Today I have tech geek who is community manager at Coudways. Saud Razzak is responsible for creating buzz, spread knowledge, and educate the people about WordPress in the Community around the globe. In my free time, he like to play cricket and learn new things on the Internet. I have asked him questions related to WordPress and some SEO questions to understand how they are doing SEO for Cloudways.
BloggersIdeas: Please introduce yourself to my blog readers? Explain who are you apart from online business life?
Saud: Hello, my name is Saud Razzak, and I am the WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways. Well, when it comes to personal life as I am mostly busy with my professional one. But, since you asked so here it goes... I have an interest in Sports such as Cricket and Football so mostly when I am free, and I enjoy playing outdoor sports with a group of friends. I also like to watch movies and listen to songs. My taste in music is quite simple, as I prefer either Bryan Adams or Beethoven.
I have a keen interest in learning new things because I believe I am an innovation seeker. As far as my other social activities are concerned, I have previously performed my duty as a dutiful citizen through a social working community called YSR. I have made significant contributions and donated finances to different trusts.
Also, during late hours I prefer to play Snooker near a club to my home, and that's all there is to it. My other interests are boating, fishing, swimming and meeting new people. Oh! And I simply love food, I can't put it in words, how much I love to eat.
I follow a simple motto in life, and I tell my colleagues and other friends the same as well,
"Think Fast, Do Smart"BloggersIdeas: What are your thoughts on cloudways.com? How did you start working for this domain name?
Saud: It all started back last year when I joined this project, Cloudways. Since my expertise was in WordPress, so it didn't take me much time to prove my skills to the Community team lead at Cloudways. Mr. Ahsan Parwez was really helpful and cooperative during the overall assessment program when I applied for the position of the WordPress community manager within the project. At that time, I was not really sure whether I will become a successful candidate or not... but now, here I am as an active part of the WordPress Community at Cloudways.
Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting platform that offers cloud services to a wide range of users on the market. Not only that, but it lets you host your desired web application on your favorite cloud server. Cloudways supports all the open source PHP based frameworks and CMS, and you can launch unlimited applications on our servers.
What I really like about Cloudways is that the amazing team we have here. It's one of a kind. There is no biasness among team members, and everyone is pretty well aware of the processes going on in each individual domain. May it be digital marketing, customer success, community, SEO, support, content or development; all departments are commendably interlinked with each other.
BloggersIdeas: What is your specific role as a WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways?
Saud: I am glad that you asked! Well, as a WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways, my ultimate goal is to educate and build a community around Cloudways.
We use to help WordPress community, attend WordPress meetups and educate individuals by sharing our expertise through various articles in WordPress. We also conduct interviews of one of the most renowned WordPress enthusiasts and also follow up with conducting weekly interviews so we (the community) can learn more from the talent and experiences of the experts in the field.
BloggersIdeas: What is your participation or role in the WordPress Community?
Saud: WordPress community is a great source of gaining knowledge in various fields of WordPress. The community enables you to research and study on different WordPress problems and too much of our surprise, most solutions, bug fixes, update rolls are basically supervised by the feedback received by WordPress community members.
I keep myself engaged with attending meetups, and I have attended different WordPress meetups. As far as my contribution is concerned, I contributed in translating WordPress to Urdu. I have created credible engagements with a number of different theme and plugin providers in time. Also, when I meet different WordPress local teams around, I have a single idea running in the back of my mind, to educate and share knowledge as much as I can.
I have always been enthusiastic to meet new people within the WordPress community and looking forward to make a lot of friends. The community is vast and full of so many intellectual minds. During the past year, I have made quite a many friends in within the WordPress realm and have also scored a number of partnership with different plugin developers and providers 🙂
I wish to see myself grow more in the coming years.
BloggersIdeas: How many days you have been blogging? What do you feel about blogging?
Saud: As soon as I became the part of the amazing Cloudways team, I got my breakthrough towards professional blogging. Before that, I used to be a ghostwriter for different WordPress queries. However, Cloudways became my first official platform through which I published my articles. I have published a few articles on the Cloudways official blog. You can access them all from the Official Cloudways Blog Page.
I think blogging plays a vital role in educating individuals far and wide across the globe. WordPress is indeed quite renowned among many people in the world; however, to much of my surprise, many are still unaware what it really is or how it functions. So, yeah, blogging is the key to educating individuals about what WordPress really is and how does it function.
According to my estimates, I have more than 40+ articles published on Cloudways and I have more than 20+ articles published on other blogging platforms. I have also conducted a large number of interviews. Some of the recognized WordPress influencers such as (Joe Casabona, Bridget Willard, Petya Raykovska, Ben Gillbanks, Ivelina Dimova, and many more) have been interviewed by me 🙂
BloggersIdeas: How many blogs do you have? Which blogs do you follow regularly?
Saud: I don't own any personal blogs. However, I prefer to contribute my work openly to whoever want to publish it. If they want me to perform a product review, or be a guest blogger, I feel more than welcomed to offer them my expertise and knowledge.
All that I have published internally is available on the official Cloudways blog page. As far as my following is concerned, I prefer to follow WPBeginner, Lynda, WP Tavern, TechCrunch, WordPress Official, WPBlog and many others.
BloggersIdeas: What are your tips on traffic generation? Please reveal some must use techniques to get more traffic to new blogs?
Saud: Traffic generation can become a rather hefty task at times. But, if you are serious about getting the network on your website, then you have to follow a few simple tactics.
1)Get Google Analytics because with Google Analytics you can keep track of your website traffic on a regular basis.
2) Advertise: This may include Paid search, social media advertising and display advertising which are all excellent ways of attracting visitors.
3) Your On Page SEO plays a vital role, so it's necessary that you have an expert on the line.
4) Mix up your content with long term/short term keywords. Make it SEO friendly and market it regularly.
5) Track where the traffic is coming more to your website through Analytics and identify what works and then plan ahead.
BloggersIdeas: What is secret of your success? Followed by your inspirational person?
Saud: There is no such secret to success. It's just pure devotion and continuous motivation. Hard work really pays off in the end, and that's how we upscale our business. It takes a lot of effort for every individual to be one with the team and be cohesively bonded with the vision of the project.
We are expanding day in and day out, and we see ourselves as one of the top hosting platforms in the world. Our customers play a vital role because without their satisfaction we are nowhere. It's not just a single man, but the whole team is moving ahead step by step. At app levels, we have significantly expanded, and we aim to go a step further with each coming year.
As far as my personal inspiration is concerned, I like to follow Chris Lema of WordPress. Chris Lema has a dot point strategy to enlighten individuals on how to resolve multiple issues when it comes to WordPress. His knowledge is par excellent and the way he delivers it is beyond expectations. If you get time, please do visit his official blog post, Chris Lema Blog.
BloggersIdeas: Could you tell us best way to earn money online even for new blogs and online businesses?
Saud: One answer! Potential real-time authentic traffic is coming to your website. The only best way to earn through a blog is to get your traffic there, the rest of the magic is done by Google Adverts and Amazon Affiliates running on your web pages.
However, our market is quite different as it is not a blog but a product/service. We are selling cloud services to various users across the world. Therefore, much of our network traffic is through direct sources seeking to launch servers in the cloud infrastructure.
We gain access through marketing our hosting services by advertising it across different social media platforms, taking part in forum engagements, providing application level solutions to individuals which automatically transforms into a lead.
Other than that, we highly focus on building self and brand image. Our aim is to engage as many people as we can and that's where our references come in handy. We make good relations with our consumers with an aim to sustain them in the long run. Our ready support plays a great role, plus our UX design does the rest of the magic and keep our customers intact and loyal to the brand.
BloggersIdeas: Best recommended off page SEO techniques?
Saud: Today, Search Engine Optimization has shifted a lot over the past few years. With all the new technology and innovative marketing strategies rolling down the market, you never know what you learn today turns out to be an outdated solution by tomorrow. Therefore, it is necessary that one should keep themselves equipped with the latest knowledge in the world of SEO.
And, to do that you have to keep track of different SEO blog and happenings in the world. Multiple knowledge bases across the Internet contains wide amount of information on SEO news/articles and if you keep yourself updated then there is a hard chance that you miss out on any key points.
BloggersIdeas: How to attract new bloggers and influencers to write about your brand as you did in commenting, outreach and traffic?
Saud: Attracting new bloggers and influencers is not rocket science. All you need to do is provide excellent par service, offer mutual benefits to your partners and promote affiliation. The more you encourage others to publicize your product, make sure that you do the same for them when it comes to marketing. Because, the digital world is all about following the barter system effectively.
BloggersIdeas: Do you think web hosting is a crucial part in affiliate marketing? Why is it essential for bloggers and digital marketing industry?
Saud: A Hosting will remain an important aspect of online blogging and digital marketing industry. The answer is simple that you cannot afford to have your web hosting going down at any time. It can ultimately put you at risk, and you may end up losing you business.
So a reliable and stable hosting partner such as Cloudways is what you should aim for that offers one of the best web hosting features for bloggers and digital marketers that eventually help them in a number of ways. It helps users focus more on promoting affiliate deals and products rather than getting worried about their web hosting needs.
BloggersIdeas: Do you use Black Hat SEO tactics in a white hat way. Like ScrapeBox?
Saud: Although, people use this tool for bulk commenting and attract quite a many Backlinks to their website in no time. It is, however, not a good practice as it can send your website's credibility at risk. My purpose of using this tool is to identify and locate relevant blogs and then significantly comment on these blogs through manual ways.
BloggersIdeas: Do you think 3rd party blog post links and eBook submissions are playing vital role these days?
Saud: My answer is Yes! 3rd party blogging or the term most commonly known as Guest blogging within digital marketing world is playing a vital role in growing businesses. It creates mutual relationships among domain owners. Plus, it is quite a healthy practice because it helps in bringing the network to your official website.
You get the chance to study other people's product which can further help you to identify how or where your product/service requires customization and upgrades. Plus, it enables you to share knowledge and acknowledge your own self on the happenings of the digital world. As mentioned earlier, I have around 20+ guest blogs on different platforms, and I will happily provide those links to anyone who reaches out 🙂
BloggersIdeas: Do You Share Your Strategies Transparently With the SEO Community?
Saud: So far, I have shared everything about community engagements, SEO, and blogging. Obviously, there is much more to it, but in my opinion, knowledge is gained through consistent self-learning. I, myself, am still a learner and haven't achieved anything major in the vast community of WordPress.
The trick is to be open about all your knowledge, and if your readers are loving your blog, then they might want to visit back again. Keep your intentions clear and focus on educating and following your passion, the rest comes on its own 🙂
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