Meet your SEO: Jason Acidre

Today I have the immense fortune to have a chat with Jason Acidre, a search strategist based in Manila. If you want to learn more about him, you can read a lot of great SEO and online marketing tips on his blog, Kaiser The Sage.

In this interview, he’s going to tell you a lot of things, even for the very first time the girls he likes in the SEO industry. 

Ok, let’s go. 

Jason Acidre

When did you enter the SEO world, and why ?

I accidentally became an SEO on February 26, 2010 – that’s the date when I was first hired to be an SEO by an Australian-based SEO agency, and I didn’t know anything about it, even what SEO means during that time! I needed the money that time (because of I have to, for my son), so I tried searching for a writing job, then I emailed this agency, as I saw their job posting on craigslist, then when they emailed me back, they asked if I’ll be interested to work as an SEO for them instead of being a writer (they thought/feel that I’m fit for the job), so I said yes.

I tried to learn everything that I think I needed to learn about the job, all the basic stuff (I remember how I was amazed when I first learned how to create an anchor text for a link, haha), while doing the actual work. They provided me with lots of resources, so most of my days are spent reading those materials (ebooks from Marketing Sherpa and a lot more) and working (7 days a week, just to catch up with my teammates). Then after 2 months I got fired – but was immediately hired by Affilorama, where I think my true journey began. That’s pretty much all of it 🙂

A great tip about onpage optimization?

Make your content be “absolutely relevant” to the keyword(s) it is targeting, and make it as comprehensive as possible. This approach seems to work well on getting better search rankings for highly competitive terms.

Of course, it’s also important to have a good website structure, wherein the hierarchy and the importance of the pages the site wants to be more visible is set to both users and search crawlers for easier access.

The most stupid thing people believe about onpage optimization?

Not really sure, but I think I’ll have to go with the “keyword density” thing. Just make sure that the content is readable for users, and that’s it!

A great tip on how you build links?

It’s all in the mindset. Before starting to build links, know your or your clients’ goals. It will be easier to build strategies if you know what you want in the end.

Once you have laid out your campaign’s objectives, it will be easier to build a strong list of link targets/prospects – prospects that will help you achieve your/clients’ goals – and on how you will plan to acquire the links from them.

Focus on getting links that will benefit you in more ways, links that can help you rank for your keywords, build up your brand as an authority and links that will yield traffic to the site (that get clicked by visitors). So how would you produce those kinds of links? By asking yourself these questions, you can certainly form unique strategies on your own that aims to achieve these goals.

The most stupid thing you heard about linkbuilding?

Nofollow links are useless. Well, apparently, it’s not. If a nofollow link is sending massive traffic to a site (and say that these linking pages are constantly driving traffic to the site that have high chances of being converted to leads/sales), then it’s not useless. I also believe that search engines do count these links, as it makes the entire link profile of a site look more natural.

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

We make sure people find the good stuff on Google.

What do you drink when seoing?

Last year, I used to drink beer while doing work (since I’m homebased back then). And a few months ago, I was physically and mentally dependent to this local energy drink called “Cobra”. But now, I think I drink anything that’s available (I’m drinking coke at this very moment, while answering these questions).

What do you think about SEO community?

It’s fun. It’s the only industry where you can find people wholeheartedly sharing their own tricks and secrets. Everyone seems to be very open in this industry, whether you’re black, white or gray, it’s one of the unique traits of this small community that I wish exists in other bigger societies – we always help each other and we always try to compel others.

Make yourself a question and give an answer: Do you have a crush in the industry?

(Sorry, can’t think of any other question haha). Yeah, there are some that I do admire in the industry like Steph Chang of Distilled, Hanna Poferl, Lauren Litwinka of AimClear, and Joanna Lord of SEOmoz.

Who is your biggest SEO influence?

There’s a lot actually, but the ones that really shaped my thinking about how I should do my work as an SEO are mostly from the works of Ross Hudgens, Wil Reynolds and Garrett French.

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

Hmm, I think I’d be a musician or a freelance modern day assassin/hacker (making evil people pay for their crimes).