Meet your SEO: Gianluca Fiorelli

I am trying to see
I am trying to believe
This is not where I should be
I am trying to believe

Today I have the pleasure to interview Gianluca Fiorelli, an Italian SEO consultant working in Spain. I mean, everyone knows Gianluca right? You can read more about him on his blog . Moreover he is SEOmoz associate and blogger for State of Search, so basically you have plenty of places where to read his thoughts about SEO and inbound marketing in general.

Let’s go!

Gianluca Fiorelli

When did you enter the SEO world, and why ?

I started later than the average SEOs. It was 2003 and I was almost 34 years old.

Before of that date I was working in the TV industry, as Head of Programming for two movie channels in Italy.

To make the story short, in 2003 there were big changes in the Italian TV industry, so that I need to reinvent myself professionally.

Thanks to my boss, I started taking care of the sites of the surviving tv channel of the company I was working in and, from a pure Content Manager position, I discovered SEO.

A great tip about onpage optimization?

The easy answer would be: Title Tag.

But, even though that is an extremely important On Page factor, I would rather suggest this other: Navigation Architecture.
In fact – as when you build an house – you must have solid foundations, or your building will collapse. If you don’t design a more than perfect navigation, so to make the link equity pass smootly and easily all over you site, while helping the usability of the same, you won’t really have bots on your side.

The most stupid thing people believe about onpage optimization?

That On Page is enough in order to rank.

A great tip on how you build links?

Before even planning a link building campaign, talk a lot with your client or with the commercial and customer care departments. Just doing so you will be able to really understand their needs and what the customers are looking fro and asking them. Once you know all those things, you can design the correct content marketing actions, which will help you gaining links.

The most stupid thing you heard about linkbuilding?

That you just need great content to earn links. Yes, great astonishingly good content is essential, but if you are not able to put it in front of the nose of those ones who will share it and link to it, it’s useless.

If you have to explain what you do at a 10 year-old kid , what are you gonna say?

I would say that I work in the Internet and that I helps sites being found by people like him.

What do you drink when seoing?

Coffee… just that. And a lot of water. I don’t like Coke that much and, as the policemen in the movies, I never drink when I am in service.

What do you think about SEO community?

I think that it is a great one. Helpful, grateful, polemic in the good way, funny and generous. Obviously that is a generalization, but I must admit that are more the SEOs with those characteristics than the opposite ones.

Said that, there are nuances from country to country. For instance the American and British SEO community, and the Spanish one too, are very proactive, entusiast, ready to unite for a cause and quite open to welcome and share things with other communities. In other countries, as Italy, SEOs – even though there are small great communities – are more individualistic and less interested in living the community experience.

Make yourself a question and give an answer: Do SEOs need to stop thinking being the center of the (marketing) world?

Yes, they should do it. And that would give them incredible new opportunity of growing as professionals.

Who is your biggest SEO influence?

Surely SEOmoz and Rand Fishkin were and are my biggest influences. But there are many SEOs out there I must thank for inspiring me when I was a newbie and now that I’m not so young anymore: Danny Sullivan, Rishi Lakani, Richard Baxter, Ian Lurie, Wil Critchlow, Aaron Wall.

If you weren’t an SEO, what would you like to do?

I don’t know. Maybe a part of me would still love working in the TV Industry, buying movie rights, programming TV seasons and attending movie festivals as I was used before becoming a web marketer. I usually joke saying that my ideal client would need to be a TV or Major Company and I its Web Marketing Consultant, as I know very well both worlds. So, dear Fox or Universal, what are you waiting? Call me now!