Advertise on podcast: RankUp

SEO and UX often go hand in hand – whether you're an in-house SEO working alongside a UX team, or an agency SEO trying to pitch an idea to a client, it's rare that you can make big changes without considering how it affects the site's design or usability. To cover this topic in more depth, we interviewed David Finberg, founder and CEO of Peaks Digital. Over the past 10 years, he's seen a lot of changes in what works for SEO, including the impact of Core Web Vitals. His company also carries out A/B testing alongside their SEO work to see what impact their changes have on their users, making him the perfect person to talk to us about this topic. If you want to hear more from David, you can find him on Twitter at @davidafinberg. Twitter is also the best place to find the rest of the RankUp team: Edd (@EddJTW), Ben (@BenJGarry) and Liv-Mae (@seoliviamae).

Ecommerce businesses and other large websites often face challenges in getting all of their content crawled and indexed by search engines. Given that index coverage is a key part of achieving good organic visibility, we wanted to bring you a conversation on how to monitor and improve indexing for your site. Dan Taylor joined us for this conversation. Dan is the head of research and development at Salt, and brought years of technical SEO expertise to the podcast. He talked us through why this conversation is important to have, tools for identifying and dealing with indexing issues, and tips for making sure that your solutions actually get implemented. If you want to hear more from Dan, you can find him on Twitter at @TaylorDanRW. Twitter is also the best place to find the rest of the RankUp team: Edd (@EddJTW), Ben (@BenJGarry) and Liv-Mae (@seoliviamae).

Content optimisation is a key pillar of SEO that continues to evolve as search engines interact with language in increasingly interesting ways. In this interview, we spoke to Liv Day, SEO account manager at Honeycomb Search, the SEO service from startup accelerator Twinkl Hive. Liv came into SEO from a background in linguistics and copywriting, which made her the perfect person to talk through this topic with us! We covered topics such as finding content opportunities, understanding what kinds of changes are likely to make a difference, and addressing challenging topics where the information currently in search results is different to what your business is trying to say. If you want to hear more from Liv, you can find her on Twitter at @oliviaday__ (with two underscores). Twitter is also the best place to find the rest of the RankUp team: Liv-Mae (@seoliviamae), Ben (@BenJGarry) and Edd (@EddJTW).

Startup SEO has all the ingredients of SEO for larger businesses, but with unique considerations that make it worth discussing as its own topic. Where do you start when a website has no content? How do you build links when no one's ever heard of the brand? What do you say when your client asks for advice on their brand name? How do you manage expectations for results when you're starting from scratch? Dan Rawley works with startups on a daily basis in his role leading Honeycomb Search, the SEO service from startup accelerator Twinkl Hive. He talked us through key aspects of technical SEO, content optimisation and link building for startups, but many of the tips can be applied more broadly to SMEs and new websites. If you want to hear more from Dan, you can find him on Twitter at @danjrawley. Twitter is also the best place to find the rest of the RankUp team: Edd (@EddJTW), Ben (@BenJGarry) and Liv (@seoliviamae).

2021 was a big year for SEO. We had multiple algorithm updates, Core Web Vitals became a ranking factor, SERP layouts changed, Google messed around with title tags...the list goes on. In this episode, RankUp's regular hosts Ben Garry, Olivia-Mae Foong and Edd Wilson sat down to break down 2021 and look ahead to 2022. But we didn't want to give you a wooly new year episode that just rehashed what you already knew from working in SEO. Instead, we focused on the practical tips that came out of last year's changes, and where you should be focusing if you want to see success in 2022. Follow the hosts of the RankUp on podcast on Twitter, at @BenJGarry, @seoliviamae and @EddJTW.

There was no better way to finish off a year of interviews than with a special episode featuring not one, but two guests! Rejoice Ojiaku and Wilhemina Gilbertson-Davis joined us to talk about why diversity matters in SEO, how businesses can take steps to improve their own diversity, and to have a fascinating side chat about Rejoice's work in content repurposing. Continue reading or listen to the full interview for the whole story. As you'll hear in the episode, there's lots more to come from Wilhemina, Rejoice and BDigital, their digital marketing platform designed to showcase and inspire Black talent. You can see all the upcoming info you need on Twitter, @BDigital_UK, @RejiYates and @willz_PB. Rejoice and Wilhemina also mentioned upcoming opportunities to engage with BDigital like sponsoring their upcoming events or sponsoring someone to go to BrightonSEO in April. If you or your business would like to get involved, email them at [email protected]. To hear more from the RankUp team, you can find us on Twitter at @BenJGarry, @seoliviamae and @EddJTW.

Anthropology and SEO don't seem like interconnected disciplines, but Helene Jelenc opened our eyes to the ways that anthropology can make us better SEOs in her talk at BrightonSEO earlier in 2021. Inspired by that talk, we invited her to the podcast to hear more about some of the theory and practices that she introduced, with the aim of giving our listeners and readers some practical takeaways that can be used in all of our SEO strategies. In the episode, we discuss what anthropology is, why it fits so naturally with SEO, and how we can apply anthropological research methods to our work. If you want to hear more from Helene, you can find her on Twitter at @wanderinghelene. As well as her day job as head of SEO and research at Wallflower Studios, Helene is a travel blogger who writes over at Wandering Helene. Twitter is also the best place to find the rest of the RankUp team: Edd (@EddJTW), Ben (@BenJGarry) and Liv (@seoliviamae).

Technical SEO is crucial to organic success and a part of the SEO job description that many in the industry enjoy. Many technical SEOs have also found ways to use their skills to look into automation opportunities and rethink the ways in which different SEO tasks are carried out. Luke Davis is one such person. A technical specialist here at Impression, Luke has also taught himself Python and applied it to a range of different activities. If you're considering specialising in technical SEO yourself, or you're simply interested in hearing other people's views on how this area of the industry is developing, Luke's thoughts and experiences are a fantastic place to start. He joined us on the podcast to discuss his route into technical SEO, and what he sees as important in the field right now. Like always, you can listen to every word of our conversation with Luke via the player at the top of this page, or by finding the RankUp podcast on your app of choice. You can also keep reading to see write-ups of some of our highlights from the conversation. If you want to hear more from Luke, you can find him on Twitter at @LukeDavisSEO. As he mentions in the episode, Luke is also a prolific blogger – find his work at Sampleface, Cultrface, LOGiCFACE, Playrface, Distant Arcade and Pandog. Twitter is also the best place to find the rest of the RankUp team: Edd (@EddJTW), Ben (@BenJGarry) and Liv (@seoliviamae).

SEO testing is the process of measuring to see whether changes made to a website have made a significant difference or not. It's always been possible if you've had access to good data and some time on your hands, but tools are starting to appear that automate the process. We spoke to the creator of one of the first and only dedicated SEO testing platforms, Nick Swan, who launched and runs seotesting.com. The tool uses Search Console data to measure the significance of changes over a 2-6 week period after a set date, and can also accommodate A/B tests. In this episode, Edd and Ben wanted to get to the bottom of what SEO testing means, why it is important, and how to make sure the data you get is useful. Join us as we hear the answers from one of the industry's leaders on the subject. If you want to follow Nick to hear more about SEO testing and the rest of his work, you can find him on Twitter at @nickswan. Listeners of the podcast can also use the link https://seotesting.com/partner/rankup to access an extended free trial for seotesting.com. Twitter is also the best place to find the rest of the RankUp team: Edd (@EddJTW), Ben (@BenJGarry) and Liv (@seoliviamae), or keep up with all things Impression over at impression.co.uk/blog. 

Managing SEO projects can be a complex undertaking, with different websites having completely different requirements, and different SEO activites often requiring very different skills. Despite its complexity, many SEOs find themselves in the position of managing projects solo. They could be freelancers like today's guest, working in-house as the only dedicated SEO, or even simply the only SEO on a particular client's team in an agency. However you find yourself in such a situation, it's always helpful to hear from other people who have a lot of experience managing SEO projects on their own. Kevin Kapezi is one such person, having worked as the primary SEO specialist at Experian before going full time as a freelancer with Growthack. Kevin has appeared on the podcast before, in episodes 11 and 12, and we were thrilled to have him back to talk about his decision to go freelance and his tips for managing SEO projects solo. To see Kevin's recent talk at the Whitespark Local Search Summit, take a look at his speaker profile. You can also see a summary of the talk in Whitespark's event roundup. You can follow all of us on the podcast on Twitter, at @KEVKDigital, @seoliviamae and @BenJGarry. If you have any questions for the podcast or you're interested in appearing as a guest, we'd love to hear from you.

SEO is booming, and growth goes hand in hand with job opportunities. The last 12 months or so have already seen SEO professionals across the industry changing companies and changing roles at a furious pace, but there's no sign of the recruitment drive slowing down. You might find yourself facing a career choice soon. When it comes, what will you be thinking about? What progression opportunities does your current workplace offer, and what might be available elsewhere? What do the different job roles in SEO mean from company to company? We had the pleasure of speaking to Jen Penalua about these questions and more. Jen is a senior SEO strategist at Evoluted, and was one of the people to take the plunge and move to a new company in the pandemic. This interview was a fantastic opportunity to get Jen's insights into her own decision making process, and to have the opportunity to discuss how SEO careers can look different from company to company. You can follow all of us on the podcast on Twitter, at @penaluna_jen, @seoliviamae and @BenJGarry.

Mental health is a vital conversation topic in any industry, especially given the challenges thrown at us by COVID-19. SEO is no different, with imposter syndrome, performance expectations and the stresses of remote work just some of the strains commonly felt by people working in our industry. Ryan Darani, our guest on this episode, is keen to keep people in SEO talking about mental wellbeing and working proactively as a community to make our workplaces and working lives healthier. Join us as we talk to him about SEO's unique challenges, share some of our own experience about mental wellbeing in the industry, and discuss some of our thoughts as regular SEO workers (not medical professionals!) on ways we've found of protecting our mental wellbeing when things get tough. As always, you can listen to the interview right here on this page or on any podcast player of your choice. Or, if you want to see a few key points, keep reading for highlights of the interview. You can also follow all of us on the podcast on Twitter, at @SearchForRyan, @EddJTW and @BenJGarry, or find out more about Ryan's freelance work at ryandarani.com. Link for MHFA course through St. Johns Ambulance