Michał Suski is co-founder at Surfer. Digital marketing and website quality enthusiasts Skilled SEO and a successful team leader. Former head of SEO at one of the top Polish agencies, KampanieSEO.
How did you start out as a marketer?
A friend who owned an SEO agency asked me if I wanted to try it. It is that simple.
I watched some tutorials and joined his team as a PBN copywriter.
A few months later, I had some clients, and I led them to the first page of Google.
Sawek Czajkowski created an atmosphere for education in his company.
I was constantly learning. The SEO industry changes so often that you have to stay up-to-date.
Getting better and better at SEO allowed me to get a promotion to team leader and then head of SEO at the agency in 2 years.
Looking back, what was your hardest struggle when it came to delivering results?
Time-consuming but super-effective on-page optimization strategy.
We were analyzing competitors’ content, looking for common elements and patterns.
The biggest challenge there was automating that process.
This is how we ended up building an internal tool for the agency.
The tool served well and allowed the agency to scale up without adding more people.
Now I am involved in crafting that tool full-time. What we struggle with now is holding our horses and executing the features that we have started building.
Great ideas are coming all the time, and it is hard to prioritize them.
How did you get your first client back then, and what kind of service did you provide for them?
Let’s focus on surfers in this thread.
Our first client bought the Early Access plan out of the blue and asked for a refund the next week.
That was painful. But that was also a stress test that we passed, and we started acquiring clients for real.
The Early Access plan was a one-year commitment that helped us gather money for the beginning. It turned out that we had enough to kick off.
What do you find most rewarding about what you do?
Surfer’s clients’ successes The most rewarding moment is when I see someone I walked through the tool with a month later sharing his results. There is no other feeling like that.
We have a lot of readers who are bent on becoming freelancers; aside from freelancing, how else can someone earn online, and what is your advice?
I’d start as a VA under a well-known affiliate marketer. It is a great opportunity to learn processes and tricks and participate in the successes.
If you are good, you will be rewarded. If you are even better, you will learn, pay the debt, and then start your own affiliate portfolio.
If you were given the chance to build your career all over again, what would you do differently so that you could achieve your dreams faster?
Leaving my previous job earlier would be the only thing I’d change. I spent there a bit too long, and instead of growing up, I started growing roots.
How is your typical workday structured?
There is no script. I try to read and exercise every day, but it is not that easy when you do all the things in your company.
This question actually made me think about it and look for some concrete blocks in my daily routine. What I know is that I spend 6–12 hours working.
Can you tell us about a time where you had to put in significant effort up front and then wait a long time for success?
The first year at Surfer was tough.
A lot of traveling between my hometown and the office (5 hours by car), a low salary, being dumped from the Head of SEO position—these were painful but had a great outcome not more than a year later.
Can you tell us about a past situation where you had to juggle multiple projects with competing deadlines?
Leaving the agency was a process.
It took me a few months to leave without causing significant damage to the company.
Sharing my time between building and marketing the product and the agency tasks was tough but not impossible.
The solution I came up with was to divide the weeks by days. I was focused on the agency for two days and on surfing for three days of the week.
What recently-developed marketing strategy, technique, or tool interests you the most right now?
Machine learning, with its ability to reverse engineer algorithms, clicked recently.
I believe it will stay with me for good.
We hired an awesome developer who knows how to utilize it.
I can’t wait to see the first results!
What do you do to stay up-to-date with new marketing techniques?
I listen to our marketing team leader, Karolina Gawron. She is the type of person you can trust.
With her on the team, we won’t miss anything.
Can you tell us about a project you’re most proud of from your past work history?
Obviously, it’s Surfer.
An SEO tool that is leading the on-page optimization category of SEO tools.
Thousands of people around the globe are using the tool, making progress, and getting traction in search results.
Surfer removes the guesswork from the content optimization process. We provide information that makes data-driven decisions affordable for everyone.
Which one book or blog post would you recommend every marketer read?
Great by Choice is a book that everyone should read, no matter what kind of business they are running.
What advice would you share with other marketers who want to become more productive?
I am not a productivity master, but the time hack I discovered recently is that I can exercise and learn at the same time.
This is how I slow down the clock by half using audible and my bike.
If there’s one marketing guru you’d recommend, who and why?
I will recommend Matt Diggity; he influenced me a lot and helped me go global with Surfer.
He is running multiple businesses, seems to have a great work-life balance, and is always helpful.
There is no fluff in his content.
Do you do SEO? Make sure to follow Matt.
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