Welcome to a new WTSInterview edition, where we interview brilliant SEOs in our industry and share their stories with the world! Anyone is welcome to share their story by simply filling this form, we encourage folks from all walks of life in our industry to do so.
Meet Sara Vordermeier!
Sara is an in-house Content & SEO Strategist at adjoe, a fast-growing B2B adtech company based in Hamburg, Germany. She is always exploring new and improved ways to engage online audiences and generate quality leads.
We asked her everything from how she first got into SEO to what empowers her to be the brilliant SEO she is 💪🏽
I entered the world of SEO by chance and by initial bewilderment.
After graduating from university, I moved from the UK to Germany to work as a translator and editor at a small translation agency. We’d receive a lot of diverse text types (some drier and headachier than others), and I would always steal the big-brand marketing texts to proofread or translate; they were always fun. It was always these brands that would send us keywords to include in our translations, which would completely go over my head.
Some years into the job, our team had a beginner’s training session in SEO for translation. The session was basic but enough to get me thinking: “What the F is SEO” and “How can I learn more about it?” It wasn’t long until I was googling weekend SEO training courses to attend outside of work.
I simultaneously (and coincidentally) made friends with someone with whom I’m now very close, who was and still is an SEO consultant. You’d better believe I annoyed her with questions.
Within one month or so of taking these weekend SEO courses, I left my translation job and switched my career from translating content into content marketing. This was back in 2019, and I’ve worked in content marketing and SEO ever since.
My favourite SEO task is optimising website structures and the delivery of content on webpages. You have to balance being creative with being practical. And you get to collaborate with and learn from web devs, graphic designers and product marketers. There’s nothing worse than not being able to easily find what you need on a website, and there’s nothing better than seeing your organic traffic and engagement metrics grow afterwards.
Tools are great at monitoring and keeping you on track, but keeping an eye on the bigger picture is better. That’s why I would struggle without SEO and copywriting conferences (BrightonSEO, WTS Fest, CopyCon).
Whether it’s attending these events in person or purchasing their video packages, these resources, the speakers and the attendees are my number-one sources of inspiration and sanity in an industry that is continuously changing and always challenging.
First things first, everything is incremental, and you shouldn’t stress about being perfect from the get-go.
Optimisations are incremental, learning is incremental, building connections with others in the industry is incremental.
Building topical authority is likewise incremental. My specific AHA moment has come from focusing on topic clusters. It’s good for signaling authority – and it’s also good for writing about topics more granularly and concisely. You don’t want to overwhelm your writers as they try to cover A to Z in one article.
Everyone and everything has to start from somewhere.
The biggest leap I made in my career was when I asked my team lead if I could move away from writing social media content and other content tasks to focus more on SEO and content strategy. It was difficult and at first made me feel like I was no longer a team player.
I originally started as a content writer in my role and within two years of hard work am now a senior specialist in content and SEO.
Now I feel as though it’s time to share my lessons and experiences with others who are also navigating in-house SEO content roles in niche industries – and I’m excited about it!
Always be kind to yourself.
Learn the tools, but don’t forget the bigger picture. You might feel like an imposter if you don’t learn the tools, but you might lose focus or your sense of purpose if you don’t regularly look at the bigger picture and what your SEO role means in the first place (i.e. is your goal to generate leads, revenue, awareness?)
I’d like to give a shoutout to Kate Hughes, my patient, professional tech SEO mentor and friend – and a solid conference companion.
Secondly, Areej AbuAli is one of the kindest and most inspirational community builders and conference speakers I have spoken to. Without her and the WTS community, I would be wandering around conferences alone and most likely still second-guess myself every day.
What is empowering me (it’s an ongoing process) is the following:
In life: Energy is important; spend it on things that make you happy.
In content: Hard writing makes for easy reading. You need to kill your darlings.
In my career: It’s not enough to surround yourself with support – you also need to trust your own ability.
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Thanks, Sara, for a truly insightful interview!
You can learn more about Sara 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! 🙌🏽