Patrick Langridge is Head of SEO at Screaming Frog, leading a team of talented search marketers and content specialists to deliver best-in-class technical SEO, creative content, and cutting-edge digital PR for their clients.
Away from the office, you might find Patrick playing guitar in his band or sampling yet another local craft beer!
How did you start out as a marketer?
Like seemingly a lot of people, I fell into marketing in a bit of a roundabout way.
At university, I did a course with a work placement in industry included, where I got a job working in music PR.
Years later, when applying for jobs in a number of different industries, I rather stumbled across SEO and a vacancy at Screaming Frog.
It turned out that the experience I gained doing PR transferred very well to SEO, so that’s kind of what got me into the world of marketing full-time.
Looking back, what was your hardest struggle when it came to delivering results?
I think probably the expectation that getting short-term results is often difficult or even unrealistic in most cases.
You obviously want to prove the case quickly to clients to ensure they are seeing ROI and a measurable impact from the work you’re doing, but SEO is a long-term strategy that can take time to have the desired impact.
Hence, this is a constant struggle to deal with that is ongoing!
How did you get your first client back then, and what kind of service did you do for them?
The work I was doing back in 2011 differs significantly from the work I do today—perhaps unsurprisingly!
Like a lot of SEOs, I did my fair share of guest posting, paid links, giveaways, reviews, and so on, which all worked well for a while.
That’s one of the aspects of my job that I really love—how much variety there is and how many new tactics and strategies I’ve learned over the last 10 years.
What do you find most rewarding about what you do?
Seeing the impact of our work directly on SEO performance is very rewarding, as this means you’re impacting the bottom line for your clients.
It’s fulfilling to see changes you’ve recommended or strategies you’ve implemented having a genuine impact and helping clients achieve their commercial objectives.
I also work as part of a brilliant and inspiring team, so seeing them succeed, improve, and develop is hugely rewarding for me personally.
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 would really encourage investing in a website of your own as a great way to not only learn more about SEO and digital marketing but also to potentially make money too.
Think about a website you’d like to run in a space that actually interests you personally; otherwise, you’ll probably find it hard to stay motivated to continue working on it.
Whether it’s a service website for your freelancing work (such as a portfolio or case study site), an e-commerce store, or even something in the affiliate space, you’ll learn a ton about websites and SEO, and if you can get the website performing well, that should lead to more sales or leads too.
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?
I would have loved to have learned more about the world of SEO and digital marketing sooner than I did, perhaps taking advantage of the boom that began in the late 1990s.
That era sounded really fast-paced and exciting, with tons of opportunities for people to learn about the industry and test how to get websites ranking in super competitive niches.
Other than that, I’d probably have learned to code, as I think that would be useful!
How is your typical work day structured?
My day usually starts with a quick assessment of client performance.
I get ranking reports in my inbox, which I’ll go through. I’ll check performance using tools like SISTRIX and Google Search Console, just to see how things are ticking over on a daily basis.
I still even crack open Incognito Mode in Chrome to manually check rankings for a few key terms!
After that, I will see what’s come into my inbox overnight and start to plan what to tackle in which order.
My day usually consists of a mixture of internal meetings or calls about projects or client campaigns, external meetings or calls with clients, and working on recommendations or analysis documents myself.
From time to time, I’ll be involved in a sales call, pitch call, or proposal too, in an attempt to try and win new business for the agency.
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?
This describes a lot of typical SEO projects! We’ve worked with a lot of new businesses who have only just launched and have little in terms of authority or trust as brands or within the search engines.
Building that level of trust takes time and has to really be done naturally and organically.
This sometimes means that clients are spending a lot of money on something without much ROI in those early stages, but they will see big benefits further down the line.
From experience, those who are patient and commit to investing in the channel over a longer period of time often see the most success.
What recently developed marketing strategy, technique, or tool interests you the most right now?
I’m fascinated by the recent emergence of digital PR within SEO.
PR has always existed in its own right, of course, and as explained earlier, my brief dalliance with PR was hugely beneficial to me, even finding the world of SEO, but unquestionably there has been a huge increase in digital PR as a component of the SEO industry.
Lots of agencies (including my own) are investing in the discipline and having great results from doing so.
PRs who have a good understanding and appreciation of SEO and how their work can impact it are at a huge advantage within the industry.
What do you do to stay up-to-date with new marketing techniques?
I read a lot of industry blogs and follow tons of people on Twitter to ensure I’m getting a constant stream of useful information!
It can be hard to keep up and easy to be oversaturated by the sheer amount of content being produced, but it’s important that I keep my finger on the pulse with what’s happening in SEO and the wider marketing industry.
Which one book or blog post would you recommend every marketer read?
I don’t read a huge amount of traditional marketing books, in all honesty, though one of those I would recommend is Nudge
While it’s not a traditional’ marketing’ book per se, I found it really useful in understanding decision-making, problem solving, and influencing, all of which I would say are very useful skills for any marketer.
If there’s one marketing guru you’d recommend, who and why?
Bill Slawski is someone I’ve got huge respect for.
I love reading anything he writes or hearing him speak at events. I was even fortunate enough to share the speaking stage with him in Paris last year, which was a real honor!
Anyone looking to get a better understanding of how search engines work, Google patents, and the semantic web should give Bill a follow on Twitter: Bill Slawski
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