Who is Pasquale Gangemi? What is your professional career?
Back in that time, I started my first two personal web projects (# seospecialist.it and infografiche.com) and won an SEO contest. This convinced me even more that this discipline would be the way to go.
What are you doing now and where?
I worked as an SEO Specialist, SEO trainer and consultant for several listed companies in Italy as a freelancer. Today, I’m Partner and Head of Operations at Pro Web Consulting, Switzerland-based consultancy firm, focused on search engine optimization and web analytics: we are experiencing a great corporate growth, becoming a point of reference for the market, managing increasingly complex and international projects, and greatly expanding the internal team. When I arrived, in 2013, we were in 7, now we have 40 specialized resources.
Which were the biggest challenges you have faced in achieving your goals?
I do not like to talk about difficulties, to say the truth, rather about “margins of improvement”. If I really have to find some, I would say that being Italian in the field of web marketing is more complicated than other countries for various reasons. First, digital culture is still lacking and when I started, 8 years ago, there were no specific courses for those who wanted to learn and study SEO and related topics. Fortunately, today the situation is slowly improving.
Also, from a personal point of view, when you move, you necessarily stay isolated and feel the lack of family and friends. Connections with a city as Reggio Calabria are difficult: there is no territorial continuity. It seems absurd to say, but I assure you it is simpler and cheaper to book a flight to New York than to re-enter Reggio Calabria for Christmas!
What is the most beautiful part of your job?
The relational element: I like to have to deal with customers, understand their needs, define project details.
I also like to share my knowledge with collaborators and mentees: in our company, we organize seminars and conferences regularly to spread SEO culture. But the aspect I love the most about my job is to work closely with my team, because I can share ideas and discuss with great professionals that I appreciate.
For work reasons, you had to live away from your city: what would you advise young people who, as we all know, are facing a very complex and difficult historical period?
Which are your next projects?
I have not worked as a freelance consultant since some years and my activities are all connected to Pro Web Consulting: we are currently studying and experimenting with new SEO strategies and actions for “different” search engines, not only Google. SEO for Amazon and App Store (App Store Optimization) are a few examples, and can be considered for all search engine effects.
A question I always like to ask: if you should summarize in a word what is the path you have undertaken so far and what you are orientated in the future, what would you choose?
Well, summing up what has been said so far, and even more with one word, is pretty difficult. Let’s say my shortlist is made up of three “keywords” (to stay on topic)!
First, the commitment, which is the most decisive. Then passion, because without it you go nowhere. Finally, entertainment, because I really love what I do, and I confess that, at the moment, I still have a lot of fun doing SEO.