In our new feature, we will occasionally host leading people from the digital industry and ask them to answer professional and personal questions. The goal of this feature is to provide a platform and space for leaders in the digital community so they can share their knowledge and experience with others.
Last time we hosted Eliav Lankri, click here to read his answers to the questions.
This time on the A-List – Michal Cohen!
How did you start your career?
Somewhere back in 2007, I read an article about a new field called affiliate marketing and started looking into what it was about. Through that research, I came across the term “Search Engine Optimization” and it intrigued me. The SEO field was new back then, there was a small community in Israel exploring it together, and I got drawn into it. I taught myself how to build and optimize websites, read about SEO, experimented with it, and was fascinated by the results and the ease with which large and targeted audiences could be reached.
How did you take your first steps in the industry?
Suddenly clients started coming. Even before I understood if I wanted them to. They reached out to me through professional forums I managed or was active in. I started promoting them, met web developers and other professionals, and through them received more inquiries. The field was so new and untouched, there wasn’t a huge supply of service providers, and clients simply arrived. After a year, I started hiring employees and growing Webguru, but I always made sure to remain a small business, one where I have control and involvement in every project and have the ability to choose clients and turn down those who aren’t a good fit for me.
What are your challenges as an SEO specialist?
In early 2020, after 13 years in the field, I began to feel burned out. I scaled down Webguru a bit and concurrently founded Experts, a website for booking online consultation meetings with experts (currently in psychology and soon in other fields). So the challenges I’ve been experiencing since then are both in my role at Webguru as an SEO specialist and in my role at Experts as an entrepreneur and new business owner.
THE challenge in organic SEO is that success depends on everything around you and out of your control: website development, site structure, content, hosting, brand quality, what it even has to offer… This situation is frustrating both for SEO professionals and for the clients, the website owners.
Think of a doctor, for example, who wants to promote their website on Google. Usually, they’ll need to reach out to the web developer to make adjustments and changes to a site they already paid for, they will have to write an enormous amount of content on and off-site, and invest long months until seeing results. It’s expensive and tedious, and in many cases, vendors don’t know how to provide a solution good enough to rank organically. The client and the SEO agency sometimes find themselves lost among the various vendors.
My solution at Webguru was to offer all the services in-house. I took control over site building, content, hosting, everything. That was the only way I could take responsibility for the SEO success and free myself and the client from battles with external vendors. The challenge is finding excellent vendors while still maintaining competitive prices for the end client.
I love working with small businesses. I love seeing them surpass the big players on Google. But I have always thought that for tiny businesses, it’s not always right to go through the long journey of organic SEO. And that’s one of the reasons I founded Experts: to offer that doctor who wants to promote themselves on Google the chance to join a website that is professionally promoted and marketed instead of embarking on this whole long journey alone.
Which main platforms do you recommend advertisers use?
People used to ask “what’s better, Google or Facebook?”. Today there are many other options and today it’s no longer a choice. Advertisers need to be wherever their target audience is. People are connected to digital all day: they are on Google, on social networks, YouTube advertising, podcasts… That’s where they are exposed to products and that’s where they consume them. And if you aren’t there as an advertiser, they will buy from your competitors. This is another massive challenge that puts small businesses at a disadvantage against big-budget brands.
What do you think is the next big thing in digital marketing?
One of the trends is “practicality/no-nonsense.” Users, especially the younger generation, want everything easy, fast, and straight to the point. This obviously has implications for marketing, SEO, web and app development, and content writing. Here are two examples:
Voice searches – The younger generation discovered that it’s much easier to speak into the phone than to type on it. It happens in voice messages on WhatsApp (God forbid) and it also happens in Google searches. More and more Google searches are voice-based, and SEO professionals need to adapt to this trend.
No-nonsense content – Google displays answers directly on the search results page (“position zero”). SEO specialists who want to appear there need to write “to-the-point” content free of long introductions and chatter. Content that simply answers users’ questions.
What does your everyday work routine look like?
In the past I was a manager, and I must admit it didn’t really suit me. Today I am the worker and the entrepreneur together, and that’s how I like it. I have one employee, the talented Itay Tao. He is my right hand and we complement each other very well. We work in a hybrid model and communicate throughout the day on Slack. The organic SEO work is our comfort zone and the development work on Experts is the new and challenging territory. The combination of both is very balancing and mutually enriching.
What advice would you give to someone who just started their journey in the digital world?
Specialize in a specific niche and don’t spread yourself thin. Discover where your talent is, where your passion is, and dive deep there. Digital marketing is not a one-person profession.
Where do you draw inspiration from?
I like looking for inspiration in podcasts. Recently I listened to Noam Ohana, the owner of the Midrag website, and found that I really relate to his vision and values. He is not a digital marketing person, but he built a platform that markets thousands of high-quality professionals who no longer need to deal with marketing work themselves. Throughout the journey, he placed service quality as a top value, invested in gathering real reviews, and only let the best onto the site. I admire the fact that he prioritized quality over profitability all along the way, even in years without funding. I hope to do the same at Experts.
How do you stay updated on everything new in the world and in general?
It’s uncomfortable to admit, but in organic SEO there are hardly any websites innovating anything anymore. After all, nobody has the secret recipe for SEO. No such thing exists because a large part of SEO is AI-based. I follow Google’s publications, their answers and updates, follow several SEO people on Twitter, consult with a group of colleagues, and learn a lot from experience.
How do you summarize the year 2021?
So many conflicting answers come to mind for this question. I replay everything we went through with Experts. An idea and a dream that we turned into reality, and everything was there: expectation, hope, excitement, disappointment, confusion, falling down, regret, change, rising up… Overall, I’m a bit disappointed in myself for moving very slowly. I took one step forward, two steps back, a break, panic, and then another step. I wish for myself this year to shake off the initial shock and dare to advance faster and better with the next Experts sites.
After the COVID crisis period, what should we take forward to preserve?
COVID-19 toughened all of us up. It trained our adaptability, creativity, and flexibility muscles. We learned to act fast under conditions of uncertainty, to operate efficiently, to reinvent ourselves. We learned to be much more digital, we learned that (almost) everything can be done online, and sometimes it’s a convenient option that also has advantages. All these tools will stay with us into the future, with or without COVID.
A bit about the interviewee
