Today, we are glad to invite our Spanish ambassador Fernando Muñoz, also known as Señor Muñoz. Co-founder and SEO Manager at Grupo Raíz, regular speaker for major online marketing events, member of the SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization), Fernando is very active in the SEO community. Thank you for joining us, we are going to talk a little bit more about you and introduce you to our community.
Can you tell us how you started in the SEO world?
Well, the whole fate of becoming a SEO was like an accident. I had just finished my studies and completed an engineer cusus when I came to Marbella and started working in a small hotel chain group. They were doing a lot of SEO and internet marketing.
This company was one of the most powerful on the internet, they were doing things since 1995. So I jumped into the marketing structure and internet marketing and that is why I started to write about SEO and to work in that part of the online marketing.
You’re known as the founder of the SEO agency Señor Muñoz but you recently launched Grupo Raíz. Can you tell us more about it? Have you kept your activity at Señor Muñoz? Why this project? What are you doing there?
We were doing SEO for great companies, for the biggest companies in Spain. By the way, small companies were small boutiques. And we were wondering how to become bigger, and you know that SEO is hardly scalable because you need a lot of people working for you. It is not about 5 clients, 5 SEOs, 10 clients, 10 SEOs, SEO is not working this way. So, wondering how we could become bigger, we were working with a few other big agencies and we were talking about how we could become bigger. This is how Raiz was born. It was not something that we were looking for but that is something that appears and that was marvellous. It is so nice that we can share that opportunity, share the same company, the same name. That is how Raiz has started.
Do you have any particular subject for this month, any SEO tips, SEO projects that you would like to share with us?
Right now, we are so glad to work with SELO group, but also with Comita Poinciana, or with Cash Converter, a big company too. We love how we can deal with small clients but also with bigger clients, because we are the same. So it is so nice to see that we can do our work properly. It does not matter if you are big or if you are small, you have to do it properly. I think that is the biggest thing I’m proud of. I can help big, I can help small companies and it doesn’t matter if you do quite good things you have a lot of opportunities to become bigger, to have more sales.
We invited you at the European SEO Night in Paris back in November, where you talked about voice search and its impact in 2018. What are for you the 3 main lookout points? Why do SEOs should pay attention to it?
Well, I think voice search is something so disruptive. We are not used to have non-screen, we don’t have a screen with voice search and it is something that we have to deal with. It is a filter, it is a bubble in which you don’t have 10 links or to look for something different. You only have one answer and it is always the same answer. People trust Google, if you look at the latest studies, something from Google is seen as good 90 % of the time . So if Google says that there is only one answer to a question, people are going to trust it. We have to fear the bubble here cause it is not about how to rank or how to improve your CTR, it is not that, it’s only about one position. We should be afraid about what is going to happen in the next steps. For example, when that feature comes from a PPC campaign, I think that moving towards that part, that non-screen world, speaking to the smartphone, to the tablet, to the Google home Alexa, we should know that we are going to have problems about how to deal with that. It is no more 10 links, it is only one link. Well, I’m afraid, I’m preparing the rest around. No, I am joking! It is not going to be so easy to reach on the investment in our period, right now we should be profitable. But I don’t know how we can become profitable in that scenario, that part. So it is something that we really have to think about, we have to be profitable in that part too. If it is going to be 20 % of all searches, the number of mobile searches is growing up, right now there are more researches than text researches, we have to be prepared to improved that part.
Looking in the future, the mobile-first index is coming soon. Have you already seen the transition with some of your clients? What do you recommend to smoothly make the shift?
I don’t know what is going to happen. I mean it is a mobile search world. Right now, it is clear that you can’t hide content on the desktop searches. Maybe, people using Oncrawl remember when we used to put content on desktop, for example on the comments behind some tabs. Right now, this content is duplicated in the desktop searches. Google says that it is going to be a lot in mobile searches but we haven’t touched this part so we don’t really know what is going to happen when mobile first will appear. We are going to see what happens in that part because it is not really easy to understand how Google is going to deal with drop down menus, content in tabs…etc. What we are doing is trying to improve the PPO, to make the website faster. It is not about AMP, it is about making websites better, lighter and looking to improve the user experience. I think SEOs should work so closely with the UX team. We have to do this thing even better. So how are we going to do? I prefer to do that part instead of making big changes on the architecture for example. We should be wondering what is going on about speed, PPO, user experience.
Is there any best practice that is for you essential to optimize a website in 2018?
We are working right now with big ecommerce sites and we are trying to improve how users and Google find the important parts of your website. If you are an ecommerce website, everything should be clear in the first screen. Prices, buttons, titles, photos and the resume of the product need to be clear. If we have that, if you are always clear in that part, users will find what they are looking for. Another thing that we are trying to improve is how to deal with transactional informations and with all the informations in general. It is not the same to get a good position for informational search queries or transactional search queries. For example, if a user is only looking for a simple information, he will get a different page than the user who has the intention to make a purchase. These informations are different and can be translate in two different pages of your website. And maybe that trying to answer directly to the user is what we should now look for in our websites. It is not something new that Google wants people to make good things with search engines. But right now it is so clear that you have to properly answer the user and in a fast and good way.
There is the public face we all know, but what is Fernando doing on his free time?
I tried to spend as much time as I can with my kids. They are used to see me going out and make conferences in Madrid, Paris, Roumany – it doesn’t matter where. When I am at home, I tried to be here when they come back from school, play with them, build some lego. I love to go for a walk in Cadix, it is a small town, and I also love going out or rest, in Cadix. And sometimes, I even go to see football matches here in Madrid or in Cadix. Madrid is a 3rd division and Cadix is a 2nd division but I Iove going to some football matches. It is something that I need to not become mad.
Finally, I would like to know how it feels to be one of our ambassador? And what’s your most favorite Oncrawl feature?
I love how Oncrawl can bring you closer to the information. It can give you a big picture about how is your site. If you do proper segmentation on your website, you can see how Google is going through your site. I’m using it right now with big news sites, and something that has surprised me about Oncrawl is that I was wondering how I could put figures into what I think as a SEO. Something is going on the website, I know that some parts of the website are weak and ok let’s see. I’m not worried anymore because, now I can have Oncrawl to show me a clear picture that says “Hey look, that is what is going on your website. This is what Google is doing on your website. And as you see, it is going around shitty parts of your website, it is crawling news from 2014 and this is not what you want to”. What we want is to improve our position right now, we need to improve that part and now we have figures, we have numbers and this is one of the best part of Oncrawl. If SEOs are wondering how Google behaves on their websites, now they got the answer Now, you can give figures to your customers, even if they don’t know about SEO, so that they can understand what’s going on. If you show them numbers, you got it.
Thank you Fernando for your time and your answers. It was very interesting to have you with us and to introduce you to our community. Thank you for joining us, we hope to see you soon!
