In the Spotlight: Becca on Branding and Online Visibility

1. What sparked your interest in SEO, and how has your journey shaped your approach to branding and online visibility?

“I’ve always really taken to both numbers and words, and I loved any way I could combine those different interests. At college, I studied Mathematics, Further Mathematics, English Language and Literature, and Psychology – leading to an agonising choice been the analytical half of my brain and the creative half when going to university,

I studied English Language and Literature at university and loved all the highly varied modules I studied. However, when I entered the world of work, I craved a career that combined my love of language and storytelling while still fuelling my logical and systematic side. Enter SEO.

I found the world of marketing, but my background in these commonly opposing fields led me to content writing, where I kept a close eye on the pieces’ performance. I was curious how content quality correlated with position in the SERPs (search engine results pages) and what other factors influenced this.

Before I knew it, I was knee-deep in learning all about on-page SEO, some technical SEO, and polishing up my copywriting skills. I’m hugely grateful to those who have supported my learning and continually pushed me to be the best version of myself.

This journey into the world of SEO has shaped my approach to branding and online visibility by instilling the importance of the person on the other side of the screen. It’s all well and good having content rank in Google’s top spot and metrically look great, but if it’s not crafted in a way that speaks to a brand’s audience and understands their needs, it won’t convert.”

 2. What’s one SEO myth you’d like to debunk, and why do you think it’s so commonly misunderstood?

“That wholly AI-written SEO content is a viable alternative to experienced SEO copywriting.

Sure, it takes mere seconds to ask an AI content assistant to produce a 1000-word blog on a particular topic, and you’ll end up with a coherent enough piece of writing. However, AI cannot truly understand a brand’s tone, values and drive. Nor can it understand your audience’s individual needs and pain points.

AI is an incredible tool to aid content writing, but for a consistent brand tone and voice, real people need to write for the real people consuming the content.”

3. Can you share a recent SEO project you worked on and what made it exciting or challenging?

“As part of a brand refresh for CEWB, I worked on their new site’s on-page SEO.

CEWB is a business offering training and support for schools on emotional well-being and mental health. Merging consulting services, education and health, this was an industry I hadn’t worked in before, making it an exciting challenge.

To conduct the keyword research thoroughly, it was essential to have a discovery call with the team at CEWB to truly understand the core values of their business, what drives them, and the setup of service offerings. After gaining a better insight into both the business and the industry, I completed keyword research for all core landing pages and provided metadata recommendations for all pages on the site.

Keeping the target audience in mind is essential with all SEO work, but it was perhaps even more important in the education and well-being space. As part of the SEO work, I optimised the copy created for the brand refresh to reflect the important information to the users, ensuring the pages were manageable.

It’s vital for us that any SEO work with Refined Marketing keeps the user, not just the search engine, at the heart of the project.”

4. What upcoming trends in SEO do you think businesses need to keep an eye on for the next year? Anything you’re particularly excited about?

“When it comes to SEO trends, the huge elephant in the room is artificial intelligence (AI) and its growing capabilities. While it’s easy to worry about how the SEO landscape will inevitably become more AI-heavy, I think it’s something to look forward to learning more about.

Generative AI is ever-evolving. How search engines pull content through to the overview — as well as how it is credited — is constantly being updated. Voice search is on the rise, and I think we’ll see even more people heading to TikTok as their default search engine over Google.”

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