One of our newest SEO recruits, SEO Manager Manuel Madeddu joined Honchō with loads of experience. We asked him a few questions about how he got started in SEO, his career highlights so far and where you’ll find him when he’s not busy getting our clients to number one.
Why SEO? What does SEO represent to you?
Some people say, if Leonardo Da Vinci was to be born nowadays, he would have been a Movie Director. This is to say that’s one field where you always test yourself and push your limits, where you adapt and need genius ideas; a field touching several disciplines allowing you to span easily from creativity to very technical knowledge.
I’m not Leonardo nor a movie director – but maybe that’s why I chose to work in digital marketing and more specifically in SEO – despite having studied Mechatronics (Mechanical Engineering & Automation). If (for me) Engineering was fascinating because of the union between Physics and IT, giving a soul to a moving machine, SEO is trying to apply what you know (and don’t know yet) to find a structure and process to tame data to reach a specific target. An ever evolving environment that always tests you and for which you need to be both creative and technical and explore new paths in order to solve problems.
How did you get into the SEO industry?
My partner and I came to the UK from Milan, Italy in 2009 during the recession. It was then that we decided to try our own way and founded our very small and modest marketing agency. She studied graphic design; for me it was all new. I learnt how to build a site from scratch in HTML & Flash and then moved to the most used CMSs, such as WordPress, Magento, Drupal and Joomla. As well as creating and putting a site live, following what our clients were asking, I also learnt how to use social media, paid campaigns and newsletters to promote a business and leverage visibility.
And of course, once you build a site for a client, they ask you why they are not appearing in the first page of Google. That’s where I started my relationship with SEM/SEO, and from there I’ve been fascinated and focused more and more on SEO.
Do you have any specialisms? What are they and how did you discover them?
Whilst running my agency, I learnt to use a quite extensive number of softwares and channels, from video editing, programming, web design and coding. When you put yourself on the front line and you have to provide answers to your clients to pay your living, you just learn every day. But I always had the feeling you cannot master a lot of things because you end up mastering nothing. I then decided to focus on the aspect of digital marketing that was more fascinating: SEO.
What have been some of your favourite projects?
RMV London – not a big brand nor a known name, but one of the first projects I worked on and one had to learn a lot. But most importantly, one of the first clients that trusted me and a milestone in my career. I managed to build the first sites for them, managed their Google Adwords and Facebook campaigns and worked on their SEO from day one, improving their local presence.
GHDHAIR.com – being involved in the optimisation and migration of 14+ international websites. Managed to fix many of the technical issues on the existing sites, from not translated content to wrong hreflang tags/canonicals implementation and unoptimised IA.
Planned and worked on pre/post migration optimisation and analysis over a phased migration 2 sites at time.
Fortnum & Mason – worked on BAU site on-page optimisation and involved in the new site launch. Definitely enjoyed going to their HQ… but most importantly working on their re-design and migration project, involving UX and SEO A/B testing.
Where can we find you when you’re not at work?
When not working and not playing some music with my keyboard, not reading and not holding a Playstation joypad, for sure you’ll find me trying to spend some good family time with my 2 sons, Samuel and Daniel. When the weather lets us, we all love to explore the countryside, farms and visit new places.
Do you want to start seeing ranking results for your site? Talk to us today about how we can help you get your site climbing the search positions. Get in touch using the contact form below to speak to a specialist.
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