Why did you decide to become a mentor?
Along my career there have been always friends and colleagues that told me I was good at explaining things and encouraged me to share my knowledge.
One turning point was when some of my clients, a marketer, told me that for the very first time as a marketer they actually could understand an SEO audit, the one I sent them. I thought, well, maybe my friends were right!
Earlier in the year, a very close colleague strongly recommended that I share my knowledge by mentoring others. He suggested me to join Mentorcruise, an online platform that connects mentors and mentees. After careful consideration, I decided to take his advice and registered as a mentor on Mentorcruise.
And here I am, ready to pay forward the guidance that helped me in my own career!
How did you get your career start?
My career in the digital marketing world started in 2006, when I created my first e-commerce website, with my wife as partner in crime. It was indeed the very first online wallpaper shop in Spain. We didn't know very much about e-commerce, digital marketing and let alone SEO. At that time I was fascinated by how customers know would find our site, and the developers let me know that they created a "landing page" for SEO.
Me being that curious, you can imagine that I wanted to know more, and back then, there were little resources about it (YouTube didn't exist), so I started experimenting. Tinkering and tweaking things on the website, stuffing keywords (yes, it was that easy back then), I started to get how SEO worked. I got my fair share of Google penalties, so I reckon we can agree that I learnt in a very scientific way :-D
After various e-commerce platforms, blogs, and other endeavours, in 2009 I felt ready to offer my SEO services to others.
In 2014 we decided to move to the UK and landed in Brighton, the Holly Land for SEO!
Until today :-)
What do mentees usually come to you for?
Usually mentees reach out to me to learn more about SEO. Some of them come because they see it's a skill they need to learn to grow their business, or because they have a blog and they want more visibility. Others, more experienced ones, come to me to learn more about strategies or about some technical intricacies.
All of them are welcome.
The good thing that I offer is that most of the knowledge I share comes from experience. Obviously there's been theory, but usually came after having experienced the issues (some times the hard way). SEO is an ever evolving discipline that requires constant learning about different concepts: technical, strategic and even psychological.
Having a mentor provides invaluable targeted guidance. This accelerates progress in your career or field of study. With their years of experience and expertise, mentors can guide you straight to the skills and knowledge critical for advancement. This prevents wasted time and effort going down wrong paths or reinventing the wheel.
In my experience, a good mentor crystallizes exactly what matters most in your pursuit. Their guidance is like a shortcut to the top.
What's been your favourite mentorship success story so far?
One of my most rewarding mentoring experiences has been working with another SEO who was struggling to improve rankings for his client's website. When he first contacted me, their site was buried on the second or third pages of search results - not ideal when you're trying to drive traffic to your site.
Over a series of mentoring sessions, I shared my SEO strategies to optimize on-page content and leverage internal linking. My mentee took these tactics and ran with them, updating website copy, finding internal links opportunities and working on the copy as well.
Within just one month, he excitedly messaged me that his client's website now ranked on the first page for several of their target keywords!
Through his diligent efforts and application of our mentoring lessons, they were finally gaining the visibility and traffic needed to grow their business.
Seeing my mentee achieve these results so quickly was incredibly rewarding. It reinforced that when you equip people with the right SEO knowledge, they can make massive improvements.
I love being a mentor because it allows me to empower others and see my strategies succeed. These stories keep me motivated to continue sharing my expertise through mentoring.
What are you getting out of being a mentor?
Being a mentor made me realise that I actually know more than I think I knew, and has boosted my confidence to go out of my comfort zone.
There's a before and after of being a mentor. It has helped me overcome my imposter syndrome. I know it will always be there, but not so present.
I've had to learn new skills, which have helped me improve my work as SEO manager.
I congratulate my colleagues that encouraged me to take this step.
It also gives me the opportunity to meet people around the world and see the positive impact of sharing my knowledge has in their lives.
I'm always surprised to see how unknown the world of SEO is. It's strange, because we use Search Engines (Google mainly) every day, more and more business depend on being found on them. Yet, SEO remains one of the most overlooked channels in Marketing.