John Rampton

Best known as an Entrepreneur and Connector, John Rampton was recently named #3 on Top 50 Online Influencers in the World by Entrepreneur Magazine as well as a blogging expert by Forbes. Awarded Top 10 Most Influential PPC Experts in the World for the past 3 years. He currently advises several companies in the Bay Area.

Speaker Interview
UnGagged Las Vegas 2015:

Who are you and what do you do?

I’m John Rampton. I’m the founder of due.com, we’re an online invoicing company.

What have you enjoyed most about UnGagged?

What I’ve enjoyed most about UnGagged is probably the speakers. Great lineup of speakers, very, very influential people, and you actually learn new things. I find I go to lots of conferences, and you don’t learn anything, and I’ve actually learned a lot here.

What have been some of your best conversations and who have you been speaking to?

Some of my best conversations is primarily around people. I mean, Marty from AimClear was a really good conversation, we sat and talked about Facebook ads and where the future is going. We had another conversation about the future of mobile; great conversation where I was able to learn a lot about something I had no clue about, it’s pretty cool.

You go to like 30 conferences a year, how does this rate compared to the others?

Oh, definitely up there. It’s awesome, a great conference, Again, it’s back to you really, really meet a lot of people that I wouldn’t normally meet, and you can learn from them. You’re in an unfiltered marketplace, setting, where people talk openly and you know you can really learn.

UnGagged London 2015:

Please introduce yourself and tell us, why UnGagged?

Hi, I’m John Rampion, I’m speaking at Ungagged 2015 in London. I will be speaking about how to get press and you can come see me. The reason why you should really come see me is because I’ll give you insider tips and tricks on how to really get press. Since I am press, it really helps.

What are your top tips and priority actions for overcoming issues associated with any big Google algorithm roll outs?

So, Google is always changing, and therefore we must adapt. But truly, don’t focus 100% of your efforts on organic traffic. I mean if you really want to do that, know that it might go away; because they’re a company and they have to make money. So, focus on referral traffic, email traffic, all different forms of traffic. Additional things you can do, is really focus on amazing content. Put up content for your users; not for Google, not for your mum, not for this, put up content for your customers and really have them in mnd. Write content that you know they love, and that’ll never go away.

How can businesses with smaller budgets and resource best respond to big updates?

The best way for small businesses, small business owners to, you know stay up, is again, going back to the content. Just putting together amazing content, putting together amazing resources for all their customers to see. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big company, a small company; if you’re putting together amazing resources online, that’s how you stay ahead of it.

Are you aware of any gamechanger developments on the horizon that in-house or consultant SEOs should be aware of?

First of all, for SEO’s there are so many tools out there that helps you stay ahead of the game and really know what’s going on. One that I would talk about specifically is Searchmetrics. They’re doing amazing stuff with content, I mean I go scope out all my competition, see what posts are doing the best. Write them better, do a better job, do better, and they’ll rank better. So I mean, using tools to your advantage will really help you out. I mean that will help you stay ahead of the game.

In your niche or sector, what’s the most annoying SEO misconception? Please feel free to set things straight!

So the most annoying misconception; first of all, keyword stuffing. I see so many posts where they have keywords just over and over and over; and there’s no need for it. Write your content for people, not for search engines because if people read it and they get annoyed, they’re never going to come back to you. I think everybody is pretty much smart enough, including Google, that if they see that, they’re not going to push traffic toward you. That’s probably the biggest misconception. One that I see people making all the time as well, is just putting things together really, really quick, and sloppy. Throwing them up and thinking that because they did something, they should be rewarded for it. That’s not the case. Put quality work up. One piece of content that is amazing, is better than a thousand pieces of not quality.

Current favourite SEO tool or platform? Or can you us the insider track on any sexy SEO related platforms, tools or developments coming soon?

One tool or platform, there’s a couple of different tools out there that I use. Again, Searchmetrics is a really great one, I use that literally on a daily basis; mainly for competition. I don’t use it for myself, like seeing what I’m doing bad, I already know what I’m doing bad, so you know. But seeing what the competition is bad, and really fix it and exploit it. Another one, Market Brew is a really cool one that I’ve used, that not many people know about. They tell you, here’s number 1 in Google ranking, here’s number 2, 3 and 4; and how far apart they are, and exactly what to do to be number 1. Basically, decripts what these guys are doing and how to get there. Tons of other good ones, Serps is another good one, Ahrefs, SEMrush, I mean all of them are pretty good, and if you sue several of them; I recommend using several different tools because it gives you a really good view of the landscape.