trends
• and of course SEMrush

Thanks so much for joining us! What do you think will be the most influential changes to the (SEO/SEM) industry over the next year or so?

Hi! I believe that in the next couple of years  will be an increase On Digital Marketing overall but specially with everything related to Social Media. My winner: Social Media Ads.

Whats your startegy on decision-making?

I have 3 steps for decision making: 1. Background and Data Analysis 2. Insights and patterns 3. Possible Solutions.  I still use and love to write on stickers.

Welcome, Fernando! I have found SEMRush so vaulable over the past few years, especially in finding content planning opportunities based on questions we hadn’t previously thought to answer. I want to know from your perspective – What do you think is the most underused or underestimated tool in SEMRush?

Thank you! I see great potential on several tools that we have, but I personally found Historical PPC Data very underestimated. It’s an awesome feature to understand the coverage of any ad campaign over the past years and the current status of course.

Thanks for being here Fernando! What tools would you say users on SEMrush are utilizing more of the past few months compared to the pre-covid world?

Well, I’m also a SEMrush user myself, and it’s clear for me that the Content Marketing Toolkit is the winner but, we have still as usual a lot of users growing their numbers with our SEO toolkit.

What do you think SEMrush does better / worse compared to alternatives like ahrefs and moz?

We do our best for sure:), but I need to say that  we have more features that are aligned with Marketing processes, such as: Content Marketing that starts from Keyword Research to content creation and goes beyond thanks to our Content Marketplace. You work all your Online Visibility with SEMrush, not just some parts of it. Let me add that we don’t actually see them as an alternative. We have some overlap but the same way we have overlap with Buffer, Hootsuite and many other companies. But nobody considers Buffer an alternative to SEMrush. We are building complete Online Visibility management platform MOZ and Ahrefs focus on narrow parts of SEO. SEMrush is ranked as a leader in 10 product categories on G2. None of this companies can say the same

Hey, as a small family owned game development shop, what do you suggest as the most cost effective, or grassroots methods of getting our newly released game out to more people? We thrive on user feedback!

Congrats, I will of course 100% recommend Social Media Ads + GDN.

What are the top 5 things you consider when you create the plan for the next quarter/year?

Hey, thank you!
5 things to consider will be:

1. Resources (human/technical/budget)
2. Trends (Landscape of my niche)
3. Competitors
4. Plan
5. Strategy

Hey, thanks for your time. Any feedback on some of your favorite tools or hacks in SEO? Also curious about your position on influencer marketing as it relates to tiktok.

Hi, thank you!My hack here is to use your CMS + the SEMrush Writting Assistant addon, it’s just amazing. If you use WordPress it’s just a gold mine.In regards of tiktok… well I have my account there:). If your users are using TikTok, you should go there too.

Higher level where do you believe SEO (and digital marketing as a whole) is headed in the near (say 2-5 years) and long term (10 years out)?How will it be different than today? What will be the new priorities?

Thank you for participating! In My opinion most of the Digital Transformation that we expected to happen in the next 3-5 years from, is already happening during the last 2 months. That means that we will have some big changes in every level in Digital Marketing. The new priorities for marketers will be more focus on “users” and more applications for “user’s data”.

How affected has SEMRush’s keyword data been after Jumpshot got shut down? How has this affected your industry as a whole?

Hi! Over the last three years, many SEO tools started using clickstream data to power keyword research features, estimate search volumes and calculate some other metrics. SEMrush invested in relationships with multiple data vendors and many of these vendors work exclusively with us. So SEMrush products were not impacted by the Jumpshot incident in any way.

Do you ever see SEO moving away from backlinks as the main factor, and if so, what would take its place?

Hi Scott, nice questions. I believe at some point that will happen. My best guess is User Behavior replacing it someday.

In the early days of SEMRush what did the team see as their initial differentiator or the opening in the crowded market place because it seemed like there were already plenty of players in the SEO/SEM tools market like Moz, Majestic, AdGuru, etc.

Hi! Oh yes, I have been working for SEMrush almost 9 years now and I remember those times. I’m sure that our differentiator was basically that you could use SEMrush for different languages and for many locations, we didn’t stayed focused only in the English language. Now we have more than 140 databases an several, several languages still.

Hey Fernando. Welcome! What are the top 3 findings regarding the latest Google algorithm update?

Hi! Thank you for the question! Let me quote our recent research “With the help of SEMrush Sensor, we compared the average volatility value 7 days before and 2 days after the Update announcement. And, the most influenced categories are Travel, Real Estate, Health, Pets & Animals, and People & Society. This is true across both desktop and mobile searches.
We have also spotted that many big domains were highly affected. Around half of the significant ranking changes within the US occurs at websites with traffic exceeding 1 million monthly visitors.” source https://www.semrush.com/blog/google-may-2020-core-update/

Tell us the backstory of Traffic Jet. Why did you build it and what’s the big picture idea?

Our Traffic Jet tool is a new tool that can handle your website’s advertising campaigns automatically using a very powerful artificial intelligence engine which works 24/7/365 to direct and optimize traffic for your website.
It works by generating ads or using manually created ones on Search, Display, Mobile, and Social campaigns on traffic sources such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and calibrating to address the appropriate target groups for your niche ensuring relevant traffic to your website… Backstory? To make your life easier 

Why does SEMRush heavily advertise to known SEMRush subscribers via display retargeting?

Hi Jim! SEMrush is a robust platform and the learning curve it’s the easiest in the market, so  we use display remarketing for many reasons, to remind you about our free Academy courses, New Features, Researchs, Workflows and more.

Give me your best reason to switch from Ahrefs to semrush (FR market) !

We do our best for sure:), but I need to say that  we have more features that are aligned with Marketing processes, such as: Content Marketing that starts from Keyword Research to content creation and goes beyond thanks to our Content Marketplace. You work all your Online Visibility with SEMrush, not just some parts of it.

Hi, what are your top three most used marketing tools on a daily basis? Especially for a small startup shop.

Hi! Yes, 1. Monday or similars  2. Slack or similar 3. Salesforce or similar

Thanks for joining! What do you find is some qualities that ared shared by top marketer comparing to average ones

Hi, thank you for participating! My two cents:
Top Marketers love to have quick wins and  have the tools to measure them. Average Marketers they want to have big results at any cost.

Could you talk a little bit more about your buyer personas, positioning strategy, and how it evolved over the years?

Hi, sure! Our buyer personas were basically SEOs all over the world for many years, but we grow a lot and now our buyer personas are all the people/brands who wants to improve their online visibility, that means several channales to work with such as Paid Advertisment (also Social), Content Marketing, SEO of course, and Social Media.

Hi, we are a new ecommerce brand that offers a curated collection of scandinavian inspired interior lifestyle products in the US. our biggest challenge has been marketing and getting a return/conversions. what is the best way to get the word out about our brand? also, do you have any tips for working with influencers?

Hi Craig, nice! Build brand awareness is one of the greatest experiences in Digital Marketing. You can built it on social media, use customers’ testimonials, cooperate with social media influencers in your niche who tested or are able to test your products. And of course check what your competitors are doing in terms of SEO, Social, Paid to understand better your next moves. I highly recommend you to use Market Research on SEMrush Competitive Intelligence Addon.

How to recover from the recent G traffic devastation? No active link building.

Hi, that´s an interesting question, can you provide more details (domain), PM if you want.

As SEMRush launches new services, who have you made as your competitors more recently?

Hi, we indeed have many, many new features and yes we definitely have a lot of competition out there. But Instead of aligning ourself with others, we do our best to build a
business that will be benchmarked.

Any tips on refreshing old content on your blog? We’ve got posts going back 10 years, how would we go about breathing new life into them?

Yes, there is nothing criminal on removing old posts that are not giving you any results. I highly recommend here to use one of our tools called Content Analyser to run a Content Audit and create a workflow for repurposing, deleting or creating new content. You can also integrate your Search Console account to have more insights.

Thank you for this opportunity! Do you have any tips and best practices on how to effectively measure Organic traffic and search through SEMrush?

Hi! Thank you for participating! And yes, we have a tool that help you understand better the big picture: Organic Traffic Insights combines your Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEMrush data all into a single dashboard. That includes data such as click-through rate, sessions, and volume with organic keywords and rankings found by SEMrush and Google Search Console.

Who was the most instrumental person for your career and why?

I´m sure that at some point David Allen GTD´s book and speeches had an significant impact on my professional and personal growth. I meet him last year at one of SEMrush special events and I confirmed it.  The ¨why¨ is simple… having an actionable step to your ideas and plans is fundamental to move forward, and if you classify your ideas and thoughts  you will have more available time for those things that you enjoy the most.

How strong and accurate do you consider SEMrush ppc data is compared to your competitors?

Hi mham! Well, we have the largest database of keywords on which we collect text and also PLA advertisements, and PLA is an unique and exclusive thing among other big tools. Besides the usual set of tools for keywords research we also have a display tool where you can see the creatives and competitor´s audience, and many other  tools that allows PPC expert to create campaigns without excel´s pivot tables and have more time for other tasks.

What are some of the most important aspects/best practices for content marketing strategy for B2B companies in 2020?

Hi Igor! I will highly recommend to have a content marketing plan and then proceed with the strategy. I know, sounds very obvious, but even in 2020 many companies are still creating content without a plan. Then you can proceed your process

• Run out a content audit.
• Set content marketing goals.
• Carry out audience research. …
• Determine the type of content to publish and the delivery channels.
• Create a content calendar.
• Have a plan and budget for content promotion.

Thank you all for your amazing questions, it was a great time for me and reach out on any social network or directly to my Linkedin profile here https://www.linkedin.com/in/fernandoangulo/ or join our private Facebook group only for paid users https://bit.ly/2zXNuNm