Today we have selected Rod Wills to take his Interview. He is the CEO, Co-Owner, and Founder of the SEO cycle.
First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times?
At Web Prosperity and SEO cycle, we operate a disseminated office. As this has been our normal mode of operation before the pandemic, isolating and working from home has been relatively easy for us individually.
Logistically, navigating the challenges presented by the pandemic has not been too difficult compared with many other businesses; however, we do have workers located around the globe. This has meant dealing with varying levels of lockdown stages.
We have also had a few international workers who have been personally impacted by COVID-19, which is naturally a concern for us on a human level. We have been required to alter some of our existing arrangements from a managerial perspective to accommodate these fluid circumstances.
Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company.
With a background in digital marketing and IT dating to 2000 (at which point I completely changed my career direction from the health and medical sector), Web Prosperity and SEOcycle were founded in late 2012.
This resulted from seeing a need for reliable and affordable SEO and web design options for small businesses. Too many existing providers take a cookie-cutter approach to SEO and insist on lock-in contracts, which promised much but delivered little in real customer-focused service and were not suitable for smaller clients with budget constraints.
How does your company innovate?
SEOcycle provides cost-effective, individualized SEO campaigns to suit our clients’ business, brand, goals, and budget. We work to understand our clients in-depth, and we aim to collaborate with them to work as part of their team – not just for it.
We are a 100% Australian-owned business, and our front-end services and management are located in Sydney, NSW. We have an international, scalable worker base (located in North America, Southeast Asia, and Europe), enabling us to adjust our approach quickly as Google’s (and other search engines) requirements change.
How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your business, and how are you coping?
We saw a significant initial drop-off of clients as lockdown progressed in March/April 2020. This was not unexpected, as many small to medium businesses were susceptible in the early stages of the pandemic.
In the months since we have built back, and we have now surpassed our core pre-pandemic levels. This is mainly because our clients understand that we are a value-added component of their business. Affordable, results-driven SEO is an important aspect of navigating through the pandemic’s challenges.
Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned?
We jumped early in the pandemic and moved all workers to work-from-home arrangements to negate worker impact from the pandemic. We have managed to keep all workforce levels actively employed throughout the process. It’s important to take a proactive approach to challenges, adapting as necessary, and this is what we have done.
What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis?
We were already set up for remote working, so not much changed for us on a day-to-day basis. We did add increased worker flexibility to our workforce to account for any sudden changes the pandemic may cause.
Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game?
Our primary competitors are larger agency-type companies. Many digital marketing agencies offer “SEO” but do not have specific, professional SEO experts for both onsite and offsite SEO. We do both, and our service is complete and comprehensive. At SEO cycle, we offer value for money services and a personalized level of service, which the bigger companies either can’t or won’t provide.
Your final thoughts
SEO is more important than ever in the post-COVID marketplace, where more consumers globally seek solutions online. SEOcycle provides search engine optimization, web design and development, content writing and ghost blogging services, and social media management for SEO. We specifically design our websites with SEO processes and Google algorithms in mind.
We are committed to offering the proven SEO services that our clients expect, with the key point of difference that we understand our clients’ needs and create bespoke campaigns to suit their brand, business, and budget and help them achieve their goals online. Our key target clientele is small to medium-sized businesses (including sole traders), and we work with clients throughout Australia and internationally.
- Spokesperson: Rod Wills – CEO, Co-Owner, and Founder
- Company: Web Prosperity & SEOcycle
- Website: www.seocycle.com.au