The FCDC was at BrightonSEO in September, and we had an amazing conversation with Sarah Presch.
Sarah is an award-winning international SEO consultant with 10+ years of experience helping some of the world’s biggest brands grow their online presence internationally.
In this episode, Sarah discusses;
Name: Sarah Chaya Presch
What She Does: Digital Marketing Director at Dragon Metrics
Company: Dragon Metrics
Noteworthy: Sarah speaks over 10 languages and is the Co-Founder at Neurodivergents in SEO
Connect with Sarah
💡Transition from Waitress to SEO Expert
Sarah shares her journey from working as a waitress in her early teens to becoming an SEO expert. She highlighted how her first job experiences, even as a teenager, taught her valuable lessons about dealing with people and difficult customers.
💡Transition to a Career in Translation and Linguistics
After working multiple jobs in her late teens, Sarah took a career turn by becoming a carer for elderly people. Later, she intended to join the military as a linguist to pursue her passion for languages and translation. Her linguistic skills played a crucial role in her journey into international SEO, allowing her to understand and adapt content for different cultures and languages.
💡Her transition into SEO and Establishing an Agency
Sarah stumbled into the field of SEO when she was tasked with handling SEO for a translation agency’s website rebrand project. She gradually transitioned into SEO, set up her own agency with her husband, and later moved into various roles as an SEO professional, even working as an International SEO Director before landing at Dragon Metrics.
Importance of Language and Cultural Understanding in International SEO.
Sarah discusses how her multilingual skills and understanding of different cultures have been invaluable in her international SEO work. She discussed the nuances, cultural sensitivities, and the need for linguistic fluency when conducting SEO for different countries and regions.
Chima Mmeje 0:04
Day Two of Brighton SEO. It’s meet you. When did you join Dragon Metrics?
Sarah Chaya Presch 0:11
I’ve only been there for like three months. So
Chima Mmeje 0:14
I knew that was not where you were, we’ll get to dragon metrics eventually but let’s go all the way back. What was the first job you ever held?
Sarah Chaya Presch 0:22
First job I’ve ever held. I think that was like a waitress in a pub when I was like 14. Wow. Yeah.
Chima Mmeje 0:30
Okay. Why? How and what was it? Like?
Sarah Chaya Presch 0:36
Basically, my friend worked there. And my friend didn’t want to work every weekend. So she was like, well, you share the job with me. So I showed shared the job with her. And
Chima Mmeje 0:47
Wait you guys were splitting a salary. Hahahaha
Sarah Chaya Presch 0:48
Yeah So it’s pretty nice arrangement didn’t have to apply for the job or anything. I just, you know, turned up got some money. And that was it. And yeah, I liked it, actually. Yeah.
Chima Mmeje 1:03
How’s it working uniform? I’m sorry, boy, if you’re working in the pub at 14, I’m worried about men harassing you and things like that. Especially when you’re drunk.
Sarah Chaya Presch 1:11
I was kind of like a really small family pub in a tiny village. So like everybody, there was locals. And I didn’t have anything like that at all whatsoever. So I was really lucky.
Chima Mmeje 1:22
That’s nice. Nice. So did you learn anything about working with people from working in a pub at 14?
Sarah Chaya Presch 1:30
Yeah, people can be difficult.
Chima Mmeje 1:33
Explain.
Sarah Chaya Presch 1:37
People are like, like, people are people and sometimes it can be awkward and behave like spoiled brat. hopped on the plane over actually like this business lady in her late 50s had a full temper tantrum on the plane. Because she had a little handbag that was that big. And she wanted to put it in the overhead lockers. And it wouldn’t fit because it was a full plane. And she had a temper tantrum over that. People. So yeah, yeah, people.
Chima Mmeje 2:08
How long did you do the waitressing job for?
Sarah Chaya Presch 2:11
So I stayed there for just one summer. And then I worked in a couple of other places. So like, I worked in a Chinese restaurant for a couple of years. And in a little shop as well. selling newspapers, and selling
Chima Mmeje 2:28
newspapers. Let’s pause there like was, you know when, like I picture who sell newspaper I picture what we had back in Nigeria, like you carry a bunch of newspapers. And then you like sell it to people in traffic here and they’re just trying to get into buy a Newspaper
Sarah Chaya Presch 2:41
And then not quite. I don’t think I would have been good at that. Because I didn’t I wouldn’t approach people. But it was in a local news agents. So okay, yeah.
Chima Mmeje 2:52
Okay, so you’ve had all these jobs now, from when you were 14, you’ve done. You’ve waitressed as a pub, you’ve worked at a Chinese restaurant, you’ve worked as a news at the news agents. What else?
Sarah Chaya Presch 3:05
Oh, my gosh. So my last? Well, I don’t know if I can say my last job before I had a serious job. Because this was kind of a serious job was like a carer for old people. This was
Chima Mmeje 3:17
one of them. Were looking at jobs you did from 14 to maybe like 16 or so.
Sarah Chaya Presch 3:21
Okay, so yeah, that was yeah, that was that. Were
Chima Mmeje 3:26
you already making a lot of I’m gonna say, you know, a lot of money for us pay for this new year. That’s probably like a lot of money. What did you spend your money on? Um,
Sarah Chaya Presch 3:35
I had to pay for everything myself from that age, actually. So yeah, it kind of went to living how we’re doing stuff. You know,
Chima Mmeje 3:43
wow. You’re already paying for like, insulators and things like that. Wow. That’s interesting. Yeah. That is adults that is of adults in right there.
Sarah Chaya Presch 3:52
It was. Yeah. So I had to have the jobs in order to you know, survive. And if I wanted clothes and nice stuff, then, you know, I needed
Chima Mmeje 4:01
money to ask if you grew up poor or something like that, because I grew up poor. So that’s, I’m just curious.
Sarah Chaya Presch 4:06
Yeah. So no, but let’s just say family was quite dysfunctional. So I left home very young, and then was very poor
Chima Mmeje 4:16
you were industrious, and to like, have to make your money and look out for yourself. Amazing how you’ve turned out despite everything.That’s amazing. So, Where Where were you? Where were you in the world between the ages of 14 to 16.
Sarah Chaya Presch 4:30
Exactly. It was in the UK in Bournemouth.
Chima Mmeje 4:34
Bournemouth
Sarah Chaya Presch 4:34
Yep.
Chima Mmeje 4:35
Okay, Bournemouth. Oh Bournemouth is a small place. Okay. That’s nice. Yeah. And they have like a nice sandy beaches and everything.
Sarah Chaya Presch 4:42
Yeah, now it’s kind of like looking out and seeing the sea. It kind of reminds me a bit of that.
Chima Mmeje 4:47
That’s nice. That’s nice. All right. So now you’re 16 Have you gone to the university yet? At 16 Are you still in secondary school?
Sarah Chaya Presch 4:56
Yes, I was meant to be starting off my a level. but because of having to work full time in order to do everything I dropped out of my A levels, which I actually haven’t admitted to anyone yet so I hope people aren’t judgemental
Chima Mmeje 5:13
I don’t think anyone is judging you for dropping out of A-levels
Sarah Chaya Presch 5:16
of that. And also I found it really really tough because it was an extract utility and like being autistic and ADHD, I just couldn’t cope with it. So I by that time, I was working full time as a sandwich artist in subway.
Chima Mmeje 5:32
Is that what they call it? Sandwich Artist?
Chima Mmeje 5:34
what does this sandwich artists do?
Sarah Chaya Presch 5:37
makes pretty sandwiches I guess, haha
Chima Mmeje 5:41
a sandwich on camera just between us. Give me a good recipe for it.
Sarah Chaya Presch 5:45
Oh, God, I can still remember all of them. So like for example, like a subway melt. It’s two pieces of Turkey. Two pieces of ham and a piece of beef.
Chima Mmeje 5:53
Wow, you remember how to make it? Oh, yeah. Like any dresses on it’s
Sarah Chaya Presch 5:59
my personal favourites was always Southwest and mayonnaise. But yeah, loads of people had so many different things. That’s
Chima Mmeje 6:08
how you make yourself in melts. Everyone, you learned something new.
Sarah Chaya Presch 6:11
There you go. And two pieces of cheese, cheese and toasted
Chima Mmeje 6:17
cheese, two pieces of ham. Turkey and south and my central ranch my
Sarah Chaya Presch 6:25
southwest sauce and mayonnaise, Southwest
Chima Mmeje 6:27
sauce and mayonnaise. How to make the subway melt.
Sarah Chaya Presch 6:30
There you go there you go on fax, if I got that wrong, I’m sorry, Subway.
Chima Mmeje 6:36
Alright, now, wait, you worked at Subway after you dropped out
Sarah Chaya Presch 6:41
of school. I was working part time while I was at school. So I just kind of went full time when I dropped out.
Chima Mmeje 6:46
You did this job now from when you were 16 to when?
Sarah Chaya Presch 6:50
until I was about 17 and a half. What happens after that? So I applied to join the military as a translator because I always wanted to be a linguist. So I thought you know, free college, you know, free training, I would go and do that. So that’s kind of where my serious life I would say started.
Chima Mmeje 7:11
Like, you know, I’ll get into the good stuff. Someone who was ex service that makes you an ex servicemen, right?
Sarah Chaya Presch 7:18
Kind of Yeah, I got pregnant now and had to stop,
Chima Mmeje 7:23
but did you like fully enlist.
Sarah Chaya Presch 7:26
I did I signed all the papers started doing all the all the training and stuff and then basically it got pregnant. So I never got deployed or anything like that.
Chima Mmeje 7:37
But I have to ask, what was the regimen? Like was it like wake up at 5am in the morning, go for drills for launch? And work? What was that regimen? Like was it delivered to me like while we’re doing the training,
Sarah Chaya Presch 7:50
um, to be honest, like military stuff kind of was like an autistic person’s dream because it was like routine do this do that you always do what was happening. So like, for me, it was perfect for other people. I think they could have been like, right, there’s okay, this is a bit much.
Chima Mmeje 8:06
So what time did you wake up? I’m just saying to get an idea of what your routine was like?
Sarah Chaya Presch 8:10
Um, it really depended like I like sometimes we to get up early, especially like, yeah, no, it really depended on the day like it wasn’t as kind of like, like in the films where you’d get woken up and you’d have people screaming in your faces and stuff. Not Of course. Yeah, exactly. Not quite, not quite like that. But you did have a set routine and you did have to kind of you know you had when they would check and make sure that you know your skirt science correctly. And you polish your shoes. Stuff like that.
Chima Mmeje 8:46
Wow, was there anything right for you enjoyed during the training? Obviously ready for this crap. So that’s why I’m asking if you had like anything that you look forward to.
Sarah Chaya Presch 8:55
I actually found it quite fun, actually, in a weird way. Like I know. Yeah, no, this is where everyone’s gonna think that I’m a right weirdo. Because I’m like, training military. I kind of enjoyed like the exercises, you know, where you got to go in colour, like paint your face and all of that kind of stuff. But I always got told off because I like makeup. And I’m a bit sassy. And I’d always try and hide the fact that I was wearing makeup but they’d always catch me because like I’m very white. Like my eyebrows are white my eyelashes away. I’m like, I could blend into all white wall. And so they’d be like, be wearing mascara.
Chima Mmeje 9:39
Alright, so what? I’m just curious, what does a linguist do?
Sarah Chaya Presch 9:45
Um, so basically, I can’t talk too much about it.
Chima Mmeje 9:49
No, I mean, like in general
Sarah Chaya Presch 9:51
oh, like linguists in general. So kind of like translating that kind of thing.
Chima Mmeje 9:57
How many languages do you speak?
Sarah Chaya Presch 9:58
Oh God. Don’t even ask I’m really anxious at maths so like languages are my only saving grace listless them less less count them. Okay, so English obviously yeah, German, French, Czech Slovak used to be able to speak a bit of Russian I did actually learn Chinese, Japanese and Italian. And then just because you know, I’m a really, really, really bad Jew but I can pray in Hebrew, if that counts
Chima Mmeje 10:27
That’s 10 languages
Sarah Chaya Presch 10:29
and Yiddish, but that’s useless.
Chima Mmeje 10:30
I like, we need to take a moment to acknowledge that she can speak 10 languages that is a wow, that is insane that is that is next level polyglots. Right there. insane. That I have to obviously ask, if you’re able to speak this many languages, you must thrive at international SEO?
Sarah Chaya Presch 10:55
Oh, yeah, that’s probably, you know, the story, I’ll probably come to that. But that’s how I ended up in international SEO\
Chima Mmeje 11:03
be the polyglots. And how that helps you become a better international SEO. Alright, you’ve left the military because you’re pregnant. I want to dig into this because we talked about this during the last Brighton SEO, with one of our guests on what that looks like for women who in woman in workspace, being pregnant and having to take time off, and how that looks like when you come back. And it’s very scary experience. What did that look like for you after you get beds,
Sarah 11:29
I was kind of lucky. So I when I was 18, when I got pregnant, I was 19 When I gave birth. So for me in a way, it was kind of a bit of a blessing because people assumed that, you know, the little gap in work and everything was due to just me being young. They didn’t realise that actually, you know, I went away and had a baby and all that kind of stuff. And people can be a bit judgmental about that as well. So I don’t actually have maternity leave on my CV anywhere or anything plus, because I had to do some freelance work in the middle of it. So you know.
Chima Mmeje 12:05
Okay, so what do you do next after you after you have your baby? What career move did you make next?
Sarah Chaya Presch 12:11
Yeah, so I started working as a freelance translator. So by that time, I’d moved to the Czech Republic was living out there. So I was helping companies. Because I’ve always been integrating and stuff like that with, for example, translating from Czech to English, but marketing copy, that kind of thing. So run my own small business, doing creative English writing stuff.
Chima Mmeje 12:36
You move to you move to the Czech Republic. Why do you move to the Czech Republic at one I’m going to skip that one. Understand moving countries such a huge decision actually ended at such a young age. Why do you move to the Czech Republic? Why Czech Republic family? What family? You have family there?
Sarah Chaya Presch 12:52
Yes. And I have family in Poland as well.
Chima Mmeje 12:55
All right now, you Czech Republic you run your freelance business as a translator? How long do you do this?
Speaker 2 13:02
So I did that in till. So I have my son as a year and 23 months difference between my son and my daughter. So I did that until my son was born and then got a job in a translation agency. When I was eight, my son was about six months old. So 21 ish. Something like that.
Chima Mmeje 13:28
This is now we don’t have all these tools. Now. I feel like it’s just like dragging them out of the market these days. What do you think
Sarah Chaya Presch 13:35
this is probably going to be controversial. I’m really sorry, to everybody in the language industry. But I don’t think the way translation agencies are now is really set up for the future just because it’s all very stuck in their ways. And like, you know, I’m going to translate it from one language to another and this when actually people want online content, they, they want it creative, that has to resonate with the target audience, rather than just being one carbon copy with the other and they think that, you know, SEO is kind of just translating some keywords and adding it in there. When actually it’s not quite like that. So,
Chima Mmeje 14:10
okay. All right. So you how many how many? Sorry, how many years ago do you say you were translator for?
Sarah Chaya Presch 14:17
So I started working. So when my daughter was.. like 19? About three years.
Chima Mmeje 14:22
Three years? so 22? 23?
Sarah Chaya Presch 14:24
Yeah, because I still did it a freelance. Actually, I still do. I still do it sometimes. Yeah.
Chima Mmeje 14:30
All right. So I’m trying to get to where you move to SEO. So you do the freelance you most of the agency. What comes next after the agency? This is where SEO comes in. Okay, that’s what I’m trying to change. Okay. How did you find SEO because most people fall into it by accident. How did that happen for you?
Sarah Chaya Presch 14:46
This is quite funny, because I was working in sales and marketing. So I was a marketing manager and business development manager for this translation agency, and they were doing a website rebrand. So it was In charge of, you know, writing, the copy editing, all of that kind of stuff, they were going to have an SEO agency do everything for them. The SEO agency kind of started, and then halfway through the project decided that they didn’t want to do it anymore. So my boss was like, right, you’re doing the SEO? And that’s how I fell into SEO.
Chima Mmeje 15:20
So you started doing SEO, you had no idea what you were doing, how did you learn?
Sarah Chaya Presch 15:26
google, searching for things reading up? Basically teaching myself
Chima Mmeje 15:31
really? what resources? Do you find yourself? Maybe websites, some learner sorry, some will I say influencers quote in quotes, What were the things that you saw yourself, we kept coming back to, as you were learning, you remember any of them?
Sarah Chaya Presch 15:47
It was difficult, because like looking back now, I think I had no clue about the SEO industry or anything like that. But Google Garrage was the first thing that I did. And that kind of helped me kind of get in the mindset of things. And then I did a diploma in digital marketing, which had SEO modules and things like that. So that helped a lot. And then from there, kind of just going through free resources, looking at, you know, blog posts. You’re
Chima Mmeje 16:18
learning. As you’re reading, you’re kind of implementing, because you’re so lucky that you had the live websites that you could implement and test stuff on.
Sarah Chaya Presch 16:26
Oh, yeah.
Chima Mmeje 16:27
That’s amazing. All right. So now you are now an SEO. And now in the SEO industry, you’re learning you’re implementing? What are the things because I feel like technical SEO can feel very overwhelming? How are you able to like learn you develop a process as you’re learning, like anything that helps you so that when you see this, you know, oh, this is this problem, I’ve done it before, this is how I solve it, you develop your process as you’re going along? To help you anything like that, or are you like our guests yesterday, who kind of like just wings it and solves it on a case by case basis.
Sarah Chaya Presch 17:01
At the beginning, it was very much winging it, like I did not really know what I was doing at the beginning at all, and just tried lots of different things. Like the more experience that I got, because that was like 10 years ago, or so now. It’s got easier because, you know, I could I know what I need to do for certain things now and can put processes in place, a lot of the processes are in my head, rather than on paper. But you know, it’s like with SEO, every different website, every website is different. So you can’t really have one set process for everything. And I think that’s where lots of people go wrong sometimes as well.
Chima Mmeje 17:42
Alright, so you, you so you know, you love minutes, you live this job, when do you know it’s time to leave this job and go to the next one.
Sarah Chaya Presch 17:50
So I was working for that agency, I got another job with an another agency had a marketing that kind of thing. And I did a lot of the SEO and I realised that’s when I wanted to do it full time, you know, I didn’t want to work in sales, I didn’t want to like a hybrid job of sales and marketing and that kind of thing. And I just decided that I wanted to do something, and my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time is also an SEO. Justin.
So we were talking about it, um, you know, the company that I was working for was using an agency and they were absolutely shit and kept trying to, you know, rip the company off. The company that he was working for was using an agency and they wish it and they were ripping everybody off. So we were like, Why don’t we do this for ourselves? So we set up an agency, and we set up our own SEO agency.
Chima Mmeje 18:44
I mean, after your first job, you went to set up an agency. That’s insane. That is amazing.
Sarah Chaya Presch 18:49
Okay, insane. I would say now looking back, it’s easier. Yes. You know, it’s not so the agency went really, really well. And like, we were named Ireland’s, like second best startup and stuff, because we’re based in Ireland at the time. And it went really, really well. And then health issues. I had some health issues, and then I decided look, I’m gonna take a step back and then go into full time employment, which I did
Chima Mmeje 19:18
no way. I just want to say that yes, agency life is hard. It’s brutal. I’ve been there. I’ve done it. It’s brutal. Anybody who was was an agency will tell you that. Yeah, it can be brutal. Actually. You’ve been the founder. So Oh, yeah. Insanely proud of you for even making that decision to take a step back and recognising that this is not something you can do combined with your health.
Sarah Chaya Presch 19:40
Yeah, it was super hard at the time because, you know, I would say I was quite naive back in the day and like the stuff that you’d read on LinkedIn, it was all about hustle culture, bro culture. You know, you have to do this and you have to do this to be successful and being autistic. I kind of take everything at face value. So when When I gave it up, I was kind of worried that nobody would ever hire me again, like I’d be too overqualified. Like people would judge me because I couldn’t hack running my own agency, even though there was reasons behind it, but luckily, it kind of things fell into place.
Chima Mmeje 20:14
And where did you end up next?
Sarah Chaya Presch 20:16
Yes, I worked for a big content agency. And was their international SEO director, wow. And focus on the SEO that went, well, they then got sold. So went to another company and did exactly the same thing.
Chima Mmeje 20:33
Alright, let’s pause here. We’re gonna go back now to running your own agency. Yeah, exactly huge thing I want to dig into that. You start off, it’s just you and your husband, how do you one, develop a process for getting clients results, two, grow the agency to start getting more people in. And then three, establish that work life balance, got you like, these are the big problems for no one, get the processes in place to deliver revenues to deliver value for your clients to get people in as you’re growing your agency three, work life balance, walk us through that?
Sarah Chaya Presch 21:15
It was difficult because I as I said, when I first started, I never run my own business before. And I think I was really naive when I went into it and thought it was going to be a lot easier than it was when it came to like getting clients results and stuff like us both being SEOs, we did our very best with it actually was quite complicated when we started hiring staff, because finding good SEO is is really tough, and finding reliable people as well. So we started off by hiring a lot of people that didn’t work out.
So whilst we went to a more freelance model, and that worked out a lot better, still in contact with a lot of the Freelancers today still, and work with them. When it comes to business development. So because I’d worked in sales and marketing before, kind of live conferences, were always the best speaking of conferences, you know, inbound marketing, sharing your knowledge, that kind of stuff. And then work-life balance that I was really bad at. Because I worked with my husband, I lived with my husband. You know, we we went through a stage where we weren’t even husband and wife anymore. We were just like two colleagues. Yeah. And that’s another reason why I was really happy when you know, we separate, not separated as husband and wife. But exactly, because I’ve got my husband back now.
Chima Mmeje 22:39
I would love to like, just dig into that. Just like briefly working with someone that you go home with. And now I just have a question to not ask, what was that? Like? It was it The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, please?
Sarah Chaya Presch 22:58
Oh, God. So the good. You know, you had somebody that you could rely on, you could trust him, you know that you were always there for each other. So you genuinely had that, like actual partner. The bad was, you’re married to them. And then you have new filters. So like, you know, if I was talking to a colleague, I would have more of a filter than if I was talking to my husband and vice versa. So you know, sometimes things can get a bit heated. And then the ugly, like, could you imagine like waking up to your business partner every morning and then like, having them walking around the half house farting and stuff like Yeah.
Chima Mmeje 23:40
Oh my god. Okay, that’s good. I’m so glad that I asked that question. Thank you for your honesty. Thank you so much Sarah for your honesty. All right. Now, yes, going back in house, this next job? What is the thing you learn your next role? That is the most profound
Sarah Chaya Presch 23:56
in the next role, I would say because it was such a bigger company and working with such bigger clients. We never had that as a smaller, smaller agency. So it taught me a lot about the corporate world and made me realise that actually, I don’t like the corporate role very much because it’s kind of wonky.
And yeah, you know, you can learn so much from being on big accounts. Do I want to do it for the rest of my life? No, which is probably why I’m a tracking metrics. Now. We’re not SEO.
Chima Mmeje 24:29
So after this company walked me through the other jobs you held your head of international SEO,
Sarah Chaya Presch 24:36
SEO director. Yeah.
Chima Mmeje 24:38
What do you do next? After this,
Sarah Chaya Presch 24:39
I went to another company, but basically did very similar so it was director of international SEO.
Chima Mmeje 24:46
Which brings us to the conversation about how being a polyglot makes you a better internationalist you talk to us about that.
Sarah Chaya Presch 24:55
Oh, god, it’s so useful. Because when you’re dealing with like content in different languages having that global understanding makes such a big difference. Like, I don’t understand how people can audit content or audit SEO, if they don’t speak the language, because how are you going to know that, you know, this call to action is shit, or, you know, this content is actually quite offensive.
Chima Mmeje 25:18
But just nuances, those contexts that Google Translate cannot show.
Sarah Chaya Presch 25:22
Exactly like, you probably know what it’s like, you know, the Nothing about us without us kind of thing. Like, I can spot a piece of content, let’s say, written by neurotypical person, you could probably spot something that’s written by a white person any day, you know, you just don’t have the, it just doesn’t have that kind of like, spark to it, per se. And it’s the same with different content as well, like German people love different call to actions.
And then you’ve got people that don’t even realise that, you know, China doesn’t even use the same search engine as Google. So or that some things are offensive in different cultures or in Northern Ireland, I go out with the slogan The future’s bright, the future is orange, because that’s really offensive. So yeah, understanding languages understanding the way the world works, and that really helps.
Chima Mmeje 26:16
To Anybody who wants to do international SEO, be a polyglot.
Chima Mmeje 26:22
Alright, let’s skip to you at dragon metrix. Now. Why do you leave your previous job? Because everybody keeps it? Oh, well, when I feel like I’m not going even Thierry said it yesterday, most of the guests have, how do we say they leave when they feel they’re not learning anything? And you’re not being challenged? Is that the same for you? Or is there a different reason doesn’t have to be altruistic? Is there a different reason why you’d say, Okay, it’s time for me to leave this role. And move to the next one.
Sarah Chaya Presch 26:47
You know, when you get to like a certain level, and you’re in the company, and everybody, you kind of know more than everybody, you just get bored, and you don’t have anywhere to go. And I know that as an SEO, I am not perfect. I don’t know everything. And, for example, if not, I’m really good on the international side, my technical side, isn’t that good. So I wanted to go and challenge myself, because I didn’t want to be that, you know, I’m, I’m in my 30s now, and I didn’t want to be doing the same thing for the rest of my life. And having used Dragon metrics before, again, I didn’t want to go and work for a software company where you know, I wasn’t 100% invested in the software.
Yeah, so knowing tracking metrics, having used it with it being like a global platform that has helped me as an SEO, I was like, You know what, I’m gonna apply to them. Because I was I was also at the stage where, you know, I didn’t want to go send 10 million applications to absolutely everywhere, I wanted to pick and choose where I wanted to work, I wanted to make sure that the culture was right, I wanted to make sure that you know, the role was going to be a good fit. So when dragon metrics came up, I was like, Well, I liked the tour. I like the people. It’s tech. So it’s something that I know that I’m not amazing at so I could learn. So yeah, and how
Chima Mmeje 28:05
How are you finding learning while improving the technical side of your skills?
Sarah Chaya Presch 28:11
I love it, like the CEO, Simon, he’s an absolute tech whiz like that man is a genius. So I feel really lucky that I get to learn from him. And, you know, I feel like I’m learning something every day, which I haven’t done for a long time. So it’s really nice. And it’s really rewarding. And I’m not good at tech yet. But hopefully, I will be.
Chima Mmeje 28:33
I just find it very interesting that almost everybody we’ve had here who is it? Technical SEO like international issues, but always says they’re the number one reason for them moving isn’t really money, it’s always the desire to learn something new, improve their skills, and find that next thing that makes them better at what you do.
So I think this is something for anyone who’s watching and is just starting their career, to just put in there that desire to keep learning, the desire to keep getting better, and to not settle and get comfortable so important. Alright, give our community an advice. Those who are just coming up in the industry, what are the most essential hard skills, soft skills they should be learning? If they’re trying to come into the SEO industry?
Sarah Chaya Presch 29:19
That’s a tough one, I would say kind of, don’t be afraid. If you look at people who are further on just you know, I went through the stage of getting impostor syndrome and looking up at people on being like, Oh my God, they’re like celebrities, like I’m never gonna be like that. But at the end of the day, they’re just people. And they’ve all started off somewhere.
They as I’ve just told you, I started off by being thrown in at the deep end. And don’t be afraid to have a side don’t be afraid to break it. Don’t be afraid to you know, trial and error at it’s always better to kind of just play around and mess up things rather than actually sitting down and doing the theory because the theory is great, but it’s not the same as like practical experience. rinse
Chima Mmeje 30:02
And there you have it from Sarah Presch right?
Sarah Chaya Presch 30:04
yes
Chima Mmeje 30:04
thank you so much
Sarah Chaya Presch 30:06
thank you thank you for having me
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