SEO Lecturer, Niko Samkharadze on His Profession, Experience, and Significant Projects
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing a website in search engines. It helps businesses occupy leading positions on users’ search pages, which plays an important role in a company’s success. Today, an SEO specialist is one of the highest-paid professions in the marketing field, which you can now master at Commschool. In this blog, I’ll introduce you to Niko Samkharadze, a leading specialist in the field who will lead the SEO course.
Niko has been working in digital marketing for 6 years. His career began at Alpaca, the first SEO-specialized agency in Georgia, where at different times he was a WordPress developer, SEO specialist, led SEO and development teams, and held the position of COO of the company. Niko’s portfolio includes 20+ projects in both local and global markets – in industries such as Adtech, iGaming, tourism, financial sector, E-commerce, healthcare, online media, and more. Since 2023, Niko has been working as an SEO specialist at Upgaming and as a freelance SEO specialist at the digital transformation agency Redberry.
Niko tells us about the path he took to his current career and what the daily life of an SEO specialist is like
Career Start
At that time, I had almost no work experience, but writing had been my main passion since childhood. That’s why I decided to try my luck as a copywriter in marketing. What fascinated me most about copywriting was that in a technically limited setting, you could convey a company’s or brand’s message to the audience with a small text in a way that would have a positive impact on them.
I was lucky and started working as a copywriter, which actually turned out to be the beginning of my career. This opened many other doors for me over the following years.
Path to Becoming an SEO Specialist
As I mentioned, copywriting was my first steps in my career. Over the years, I gained experience in web development, where I completed dozens of projects and learned SEO from very good mentors, and I remember how fascinated I was when I first realized how important, comprehensive, and interesting search engine optimization is.
In addition to the technical skills I acquired, communicating with numerous people, clients, and companies gave me such Soft Skills that are one of the most valuable acquisitions for any SEO specialist or marketer.
One of the biggest benefits of working as an SEO specialist is that you have to work with many different industries that are unknown to you at the time, and for the project to be successful, it's necessary for you to study the peculiarities of that industry, which ultimately gives you multifaceted knowledge.
Currently, I work at Upgaming, with a great team where we work on internal projects, their development, and optimization in search engines, where even after 6 years, I learn something new every day.
However, SEO is practically an inexhaustible topic, and if you stop learning and keeping up with trends, you’ll definitely fall behind. That’s why I’m now also learning programming in parallel, which will be an additional tool for me that I can then adapt to SEO processes.
What is a typical workday like for an SEO specialist?
My workday starts the night before when I plan the next day’s work. However, the morning actually starts with reviewing updated data of projects in Google Search Console. It’s a very pleasant feeling when you start each day by seeing the project’s progress. However, there are days when we encounter negative dynamics instead of positive, but this is also very interesting because at such times we note and investigate what the problem might be and improve processes bit by bit day by day.
On my way to work, I listen to Seth Godin’s podcast Akimbo, which has a format that arouses curiosity in people and pushes you to create a product/service that will ultimately be beneficial to people both in terms of profit and in general, to make the world a little better.
At work, I have two modes – one when there’s technical work to be done, at this time I use the Pomodoro technique to maximize time optimization and challenge myself to accomplish as much as possible during the day, and ultimately it has some game-like quality and looking at a green To-do list is very pleasant.
The second type of days are – when we have to develop a new strategy, overcome new challenges, and on such days I mainly discuss with the team what we can do, what options we have to make our site better and think of solutions beyond the box. It’s precisely thinking outside the box and creative approaches that can turn out to be a catalyst for the project’s success, and I especially love such days.
Successful Projects
My most successful and at the same time favorite project is the SEO optimization of the Georgia.travel website, which has fundamentally taken a special place in me for several reasons:
The website actually represents the main hub for foreigners or Georgians who want to learn more about Georgia and get any information about our country and culture. Therefore, it was a great honor to work on a national-scale project and contribute to the country’s popularization.
Also, the project was quite large-scale, during which I had to work jointly with 4 companies that were involved in the project with different profiles, and I had communication with many industry specialists from whom I learned a lot.
Also, due to the scale of the project, it was necessary to search for optimal solutions, properly distribute resources, and keep a finger on the pulse of all project processes, which turned out to be a very interesting experience.
In the end, the work paid off and the website currently has about a 1000% increase in terms of traffic and hundreds of thousands of people visit the website every month from any point in the world.
As for the foreign project, one of the most interesting projects is the one I’m currently working on with Lineate. The industry where Lineate operates is completely new to me and it’s a great pleasure to get to know a new field in depth and receive new challenges.
Recommendations:
To learn about news in the field, I actively use websites that are one of the most authoritative in the SEO field: Search Engine Journal and Search Engine Roundtable.
Also, I learn information in my browser’s personal Newsfeed (Google knows better what I want to read. Haha)
I also actively use Reddit and SEO-themed Subreddits, where I learn something new from real people working in the field, read interesting opinions on strategies, get acquainted with case studies, etc.
So, if you’re a beginner or experienced digital marketer and want to deepen your knowledge in SEO with the help of industry specialist lecturers, this course is for you. Join us at Commschool!
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