SEOblog Interview: Denver SEO Expert Courtney Miller from Fruition

We’re excited to have interviewed Denver SEO expert Courtney Miller from Fruition for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series!

Fruition is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO agencies in Denver.

Miller is Fruition’s director of digital marketing specializing in search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. An accomplished SEO expert, Miller has been working in the field since 2011.

Miller’s passion for SEO continues to grow because of the challenge, creativity and strategy it takes to successfully execute SEO strategies.

What would you say is unique and/or challenging about the Denver SEO industry?

“What is unique about the SEO community in Denver is the talent! In the last several years, Denver has become a home to many highly-educated and technically-savvy individuals. With this new level of talent, some Denver agencies are becoming known as top agencies in the country, where before, top agencies were mostly limited to New York or LA. 

“However, the Denver SEO industry comes with its own challenges as well. Local businesses see other websites ranking higher than them and they don’t know why. Unfortunately, it’s often because their site is so spammy. It can be  difficult to have conversations around why we won’t mimic spammy practices and we have to explain that we don’t play in that “gray hat” field. We care about our clients’ businesses and want them to succeed, so we take care not to run into any issues with Google.“

How does your agency stand out in a crowded market like Denver?

“Fruition is a full-service agency. We have in-house, full-time employees for nearly everything digital. We can provide design, development, marketing and even content services, which are usually outsourced by most SEO agencies. This allows us to create holistic, in-depth strategies that address every facet of our clients’ digital footprint.

“Because of our wide range of talent and commitment to crafting custom strategies for our clients, we’ve been recognized as a top agency in Denver by SEOblog.com and Clutch, to name a few. This recognition, as well as the testimonials from our clients, speak to the continuity and quality of the services we recommend and provide.”

Can you share a success story from a local SEO campaign centered around the Denver area?

“We have partnered with Denver-based Beauty Bar, a local beauty bar, for the last three years. The company, which offers a wealth of services, such as nails, massages and blowouts, came to us looking to expand their digital marketing efforts because they were not pleased with their existing agency. In the last three years, (comparing Q4 2019 to Q4 2016), we’ve seen a 128 percent increase in new users (organic only), which calculates to 7,281 people. We’ve also increased conversions by 34 percent. Per SEMrush, we have grown the company’s total organic keywords ranking on the first 10 pages of Google from 932 (in Dec.2016) to 5,817 (in Dec. 2019). Organic traffic sessions have also increased year over year, and we’re getting stronger and stronger results every year:

2017 vs. 2016: 16 percent increase
2018 vs. 2017: 32 percent increase
2019 vs 2018: 20 percent increase

Total (2019 vs. 2016): 84 percent increase

“Sure — numbers are great, but what have we been doing to achieve them? It comes down to developing both a strong content strategy and technical SEO focus. Since Fruition has experts in all marketing channels (social, email, PPC and SEO), our team can work together to create a holistic strategy across every specialization. By strategizing universal themes and messaging, we can create and implement a seamless digital strategy.”

What is the best advice you ever received in business?

“Put the people in the position they should be in. You may hire someone to do one job, but find out they have a wealth of skills for something else. If that happens, move them to the position that brings out their complete skill set. Not only does this help the employee, but it helps the business as a whole.

“Focus on the problem you solve, not the services or product you offer. Too often marketers want to talk about themselves and what they offer, when they should be looking at things from their customer’s perspective. Customers don’t care what you sell but what’s in it for them.“

What do you think is the most important quality that makes an agency truly great?

“The foundation of a great agency is a strong team. At Fruition, we spend a lot of time vetting candidates to ensure they have the talent required for their role and the ability to hit the ground running. At the same time, we heavily consider if candidates are the right fit for our culture, because we want our team members to share the same values and goals. We invest in our employees and help them grow and learn more by promoting cross-training and individual education as much as possible. I think this is why Fruition has become such a great agency – not only do we have amazing talent, but we also work together so well that we become a well-oiled machine built on trust, mutual respect, and enthusiasm.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“Google has made some pretty big changes this past year and we don’t expect them to stop. Just recently, Google’s made changes to the way the SERPs appear, made efforts to remove duplicate results for one domain on a search result and continued to tweak the ever changing featured snippets. To stay on top of SEO and organic search as a whole, we stay abreast of these changes and assess next steps to make sure our clients’ strategy never becomes outdated.”

What is your reaction when you hear that “SEO is dying”?

“People have been saying SEO is dead for 20 years, but SEO is still in its infancy. In 2020, SEO isn’t about trying to rank specific pages of a site in a specific spot in a search result. Instead, SEO is a complex suite of techniques used to get a site or a post in front of a consumer at the moment they are ready to purchase. Further, search engines aren’t limited to typing anymore. Voice search, assistants and other forms of search that don’t rely on a keyboard have only expanded the amount of work that companies need. In 2020, it’s become a very dynamic and complex dance to optimize a site for Google and Amazon. A business needs to be active in all things digital to stand a chance against their competitors.

“The predictive work in SEO is what will continue to drive growth in the industry. For example, automated site optimizations are still geared toward conversions and usability. Auto optimizations for search engines or decision engines are still in an early stage of development. Further, more predictive page generation and relationship building based on prior search history is reaching a point where we will begin to see positive returns in particular for industries like healthcare.”

What do you think is the most important contributor to keeping clients happy?

“Communication and clarity. SEO can be difficult, since you are working against a search engine that can suddenly decide to use different ranking factors that could drop your traffic. Whether it’s good or bad news, we’re are constantly communicating with our clients and clarifying the potential effects of any algorithm changes or updates to Being on top of any issues and providing solutions is the most important part of gaining and keeping trust with your clients.”

Interested in being considered as an SEOblog “Featured SEO Expert”? Reach out to our team at [email protected]! We’d love to hear from you and give you a high-traffic platform to share your SEO agency’s story and insights.