At Sitebulb, our tool scales with you. Whether you’re doing SEO for freelance clients, a small business, large website brand, or agency, we support SEOs at all stages of their career. And we want to shine a spotlight on some of the superb SEOs that are out there. Some you may have heard of, and some perhaps not… not yet anyway!
Today, we speak to Liv Day, SEO Lead at Digitaloft, who spoke at Sheffield DM this month about E-E-A-T.
To get started, briefly give us an intro to you:
I’m Liv - SEO Lead at Digitaloft. I’ve been with the amazing Digitaloft team for just over a year, before which I headed up an agency that provided SEO and Digital PR services to start-up businesses. So from tiny businesses (some who didn’t even have a website before I started working with them) all the way up to household names - I’ve pretty much seen it all!
SEOs have varied backgrounds, in PR, web development, marketing, content and more. How did you get into SEO?
My background is mostly in content. I started off my career working in-house as a copywriter at an educational publisher. This has given me the keenest eye for detail and a love of getting stuck into each and every level of a content strategy. Going way back to university, I studied Linguistics, which had a lot of modules focused on machine learning and generative grammar. It’s definitely come in handy when diving into exactly how Google processes language and takes meaning from text, and gave me a bit of a headstart in the ChatGPT revolution!
What do you like most about the work you do?
I love chatting to clients - I have learnt SO much from the people that I’ve worked with. I’m still in touch with some of the start-up founders I’ve worked with and will always keep cheering them on from the sidelines. I remember a client emailing me after getting a BBC link (and radio interview!) the most heartfelt message (mostly in caps as he was so excited!) about how much it meant to him. Aside from that, I love being part of an industry that facilitates my love of learning - you can never get complacent in SEO and think you know it all. No one knows absolutely everything, even if you’ve been in the industry 20+ years. The nature of Google and the people in the industry will always encourage me to keep growing, which I think is an amazing thing.
What do you like least about your work? – Be honest!
When (sometimes) things just don’t work! I love diving into an SEO mystery, but get SO frustrated when things simply don’t work, often defying all logic. Google is an absolute law unto itself and doesn’t owe us anything - and there are sometimes SEO mysteries that leave us scratching our heads. It’s equal parts frustrating and rewarding (when I eventually figure it out), but SEO has given me a fair few headaches over the years.
Oh… and GA4.
What are you working on right now – or what have you just finished – that has been exciting/challenging?
I’m currently working on some big changes for our SEO department at Digitaloft. I want to flip the way we approach technical SEO audits on its head, revamp our reporting, and bring our Digital PR team much, much closer to SEO. It’s a massive project, but I’ve already had so much fab input from my team and I can’t wait to see what success the department is showing in 6 months time.
What sort of SEO topics, issues, and techniques are you obsessing over right now?
I’m obsessing over reporting right now. Traditionally, agencies spend a lot of time on reporting - often about things that don’t really matter to clients. I’ve had some really open conversations with clients about what metrics actually matter to them and I’m currently looking at new reporting templates that reflect this, while automating as much as I can - minimizing effort to my team and freeing up time to really get stuck into the nitty gritty of SEO.
What do you think we should be talking about more as a community?
The amount of SEOs with crippling imposter syndrome. SEO is such a large field and it’s impossible to know everything. I’ve come away from some in-depth technical SEO talks thinking “wow I thought I was pretty good at tech SEO, but maybe not!” Comparing yourself to others is exhausting - that person who is a tech SEO pro might not be able to write an article to save their life, or your colleague who writes every piece of content perfectly might not have a knack for reporting. Everyone has their challenges - it’s just a matter of owning what you’re great at and learning the rest as you go.
What are your go-to SEO tools, and what do you use them for?
If I had to use just one SEO tool, it would be Semrush. But I’m also a big fan of getting input for strategies from every possible angle. When I put together a content strategy, I’m diving into a brand’s social media comments, their reviews, chatting to customer service teams, looking at Google Trends, alsoasked.com - you name it, I’ll be looking at it. Every tool or technique has some unique insight to provide.
What’s your top tip for superb SEO?
Do something that is *actually* going to make a difference to your site every day. In SEO, it’s easy to go round and round in circles talking about why a site has seen drops or talking about a vague strategy, without anything actually getting done. The first hour of every day is my “power hour” - I go onto a client site and spend an hour making internal linking improvements, fixing broken backlinks, picking out one page that needs improving etc. It’s something I’ve got my whole team onto lately, and it’s making a real difference.
Are you an SEO with a passion or project to share? Get in touch with us about writing an article or doing a Q&A.
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Liv is an SEO Lead with experiences spanning both agency and in-house environments - across content, SEO, digital PR, and wider digital marketing (but don't talk to her about her PPC days!) Beginning her career working with start-up businesses looking to kick off their organic strategies, Liv has since moved onto larger businesses and household names in more recent years. She regularly applies her educational background in linguistics and psychology to the world of marketing and SEO, looking to gain as much insight as possible into how people search and how this is evolving.
