An Interview With Steve Wiideman, Co-Founder Of Wiideman Consulting Group

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Below is our recent interview with Steve Wiideman, Co-Founder of Wiideman Consulting Group:

Q: There are already several SEO consulting companies on the market, why do you think yours is superior?

A: Wiideman has been in the search optimization and paid search advertising industry since the late 90’s, cultivating knowledge and experience from peers, practitioners, and our own experience. In our opinion, there is no one superior consulting company, just different competencies, strengths and viewpoints.

We are often called “The Agency’s Agency”, called upon by some of the world’s largest digital marketing firms to audit and provide training in advanced search engine optimization strategy.

Our approach includes a well-rounded mix of technical, contextual and off-page visibility audits and roadmaps, while our strength has always been in creative search engine strategy (to attract links and develop depth in site structure and taxonomy).

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Q: In the world of Search Engine Optimization, change is a constant, how do you adapt your strategies to this change?

A: At our core, we base recommendations on timeless principles including constant improvements in relevancy, visibility and user behavior signals. We’ve augmented our strategy over years to include testing of new enhancements, such as Rich Snippets and Structured Data, Featured Answers, Voice Search, and the like.

We keep up by subscribing to over 40 industry news and bloggers through an RSS reader and daily regimen, with Google and Bing Webmaster blogs syndicating to Slack, our instant messaging and team collaboration platform.

Q: What is the best coaching and advice you could give to businesses when it comes to SEO?

A: The best coaching advice for businesses interested in maximizing SEO would be to develop a strong time-management matrix that allots for daily learning, ongoing training from leading experts in very niche disciplines of search and an open-mind to collaboration with other agencies. Regardless of how good you believe you are, there’s always something you can learn from other practitioners.

Second to that is strategy. Most agencies don’t have more than a few checklists and some third-party tool they garner ideas from. Performing comprehensive audits for technical, contextual and off-page visibility and then building a solid 1-2 year strategy for each may be the cornerstone of an experienced SEO consultancy.

Q: You have served some of the world’s largest brands in e-commerce, service & franchise industries; how did you help them grow over the years?

A: Earning buy-in from the client and their various IT, web development, marketing and public relationship teams is the most-challenging hurdle in working with larger brands. There is also a high churn rate on resources in each of these business units, so you’re constantly having to retrain team members.

To see growth year after year, we set very specific KPIs for improving technical issues, increasing share of voice for tracked keywords, and increasing revenue, which we review religiously during weekly or twice-monthly calls.

Q: What’s included in your free SEO Audit?

A: We offer a free live assessment of basic SEO focal points to those interested in working with us to earn trust and to compensate our potential client for their time. We know our clients’ time is valuable and hold ourselves accountable to always providing value. In that assessment, we’ll look at security, privacy, content management system limitations, appearance of pages in search results, mobile usability, inbound links and any specific pain points the business has.

Our paid audit is more comprehensive and includes video tutorials, links to Google Developer documentation, and scoring method insights so our clients can re-run their audit later.

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Q: Looking ahead for the next year. What is the strategy for Wiideman Consulting Group?

A: Wiideman has finally started the transition from selling our time to selling our knowledge. Our first online SEO class (in beta) launched in August 2019, with 3 more programs queued up for development in Q4 2019. Our hope is that this approach will enable us to scale and invest more time into research, testing and really exploring the outer limits of search engine optimization.