Antonis Konstantinidis
Head of SEO @EFEnglishLive
In a pre-penguin world everyone thought that achieving a number one position in rankings would come with the usual grey-hat ranking techniques that everyone else used. But Antonis needed to convince everyone in the company that he was working on to not follow the crowd - he saw the Penguin's flipper-writing on the wall. Here's how he did it.
About Antonis
Helping Betfair’s Greek blog attract more traffic was Antonis’ introduction to the world of SEO. Since then, he has worked primarily in SEO leadership roles throughout Europe and the UK. Antonis currently works for EF English Live as their Head of SEO and Content Marketing.
The Penguin Prognosticator: Going Against The Crowd
“…In SEO, staying well-informed comes with the job. Whether you read blogs, follow key players on social media or watch YouTube videos is less important than who you get your information from. Choose the right people and you get plenty of clues of what is coming. If I had to recommend one person, Bill Slawski would be at the top of the list.”
Q&A with Antonis Konstantinidis
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
I think back when I was in PokerStars, some colleague told me to don't listen to anyone but test everything. It was the best thing that i have ever heard. Unfortunately there are many “seo experts” in our industry that claim to know SEO but in essence they just recycle same old articles.
Just because some say that a technique worked for them, doesn't necessarily means it will work for you. SEO is so fluid which makes it special but frustrating in the same time. You need to be open to other views but essentially you need to test your tactics (maybe to your own websites) and see what works best for that website in that given time.
What one tip would you give someone who would like to get into SEO as a career?
I think the best tip that i could give is to make 3-4 of your own websites and try to rank them as high as possible. Use any technique that you like, white hat, blue hat, black hat and see what you can achieve. In an industry where it is ever changing, having experience for ranking your own website and being able to talk about it is the best thing you can add on your cv. It doesnt matter whether you get 100 or 1000000 unique visitors per month, but being able to talk about how you done it is the best start you can have as an SEO.
Also the more times you have failed and penalised your website, the better it is. As know you really now what are the limits in Google’s algorithm.
How do you relax when you aren’t working?
I wouldn’t say i am relaxing, but I do like to train Brazilian jiu jitsu every week, or as much as my son lets me to. I think that and trying to teach my 17 months son nowadays on how to use his new baby skateboard are the most relaxing things :)
What was your first ever job?
A waiter in a beer restaurant back in Greece. It lasted for a year and it was really mind opening. When i came in UK, after my Masters degree i started working in customer service for Betfair.
How did you get into SEO?
In Betfair, after one point i started working in the greek marketing department and i was responsible for updating and maintaining the greek blog of our market. Eventually only with good content and some internal links (as i found out later on) the blog became the most successful in the company for all the international markets.
Naturally, i started wondering why that happened and i found out about SEO... What is your favourite SEO task to do? Monitoring rankings. Its like the stockmarket, it can be really painful but still my favorite moment for some reason..
What inspired you to choose the topic of your chapter? Why is it important to you?
I think Link building is still an important aspect of SEO that many are afraid to talk about it. Just because you build links doesn’t mean you are doing something bad or you are against Google. In fact they still want and links as long as they are build correctly. For me its one of the areas that i have experience and lots of stories to share about but also i do find it important to educate new SEO’s about it.
What is your favourite SEO / marketing related resource or book? (other than Mastering In-House SEO of course!)
I think twitter can be really entertaining and informative for an SEO, following the likes of Bill Slawski and Glenn Gabe has helped me to stay up to date and keep learning new things.