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Interview with the Economist
It was 6:00 PM Monday evening and I was about to head out of the office when the phone rang.
A journalist from The Economist wanted to do a phone interview on the status of the SEO/SEM industry and how it all works.
Well, at first we thought it might be a competing SEO digging for secrets. Some will stoop to anything. So Stone (owner of SEO Advantage) handed the phone to me.
Turns out it actually WAS the Economist!
In case you miss the story, here's what we talked about during the hour-long interview, point-by-point with a few more notes added:
1. The reporter asked which industries our clients operate in (real estate, mortgage industry and a few other niche areas).
2. How one starts an SEO campaign - "hopefully not from scratch," I said - LOL. I went into the client's initial keyword lists and what their main terms are, then how to set expectations, etc.
3. The size of our company and the average size of a regular SEO firm - 5 full time (4 in Tampa, 1 in Gainesville) and a support team in India for programming and link pop. Some SEO firms are bigger, but many operate as freelancers. Our team includes a really experienced bunch, each with our own area of expertise.
4. How we research - essentially we look at the client and their industry from the eyes of the search engines, site visitors, and customers using wordtracker.com, a study of competing sites, and analysis by our in-house MBA marketing guru.
5. How we check rankings - Webposition Gold, Topdog, Ranking Manager as well as real time lead tracking using our custom tracking program I built (still in dev) www.seotrends.com
6. Benefits of using PPC - I went over how powerful PPC can be if you have the budget. You can start branding from day 1 while your SEOs are writing/redoing/redesigning/developing/tweaking your site.
7. The Google Dance - I told him he's 2 and a half years late on this one :) So I explained the rolling updates and how the board is always changing and clarified the definitions he was having trouble with. He thought that updates, dances and algorithm changes were all one and the same - I got this when he mentioned the Jagger dance :) I explained the Google changes now are not done at 12 midnight on the 20th when you can hit the refresh button and see the results dance in front of your eyes. It can update now daily, weekly, etc. Major updates to algorithms affect the SERPS every 6-8 months (that being a trend and not a definitive time line), and every quarter PageRank is adjusted.
8. What is PageRank? Well, what you see in the Toolbar is eye candy. It's not linear. I can get a PR 4 to outrank a PR 6. It's more of a "wow, you have a PR 6," pat yourself on the back type of update. The real page ranking system is far more complex and is updated more often than once a quarter, probably more like once a week.
9. What is it that inbound links actually do? Well, first off, you NEED links - it's sink or swim without at least one good link. A good way to get a lot at once is to do a press release on the web. Blogs, news outlets and blogger hubs like Technorati have played a big role in spreading the word. I talked about the benefits of getting into dmoz since there are so many dmoz mirrors that hold huge pagerank - it's worth the wait. You see, what happens is dmoz releases its rdf file to the public, and Google uses this to update its directory as well as all the mirrors. It's an easy way to send big links into your site. Then I explained about directory one-way links in general.
10. The Sandbox - This was not an original question - it was news to his ears, so he asked what it meant. I explained that it's like a probationary status that a new site receives. He asked if it was a purgatory; I said that's a good way of looking at it. And from what I'm noticing it's getting stricter. It's got some people worried. He then asked what the purpose is, since it sounded like nonsense to him. I explained that it was there to keep fly-by-night spammer sites out of the search results. But it has also been the bane of new webmasters with legitimate sites. A lot of people are throwing up their hands and giving up. The ones with money hire an SEO ;)
11. The history of SEO - From my point of view, it has evolved and grown as the internet has become more popular. You can trace it back to mid 90's but it really started getting big when forums like jimsworld and spider-food opened the doors for the DYI SEOs. People were asking questions and getting answers from the pros. I told him that SEOs are usually your freelance types but like the industry, it's evolving. Mostly toward SEM. You need to know your stuff. Clients are looking for full-service SEO, PPC, reporting, ROI analysis, conversion funnel analysis and more.
12. Sblogs and spammer sites - Unethical SEO is a broad term. You have your unethicals that screw over clients, take their money, and get them banned for aggressive tactics. There is a class action suit against traffic power over that whole issue. And then there are aggressive SEOs that could care less about search engine guidelines and will do what needs to be done to rank. They too often get mixed in the same title. The difference is what the client knows. There is a market for spam. People do want spam sites. People want you to scrape content and build the super cloak and push traffic to them. And if that is what they buy into knowingly, then you can't call the SEO unethical. They're just aggressive SEOs. The knuckleheads that dupe, that build the cloaks and link their clients into the cloaks like the above mentioned companies are the ones that ruin it for the industry.
He asked me if I knew of scraper software by name (I pleaded the fifth) :evil: Ok, I said I didn't know of one by name. Honestly I forgot Fantoms page generator software 'cause he names his products with goofy names LOL.
13. The future of seo - I explained the hard part is training new people. How do you train an SEO? It's tough work, it's far from being fun. In a way it's very boring stuff. You write a lot, then you rewrite some more, you have to do research and do keyword studies all day. The worst is hunting links. That is going more and more outsourced. Pay a US employee 10 bucks an hour to hunt links all day or pay an Indian firm 150 bucks for 15 PR 5 links. The time involved makes links, even crappy ones, way too expensive if you cost them to an in-house employee.
As per training an SEO, this is where the industry can only grow so fast. To train an SEO takes at least a year. And even then,would you trust them to take on a big client? SEO has to be processed like any turnkey industry if it wants to grow and be productive. It's already headed in that direction. Copy/content specialists, link specialists, structure and design specialists, PPC specialists, and so on. The neat thing is that this process has opened the door for specialist companies that firms can farm out work to. Link pop companies have been out there for a while, but more and more you're seeing copy/content generation companies, too.
Finally, my opinion is that SEO/SEM will grow its fastest when traditional marketing firms want a piece of the search engine pie. I just hope the sandbox doesn't scare off the next generation of pure SEOs.
Aaah. All in a days work.
Want to talk more about SEO? You can get hold of SEO Advantage at 813-902-1405 or info@seoadvantage.com.
Search Engine Optimization Blog Article...
A journalist from The Economist wanted to do a phone interview on the status of the SEO/SEM industry and how it all works.
Well, at first we thought it might be a competing SEO digging for secrets. Some will stoop to anything. So Stone (owner of SEO Advantage) handed the phone to me.
Turns out it actually WAS the Economist!
In case you miss the story, here's what we talked about during the hour-long interview, point-by-point with a few more notes added:
1. The reporter asked which industries our clients operate in (real estate, mortgage industry and a few other niche areas).
2. How one starts an SEO campaign - "hopefully not from scratch," I said - LOL. I went into the client's initial keyword lists and what their main terms are, then how to set expectations, etc.
3. The size of our company and the average size of a regular SEO firm - 5 full time (4 in Tampa, 1 in Gainesville) and a support team in India for programming and link pop. Some SEO firms are bigger, but many operate as freelancers. Our team includes a really experienced bunch, each with our own area of expertise.
4. How we research - essentially we look at the client and their industry from the eyes of the search engines, site visitors, and customers using wordtracker.com, a study of competing sites, and analysis by our in-house MBA marketing guru.
5. How we check rankings - Webposition Gold, Topdog, Ranking Manager as well as real time lead tracking using our custom tracking program I built (still in dev) www.seotrends.com
6. Benefits of using PPC - I went over how powerful PPC can be if you have the budget. You can start branding from day 1 while your SEOs are writing/redoing/redesigning/developing/tweaking your site.
7. The Google Dance - I told him he's 2 and a half years late on this one :) So I explained the rolling updates and how the board is always changing and clarified the definitions he was having trouble with. He thought that updates, dances and algorithm changes were all one and the same - I got this when he mentioned the Jagger dance :) I explained the Google changes now are not done at 12 midnight on the 20th when you can hit the refresh button and see the results dance in front of your eyes. It can update now daily, weekly, etc. Major updates to algorithms affect the SERPS every 6-8 months (that being a trend and not a definitive time line), and every quarter PageRank is adjusted.
8. What is PageRank? Well, what you see in the Toolbar is eye candy. It's not linear. I can get a PR 4 to outrank a PR 6. It's more of a "wow, you have a PR 6," pat yourself on the back type of update. The real page ranking system is far more complex and is updated more often than once a quarter, probably more like once a week.
9. What is it that inbound links actually do? Well, first off, you NEED links - it's sink or swim without at least one good link. A good way to get a lot at once is to do a press release on the web. Blogs, news outlets and blogger hubs like Technorati have played a big role in spreading the word. I talked about the benefits of getting into dmoz since there are so many dmoz mirrors that hold huge pagerank - it's worth the wait. You see, what happens is dmoz releases its rdf file to the public, and Google uses this to update its directory as well as all the mirrors. It's an easy way to send big links into your site. Then I explained about directory one-way links in general.
10. The Sandbox - This was not an original question - it was news to his ears, so he asked what it meant. I explained that it's like a probationary status that a new site receives. He asked if it was a purgatory; I said that's a good way of looking at it. And from what I'm noticing it's getting stricter. It's got some people worried. He then asked what the purpose is, since it sounded like nonsense to him. I explained that it was there to keep fly-by-night spammer sites out of the search results. But it has also been the bane of new webmasters with legitimate sites. A lot of people are throwing up their hands and giving up. The ones with money hire an SEO ;)
11. The history of SEO - From my point of view, it has evolved and grown as the internet has become more popular. You can trace it back to mid 90's but it really started getting big when forums like jimsworld and spider-food opened the doors for the DYI SEOs. People were asking questions and getting answers from the pros. I told him that SEOs are usually your freelance types but like the industry, it's evolving. Mostly toward SEM. You need to know your stuff. Clients are looking for full-service SEO, PPC, reporting, ROI analysis, conversion funnel analysis and more.
12. Sblogs and spammer sites - Unethical SEO is a broad term. You have your unethicals that screw over clients, take their money, and get them banned for aggressive tactics. There is a class action suit against traffic power over that whole issue. And then there are aggressive SEOs that could care less about search engine guidelines and will do what needs to be done to rank. They too often get mixed in the same title. The difference is what the client knows. There is a market for spam. People do want spam sites. People want you to scrape content and build the super cloak and push traffic to them. And if that is what they buy into knowingly, then you can't call the SEO unethical. They're just aggressive SEOs. The knuckleheads that dupe, that build the cloaks and link their clients into the cloaks like the above mentioned companies are the ones that ruin it for the industry.
He asked me if I knew of scraper software by name (I pleaded the fifth) :evil: Ok, I said I didn't know of one by name. Honestly I forgot Fantoms page generator software 'cause he names his products with goofy names LOL.
13. The future of seo - I explained the hard part is training new people. How do you train an SEO? It's tough work, it's far from being fun. In a way it's very boring stuff. You write a lot, then you rewrite some more, you have to do research and do keyword studies all day. The worst is hunting links. That is going more and more outsourced. Pay a US employee 10 bucks an hour to hunt links all day or pay an Indian firm 150 bucks for 15 PR 5 links. The time involved makes links, even crappy ones, way too expensive if you cost them to an in-house employee.
As per training an SEO, this is where the industry can only grow so fast. To train an SEO takes at least a year. And even then,would you trust them to take on a big client? SEO has to be processed like any turnkey industry if it wants to grow and be productive. It's already headed in that direction. Copy/content specialists, link specialists, structure and design specialists, PPC specialists, and so on. The neat thing is that this process has opened the door for specialist companies that firms can farm out work to. Link pop companies have been out there for a while, but more and more you're seeing copy/content generation companies, too.
Finally, my opinion is that SEO/SEM will grow its fastest when traditional marketing firms want a piece of the search engine pie. I just hope the sandbox doesn't scare off the next generation of pure SEOs.
Aaah. All in a days work.
Want to talk more about SEO? You can get hold of SEO Advantage at 813-902-1405 or info@seoadvantage.com.
Search Engine Optimization Blog Article...
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