As part of a series of SEO Questions and guest posts lined up for SEO Begin, I have managed to harass bribe ask nicely via twitter a few people I have got to know throughout this great industry. Amazingly they all agreed. First up is Nichola Stott of The Media Flow.

Director Nichola Stott of The Media Flow

When you left Yahoo and started up The Media Flow in 2009 it must have been a scary to move from one of the big 3. How have you found your first full year (and a bit) running your own business?

It was indeed extremely scary, as I had a one year old baby and launched with no existing clients; but the first client soon came in (by referral) and after that it’s been something of a snowball. Secondly, I’d have to say that the best decision I ever made professionally was to enter the competition to find two new SEO-Chicks, which I won, with my entry “The End of the What is it You Actually Do? Question”.

Winning that competition and getting to know the SEO-Chicks opened so many doors and a whole world of exposure for me; plus I’ve made some lifelong friends in Lisa, Sarah, Julie and Judith. Of course it has been extremely hard work, particularly in the first six months but I now work 9 – 6 and hardly ever on the weekends and make sure that I prioritise my time with my son.

Although our SEO industry is still relatively young, I have seen the emergence of quite a few agencies over the past few years and the London and Manchester scenes seem to be leading the way in that direction, how much do you think a continued growth of agencies will (if at all) affect us as SMB`s?

Larger agencies with significant investment for marketing and staff will always have the advantage of perception from a potential client perspective. It might be relatively easy for those of us that know what we’re talking about to establish peer credibility, however being “SEO-famous” doesn’t count for anything outside the community, unless you’re bringing in the business. Medium to large-sized brands and organisations may naturally tend to shortlist agencies of the same size and market position. True ability and reputation counts for little here.

All SEO`s are sponges to shared knowledge, where in your experience and opinion is a great place to start for those new to the SEO industry looking to get a head start in the learning process?

I always have difficulty with this question, as I cut my teeth in search working for Yahoo! I launched my SEO business after four years as head of UK search partners, so it’s almost like I have to imagine “where would I have gone for the best knowledge, if I didn’t have that route to entry”? I guess I’d have to say SEOmoz has to be one of the most useful, comprehensive and accessible SEO resources around.

We briefly met at Peter Youngs MancSEO back in October 2010 where you attended as a speaker, along with Dom Hodgsons twice a year ThinkVisibility in Leeds what other must attend UK conferences should agency, freelance and in-house SEO`s be attending?

If you’re in the South of the country then I’d seriously recommend checking out Brighton SEO, organised by Kelvin Newman; and if budget will stretch then SES London and SMX Advanced are both superb.

Once more on conferences, we all know that if you can have at least one actionable takeaway it has been worth the ticket price. What has been the single most actionable shared information you have received (not including advice shared over beer)?

It’s really difficult to be able to pick a single most-actionable take-away as I’ve attended some great conferences and heard some fantastic speakers this past year. I guess I’d have to say it was some advice from Dave Naylor at last years’ London Affiliate Conference in a session about (essentially) the bad things people do to damage your site from an SEO perspective (negative SEO).

In particular Dave spoke about what to do if your site is duplicated by a competitor, outlining the various steps to resolve. As it happened, about a month afterwards we identified a duplicate of a clients site, through a regular spot-check and of course knew exactly what to do and following the process Dave had mentioned, the site was taken down by the host before we even got as far as a DMCA request via Google.

Everyday repetitive tasks can be a distraction whichever industry you work in, which tasks do you wish you could automate?

I’ve automated as much of my invoicing and reporting as possible already. Outside of that I don’t really tend to do any repetitive tasks.

Analysis of campaigns is at the bedrock of the continued success of our clients businesses. I have only ever bought Avinash Kaushiks book and use it as a reference point. Do you have any other recommended reading?

I’ve just started reading “Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Facebook, Twitter and Other Social Media” by Liana (Li) Evans. I’ve got to say that it’s so far a really good read with lots of great nuggets of information, extremely well written and organised; and is based on real substance. Li Evans is an online marketer/SEO of considerable experience and reputation, so this is definitely the social media book for professionals, (definitely not the get-started in social media, guru-type  positioning that many SEOs seem to be wary of.)

There still seems to be a little skepticism with regards to SEO from some developers and designers and I enjoyed the comments immensely on Sarah Carlings post. What would be the single answer you would give to our industries naysayers?

Jog on.

From Googles early days, they were a simple search engine for queries, they are now a billion dollar multi vertical with too many channels for one man to monitor. With regards to brand management what are the best free tools out there?

I honestly find Google Alerts extremely comprehensive and useful. Did you know that you can use advanced operators to configure your alerts? David Harry told me that sometime early last year and I’ve never looked back. In addition, Social Mention is worth a look at. Plus you can always work with media specific tools to monitor brand mention explicitly – such as configuring search columns in tweetdeck.

2011 for SEO is the year of ….. ?

PR/Social media as mainstream SEO practise.

Have a question for Nichola? Ask in the comments section below.