Following the SEMDays conference which was held in Bucharest between 24th -25th of September, we sat down with Yiğit Konur to discuss the latest SEO techniques.
Beaglecat: What are the biggest changes you have witnessed in SEO techniques in the last couple of years?
Yiğit Konur: In my honest opinion, the biggest change in SEO techniques is the conversational search and knowledge graph for search experience optimizers. But from a traditional/blackhat SEO perspective, Penguin updates help white-hat SEOs compete in a much fairer environment.
BC: It became a constant that, for your SEO strategy, you need a blog where you post quality articles. But how about videos? How do these affect SEO?
Y.K.: Video is still in its very early stages for most uncompetitive markets like Turkey and Romania. (we also pay attention to SEOzeo) This technique seems to be hard to execute but Google definitely rewards you when you create high quality videos. Using Youtube as a promotional channel for videos will help you rank higher because Google understands whether your video pleases users or not.
BC: Where do you search for originality when writing content ?
Y.K.: Buzzsumo greatly dominates the content discovery market but I believe that their competitor Cemper’s Impactana will do great during the following months. Cemper’s strong IT background on Big Data analysis (coming from LinkResearchTools) will help Impactana become mainstream. Also, you can use both tools to export content lists and get better insights by using URLprofiler.
BC: How is the online community in Turkey? Any particularities working with/doing SEO for a Turkish website in contrast with let’s say an American one ?
Y.K.: Unfortunately, in Turkey we haven’t got a modern SEO community. With SEOzeo, we try to create a community by organising monthly events. In the 4th SEOzone Meetups conference, SEOzeo will host ex-Googler and spam-fighter Murat Yatağan. Also, we are hosting the biggest digital marketing event in Turkey, called SEOzone. This year we plan to welcome more than 700 marketing associates at our SEO conference. We also plan to create a strong web community powered by some major marketing technology providers like Deepcrawl & Majestic.
BC: From your experience, what are the biggest mistakes startup companies usually make ?
Y.K.: Moving fast! Yes, startups need to be faster but if you reflect this onto your SEO strategy, you might need to implement some gray-hats techniques that can impact your visibility in short-term but will prove harmful in the future. I strongly believe that all of startup founders need to know more about modern SEO, whether they hire in-house SEO specialists or work with an external agency. SEO techniques change fast and startup founders need to understand which technique will work for their business. There are many case studies on startups and even on corporates that lose insane profits by implementing blackhat SEO tactics.
BC: If you could change some things about Google, what would those be?
Y.K.: Google still can’t understand hidden links in some industries which is misleading for business owners who choose to work with hackers instead of professional SEO experts. Unfortunately, in these sectors links gotten by hackers work pretty well even in the medium term.
Yiğit Konur is the founder of SEOzeo, leading Turkish SEO agency which is the host of international SEO event, SEOzone. Currently, he is the CEO of SEOzone, managing a team of 17 people. He speaks at several marketing events and he is one of the judges at US and EU Search Awards.
