How to do good quality SEO – Juan González Villa
Juan González Villa studied journalism but just before the audiovisual sector crisis and the rise of the Internet he decided to change the third. His experience has helped him to become a great expert in SEO -always defending the “white hat” techniques– in particular and in the way Google works in general. Juan shares all his knowledge and experience in his blog useo so that all those who seek to start in this world know their secrets.
He talks about the hottest issues related to the search engine positioning and SEO world and he meditates about indexing, strategies for e-commerce, voice searches or “black hat SEO” among others.
You have a degree in Journalism, but you have been an SEO and ecommerce consultant for over five years. At what time did you decide to change your career? How did you care about this world?
It was clear that the future of content, and of most businesses, would be on the Internet. When the audiovisual sector, in which I worked, gave the first symptoms of crisis, I came up with a project of my own to start on the Internet. It was a project that did not succeed, but allowed me to learn what SEO is, how Google works, what users look for in a site, etc.
You define yourself as “obsessed with giving the best possible response to the search intention of the users”, have you achieved it? where is the difference?
That is something that can never be achieved at the 100%, it is rather a process. Users always enter your site from a specific page, either from Google or social networks. If you only see a page and spend a few seconds on your site, it is quite possible that they will completely forget about you and never come back. We must try to make that first visit more complete and useful for the user, give him a reason to be reminded or subscribe.
What are the key factors to take into account if we want our business to succeed?
You have to have a growth engine. This may be the SEO, the brand, the quality of your products or something in which you are superior to the competition and the rest of the market.
It is not easy, but without that differentiating factor it will be very difficult to have a business that triumphs on the internet, because the market is very saturated.
In E-commerce, what works best to boost it, SEO or SEM?
Both can bear fruit. Investing more in one or the other depends on the moment you are going through as a brand and business. If you are starting and your market is already mature, it is almost certain that you will have to invest in SEM to be able to appear already in some very competitive terms, which with SEO would require many months of work.
But SEO, well done, bears fruit for much longer. It is a long-term investment, whose profits, like the interests in a bank, grow over time. So you have to start doing SEO from the beginning, or as soon as the budget allows.
In short: I would always do SEO, and SEM if circumstances require it.
How important is guaranteeing a good user experience on our website?
A lot. It’s no use in being the first one in Google, if nothing else comes to your site, the users turn around and go to the second result.
What do you think about indexing?
I have seen many times that removing pages with little value for users of the Google index usually has positive effects on the organic traffic of the site. Especially for large sites to de-index all the “deadweight” can be very positive.
Are you afraid of Google updates? Any special one?
Google updates are a bit like taxes. We all know that at some point they will arrive and we should be prepared, but sometimes we forget them and Google “catches” us because we had not done everything we had to do.
I think Panda is a particularly delicate update, because it evaluates the level of individual urls, but penalizes the whole site (at the host level), and that complicates both the analysis and the solution.
What can you tell us in relation to SEO agencies and those that sell smoke?
Heh, heh, that’s a very broad question. I do not know all the agencies, but I know that there are agencies in Spain that do an excellent job. In general, those that have visibility in the sector and everyone knows, is due to something. I know they have very good equipment and processes.
About the “smoke”, it seems that lately it is fashionable to criticize certain people who are also very visible and offer services or training. I don’t like the criticism towards the work of others, whatever it may be. If someone criticizes because he has paid for a course or a service and has felt cheated, that is justified and can help others. But criticizing from the outside does not seem right and I do not think it does anyone a favor.
What can you tell us about voice searches? Any advice?
Now they are still little “mature”, but in five years they will be much more common than we think.
What advice would you give someone who is thinking of setting up their web business?
To be well informed before making an investment. How is the niche and competition, what traffic channels can you use to have an advantage over the competition, what expenses are going to have.
You would never start a long trip without first consulting a road map, how your car is, etc. This is the same. Good research and planning before launch can save many disappointments and failures.
In your blog, useo, you share your experience with anyone who wants to learn from you, why do you think it is important to publicize the “good SEO”?
SEO has been an untransparent sector for many years. On Googles part that has some logic, because they have to protect their product, but those of us who work as SEO consultants should not be so opaque.
The more information we publicly provide to our customers, the easier it will be for them to trust our product, and the entire sector can benefit from the sharing of knowledge, experiments and data. Obscurantism does not help anyone.
In this context, what advice would you give someone who is starting in the world of SEO?
To read and absorb a lot, from all possible sources (Google patents, blogs, etc.) and, above all, to put into practice from the minute one what you are learning. If you do not have clients, create a test site and start experimenting.
What do you think of the “black hat SEO”? Do you use any practice?
When I work for clients it is something I do not use. I do not even think about it.
The black hat techniques can bear some fruit in the very short term, but are condemned to be detected by Google sooner or later, and at the time it does, the punishment can be worse than the benefit achieved before.
For established brands or businesses it is totally out of place; Now, if you create a microniche that you want to monetize quickly and do not mind that within a few months that site loses all possibility of ranking, it can be a valid option
