Interviewing Jade Pruett

Welcome to a new WTSInterview edition, where we interview brilliant SEOs in our industry and share their stories with the world! WTS members are welcome to share their story by simply filling out this form; we encourage folks from all walks of life in our industry to do so.

Introducing Jade Pruett! She is a SEO specialist with over 8 years in the field. Before founding HelloSEO in 2020, Jade managed SEO for CNN and Business Insider's affiliate programs and served as an SEO Manager for a large startup in the semiconductor industry. In 2022, they transitioned HelloSEO into a full-time endeavor, helping clients optimize their digital presence.

How did you get into SEO?

Right out of college, I did a lot of freelance content writing. Of course, to get the bigger gigs, I had to learn how to optimize the content I was writing for search engines.

After landing a freelance job at an SEO agency, I realized the people managing me had far more interesting jobs (and more stable paychecks.) I decided to throw all my eggs in the SEO basket and dedicate my free time to really figuring SEO out. It's been a really fun journey!

What is your favourite SEO task?

I love doing Power Hours with clients. We sit down together for an hour and do as much SEO optimization on their site as possible. That often starts with discovering their target keywords, optimizing meta tags, and seeing what fixes need to happen on the backend.

It's really fun to work closely with the business owners and see just how much we can do in an hour (it's usually a lot!) This also gives me an opportunity to work with businesses that might not be ready for a full retainer but can benefit the most from a quick SEO boost.

What is your go-to tool or resource that you can't live without?

It's not very obscure, but I live in Ahrefs. It's new Content AI tool is giving me life!

What is something you learned in SEO that made you have an 'AHA' moment?

When I was still working at CNN and Business Insider, I was assigned our Roblox account. It was the only brand we managed that's target audience was primarily 12-year-olds.

Once I really began to understand my user, the page shot from the 84th position to the 1st. That is one of the most exciting and gratifying campaigns of my career. I still have screengrabs of the metric spikes in my Google Drive.

What is your proudest industry achievement?

Managing to build a 6-figure business while working a demanding startup job is something I'll forever be proud of. Getting to quit my job and go all out with HelloSEO was a huge goal for so long, and I'm so proud to have achieved it.

What advice would you give those who are starting out in SEO?

Don't get into SEO unless you loooooove it. I'm on my third read of Rand Fishkin's Lost and Founder, and he quotes Steve Jobs saying, "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."

But if you love SEO, you're in for an incredible ride. I'd recommend reading every book and blog and listening to every podcast you can find. Put yourself in positions to fail. Try things out. Get excited. Stay curious. Be generous. Go to all the conferences and ask people out to dinner. Get plugged in to WTS. Just don't believe people when they say SEO is dead.

Give a shout out to someone in the industry who inspires you, and tell us why

Imelda Perez! She is an incredible Digital PR specialist who also manages to homeschool her kids, be an awesome mom, and send me voice memos all day! She works with me on every single client I have, and I'm obsessed with her!

Navneet Kaur! She is an incredible Tech SEO who has used her skills to create the life she wants. She is so generous with her expertise and is always willing to answer my questions.

Finally, what empowers you to be the brilliant person you are?

I love the quotes, "Be More Generous Than Necessary" and "Don't Get Scared, Get Curious." I quit my job a month before ChatGPT took over the world, so staying curious about new tech and not getting freaked out has been huge. As for being generous, I always want to go above and beyond for my friends, family, employees, and clients. Even when I going a tad out of scope, I want to choose generosity.

----

Thanks, Jade, for a truly insightful interview!

You can learn more about Jade on her website and connect with her on LinkedIn.

Check out our Interviews page for more interviews. If you've enjoyed reading this, we'd love for YOU to share your story with the world! Simply fill this form here, we welcome brilliant SEOs from all walks of life! 🙌🏽