Episode 32: Interview with Aleyda Solis

Aleyda Solis is Head of Digital Strategy at WooRank in Brussels. Aleyda has specialized in mobile, technical and international SEO and has a lot of experience in the implementation of multilingual SEO projects. She is blogging as partner by SEOmoz and State of Digital and is a well-respected speaker at international Search Conferences, like MozCon, BrightonSEO, SMX London & SMX Munich, OMCap or Congreso SEO Profesional.

Andre Alpar: So! Today’s OMReport is with Aleyda. Aleyda, can you please introduce yourself.

Aleyda Solis: Well, I am Aleyda Solis. Hi! I am natively from Nicaragua. I lived in Spain for 7 years where I started to do SEO. I was previously a web developer. I work in agencies, in-house, as a consultant, for other European and American agencies too, so I have gathered some experience in the SEO industry already and now I am working in Brussels for WooRank as a Head of Digital Strategy.

Andre Alpar: OK, so how did you make the jump over the US? You started blogging at MOZ and then other blogs, how did you make that jump? It seems so far away from Europe sometimes to get ‘reach’ in the US? What do you think of that?

Aleyda Solis: Yes indeed. The one thing that I remember is that at one point I said ‘I’m going to start blogging in English in my own blog and also tweeting a little bit more in English.

Andre Alpar: But did you switch like a hard switch from Spanish to English?

Aleyda Solis: I started to balance. Nowadays I tweet much more in English, I would say, than Spanish. In Spanish there’s much more interaction and sharing the really good stuff that I’ve found.

Andre Alpar: And then in English you’re just sharing the simple stuff, and the good stuff you’re sharing all in Spanish?

Aleyda Solis: No, no, no! No but the thing is, and this is real: unfortunately a lot of the posts that are published in Spanish are just like copies or translations of the ones that are in English, but there are a few insightful, really unique, completely original types of content that really deserve that type of visibility. So I try to push a lot to help us with that.

Andre Alpar: So does the Spanish community still like to read your tweets even though they’re in English? Or do the sometimes say ‘OK well that’s much more work for me, it’s not my native language, I’m not gonna look at it anymore’?

Aleyda Solis: There’s something funny: most of the SEOs in Spain, they understand English. They might not be fluent like this, but they understand English because at the end of the day if you work with the web it’s a must to be able to understand these types of things. So yes they follow me, and at some point I tweet in English and they answer in Spanish.

Andre Alpar: Which is fine for you. OK, and then you started blogging in English, then you tried to blog elsewhere as well.

Aleyda Solis: Yes, I started on my own blog and then… I remember it was 2, 3 years ago when I met Bas, I asked him if I could start collaborating at the State of Search in web content. So I started blogging for State of Search, now State of Digital, but actually I was at State of Search before MOZ.

Andre Alpar: OK, and then when I think of you, I knew you from more, like, very technical, complex issues that would be important in an enterprise SEO context like mobile SEO topics, like international SEO topics which perfectly fit with you having a technical background, and now you’ve switched to WooRank, which is kind of focused on the local Mom and Pop shop. How does that work together? Isn’t that kind of a different world? And who’s adapting to whom now?

Aleyda Solis: Indeed. Well I try to provide enterprise-level solutions to a tool that is focused on a much more generic, low-level audience of web consultants that try to really dig and sort out SEO without really being experts or specialists in that area.

Andre Alpar: So is there like a certain drain, because I mean they’re not gonna implement href lang or rel alternate for mobile websites, or they’re not gonna switch to responsive designs, so is there kind of like a loss of things that you used to do? Or am I over exaggerating?

Aleyda Solis: Yeah but no, because in some sort of ways they’re in-house SEOs too. You know, I’m head of Digital Strategy so I do more than just SEO. But I help them to really improve in ways that I did in the past with big companies… you know, and for me also, what attracted me a lot, and one of the reasons that I joined them, is that they are able to reach so many people. So many people use their tool in some way or another. So to be able to focus on a product where I really understand the audience and I can really predict or help them to build something scalable that is going to be really useful in the future, that is one of my main motivations, really.

Andre Alpar: All right. So the company language in Brussels will be English then?

Aleyda Solis: Well at the office we speak in English. I speak French… because you know there is this Flemish-French type of thing and we have also Flemish and French people… at some point you hear a little bit of Flemish among the Flemish people in the office, other times you hear French, other times English. Other times you hear Spanish because one of the founders speaks very good Spanish with me and he likes to speak Spanish with me and there is another Spanish colleague… So it’s crazy, it’s multi-lingual, you could say.

Andre Alpar: OK, OK. So… the kind of shops that you target these days, or the clients that you target at WooRank, what do you have in mind usually when you design a product for them. I mean, because you are kind of in the edgy position as a speaker, obviously, and then you know kind of… you always think ahead. And then you try to think ahead with the interpretation of what’s happening in the big picture for the local shops and the local small businesses. How are their needs different?

Aleyda Solis: Yeah, for example, the unique selling proposition really is that it needs to be simple, it really needs to be instant, it really needs to be useful and insightful but actionable, in an actionable way so they don’t get lost, they don’t need that much time to dig out, right? So you can see… actually WooRank launched the responsive web design two weeks ago, three weeks ago, so there’s one right now. If you enter any of the reports, they are responsive. Totally responsive and friendly to any mobile device, and that is one of a few things… We are also ready to launch and to have many more different types of reports that will provide insights at other levels and in other ways to the audience. The project is evolving and it will expand much more, not only to provide websites targeted… types of reports specifically-targeted to one website, but much more than that.

Andre Alpar: So when you think of SEO for these local Mom and Pop shops or local small businesses I think, you know, bringing the onpage knowledge and guiding them through onpage topics: that seems doable. But when I think about this topic, and I’m not active in this topic because my clients are usually larger enterprises, I always have the problem of how to explain to a local shop how to try to go for a good link or anything that I could think of in a content marketing context. The things that I can think of, they’re so big, they’re much too big for them to swallow in a single month, you know?

Aleyda Solis: In fact for a few of them, for a few of these companies, SEO is not the first answer. It might be only totally local, purely local targeted strategy.

Andre Alpar: So you’re just gonna optimise for Google Maps and so on.

Aleyda Solis: Indeed, build your page there, build your presence there, optimise… become really active on foursquare, create giveaways and coupons on foursquare, get good reviews. The idea with WooRank too, and you will see, is that it has a multiple local tool, for mobile too, because at the end of the day these are this type of website that are not targeted to the main public to go and compete, but these very specific type of companies, little companies that need to earn the visibility as much as possible, not only for SEO, really.

Andre Alpar: Let’s jump to a different topic that I think we both like. How would you describe to everybody the differences between SEO in the States and SEO over in Europe? What do you think are the biggest differences that you always try to highlight to your friends in the US?

Aleyda Solis: Yes, well in the US I would say that it’s much more link building-focused. Really, I was very impressed when I started going to events in the US and then working at SEER. Of course, SEER is pretty well known for link building, for doing great link building… So of course maybe I am also a little bit biased because of that because that was my main experience with a US agency. But yes, I mean they have great marketers. I was really impressed to see their creativity, you know, these types of brainstorms and actions and tactics that they come up with to create links. But at the end of the day, if you think about it, for example there are some types of tactics that aren’t very doable because there are so many, let’s say, high schools out there who have blogs out there, and they are updating them all the time. I’ve tried to extrapolate and take that same type of tactic to Spain, and it’s not going to work because the landscape is totally different. So those are the challenges but at the same time really insightful and great things about international SEO because different markets behave differently and their ecosystem is different. So because of that, I think, because there is also a lot more competition, I believe that the US market is much more targeted to building link popularity. In Spain you can say that a lot of the issues have come from the web development with design, words… so they are much more technically-focused and also you don’t require that many links as in the English-speaking market in order to rank. So yes, there are differences of course.

Andre Alpar: How do Spanish websites usually deal with the traffic that they get from South America, because it must be like a significant bunch? And what do they do with it? Do they try to avoid it? Because I don’t know.

Aleyda Solis: No, no! I mean, there are a lot of websites actually and businesses in Spain that target and now start leveraging the Latin American market because of that because there’s a huge opportunity. And the Latin American market is like, I dunno, four years behind Spain. So right now you can see a lot of conferences and a lot of events and posts speaking about community management, social media, blogs… It’s the boom right now! What we saw in 2007 here, it’s crazy! Yes indeed, so you can also predict a little bit how it will evolve, so I will say that this is the time really to be there because, for example, they have invited me for the first time to go to speak to South America in June in Chile. And I believe it’s the first time they’re going to have a purely SEO-focused type of session, so that is great because it’s going to go really crazy from now.

Andre Alpar: Sounds amazing. All right. Thanks so much for your time.

Aleyda Solis: Thank you for the opportunity.