Meet Adriana Stein, the Multi-Language Marketing & SEO Consultant, Founder & CEO at AS Marketing, B2B Tech Expert, BrightonSEO Speaker, and Search Engine Journal Contributor. Originally from the US and now residing in Germany, Adriana is a seasoned digital marketing professional with a passion for helping businesses grow sustainably.
Adriana is the brains behind AS Marketing, an agency that specializes in creating holistic online marketing strategies for B2B and B2C companies across Europe and North America.
With her SEO-first approach, she and her team of experts help their clients develop efficient go-to-market strategies, expand into new markets, and achieve long-term growth.
What sets Adriana apart is her ability to communicate fluently in multiple languages and understand the nuances of different cultures.
Her multilingual and multicultural team works together to create strategies that incorporate various techniques such as native-speaker-level SEO, LinkedIn content marketing, and marketing automation.
By acting as strategic partners to CMOs and senior marketers, they help businesses achieve their marketing goals and grow their revenue.
As a sought-after speaker at BrightonSEO and contributor to Search Engine Journal, Adriana has cemented her position as an industry expert.
Let’s dive into the interview and discover how Adriana’s years of experience and expertise can help you develop effective online marketing strategies that drive sustainable growth for your business.
Interview With Adriana Stein
Q. Can you please give us a brief introduction about yourself and your background in SEO? How did you get started in SEO? What drew you to this field?
My start in SEO was an accident. I originally moved to Germany from the US in 2016 to get my master’s degree. After that hit some visa roadblocks, the only option for me to stay in Germany was to work as a freelancer.
The visa office suggested that I try doing translations and content writing since I had spent 6 months learning German at language school.
After speaking with a friend of mine about how to get clients, she suggested I post an ad on a German website. I did this and found there was a lot of demand for translators and content writers with my language skills.
I soon had two clients, both of which were doing SEO for the websites to expand from Germany into the US. From them, I was able to get full-on training on how to do SEO.
As time went on, there was so much demand for my work, that I scaled into an agency, which is how AS Marketing was born. My team and I now support our clients with full-service marketing in 30+ languages with native speakers.
Q. What is the current state of SEO, and how do you believe it will evolve in the age of AI?
That’s a question that I could spend hours answering haha, and it’s also way too early to tell exactly how things will change. They certainly will change, but how precisely depends a lot on how AI technology within search engines evolves.
AI technology integrated within search is still in the very early stages. As things become more advanced, we’ll see what we are offered within search and where and how people use it.
We SEOs have long been used to constant changes (even though this one is quite dramatic), but we’ll adapt like we always have. Regardless, the core of SEO will stay the same in that creating high-quality, helpful content is at the heart of successful SEO.
Q. Given the rapidly evolving landscape of search engines in the era of artificial intelligence (AI), what advice would you give to someone who is just starting an SEO campaign?
The primary best practices are still in place, regardless of AI. For now, SERPs still function in the same manner, so the best way to develop your SEO strategy is to target keywords that matter to your audience with well-structured and helpful content.
The change with AI now is that it’s more important than ever to focus on quality. Yes AI has given us some opportunities to scale, but if you scale low-quality your content will quickly be forgotten and probably won’t rank either.
What will stick in people’s minds and drive conversions is content that truly resonates with the reader, informs them, provides accurate information, and helps the user find what they need in a convenient manner.
Q. Since links have consistently ranked among the top three factors in search engine rankings, do you believe that link building will become even more important as AI-powered content creation tools make it easier for websites to publish content at a higher frequency?
This is an interesting question. I think it again leans on quality, which is what successful link building looks like nowadays. If you pay for mass spam links, then it won’t get you very far.
Links could become a stronger indicator of quality, but those links need to come from a quality source themselves. I can’t say for certain that it will become more important, as it already is.
Q. What are your top three favorite link building methods for 2023, and what makes them stand out in terms of effectiveness in your experience?
Digital PR (being on podcasts, events, contributing guest articles)
Creating linkable assets such as trends, statistics, and data-driven content (especially when you are the data source, not compiling data from third parties)
Co-marketing efforts such as co-written content
One example of a big win from these methods is we got a client over 800 backlinks with a single content piece related to statistics they compiled from a survey.
There is absolutely no need for outreach or buying links. If you’re still doing that, you’re seriously wasting time and money.
Q. What criteria do you use to assess the quality of a link before deciding to pursue it for a website?
Relevance is the biggest factor. For example, I am consistently contributing marketing-related content and being an event or podcast guest from marketing-related platforms and publications, to which we get links from that.
I do it much more so for the social proof and brand authority, the links are nice to have. But these are the methods that should be used for effective link building.
Q. As an SEO expert, what specific services do you offer to your clients?
We’re a full service international marketing agency that supports our clients in 30+ languages with native speakers.
Q. What types of businesses or individuals would benefit most from your SEO mentorship service, and what specific areas of SEO do you focus on when providing guidance to your clients?
We help our clients expand into new markets through content localization. It can be through SEO, or ideally a combination of SEO and another channel such as PPC or email marketing.
We support them with A – Z implementation and craft strategies that drive leads and conversions within their international target markets.
Q. When executing SEO campaigns, do you personally handle link building or do you work with third-party link building agencies to acquire links on behalf of your clients?
We never work with link building agencies. We work directly with relevant industry and audience-specific publications to build links as a larger part of digital PR, whether that be through contributing content, doing a webinar together, scheduling a podcast session, etc.
Q. How important do you think SEO tools are for success in the industry, and which ones do you consider essential?
I think the importance of SEO tools is really inflated. The people who use 20 or 30 tools are really just overpaying. There are free versions of Ahrefs and Semrush that provide you with all the basic data needed to get started to do keyword research and look at basic SEO data. You can then track basically all SEO performance through the best free tool out there, Google Search Console.
Q. As an SEO expert, are there any specific tools or functionalities that you wish existed in the market to make your job easier or more efficient?
One thing that would be useful is a better way to do SEO forecasting, as that’s something all businesses need to understand to invest in SEO.
Yes there are tools for this, but you still need to have a deep understanding of the market in order to input the correct data for forecasting, which is hard to do as an agency that doesn’t have the data access an in-house SEO has.
In comparison with PPC where the ROI is relatively easy to calculate with public data, it’s so much more complex for SEO, particularly for new sites that don’t have traffic to put a conversion percentage estimate on.
Q. Can you share any books, articles, or other resources from industry experts that you have found valuable?
The best SEO publication is Search Engine Journal. That’s the one I’ve found to be the most useful for staying up to date with changes, especially as those happen so rapidly in SEO.
Q. For someone who is interested in becoming an SEO expert, what advice or recommendations would you offer to help them get started and develop the skills necessary to succeed in this field?
If you don’t have the opportunity to work directly with a website at your work, create your own and build it yourself. SEO isn’t a concept that can be learned by reading or watching videos.
You need a real business context and live data to understand how to apply it. SEOs are always saying “It depends” because there is little that’s the same from business to business.
Q. How do you measure success in your career as an SEO professional, and what benchmarks do you set for yourself?
As an agency CEO, this is twofold for me. Of course, my mission is to help our clients successfully and efficiently expand, particularly so that the marketers we work with get recognition for their accomplishments within their company and career.
But secondly and just as important is that of building up my team. Not just their skills, but upholding a positive work culture where we support each other, work flexibly, and become stronger as a team.
If my team is happy and feels successful, then they’re more likely to provide great results for our clients.
We would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to Adriana Stein for sharing her valuable insights and expertise in developing effective online marketing strategies.
We hope that this interview has provided you with the knowledge and inspiration needed to take your SEO strategy and campaigns to the next level.
If you found this interview helpful, we encourage you to share it on social media with your colleagues and peers. Additionally, if there are other SEO experts that you would like us to interview, please feel free to let us know.
To learn more about Adriana and her agency, AS Marketing, be sure to check out her website and LinkedIn profile. She is a true industry leader and her expertise in multilingual SEO and holistic online marketing strategies can be a valuable asset to any business.
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more informative interviews and content from our team!
Where you can find me…
Website: https://asmarketingagency.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriana-stein-631a13145
Twitter: https://twitter.com/adrianakstein
