IMWT Welcomes Leigh-San Mo – Head of SEO Interview

IMWT Welcomes Leigh-San Mo, Head of SEO

Regardless of titles and years of experience, new beginnings often come with both challenges, enthusiasm and adjustment periods and we’re not shy to share them all with you. 

To be fair, not only new jobs but also new roles within the organisation come along with excitement and the occasional hardship. What about being a newbie and, also, getting promoted to a new role? This achievement was recently unlocked by one of our IMWT-ers and it’s news worth sharing.

With more than 7 years of agency experience, Leigh-San is IMWT’s new Head of SEO and we couldn’t wait to rave about it! 

Head of SEO Interview with Leigh-San Mo

We asked Leigh a few questions about what it’s like to be a fully-remote Head of SEO along with the best tips for navigating the ever-rising world of remote working.

You can get more insights and learn more about the future of SEO in his interview on 2020 SEO. 

It’s commonly known that the beginning is the hardest. What was the hardest thing for you to overcome when starting at IMWT?

More the psychological side effects of not having an office to go into. Some days you find it hard to motivate yourself while easily overdoing the number of working hours on busy days. It might be an effect of working remotely but it can get really difficult to switch ‘off’ at the end of the day! 

Remote Work

What motivated you to pursue a remote job?

Definitely the opportunity to work from anywhere and save time by not needing to take public transport. There are also lifestyle choice benefits — you can choose to work earlier or later and a lot of services e.g. banks, doctors, don’t open past 5.30pm so it’s much more convenient.

What are your best tips on working remotely?

Understand what your most important tasks are and plan your time accordingly. It’s still good to set regular working hours most of the time (e.g. 9-5) to keep consistent and for your team/clients to know when you are available.

There are still a lot of misconceptions around working remotely (e.g. remote workers are less productive, more lonely). Which do you think are the most common? Did you have any before starting working remotely?

It does depend on the individual but I feel most offices (being open plan) can be quite distracting so most people wear headphones to escape that. The less productive might be due to other distractions like TV or pets but there’s definitely the advantage of working distraction-free when you have full control over your environment.

How do you sustain a healthy work-life balance?

I try to not use the computer after work. And I think it’s a good thing to spend time outdoors or be active since our job involves sitting down on the computer most of the time. 

What is your biggest tip on working remotely in SEO?

Picking up the phone or even better, jumping on a conference call with teammates or clients is the best thing that you can do to build rapport or even just solve problems or deal with issues during the day.

What is the best thing that you’ve learned so far at IMWT?

With the company being 100% remote, there are numerous processes and systems that are in place to ensure collaboration and knowledge sharing so I’ve been getting more exposure to other areas of digital that I don’t normally get to work with such as analytics and CRO.

What is your best tip on becoming a successful SEO?

Really understanding a client’s business and goals so that you can build a strategy that helps them get there.