This week’s Fast Five interview takes us to Lyon, France where we met Nicolas Nguyen, SEO expert and co-founder of Semji, an innovative platform for generating super SEO optimized content. Founded in 2012, Semji is specialized in SEO, E-reputation and Content Marketing. Passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship, and with over 10 years of experience in SEO, Nicolas Nguyen is a widely respected SEO Expert and seasonal SEO Speaker. During the Q&A session, Nicolas told us about his first big SEO project, his favorite SEO software, and shared a typical SEO tactic that is easy to implement for e-commerce stores.
- What was your first SEO project, and how did it go?
My first major SEO project was over 10 years ago.
I participated in the French SEO contest, “Seotons”, back in 2010.
A hundred SEO professionals had the objective to finish 1st on the keyword “seotons” by ranking a new domain name within 3 months.
By deploying a 360° strategy mixing technical, content and netlinking, all powered by automation, I managed to finish 1st 😉
A great and rewarding experience!
- What will be the main challenges of SEO in 2022 ?
Google has evolved in an impressive way in the last few years to offer Internet users increasingly relevant search results for a given query.
I see that these evolutions require SEOs to develop new and very specific “marketing” skills:
- Understanding their persona, what they are looking for on Google and why they are looking for it.
- Analyze competing search results to propose a page and content that are much more relevant to the visitor.
- All this with one main objective: to satisfy the visitor.
In parallel, the 3 pillars of SEO (technical, content, netlinking) are still equally important to develop.
I find these evolutions very exciting because they make the SEO job even more rewarding.
- What is your favourite SEO software ?
My favorite SEO software? I have several.
But if I had to choose one, of course I have to choose Semji (but am I really objective?)
Semji allows you to optimize your website’s content to generate SEO traffic gains with ease.
In general, only 10-20% of the pages of a website are ranked on Google. With Semji, 80% of the optimized contents capture SEO traffic.
My favorite feature: you enter a main keyword, Semji analyzes competing content on the SERP and related keywords, you launch AI Writing, and the AI helps you write your content 6 times faster!
Semji also allows you to identify the pages of your site that need to be optimized first, to manage your editorial calendar as a team, and to track the performance of your content campaigns in terms of traffic and conversions.
In short, a must-have for any company with a content strategy! And on top of that, you can test the tool for free : https://semji.com/
- What is the most common SEO mistake you see people making?
I think the number one issue in SEO is being able to invest the necessary funds to reach your ambitious SEO goals.
It’s very simple: if you don’t invest enough, you won’t get much.
Companies need to understand this!
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the issue of Internet visibility, and executives need to understand that allocating budgets to SEO is necessary for success on Google.
Among Semji’s clients, the most successful are those who actively invest in SEO and content.
- What is a typical low-hanging fruit optimization to make in SEO for e-commerce?
On your e-commerce site, you have several dozen or even hundreds of product categories. Let’s take an example: yoga mats.
For each product category, publish an advice article such as ‘How to choose a yoga mat?’ with links to your product categories and your top products.
This approach will bring you three benefits:
- To transmit semantic juice towards your product category and your products phrases and thus to improve their positions on Google
- Capture new visitors from informational keywords
- To bring advice to your visitors to increase conversion rates
Search on Google ‘how to choose’ for Manomano, Decathlon, Leroy Merlin websites, you’ll find concrete examples 🙂
