Richard Nazarewicz
Technical SEO Manager - The Wall Street Journal
Coming from small and mid-sized companies, Richard joined the Wall Street Journal in 2018 to lead their SEO. Here is his recipe for success in a corporate environment.
About Richard
Richard has worked for over 15 years in technology and digital spaces, spanning various disciplines from technical consulting for high-end enterprise servers for Hewlett Packard/Compaq to a web developer specialising in SEO in the early days. He co-founded a Spanish-based digital agency focusing on the design and development of Websites, Web apps, and SEO. Today, he is the Technical SEO Manager for the Wall Street Journal.
The Survivalist’s Guide To The Enterprise SEO Jungle
“… Beyond the online world, try to attend at least one to two of the big SEO conferences every year. It doesn’t matter whether it is BrightonSEO, Pubcon, or Advanced Search Summit. Get out there and find out what people are talking about, so you are not caught out either. (This is also an excellent opportunity to practice your networking.) You might be asked to come back as a speaker next time, so always have a deck ready to show off your area of expertise.”
Q&A with Richard Nazarewicz
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
If you have an idea or concept you believe in, stick with it, and see it through. Don’t allow people to sway you off track or negative comments to influence you or you won’t succeed. This is what a well-known record producer friend once explained when I asked him how he managed to control the studio with so many big egos and so many hits to their names.
What one tip would you give someone who would like to get into SEO as a career?
Google publishes a lot of information about best practices that change ongoing so subscribe to their Webmaster blog and updates. Make a start by reading over Google’s SEO starter guide, and their support pages for Web, Search, News, AMP, Coding, Tools, etc. Subscribe to Google’s Youtube channel for Webmasters and Google Search News. Use Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, and network, follow the right influencers in SEO. I have listed many in my chapter on people to follow. And if you are very new get hold of a copy of one of those “All-in-one” used to be called SEO for Dummies books they always cover the basics and get updated. Also make sure you keep up with Barry Schwartz whos weekly sometimes daily updates on his site, newsletter podcast, and vlogs and always packed full of information if you have the time. In fact, podcasts are generally a good way to get a regular update on whats going on in SEO.
What is your favourite SEO / marketing related resource or book? (other than Mastering In-House SEO of course!)
Other than “Mastering In-House SEO” not that much really!!! I would still read up on what Matt Cutts has written over the years, SEMrush has a great blog, Eric Enge is pretty much an authority who has published. Others include Moz, Yoast, Search Engine Journal, Screaming Frog, AHrefs, and too many more to mention! And if you really want to get into the weeds I love reading Bill Slawski’s publications based on patents that Google and others submit, which he then interprets into plain (as you can get from a patent) English.
How do you relax when you aren’t working?
Drink wine, mostly Rioja, after many years of living in Spain or a very dry Martini if I am in the mood. I learned to love food and wine, especially seafood and shellfish, and I really love to cook, mostly Mediterranean food, but also Polish dishes my grandparents taught me back in the day. Also, my two little girls bring me so much joy, it’s a great escape just to hang out with them, play games, tennis, swim, build lego, and watch movies.
What was your first ever job?
My very first job was a Saturday job in a local Music Store in Reading, Berkshire, called Hickies Music, selling guitars and basses. Playing and writing music was my hobby and life for many years. But my first real job was an apprenticeship for Cable & Wireless Communications as a switch operations engineer, which basically means telecommunications specializing in the emerging Mobile Phone systems back then, and I also worked on a Telex switch if anyone knows what that is!
How did you get into SEO?
As soon as I moved from back-end server-side consulting to working on front-end projects with the emerging web market, after the dot.com boom, I was fascinated with how this simple language “HTML” was suddenly so important and the backbone to a website! As the years went on I became a developer in many different projects and eventually started my own agency where I oversaw everything digital. By this time Google was big, a little raw, but it was innovating and it was important to appear in what we now know as SERPS. The rest is history...
What is your favourite SEO task to do?
I love auditing... the discovery of problems, articulating your findings and then getting any issues resolved is so fulfilling for me. And finding new ways to build out reports on data from audits and analytics in a collaborative, digestible manner is something I love and continually work on and improve.
What inspired you to choose the topic of your chapter? Why is it important to you?
After many years in Consulting and Development front-end and back-end and having worked in both the corporate world, self-employed and in agencies I thought it would be a good idea to share my experience for SEOs thinking of moving into the “in-house” world, what to expect and how to best navigate this new world.