SEO Boy authors Amber and Carrie spoke with Shimon about some interesting SEO concepts. They discussed the importance of being interactive with social media, having resource rich webpages with high quality content, and also, Shimon’s viewpoint on the Microsoft/Yahoo deal.

Thanks to Shimon for taking the time to talk with us!

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1. SEO Boy’s Super Friends Interview Series: From Social Media to Bing with Shimon Sandler (15.7MB, .mp3)

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SEO Boy authors Joe and Carrie spoke with Heather about some core concepts of search engine optimization. They discussed creating websites that are focused toward great user experience, choosing the right keywords for the right target audience, as well as on-page optimization tips. All of these tactics, and many more, are all part of the striking the right findability formula.

Thanks to Heather for taking the time to talk with us!

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1. SEO Boy’s Super Friends Interview Series: Striking the Right Findability with Heather Lutze (13MB, .mp3)

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Tom Schmitz is a SEO and social media strategist for Portent Interactive, an
Internet Marketing agency whose clients include AdAge, Attachmate and Trump
University. He began marketing on the Internet in 1996 and was already
online when modem driven bulletin boards and online services like Genie were
state of the art. Tom served as a not-for-profit communications and
development director for many years. During this period he introduced the
nonprofit sector to Web marketing and spoke at and organized technology
conferences.

Now, let’s get to these questions!

SEO Boy: You mention in your Seattle PI SEO Dysfunction post that they made a
critical error by using a 302 redirect to their new domain over a 301
redirect. Can you tell us the difference between the two, what the effect
has had on this site (if you’ve kept up with it) and how companies can
prevent this kind of critical error in the future?

Tom: Well, first I’m happy to report that 301 redirects were implemented soon
after that article published, so all is well at www.seattlepi.com.

It’s important to understand that links generate and pass authority, the
type of authority that search engines use to decide which web pages or
documents are the most important or trustworthy. The more links a document
receives the more authority it receives. Pages that have high trust and high
authority pass greater trust and authority via links than less trusted
pages. So links are like votes, except that some votes count more than
others.

As a longstanding institution, the Seattle Post Intelligencer web site at
seattlepi.nwsource.com had lots of authority. There were thousands of links
pointing to the home page and to articles pages. When they moved to
www.seattlepi.com, all of those links from other websites still pointed to
seattlepi.nwsource.com. So, even though all of the old Seattle PI content
was on the new website, the links, and hence the authority and trust,
pointed to the old one.

This is not an uncommon situation. Web sites change domains all the time.
Company names change. Mergers occur. Blogs move from hosted platforms to
self-hosted ones. There are many reasons to transfer web site content from
one domain name to another. The search engines know it too and have provided
a way to deal with it, the 301 redirect.

A redirect forwards a web site visitor from one address to another, from the
old URL, to the new one. The two types most used are the 302 Temporary
Redirect and the 301 Permanent Redirect. 301 and 302 are codes passed by web
servers, in the background, to Internet browsers and search engine spiders.
A temporary 302 redirect says, “Go to this new page, but don’t put this in
your permanent record. We’ll be restoring the old address soon.”  The 301
code tells search engines, “This change is permanent. Any authority and
trust you gave to the old address should now be given to the new address.”

301 redirects transfer search ranking authority. 302 redirects block search
ranking authority. It’s that simple. One final note, you can, and should,
use 301 redirects within a domain as well as between different domains.

SEO Boy: Regarding your post on long tail keywords being dead, do you think SEO
people should still try and rank for long tail keywords or focus more of
their time on the general keywords since they’re finding what they need
without searching for the long tail?

Tom: I wrote that article as an inside joke here at Portent Interactive. Long
tail keywords are immensely important.

• They are much easier to rank for than more competitive keywords
• They are more exact in meaning so they tend to convert better when the
  content and keywords match
• They can be used as long-term building blocks to get higher rankings for more competitive keywords

The reason I wrote that long tail keywords are dead is because many more
people are optimizing their web sites for long tail keywords. Keyword
research is easier than ever, thanks to the search engines. This means that
the competition for long tails can be fierce. Web site optimizers used long
tail keywords long before Chris Anderson wrote his book. Back then it was
fresh powder. Today the long tail is well trodden. It’s still an important
strategy, but it’s not special anymore.

Ask yourself, “What are the new places where few web marketers look to where
I can find people whom I can convert into traffic, prospects and customers”
Today the answer usually includes social media sites like Facebook or
Twitter, not mundane long tail keywords. Here’s a hint – Facebook and
Twitter are getting pretty well trodden themselves. Can you find new answers
to this question? If so you can create a strategic advantage for yourself.
Find the fresh powder!

SEO Boy: In your opinion, what is the one aspect of SEO that will get you the
biggest return for your time spent?

Tom: It’s easy to answer, “Optimize your title tags,” or, “Get links,” but truly,
it depends on the content of your web site. I’m not being evasive either. An
authoritative business journal with lots of unique content is a very
different animal than a catalog site which sells the exact same drop
shipment products being sold by 1,200 other web sites. The business journal
is going to get links naturally while the catalog site will be hard pressed
to get organic links. So, for the business journal I’d recommend that it
teach its authors to write stories using words and phrases people search
for. For the catalog site I’d recommend rewriting all their old product
descriptions to make them unique or I might make them undertake a link bait
campaign to build domain authority or to embark on a social media campaign
that will inject the web site into less competitive search spaces like
Twitter search results.

It all depends.

Here’s a formula anyone can understand:

1. Look at lists of search engine ranking signals and become familiar with
the different factors. Here’s three lists.

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/google-ranking-factors.htm

http://www.huomah.com/Search-Engines/Search-Engine-Optimization/Search-Geeks

-Guide-to-Ranking-Factors.html

(Search engines are not going to reveal their secret sauces so I’m not
endorsing any one list. Compare them. See where they agree or contrast. Then, use your own
judgment.)

2. Divide the signals into two groups, those which should come naturally
to your web site and page content and those signals that do not.

3. Set your priorities

• Of the signals that do not come naturally, which are the most influential?
• Of the signals that should come naturally, which fall short? Why?

An exercise like this, done thoroughly and honestly, can reveal the things
you need to emphasize in your SEO efforts.

And this concludes our interview with Tom! A huge thanks to Tom for taking the time to answer our questions!

SEO Boy authors Amber and Carrie spoke with Stoney about the core concepts of destination search engine marketing, best practices for launching a successful presence on Twitter, understanding the need for online marketing investment, and the biggest challenges faced when working on SEO.

Thanks a lot for your time Stoney. It was a pleasure chatting with you!

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1. SEO Boy’s Super Friends Interview Series: Destination Search Engine Marketing and More with Stoney deGeyter (11.5MB, .mp3)

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SEO Boy authors John and Carrie spoke with Rand about the evolution of international SEO practices, awesome link building techniques, Rand’s favorite headsmacking tips (confirmation emails,incentivize links), and the emerging practice of content licensing.

It’s a pleasure to get inside the head of Mr. Randfish, and we here at SEO Boy are thankful for your time Rand!

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1. SEO Boy’s Super Friends Interview Series: SEO Abroad, Content Licensing and More with Rand Fishkin (14.4MB, .mp3)

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SEO Boy authors John and Amber talked with Alex about his personal experiences in leveraging Google Analytics to improve SEO.  Going even more granular, Alex expanded on one of his more recent blog posts regarding Apache error logs and finding “hidden data.”  And last, but not least, listen for Alex’s top 5 to-dos for SEOs using Google Analytics (link to Avanish Kaushik post mentioned in interview).

Thanks for the interview, Alex!

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1. SEO Boy’s Super Friends Interview Series: Leveraging Analytics Data for SEO Success – Alex Cohen (14.1MB, .zip)

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Listen to SEO Boy authors John and Pete chat with Dan on the significance of reputation management for any individual or business and come away with actionable items that you can integrate into your SEO plan to improve your own online reputation management today!

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1. SEO Boy’s Super Friends Interview Series: Approachable Reputation Management – Dan Hall (11.8MB, .zip)

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SEO Boy: Will changes search engines have made to more carefully consider and attempt to quantify content quality change the actual people or type of people who are involved in/successful at SEO?

Aaron: I think many people who are in the SEO field ended up in the field out of curiosity or necessity. As a stand alone business strategy it will be harder and harder to build a business off of just doing SEO. But the value of integrating SEO (and SEO oriented thinking) into your holistic marketing strategy will keep increasing. I think many SEO firms will get marginalized as many mid sized to large sized companies bring SEO in house.

There will always be some fraction of people at the market edges that take advantages of new algorithmic holes created by changes in the structure of the web. There will always be some fraction of people on the market edges pushing some get rich quick stuff that is a waste of time. But outside of those 2 groups SEO will keep growing more holistic as part of a marketing strategy.

SEO Boy: What do you think are the most important factors in building trust and loyalty for a brand/website?

Aaron: I think being consistent and showing up every day is the key. It can take a long time and a lot of effort and investment to build an audience and produce sustainable returns. If you are in a competitive market where the winners are quite passionate then you need to be pretty passionate to compete with them. Passion makes work seem less like work, and allows you to last through all the set backs required to reach a position of sustained profit potential.

SEO Boy: For beginning SEO’ers – In your opinion what are the most important things to focus on when first beginning an SEO campaign?

Aaron: Market research – know how strong your competition is, map out some of your plan of attack, map out some of your promotional ideas. And if you don’t have anything mapped out you can just throw up a blog and start writing, then try to start promoting it. Community interaction should help you come up with marketing ideas, and online there are so many signs of success that you can research (search rankings, ad placements, recommendations in blogs, media coverage, etc.)

The more you invest in knowing your market well the easier it will be to get your ideas well known by your market. There will likely be some false starts and some epic fails, but on average over time you will be far more successful if you really invest into knowing your market better than the next guy.

And the good news is that many market leaders drink their own Kool-Aid and are so busy promoting themselves that they leave little time for new analysis and learning…spending time reading and researching increases your value significantly. And you can’t be afraid to be wrong or make someone angry. If you are never wrong then you probably are not doing anything worthwhile.

SEO Boy: What types of creative content do you think has become/will soon become most effective for SEO purposes?

Aaron: I believe that whenever you create content that is free that is better than what other people sell then eventually people take notice of it, particularly if you push it hard and nobody really pushed that idea hard yet.

There is a lot of narcissism online, and so awards and other forms of ego strokes will always be profitable strategies.

SEO Boy: Sorry for the 3-part question:  What are some of the common roadblocks that established businesses have when approaching SEO for the first time? In conjunction with that, do you have clients that do not respond to the advice you have given them? If so, what is  your strategy to get them to move forward with your recommendations?

Aaron: There is a lot of misinformation in the SEO space. Many people suffer from laziness and/or looking for the quick answer, and that often results into buying a scam (if a person pays too low they preclude the honest portions of the market from wanting to work for them).

We have some clients that do not do everything we recommend. Depending on the size and structure of the company you may have to get buy in from (or provide training to) different people. In larger companies SEO does not operate in a vacuum, as there are many other competing business interests. So you give them 50 suggestions and hopefully they will implement 35 of them. In some companies there are people inside the company who do not really believe in the power of SEO. In some such instances we have done on site training to help evangelize SEO throughout the company.

SEO Boy: How did you manage to learn about SEO to the point where you say you know it inside and out?

Aaron: I think it is just a process. All the following helped me out though:

- setting up websites and watching their rankings improve
- participating on public and private forums
- reading blogs
- working on client sites
- talking with many great friends that offer lots of insights
- going to conferences
- reading some patents and research papers from search companies

Each day we try to cure a bit more of our ignorance. Learn learn learn!

SEO Boy: Not to be confrontational at all, but you mention that you don’t really like most costly SEO tools, that they eventually become un-useful after time. What makes SEOBOOK different (besides the fact that it’s free)?

Aaron: The web, search relevancy algorithms, and seo strategies all evolve. Rather than sticking to any single tool and any single mindset we try to ebb and flow with the market. If you look at our new SEO toolbar ( http://tools.seobook.com/seo-toolbar/ ) it is very similar to our SEO for Firefox ( http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html ) plug-in with the data it shows, but it also contains a bunch of keyword tools. A year or two ago I would not have liked the idea of a toolbar, but as more free keyword research tools hit the market and more competitive research tools offered data it made a lot of sense to aggregate a lot of that data, and put it in a toolbar.

What makes our tools different than most tools is that most tools are created to sell you crap you don’t need. We create tools that we want to use, based on our knowledge of the market. We also get a lot of feedback from users on how to improve our tools. Since we rely on distributed computing (easy to do with free software, a bit harder with most paid software strategies) it keeps our cost overhead low, while allowing us to provide useful software that is used by 10,000′s of people every day.

It is not that any given tool is completely without value that is the issue…it is that most software rapidly gets commoditized, and many people who had their business model commoditized keep selling stuff even after it loses utility. There are a lot of all-in-one SEO suites that misinform their customers with useless data points. Rather than removing the useless tools from their suites, they keep offering them because it *looks* like there is extra value with that extra piece there, even if it actually lowers the value of the offering.

SEO Boy: How do you learn what the search engines are up to? Most SEO people go to your site to find out when Google updates their algorithms, or when you say that the search engines are getting better at scrubbing link quality…how do you know this? Or is it top secret?  : )

Aaron: We track the rankings of a lot of sites and track how they change. If you know a few dozen keywords intimately well then when they change you can start piecing it all together, like we did when it seemed brands got a boost. I have great SEO friends that know far more than I do and a killer member’s only forum…both of them help flesh out ideas and operate at level above most SEO conversations.

SEO Boy: Did you really get into marketing just by selling baseball cards?  : )  How did you decide that you wanted to learn SEO and not something else?

Aaron: I also sold basketball, football, and (to a lesser extent) hockey cards.

My desire to learn SEO came from wanting to market a whinge site and having no capital to do so. And from that I kept learning. Someone pushed to hire me before I was trying to sell anything, and next thing you know I am an SEO

SEO Boy: People always ask about how they can make money on a blog or website;  Can you tell us more about how you went from making $300/month in 2004 to $10,000/month? What kind of dedication does one have to have to accomplish something even ¼ of this income?

Aaron: Those data points are a bit cherry picked…part of why I made so little at the beginning of the year is that most profits were invested in marketing and networking (so they seemed smaller off the start and higher at the end). By the end of that year I was somewhat well known. Some of my revenues that year came from affiliate marketing, some from direct product sales, and some from consulting.

Making 1/4 of $10k a months only $30,000 a year…which is not that competitive of a goal when you think of how many opportunities there are online. How hard you have to work and how dedicated you need to be depend on a wide array of factors, including…

- market timing & market saturation
- how good you are at networking
- how much you are willing to risk
- if you are willing to be wrong
- how quick you learn
- how much you are willing to invest in learning
- how much you are willing to reinvest profits into building up network effects and market leading positions
- if you chose the right friends and the right leaders
- your passion
- any abnormal skills that make you stand out and/or seem remarkable
- luck

cheers

aaron

Aaron, thanks so much for helping all of us understand the web and how it relates to SEO a little better!  We appreciate your time and we’ll keep on reading your blog!