SEOblog Interview: San Diego SEO Expert John Lincoln from Ignite Visibility

We’re excited to have interviewed San Diego SEO expert John Lincoln from Ignite Visibility for the next installment of our Featured SEO Expert Series!

Ignite Visibility is one of SEOblog’s Top SEO companies in San Diego.

John Lincoln (MBA) is CEO of Ignite Visibility (an Inc. 5000 company the last four years) and a highly sought-after digital marketing strategist, industry speaker and he is the winner of the coveted Search Engine Land “Search Marketer of the Year” award.

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

“San Diego is an amazing place to live and we have a very vibrant marketing community. We are not as big as LA when it comes to business, but there are still some notable businesses here. We have no shortage of talent, as many people come here to live from other areas. The most unique thing, is that it’s such a big city but with a very tight and small group of digital marketers who all know each other. I absolutely love this about the San Diego SEO community. Its a really good group of professional people who are willing to help each other. Everyone treats each other with respect, even if they are in other agencies or companies.”

How does your San Diego SEO agency stand out in a crowded market?

“We stand out because we are relentless about analytics, measurement, innovation and creating new methodologies. At this point, we offer much more than SEO. We have 90 full time employees and offer paid media, SEO, email, social media, CRO, creative, website development and design and Amazon services. Our goal as a company is to hit weekly, monthly and quarterly goals through digital marketing strategies, methodologies and tactics. Most of the time, that includes SEO which is a very big department for us and we have some amazing innovation there. We have systems for getting keywords ranked #1, for local SEO and international SEO, website transfers, linking, you name it. These systems really help guide the success. We update all our methodologies every six months and this keeps us ahead of the curve.”

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

“We were a finalist for local SEO campaign of the year for our work with Fix Auto USA. They are an amazing six year client and their team and our team have performed well together. You can see in SEMrush they are page one for “collision repair near me,” ranking for 400+ terms in top three positions and have amazing local rankings. We have clear dashboards for them and a multi-source paid media marketing mix that lets them scale new business by turning a dial. Just an amazing client and campaign. We are very good at local search engine marketing.”

What is the best advice you ever received in business?

“Someone once told me to find everyone who had the same customers I want, who was not a competitor and make it a 100 percent no-brainer to send those customers over to us. That is a great channel sales strategy and it works well. We have many partners who refer us work and we greatly appreciate them.”

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

“It is all about the customer and being 100 percent dedicated to customer success. You need to listen to them and give them what they need and a little more. Invest in your customers as much as you can. This will allow you to build accounts, goodwill and the client relationship. Now, we are a mid to premium market so we have a different customer type than high-volume low market, but either way, you need to be fanatical about customer success.”

Any predictions for the future of SEO?

“Page speed, website usability, creative and brand size are going become more important. I believe Google will be looking at more web usage signals and traffic signals than links and keywords. I am ecstatic about this and believe it will be great for our clients. You really need to build a brand, you need fantastic marketing and good product. You need a paid media and social media strategy that gets noticed. You need PR hits that actually send traffic. You need to map all the places where your customers are online and be present there.

“The future for SEO is bright, but the future is an integrated media mix. You cannot win with only SEO longterm. But it should be a channel you focus a great deal on and integrated with all your other marketing. That is what we have done — SEO, PR and content marketing drive all of our paid media, social media and even CRO in some cases. Its all one marketing campaign and it has to be integrated.”

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

“That is like saying the hammer is dying.

“Is the hammer dying? haha! No …

“But, there are 20 different kids of hammers, there are saws, there are screw drivers. There are so many tools out there. There used to be only SEO. Then came email and paid. Now there are near 100 different ways to build a business online, maybe more. I have dedicated my life to studying all the ways to accomplish business growth goals online. I always integrate SEO and often a growth plan can be SEO lead, but with paid media, funnels, Facebook groups, affiliate, email marketing … You name it! There are so many ways to get to the same end result.

“Bottom line: SEO is a very important part of the marketing mix. For most businesses, it drives 20 percent to 70 percent of sales. I think the future of SEO is bright and it will continue to be top channel. But you need to integrate it cross channel. For example, if you are getting 200,000 visitors a month to your blog like us, you better capture some emails and build a remarketing audience off it! Our blog has pop ups, email automation, drives YouTube subscriptions, people to our Facebook group and much more. It’s an entire marketing system.”

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

“You need a relationship with them, you need to get results and you need to be responsive. You need to be in it with them. This is not only digital marketing, this is life. It’s the best when you can enjoy the ride together.”

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.