Ric Rodriguez
SEO Consultant at Yext
A common feature of how SEO work gets done is in-house teams jostling for developer attention to get things done. Ric has managed to break the mold through a unique, far more collaborative process that leaves everyone better off.
About Ric
Ric Rodriguez is an experienced search marketing consultant with a history of working with internationally renowned brands. He currently works at Yext, a NYSE listed technology company, joining last year from iProspect, where he led a team driving organic search forward for clients that partnered with their sister media agency Carat. Prior to this, Ric held roles at well-known independent digital agencies, most notably within Croud and at Hearst's iCrossing. Ric has a genuine and infectious passion for marketing and technology and is a frequent author and speaker across well-known industry events and publications.
Collaboration and Coordination: An SEO Master List To Get More Done
“…We took the mass of data gathered and organised it into an itemised list that described, point by point, every single SEO task we could do. This ranged from massive, big picture projects to tiny fixes, like updating the internal links on a single page. In most cases, this ended up being a 500-600 point list.
This wasn’t a judgment on how little SEO had been done before (in most cases, the teams had already been carrying out great work), but a reflection on how much we had studied the site and the possibilities to improve.”
Q&A with Ric Rodriguez
What was your first ever job?
I used to work for a short time in my local museum, which was awesome; I’m hugely interested in classics - the ancient world, language and all the things that relate to it. At around 15 (I think!), I spent some time working behind the scenes at the Museum for Roman Verulamium - helping tour groups, setting up sessions, etc - but I was able to spend time with some of the artifacts found from the time, which was fascinating.
How did you get into SEO?
I finished uni and like most people didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life straight after; at the time, a friend of mine was setting up his own clothing label and needed my help to promote it - at the same time I’d been working on a number of social media projects (in the “golden age of organic Facebook”) and was interested in how you could influence the underlying systems in most platforms - I then met Neil Middlemas (who is also a co-author of this book) who opened my eyes to the fact that I could do this both for a living - and increase the difficulty. There rest is somewhat history - although, despite being better known for my work in semantic search, my first role in SEO was actually in Digital PR (which I did for nearly 3 years).
What is your favourite SEO task to do?
I like to solve problems - so for me, it’s the starting stage of any project. It’s working out what’s broken and why things are happening the way they are - and finding simple fixes that drive huge gains is incredibly satisfying. The first stage of the process I detailed in my chapter is entirely centred around this and it used to include day-long brainstorms with my team, where we’d all use our collective thought to solve difficult challenges - I’d fantastic to hear and see the creativity of others come to life!
What inspired you to choose the topic of your chapter? Why is it important to you?
Search is so broad and transient that finding a starting point - or building a twelve month plan that you can commit to is really hard. In fact, the breadth of the topic makes it really hard to prioritise too - we all feel we need to be doing everything to hit that “perfect” level. However, this is a utopian view of the world - and when you come to accept the things you can’t change, you can drive value through the things where you can make a difference. To me, the chapter is a framework to help people start thinking this way - to itemise all the things you want to change and prioritise or achieve them through collaboration, in a way that removes the daunting feeling of starting and maintaining any massive project. This has been hugely helpful to the work I’ve done throughout the years and I hope it helps others too!
What one tip would you give someone who would like to get into SEO as a career?
Ask questions and learn as much as you can from what’s out there; but also, don’t be afraid to form your own opinions - and for these to change as you find out more or run different projects. The community is incredibly open and collaborative - so don’t be afraid to reach out to people on the concepts or ideas you're stuck on.
What is your favourite SEO / marketing related resource or book? (other than Mastering In-House SEO of course!)
I have two - neither are marketing or SEO per se, but they fall into our ballpark. The first is Jeff Stibel’s “Breakpoint” - the book covers networks in nature and science and the impact of growth on them - with the web growing at an incredibly fast rate, it won’t be too long before we reach a breakpoint and will need to adapt to sustain it; how we will do this and what this will look like is something I’m currently focused on researching - but as a primer to network theory, this is a great starting point.
The other is Ben Horrowitz’s “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”, which is both a resource around how c-suite and company leaders think - and a first-hand account of the rise of Netscape and Loudcloud / Opsware - two important companies to the history of internet technology. It’s an intriguing story of pivots, difficult decisions and how the author overcame them - “What are we not doing?”, a quote from the book, has become an agenda point for many internal catch-ups and strategy sessions throughout my recent career.
How do you relax when you aren’t working?
More SEO, obviously?...I’m becoming a bit of a Youtube addict - I’m a classically trained musician that was born into a family of cooks and rock music, so there’s three channels I’m watching religiously - Finn Mckenty’s Punk Rock MBA is business-focused look at the rise of different metal music genres and the cultures around them; Adam Neely talks about the science and theory behind music; and Binging With Babish recreates the food from TV and Film - all three are hours of entertainment. I also recently bought Disney+, discovered Baby Yoda and Clone Wars, and that’s taken up more of my free time than I’d like to admit.