Welcome to a new Weekly Interviews edition where we interview brilliant women in our industry and share their stories with the world! Anyone is welcome to share their story by simply filling this form, we encourage women from all walks of life in our industry to do so.
Introducing Olga Zarr, SEO Expert at SEOSLY. Based in Poland, Olga is an SEO consultant who specializes in technical SEO and performing in-depth technical SEO audits for both big and small sites. She loves examining each and every technical detail of websites to detect the most hidden issues. She is an SEO geek who is addicted to listening to SEO podcasts, reading industry news, and watching Google Search Central SEO office-hours with John Mueller. Olga feels most comfortable alone in her home office room, with headphones on and doing some SEO analysis. In 2020, Olga finally decided to come out to become part of the online SEO community to share her SEO knowledge and experience with others.
We asked her everything from how she first got into SEO to what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is 💪🏽
Right after graduating from university in 2011, I started my own business (a translation agency). I have always been a bit of a computer geek and had some experience building websites, so I created the website for my business myself. This was when I learned about SEO and that it is not enough to just create a website.
It soon turned out that optimizing my website was way more fun to me than being a translator, so I started to learn SEO like crazy. I took all the SEO courses I could find and read all the SEO books that got into my hands. Together with learning the theory of SEO, I was also building my first SEO websites and blogs. Some of them are still online. This was the end of 2012 which I think of as the actual start of my SEO journey. The following two years allowed me to gain enough experience thanks to which in 2015 I got my first job as an SEO.
My favourite SEO task is by far performing in-depth technical SEO audits. The best type of an SEO audit is the one that takes me about 30-40 hours to complete. I know this is a long time but this amount of time lets me dig into each and every detail of the website and uncover practically everything. I do these in-depth audits mainly for huge international brands as part of my cooperation with one of the biggest SEO agencies in Poland. I have performed 100+ in-depth technical SEO audits so far (and counting).
There are at least a few SEO tools I cannot live without. If I were to name just one or two, then it would be Sitebulb and Screaming Frog. Besides that, I cannot live without Google tools, such as Google Search Console (and its advanced reports), Lighthouse, Google PageSpeed Insights, Chrome DevTools, and more.
For me, that was learning about and really getting to understand what JavaScript rendering is and how it works. With that knowledge and skills, when doing an SEO audit, I can pretty accurately analyze how Google is rendering a web page and whether its content is visible to Googlebot.
I would say this is the complete change of the scope of an SEO audit and how it is performed (and how many tools are used to compile it) at the SEO agency I partner with. I modified the process, extended the scope of the audit (to include practically all the SEO aspects), and added tons of useful things to check and analyze in detail (like Core Web Vitals, JavaScript rendering, page experience, website security to name a few). This new audit process allowed me to do in-depth analyses and detect absolutely all the issues on a website (plus a bunch of other “bonus” issues).
As a result, I was able to help many huge and well-known brands nicely improve their visibility in search and detected issues that other agencies never uncovered. Unfortunately, I cannot name the brands, so you need to take my word for it. I am willing and happy to share my SEO audit process and experience, so feel free to use my technical SEO audit guide and a free template to audit your or your client’s site.
Take one step at a time and never stop learning. If you feel overwhelmed, take a short break and come back to what you were doing. Remember that you won’t be able to learn everything with just one course or guide. You need loads of them.
It is unlikely that your first SEO website will be a success. Be ready to create tens of websites and have tons of fun in the process. The more you read, listen, watch, and experiment, the quicker you will connect all the SEO dots.
And totally get addicted to listening to SEO podcasts! They are very powerful and will help you overcome any SEO crisis.
This is definitely Marie Haynes. I love her approach and her SEO story (a veterinarian who became a world-class SEO who is really a great authority). Yup, her podcast is one of the podcasts I am addicted to. And another woman who really inspires me is, of course, Areej AbuAli who is really changing the SEO world for women. Thank you!
I am also a great fan of Lily Ray who is not only a great SEO but also a very inspiring person overall.
I really love these two quotes:
This is the essence of how I work, live and do my running workouts (I am a marathoner). Patience and persistence let me achieve my long-term goals. I like doing things slowly and feeling that I am also making (slow but steady) progress. This is also the approach I have taken with my SEO blog which I treat as a long-term project that I slowly build and grow (while at the same time helping lots of SEOs).
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Thanks Olga for a truly insightful interview, you can check out Olga's website and connect with her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
To view more interviews with brilliant women, check out our Interviews page. If you've enjoyed reading this interview, then 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! 🙌🏽