William Alvarez (@williamalvarez) is the Director of Organic Search at Catalyst invited me to his office at 3 World Trade Center. The last time i was in the World Trade Center building was before 9/11 for a meeting with an options trading company about building software for their trading platform. So coming back after over 18 years was a bit weird for me but the building and area is just magnificent.
William has been doing SEO for 15 years both as an in-house SEO and agency SEO. He isn’t someone who is public in the SEO industry but has been playing the game for a super long time. We talked about his career, what is interesting is he left Catalyst and actually came back to the company after a few years. It is rare to see someone leave a company and return years later.
Structured data was a topic we jumped into talking about. The growth of structured data somewhat surprised me in hindsight. Using structured data, he equated to a double edge sword because then Google shows the answers right in the search results but you do not want your competitors to get those spots. William said his clients are seeing an increase in impressions in search but less clicks and less revenues driven by Google search.
Google is your new home page he said but Google does not have the brand love with your users like you do, he said. William said he believes Google will have to have a custom design for your brand when someone finds your brand in search. Can you imagine that? Customized user interface in Google search?
In short William said, keep doing structured data and wait it out, ultimately Google will give you more back by doing this in the long run.
SEO mentoring is a thing he likes to do to help his younger colleagues and his clients. He can help young SEOs help build their careers in the SEO space. You can reach out William on on Twitter @williamalvarez.
William is genuinely a nice and giving individual and here is the video:
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