Michael Grey - The SEO Interviews - Number Three

by Darren McLaughlin

September 11, 2006 – 1:37 pm

We talk to Michael Grey, another man “in the know” when it comes to Search Engine Optimization. He blogs on the subject of SEO at Graywolf’s SEO Blog. We asked Michael six questions. This is number two in our SEO Interview Series.

The questions and answers are contained below:

1) Michael, do you refer to yourself as an SEO? If so, what does it mean. If not, tell us how you describe what your do?

I consider myself an SEO although I do work in a lot of different areas of internet marketing. I have traditional SEO projects I work as well as managing my own PPC campaigns for some affiliate products and a few eBooks I sell. I’ve been expanding into consulting projects for some clients, and practicing a bit of reputation management and social media optimization.

2) SEO is the practice of making pages “optimized” for search engines by employing certain techniques. But the search engines take measures to ensure no one cheats by making their page “too optimized”. Are search engines anti-SEO?

I wouldn’t say that search engines are anti SEO, however they definitely don’t want to be manipulated or give an indication that they can “be gamed” in any way. From a search engines point of view an SEO should work with the markup of the page (the HTML and CSS code) and make it so that the spiders and algorithms can tell what the page is about. Additionally they should direct the process of keeping pages on topic without resorting to things like keyword stuffing. Lastly SEO’s should work on the architecture of the site as whole to make sure the entire site is crawlable and as search engine friendly as possible. Search engines encourage “natural linking” through the development and promotion of quality, unique and relevant content, including things such as viral marketing.

Search engines aren’t in favor of things that create “artificial” signals of quality such as buying and converting old domains, and link development “schemes”. The amount of optimization and over optimization you can get away with is directly proportional to the amount of trust your website has. For example Forbes magazine can have pages about off topic content that will
rank very highly because of the trust associated with the domain. Websites like Craigslist can use multiple subdomains and dominate over 90 of the top 100 listings for some searches just because of the trust associated with their domains. The trick is figuring out where you are on the sliding scale and how much you can get away with.

3) Tell us about some SEO techniques that are currently obsolete. Why did the used to work and not work now?

Reciprocal link pages are so dead it’s not even funny. You may still get some mileage out them with MSN but unless the process is 100% automated it’s not worth the time anymore.

4) What advice would you offer a webmaster who wants to make their site rank higher in the search engines? Should they hire a pro or learn the craft on their own?

The thing that a lot of people miss is the answers right now are still right in front of you. If you want to figure out why a website is ranking look at three things. First look at the on site factors, such as page construction, category themeing, internal anchor text and so on. Next take a look at the backlinks see where they are coming from and try to identify powerful or
trusted links. Next try and get a sense of the history of the site if possible.

Don’t try and dissect Amazon or eBay it’s not worth the effort and you’ll never be able to replicate it. Instead try to look for the “regular” guys website that’s ranking. Go through the top 20 or 30 and pickout everybody who’s not an 800 pound gorilla go over onsite, offsite, and history factors with a fine tooth comb looking for clues and similarities as to what’s
important.

When I was first starting out I’d do it with index cards writing down all of the onsite factors for site1.com on one index card. Then I would do the same for site2.com and site3.com. Do the same for links. Then take all the links cards and spread them out on the table looking for commonalities in linking patterns.

5) What do you think the biggest development or trend in the “SEO Business” has been in the last 12 months?

Parasite SEO, Social Media, and reputation management are going to be very big in the next few years. Since Google places a lot of trust on some of these social media sites it’s very easy to take advantage of, especially if you can create your own subdomain or subfolder. It’s going to be difficult for the engines to find ways to deal with it and not throw the baby out with
the bathwater and kill the whole thing.

Being able to start a smear campaign against your competitor is going to start getting really ugly. The idea isn’t to make the customers switch to you, just think twice about buying from your competition. Creating a series of negative customer service stories that reinforce each other can be very powerful. If your SEO only works with white hat techniques you’ll have a
hard time combating that problem. Even if you love your current SEO like your firstborn child, ask them what they would do if some negative SERP’s started appearing for your company or product name.

6) I know you’ve been blogging about SEO for awhile. Should all SEOs have blogs?

I’m not sure that all SEO’s need to blog about SEO (I don’t need the competition) but I think all SEO’s should have blogs about something so they understand the technology and the medium. Knowing how and why things work always gives you an advantage. Blogging isn’t right for everyone or every client, but it is right for many of them. Staying ahead of the completion in
any way you can is always a good thing.