SEOblog Interview: Minnesota SEO Expert Anders Rydholm from PrimeTime Web

We’re excited to have interviewed  Minnesota SEO expert Anders Rydholm from PrimeTime Web for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series!

PrimeTime Web is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO companies in Minnesota.

Anders Rydholm is the owner of PrimeTime Web. He has been practicing search engine optimization (SEO) and marketing for over a decade. Originally from Mankato, Minnesota, Anders founded PrimeTime Web in June 2020. PrimeTime Web specializes in SEO, advertising and web design.

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

“There are a lot of Minneapolis SEO agencies who claim to be the best. There is the challenge of the lack of professionalization in the industry in terms of institutes, certifications or standards to grant SEOs’ exclusive right to perform SEO work. This is also true for web design, marketing and advertising. Professionalization lends authority to competent agencies. Without it, the industry is susceptible to inroads from fly-by-night so-called ‘experts’. The challenge is exacerbated by the long-term nature of SEO results – inputs are a black box and outcomes can take months for clients to realize, allowing ‘gurus’ to fool clients for months on end before running off with their investment. In the absence of professionalism, reputable agencies should strive to assert expertise, credibility and prestige into a market where few filter-criteria exist to distinguish a professional agency from unprofessional competition.”

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

“We keep client performance confidential as per our privacy policy. We do provide case studies with client permission and we’re proud of our clients’ successes and noteworthy mentions. One of our clients’ blogs was featured on a Moz episode of Whiteboard Friday. Search results are also public and an agency should be able to rank itself and its clients for competitive keywords. An agency’s search results can speak volumes about the SEO performance a client can expect to return on their investment.”

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

“We specialize in hyper-local SEO and garner hundreds of Google reviews each year for our clients. Local SEO has also been a large part of our COVID-19 response strategy, providing a high amount of visibility and awareness regarding updates to store hours or company policies. Any business can request a free local SEO analysis on our website. We provide a free online SEO analysis and offer Google Maps Local SEO packages where we publish hundreds of business listings in local online directories. We also take a holistic approach to local SEO by building local- and niche-specific citations and links in the Minneapolis area to achieve the maximum effect.”

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

“I would say the most important quality in an agency is productivity. To me, productivity means turning the dial in a black and white or gray way. Actions speak louder than words and results speak for themselves. In my opinion, a truly great agency is defined by actions and results. We understand that reporting communicates value and that customer service should be baked into all aspects of any great agency, but according to our values, truly great agencies should be focused resolutely on client satisfaction and taking action that moves the needle to deliver results.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“I think current trends will accelerate toward a pay-to-play and winner-takes-all environment. Businesses in competitive markets would be well advised to be the top competitor in their space or find a less competitive niche. The middle-ranking businesses in any niche will continue to feel the squeeze, as more traffic is clicking on the first result and above or not clicking at all due to featured snippets and paid ads. The exclusivity of ranking number one will, in some cases, create more value from elevating the brand and signifying market dominance than the resultant value from the website traffic. Innovative content creators with blogs, podcasts and vlogs will continue to benefit from the aggregate of organic search traffic from long-tail keywords as audio transcription, voice search and latent semantic indexing continue to gain traction in the organic search market.”

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

“Ultimately that’s not true. SEO as we know it is changing, but the concept of SEO is vigorously alive and well today and will only continue to increase in demand. Traditional on-page SEO techniques of meta tags and keyword insertion will carry less weight as search algorithms become better at understanding and indexing on-page content. Practicing on-page SEO will come more naturally than ever before; influencers will find themselves intuitively performing better in search. Technical SEO will change as protocols for voice search, video search engines and virtual reality technologies emerge and develop. Off-site SEO signals will diversify as algorithms will be able to weight offline signals in addition to links and mentions as ranking factors. SEO is about finding a needle in a haystack. Big data is continuously adding depth and complexity to that haystack, which ultimately will provide more opportunities to practice SEO, whatever SEO may look like in years to come.”

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

“Keeping clients happy starts with putting client satisfaction first. The most important factor is knowing what satisfaction means to a client and keeping that a number-one priority. Satisfaction can mean different things to different clients. Many care about customer service and results; many also value rapport, goodwill, trust and loyalty. Know your values and be selective in partnering with clients whose values align with yours. We value mission objectives, and that can lead to an ‘agency knows best’ mentality that needs to be checked and kept under control. Keeping client satisfaction first and mission objectives a close second is a good strategy to keep clients happy.”

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.