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Welcome to the seventh installment of The SEO Interviews. The SEO Interviews are a series of 6 Question Interviews with some of the best and brightest minds in the field of SEO. This week we’re happy to talk to Todd Malicoat.

SEO Profile:

Todd Malicoat has been creating websites since 1997, and started doing SEO and Internet marketing in early 2001. He is a moderator at the World’s largest webmaster forum Webmasterworld.com, and maintains an Internet consulting journal at www.stuntdubl.com.

Todd has recently been a speaker on topics such at both Search Engine Strategies and Webmaster World’s world of search conferences on link development and search engine marketing. Todd offers a variety of search engine marketing services – for more information on Todd, please see his about page.

The SEO Interview

1) Todd, I read some of your writings about "abundance thinking",
which is a subject I’m also interested in. Tell us how you apply the principles of abundance thinking to your SEO and link building efforts.

The internet has brought about a really interesting paradox with regards to the "abundance mentality". There is a wonderful "give to get back" karma associated with the web. It’s really more than a cliche – all the most successful companies (google, hotmail, ebay, myspace, etc.) are based around new models that are unique in that they provide some service or offering that was formerly a paid service, and have found new ways to gain profitability.

I’ve been extremely lucky with by being taught by some of the most brilliant minds in the world of SEO/SEM. For me, having an "abundance mentality" was an obligation, because I was really accepted by others with the same attitude. It’s getting harder for me now to be more generous with time (at some point you want to earn some money), but I still really enjoy helping newer people with a hunger. The reason "SEO" has such a positive connotation within the community, is that there is a wealth of information that flows openly to those who think with an abundance mentality. Short-sightedness for a quick buck is sussed out very quickly by a group of people who are professionals at determining bias, and when they’re being "sold something".

I really like Greg Niland aka GoodROI‘s choice for a radio show name, "Good Karma" – because it’s really a big part of what drives the community. There is much more willingness to help folks that you see helping others. Of course, all of this abundance mentality is not just tie dye and hemp bracelets either – it’s good business practice. Helping others gives you a positive reputation that makes sales easier. People respect truth and openness – and in an industry that is so helplessly misunderstood, trust and credibility is incredibly important.

I first fully embraced the "abundance mentality" several years ago after posting a large rant in the webmasterworld supporter’s forum about how people had a "scarcity mentality" and no longer shared any good information. The response I got in less than a few days was a new post by Dean "digitalghost" Bloomfield called "scarcity be damned" – which was a pretty impressive post to me at the time. I was constantly amazed that so many bright people were willing to share their opinion to the sometimes incredibly naive questions that I asked. I appreciate this even more now, after a few years of answering those same types of questions just what a charitable offering that time spent to answer questions was. In an industry that is educated nearly completely online – there is an obligation to return some of that time to new people learning in thanks of the people that you learned from.

There’s a good discussion about DaveN hitting his boiling point on sharing information at threadwatch right now. Everyone who writes about or discusses SEO in the community has this quandry sometimes, and hits the threshhold of no longer wanting to share. It’s very difficult to figure out sometimes what should get shared in the pub, with clients, and publicly. It’s really important to have a group of associates that you share information more freely with in a private trusted setting to compare notes as well as adding to the fountain of fundamental knowledge online.

Continue reading “Todd Malicoat – The SEO Interviews – Number Seven” »

Welcome to the sixth installment of the The SEO Interviews. This week we interview Russ Jones of Virante.

Here are the other five interviews (listed in order):

• Joe Balestrino – Mr. SEO
• Dave Davies – Beanstalk
• Michael Grey – Greywolf
• Bill Slawski – SEO by the Sea
• Michael Martinez – Xenite.org

SEO’s Bio

I am Russ Jones, CTO of the search marketing firm Virante, Inc. in Durham, North Carolina. I have been in the web design / development industry for nearly a decade, and search marketing specifically over the last 3 years. I have a bachelors degree in Political Science and African American Studies from UNC Chapel Hill (Go Heels!) and have been married a little over 1 year to my wife Morgan. I absolutely love my job at Virante. It is incredibly exciting to come up with creative marketing strategies coupled with strong SEO tactics to make businesses profitable and organizations prosperous.

1. Doing SEO is an ever changing search engine environment can be a challenging task. What stable SEO methods do you recommend to establish a presence online?

I remember sitting in on a discussion about Latent Semantic Indexing (a terribly mind-numbing subject matter that I would not wish upon the worst of my enemies), thinking to myself: “wake me up when it is no longer about links and content.” It’s all about links and content. Thus, there are a few guidelines that have and will continue to exist ad infinitum in the SEO world:

A: Better URLs. Clean up your URL structure. Make shorter, keyword rich, dash separated (only a few) URLs.
B: Better Keywords. Do keyword analysis that compares competitiveness to traffic. A good keyword is money in your pocket.
C: Link-bait, Link-bait, Link-bait. A good link-bait campaign can be worth thousands of permanent, 1-way links. Try buying text link ads for the same price – its impossible.

Continue reading “Russ Jones – The SEO Interviews – Number Six” »

Welcome to the fifth installment of the SEO Interviews. If you’ve been following along at home, I’m embarassed to admit I mis-labeled the last two as number 2 and 3, when in fact they were numbers 3 and 4! Sorry about that. They’ve now been relabeled to reflect reality.

SEO Bio

Michael Martinez has been creating and promoting Web sites since 1996. He learned about and began practicing search engine optimization in 1998. An avid science fiction and fantasy fan, Michael has shared his passion with millions of readers around the world through Web sites, online essays, two print books, and an eBook with more than 1,000,000 downloads. He currently participates in several SEO forums and contributes to SEOMoz’s popular blog.

1) Michael, the series we’re doing is for discussion about “SEO”, but let’s face it, that acronym is not always completely descriptive of what people do. Describe what you do as it relates to search engine rankings.

I begin with research into query trends. What are people searching for? Then I analyze content most likely to be found by query patterns. That gives me an indication of what people are looking for. Then I construct content that matches those query and content patterns. Promoting good content begins with designing the content. Where necessary, I work outside the primary content but that’s not very efficient and has less to do with search engine optimization and more to do with simple advertising.

Continue reading “Michael Martinez – The SEO Interviews – Number Five” »

Our latest SEO Interview is with Bill Slawski, the SEO by the Sea. If you’re interested in being interviewed, we’d love to hear from you.

SEO Bio:

Bill Slawski is the founder and president of SEO by the Sea, Inc. He started moonlighting in web promotion and design in 1996, while working for the Superior Court of the State of Delaware. Initially working for the Court as an intern for the staff attorney, his interest in technology overcame his interest in the law, and he started working to bring new technologies to the Court. The Court has been a pioneer in a number of technology initiatives over the last few years, and has been recognized by Harris Poll and the US Chamber of Commerce as the top trial court in the country for the last five years in a row. He left the Court in early 2005, to work full time with Maryland internet marketing firm webadvantage.net. In 2006, he started his own firm, SEO by the Sea, Inc., specializing in internet marketing and search engine optimization.

Bill, born 1961, has a jurisdoctor degree in law and BA in English. He is also one of the founders and administrators of Cre8asite Forums, which focuses upon Usability, Web Design, and Marketing. He is a correspondent for Search Engine Watch on Patents and Search

1. This series is about people that refer to themselves as “SEOs.” Could you explain what an SEO does, and do you consider yourself to be one of them?

When I first started out on the web, I considered myself as a guy with a web site who wanted other people to find that site. This was before Google, and even before the days of Alta Vista, so instead of relying upon traffic from search engines, I was looking for places that might link to the site, and bring actual traffic to its pages. There were directories that were helpful, like yahoo, but building some type of relationship with businesses that had sites was as important, or even more important than being linked to from those sites.

I also tried to focus upon building a strong, useful, and informative web site, and that still is a goal in these days of search engines. When Altavista came around, and then Google, the importance of being listed in those became evident quickly. But, having worked on things like using words that a targeted audience expected to see on the pages of the site already, and using them in unique title tags and headings on each page of the site made it easy to rank well in search engines for terms that people would search for to find the site. Paying attention to feedback from customers, and the language that they used was helpful as well.

Continue reading “Bill Slawski – The SEO Interviews – Number Four” »

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.

Continue reading “Michael Grey – The SEO Interviews – Number Three” »

This is the second in our SEO Interview Series and we ask Six Questions to Dave Davies of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc. If you’re an SEO and would like to participate, we’d love to hear from you.

SEO Profile

Dave Davies is the CEO of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning, Inc. He has been involved in the Internet industry since 2000 and optimizing website since 2001. Beanstalk offers guaranteed SEO services to companies from around the world and guarantees first page rankings on the major search engines or your money back. Visit their website for more information and to read more about SEO in their articles on on their blog

The Six Question SEO Interview

1) The acronym SEO could be confusing to some people. Are you an SEO, or is SEO something you do as part of a larger discipline?

At the moment the only service we focus on is SEO however, due to the importance of additional factors we will be moving into the areas of PPC management and conversion analysis/optimization.

2) SEO reacts to search engines, and search engines react to SEO. Is the practice of SEO always self-defeating?

Good question and the reply depends on the tactics used. For those who chase algorithms then it is as they will always be playing catchup. For those SEO’s that stick to the best practices and and simply focus on building the strongest site possible (incoming links, quality unique content, etc.) then not-so-much. These SEO’s will be willing to hold steady when an algorithm shift sees their sites drop a bit knowing that the next update will correct the issue (we are currently seeing this situation on Yahoo! results out of the US).

Continue reading “Dave Davies – Beanstalk – The SEO Interviews – Number Two” »

Joe Balestrino joins us for the first in our SEO Interview Series. We’re asking SEOs 6 questions about their practice. If you’d like to participate, we’d love to have you. Please follow the instructions concerning the SootleDir Six Question SEO Interview Series

SEO’s Bio

Joe owns and operates Mr-seo.Com where you can read his articles, hire his services, listen to his podcast or join his forum.

1) I notice you call yourself an SEO/SEM Specialist. Can you tell me how the two disciplines differ?

SEO is the process of helping sites rank better organically. SEM is the process of generating traffic through paid marketing.

2) What trends have you seen unfolding in the last 12 months in SEO?

Yahoo and MSN have been making changes with the intention of becoming more competitive in relation to Google. Look for their algorithms to become more complex in the near future. One way links are what webmasters are seeking now that Google has stated that link exchanges and buying links are not a good way to go.

3) What do you recommend as SEO best practices right now for people looking to rank high in the search engines?

People should stick to the the basics and learn how to optimize title tags, H1 tags, build links, etc before worrying about precise keyword density or more complex issues related to optimization.

4) Do you derive most of your traffic from search engines or other sources? Describe the methods you find most effective.

75% of our traffic comes from search engines. We also do a lot of other advertising, articles and podcasts that help generate traffic. Because of the unique nature of our business, ranking well for organic searches is crucial. For other businesses, however, many methods can be as or more effective. Podcasting is becoming more popular all the time and allows many companies to reach an audience that otherwise might never find them.

5) What would you tell someone who was thinking of entering a career in SEM/SEO? Is there an ideal candidate?

An ideal candidatre is one that likes a challlange and is willing to put in the time to keep abreast of all the changes. He or she should be willing to gain a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t prior to offering services professionally so that client’s sites won’t serve as guinea pigs.

6) What do you think the most important SEO trends will be in the coming 12 months?

By far, the most important trend will be the greater realization that SEO is necessary for cost effective success on the net. Companies who have traditionally only used PPC advertising are starting to realize that SEO can greatly diminish their reliance on paid search marketing, which will only increase in price as time goes on. Small businesses have realized this for quite a while now, mostly out of necessity. If you don’t have a decent PPC budget, you can’t run an effective campaign. If you are organically optimized, however, PPC isn’t always necessary.

This post is to announce the new SEO Interview Series. This is a great way for you to be spotlighted, if you are an SEO. The interviews will be in 6 Questions. I’ll try and write the questions as uniquely for each candidate as possible.

Ultimately, I’d like to build a repository of decent, up to the minute information concerning what SEO tactics people are actually using, as well as learn more about the people who make up this industry.

SEO is evolving rapidly, and is becoming more and more mainstream every day. The number of job openings being advertised for the position are quite impressive. People love to learn about gaining search engine traffic, so let’s delve into what really works.

I look forward to hearing from you.