I was really lucky to interview 3 people in Berlin for the State of Search Roadshow. Interviewed, Marcus Tober from Searchmetrics, Andre Alpar from AKM3 and Alessio Madeyski, the Italian SEO professional living in Germany.
I have uploaded my first two posts to State of Search, but I also wanted to speak to Alessio about his SEO experience outside of work. I asked him the following:
How did you get into SEO?
I started in SEO at the end of March 2011. I have a degree in molecular biology but the life in laboratories was not for me. So I moved to Berlin in January 2011 and I started working as freelancer for a UK startup, taking care of their social media and helping them to create the mobile version of their site. Then I saw that Zalando, the famous fashion e-commerce, was looking for an SEO manager for the Italian market. So my adventure in the SEO began, and now I have an amazing team working with me, and I am responsible for the SEO in the Italian and Scandinavian markets.
What do you like the most about SEO?
SEO is a challenge. Everyday there is something exciting to know. I love when I’m doing something for the user, and the user sends me an email to thank me for the help. The main focus of my work is around the user and their experience on the site.
I strongly believe in the saying “the brand belongs to the user, not to the company”. If I were to give advice to other people starting out in the industry, it would be: “Be awesome, be creative when doing SEO. If you don’t have passion for it, leave and do something else”.
Many people are talking about SEO but you can see in their eyes they have no passion. Why is that? You have to love SEO, especially if you think well beyond SEO (social media, user interface, design, content management, graphics, offline…).
Who have you helped the most and why?
The SEO community. I’m using twitter a lot, and I have so many “mentors” that I cannot say who helped me the most. You can see my profile (@madeale) and see who I’m talking to. Moreover, you can see who I consider great SEOs and great people on my “Meet your SEO” series on my blog where every week I interview amazing SEOs so I was really pleased when you sent me an email asking to meet up and discuss SEO. Thank you for meeting me and I hope to see you when I come to London for the next SEO conference.
Alessio’s interview about working at his ecommerce company will be uploaded to Staate of Search next week.
Thanks for the interview, Jo! it was really nice to meet you! hope to see you soon!
Hi Alessio, it was good to meet you as well. Hope to see you in London soon.