A few weeks ago, I had the lovely opportunity to be a guest of the Sage Advice Podcast with Ed Kless.

He asked me why and how I  chose to become an SEO Specialist.

I have now realised that this is something that I hadn’t shared on my site yet. So, here’s a transcript of my interview, which you can listen embedded here:

Ed Kless: Hi, everyone and welcome to our podcast. I’m Ed Kless and with me today is Silvia Del Corso.

Silvia has been working as an SEO Specialist for 7 years, helping small business owners get their websites found better on Google, using keywords that will drive targeted traffic.

She runs PinkSEO.Marketing from West London, where she loves to talk about SEO every time she can. She also writes articles on SEO tips for small business owners on her blog, shoots videos on her YouTube channel and conducts live training sessions on most Monday mornings on her Facebook page. Welcome to the Sage Advice Podcast, Silvia Del Corso!

Me: Hi! Thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Ed Kless: Well, sure. Silvia, tell us a little bit more about yourself and your company, PinkSEO

Me: I’m an SEO Specialist, which means that I help website owners be found better on Google by optimizing their websites, with all of the technical aspects of them.

My business is actually the rebranding of my previous business.

I’ve been doing this job, as you said, for seven years. My business name wasn’t always PinkSEO.Marketing. That’s the name I gave to it when I moved from Italy to the U.K. As you can easily hear, I’m not a Native UK English speaker! I moved here to London from Italy 3 years ago with my entire family and I used to do this job earlier, as well. In Italy, I was an SEO Specialist as well and it wasn’t a different type of job. The way you can optimise sites changes over time according to all the different changes in the algorithm and you always have to keep updated – but it doesn’t change geographically. So, no matter if you live in Rome or in London, it’s the same, it doesn’t change so much.

I gave this name to my business when I rebranded because when I started doing this job, I discovered that at conferences and events, 99% of the SEO Specialists attending were men. Just very few women were there in the room every time. I noticed that it was one of the jobs that were not so popular among women, even if I liked it very much.

I like the thing that it’s very measurable.

So, anything you think you want to do, you have to test it and to measure it. This gives me reassurance because I can actually track it and see if things are working or not. I can see the positions in the search engine results pages increasing or decreasing or the difference in the traffic and the number of visitors that my clients’ websites have. All of this gives me proof. I think this is one of the reasons why I like doing this kind of job: it gives me safety. It’s not a matter of opinions, it’s a matter of facts. So, if you do something right, you see it’s working. Otherwise, you know that you have to change it. The results guide you.

Also, what I wanted to say is that to become an SEO Specialist can be done by a woman just as well as a man can do it.

At the moment, more than half of my clients are women. I think that we maybe understand each other very well. I can understand their questions, and sometimes they fear people may consider them not skilled enough or not tech-savvy enough because they don’t know some of the things. So, they feel a little bit more relaxed chatting with me about their questions, knowing that I’m not judging at all and just trying to help.

Ed Kless: Tell me about your passion for making connections.

Me: That started since we moved here. I’ve been living an entire life in another Country. Then, we had to move because our economic situation was not very good in Italy. When we arrived here, there was no connection with people at all, in the beginning. We knew nobody, we had just a couple of friends, no family, no relatives. I had to restart everything from scratch. So, I started to find the few networking groups and I started attending some events. I’m a little bit of an introverted person – although I’ve learned how to deal with my public speaking issues. Anyway, in the beginning, it wasn’t very easy. Then, I realized that it is really like giving new blood into a business because we need to be connected with other people and, in the end, I found out that I like doing it very much. I like being connected with other people.

If you think of this from an SEO perspective, it’s the same. Websites need to be connected with other websites, just think of the importance of the links.

As well, business owners need to be connected with their demand.

What SEO can do is to create this kind of natural connection. Somewhere, there is someone who’s needing what you, do your products, your services and somewhere else there’s you as a business owner. It’s just a matter of being found and creating this kind of connection with somebody you might have never met otherwise. They might not know about you or your existence, your business. If they find you instead of a competitor, that makes a world of difference. But we know that it doesn’t happen so easily, unless we work on it, because there is so much competition around. That’s where SEO helps to facilitate his kind of connections.

Ed Kless: Sure. Well, Silvia, we have an exit question that we ask all of our guests and that is:

“Who is a hero of yours and why are they a hero?”

Me: I know it might sound not the most original answer but, if I have to think of a hero, I think of my dad. He went through a lot in his life but he always told me that I should get people to treat me the way I deserve. This is something that I kept thinking over during my entire life on different levels, as I grew up. It’s something that helps me in business as well because it makes the foundation of your self-confidence, knowing that you deserve that kind of respect from people. You can help them, you can get connections but there’s a point in which you have to say: “No, I’m sorry, but this thing can’t be done“. This starts from believing in your own skills and your own capabilities and knowing that people can interact with you but you have your own set of boundaries around which protect you.

Ed Kless: Lastly, Silvia, how can somebody contact you?

Me: Well there is my site, PinkSEO.Marketing and with the same kind of name you can find me on all of the social media and I’m very sociable, although I’m not regularly posting every day. There can be some days in which I’m extremely active and some days which I’m just trying to chase my children around! But with PinkSEO.Marketing, I’m on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. On LinkedIn, I’m with my name, Silvia Del Corso.

Summary
Photo ofSilvia Del Corso
Name
Silvia Del Corso
Website
Job Title
SEO Specialist
Company
PinkSEO.Marketing
Address
277 London Road,
Isleworth, London, TW7 5FN