SEOblog Interview: Phoenix SEO Expert Zachary Colman from Creatitive

We’re excited to have interviewed Phoenix SEO expert Zachary Colman from Creatitive for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series!

Creatitive is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO companies in Phoenix. Colman offered us some insights into his inspiration and how he came to founding Creatitive.

“I’m extremely lucky to have found an avenue where I can use my combined sports and web background in one arena,” Colman said. “At Creatitive, we aid athletes in branding themselves, we show business owners how to increase revenue and we guide sports foundations to run highly successful events with custom crowdfunding platforms.

“In college, my interests branched and I found myself neck-deep in the fascinating world of design. That led to an amazing career as a professional designer and art director. I eventually attained certification in Magento front-end development and marketing strategy from Cornell, which gave me the ability to turn those designs into fully functional solutions.

“Back then, Creatitive was a pipe dream – and it stayed that way for quite some time. I realized over the years this recurring vision was actually attainable, so I set out to make it my career and reality. Creatitive is the culmination of my passion for the sports industry and my years of experience as a designer and developer. Since the early days, I’ve had the honor of working with NFL athletes like Calvin Pryor and Mike Kafka and helped businesses from online sports gear retailers to the Phoenix Suns.”

What would you say is unique and/or challenging about the sports industry and working in your niche?

“I think the biggest challenge is the amount of directions you can go. There is so many verticals within the sports industry, for example professional athletes sometimes want to open a gym, but a gym owner is not always a professional athlete. Having multiple verticals means we have to tailor our messaging accordingly for each. Though it has also given us an advantage, as we start to really feel the pain points of each vertical and what they are trying to achieve.”

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

“Well, besides focusing on the sports niche, we still take enterprise and local businesses that come to us through referral. I think where we stand out the most is our abilities as a full service agency. I am not saying focusing on one service is bad, it actually helps you target your audience better. But we have seen too many times, prospects using multiple agencies and communication and quality start to lag. We noticed that omni-channel marketing is the next big thing and to bring more quality, we provide a system of services that we have turned into a product. This way the client can come to us for everything including brand identity, web development/hosting, content marketing and online search (paid and organic) This way we have full control over bringing more value to the client.”

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

The clients we love are the ones that have the same passion as us. Those clients who want to grow and love to throw gasoline on the fire if something is working. We have a local client who has been on our BrandBuild (TM) package for almost three years now. They started with a website that had malware and only had 200 visitors a month and most of those visitors had no user intent (mostly spam) Over the last three years we have slowly moved them up in SEO services as well as hosting, while strategically lowering paid spend as their online presence grew organically. “Not to brag, but lets just say we are now in talks of them franchising as I set a strategy in place to get them to that spot for future locations. They went from that 200 or so sessions a month to around 900+ views a day with a combination of different SEO tactics all working together. It took about two years to reach this point, we had to work our way through previous mistakes and focus on user intent keywords so the client was getting leads well before it exploded to where it is today.

What is the best advice you ever received in business?

“I think the biggest mistake business owner make is they focus so much on getting clients day one, Gary Vee has said it multiple times and I think it actually goes hand-in-hand with business and SEO — Enjoy the Journey.”

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

Off of the question above — I think the agencies that make it don’t sell themselves short. I have been able to relate to most of my clients as I preach what I do. My agency was/is the testing ground for delivering great results to my clients. The agencies that I see have an understanding of quality, processes and results for their clients first and foremost, makes them great. This doesn’t mean giving a whole bunch of stuff upfront free, but making sure you are giving them results that grow their business. At the end of the day, the better you are with your clients the longer your retention rate will be.

“Also, I think being able to let clients go or know when its not a right fit. There is enough business out there for everyone, so being able to refer when its right.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“In the day of social media, I think that attention span has dropped tremendously. I think in the near future Google will start testing “story” based content in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Though I am kind of cheating on this one as Google just came out with a WordPress plugin for this. I predict they are testing this theory.”

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

“Haha, I think quite the opposite. I think we had the internet and before SEO and PPC really starting getting noticed social media came about. I think so many people in today’s world still don’t even know what SEO is.”

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

“COMMUNICATION! I think it’s that simple, I hear so many prospects talk about working with bad agencies in the past. The culprit is usually bad communication on both sides of the table. Just letting the client know what we are working on, or even our frustrations with SERP results, builds trust.”

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.