At North South Media we have been popping in and out of various search marketing niches to arm, not only ourselves, but also our readership, with a far better understanding on how the various fragments function. Our latest offering is Social Media and for this interview we got together with one of Scotland’s best and highly vocal social profiles online today : Andrew Burnett. We thoroughly enjoyed our talk and hope you do as well, here’s how it went …

Me : Andrew, myself, and an abundant users of Twitter, Digg et al. Feel we know you well – but for those that are just tuning in for the first time ever to Andrew Burnett, care to fill them in ?

Andrew : Well, if that’s not a tough question to start with! I’m active on most of the bigger social media sites. Wherever possible my username is andrewburnett, but where that is already taken I can be found under the guise of emecks (a throwback from my days at Macromedia – emecks being inspired by MX). For me social media has two great benefits, meeting great people and finding great links. I do my best to look at any link I am sent and will vote on any of them that inform, amuse or entertain me. There are a wide variety of links that interest me, from typographic through wordpress to environmental issues.

Me : Ok, this interview is about social media, and there is sooo much to talk about, but im going to start with Digg, its new toolbar, and the monopilisation of its front page.

• Having quickly used the toolbar, I like it, but I know its not a good thing on the whole, can you expand on this?
• And also how do Digg, release their front page from the iron grip it finds itself within or can’t/won’t they?

Andrew : I think you mean the new diggbar (as opposed to the Firefox plugin diggtoolbar). In general I am not a fan of the current resurgence of iframes, it’s the reason I stopped using hootsuite for twitter. That said I actually find some benefits in the diggbar – the number of page views are there for all to see, favourite, facebook, tweet, email and shout options are all there directly on the page.

I’m not sure that I agree about the digg front page being monopolised. There certainly are a number of sites which seem to always be there, but these sites are pumping out great content. Once a site has had a number of digg front pages diggers will subscribe to its RSS feed to be the first to digg its latest content. Some see this as a vicious circle, I prefer to look at it as confirmation that great content is the holy-grail for all websites!

Me : Looking around the social media sphere it seems the full environment is pitted with changes, now I don’t mind change, as long as its for good, hence my sucking-of-breath noises over the diggbar. But one place I used to love hanging out at was StumbleUpon (SU), now I barely give it a fleeting glance. Do you feel that SU has taken a turn for the worse via its changes?

Andrew : Embracing change is a necessity in all internet disciplines, but possibly more so in social media than anywhere else. StumbleUpon’s recent changes initially frustrated me as I found my email inbox filling up with shares (SU now allows you to share stumbles with all of your friends in one click). Once I found out how to disable the email notifications I actually really like the feature, I rarely share things via StumbleUpon but when I do it is usually something that I think is great for all my friends so being able to reach all of them so easily makes for a much nicer experience! On a side note I have met some of my best social media buddies through StumbleUpon’s share bar, after say 10 or 20 messages there we’ve shared Skype names and actually talked to each other.

Me : What’s your honest thoughts on Facebook, LinkedIn & Plurk ?

Andrew : They are all very different services, all useful for different things. Personally I use Facebook to get back in touch with people I’ve lost contact with over the years (leaving Scotland for Switzerland and then the same in reverse has that effect). Also I’ve got all of my twitter updates spamming Facebook in the vain hope that my Facebook friends will start to tweet. LinkedIn is one that I’m more passive on, it seems most people I know ask me to join their LinkedIn networks. I’ve never had any interaction on the site though and to be honest don’t see benefit in it for myself, though I know many people who have had great successes using it.

Plurk deserves a mention from me all of its own. Plurk was the first microblogging site that I got totally addicted to, it was the site that underlined what social media is to me. It has its flaws and despite very rarely visiting it anymore it will always have a special place in my browser.

Me : Twitter! Where do we start. Now, we know its not a fad, but we also know it takes 2 or 3 attempts to actually get it. We’ll I suppose the first thing to ask is how would you improve the service? Secondly, should all businesses have a Twitter account? Thirdly, I know you use Twitter as a platform to go out and network with people face-to-face (more power to you, I say) however, would you not prefer spending your Twitter time blogging more than retweeting someone else’s work?

Andrew : The only thing I would change about twitter is to make the service more solid, ie. to ensure the “failwhale” appears monthly as opposed to daily. It is a truly phenomenal service with really very little need for improvement. Should all businesses be on Twitter? Not all businesses should be, but there are very few who definitely shouldn’t – many who think they don’t need to could benefit from it. Zappos is an exceptional example – if a shoe company can benefit from being on twitter anyone can, it’s all about how you do it.

The blogging point you bring up is an interesting one, from my perspective twitter has brought enormous benefit to those who publish great posts on their blogs. People tweet about great blog posts and raise the visibility of them, others create great blog posts – both parts are essential for success. So I suppose my personal take on it is let the bloggers write ever better posts and let the twitterers expose those posts to ever increasing numbers of twitterers. That way everyone benefits!

Me : There has been a massive upsurge in Social Media experts and Gurus recently. Now, I know that labelling yourself as an expert etc… is something you don’t participate in. What is it you feel that a person wanting to break into social media should bring to the table i.e. what netiquette should a social media participant strive for?

Andrew : One of the biggest (and best) lessons I’ve learned is to avoid conflict. Social media is simply not an arena for one-upmanship, it is much rather an opportunity to find and interact with peers. That may sound very vague but it is ultimately just an extension of offline reality. There are people whose opinions you respect just as there are people who respect your opinion. The important word here is respect. The one great advantage that social media offers over the offline world is that you can find many people whose opinion and knowledge you respect and can simply ignore those who you don’t respect.

Me : What other benefits are there of being involved with social media that people may not have considered?

Andrew : Free beer! Seriously though, free beer. Consider this mini case study: I got sent 12 bottles of beer to sample before it got launched to the public, obviously the hope was that I would like it and say good things about it. The beer was exceptionally good and I did indeed tell a lot of people about it. As I had 12 bottles I tweeted that people were welcome to come to my house and pick up a couple of bottles, through which I met a great local guy who in turn invited me to his business launch the next evening. The knock on effect of doing something genuinely good is amazing!

That only worked because the beer was great though. Had it been mediocre or bad I’d not have said a peep and would have left it at the next party I got invited to. Honesty and transparency are two massive benefits of social media. This is why advertising a poor product or service on social media is doomed to failure and ridicule, and quite rightly so.

Me : Finally, Andrew, where do you see social media in a few years time?

Andrew : My own hopes are quite utopian, I would love to see social media making the world smaller and generating more respect for each and every individual in the world. I would love to see a reduction in conflict as we embrace what makes us similar and as we reach out to our brothers and sisters across the globe. That is what I personally hope for and I truly believe we have only just scratched the surface of social media’s potential.

Recent events on twitter with every celebrity and their dog feeling the need to collect a million followers disappoints me in the extreme – this has nothing to do with being social. Collecting any arbitrary number of followers by definition ignores the value that the individual has and that is what makes social media social.

Cheers Andrew for your time towards this interview. I know you have been busy as of late getting Design Build Promote off the ground. If anybody wants to connect with Andrew you can follow him on Twitter @andrewburnett and be prepared for a highly insightful experience.

In my constant quest to understand better the knowledge surrounding search marketing I run a few interviews with guys and gals who understand every nook n’ crannie of their niche. I am delighted to bring you my recent interview with Dev Basu, about Local SEO. Here’s the interview :

Me : Dev, welcome to NSM, can you please give us some background info on yourself and your current role within the Search Industry today?

Dev : Thanks Paul. I’ve been active in the search marketing industry since 2006, although I stumbled upon SEO as a marketing medium in late 2005. Since then, I’ve worked at Microsoft Canada as a channel marketer, with my role evolving into managing their OEM web portal. My first serious foray into SEO was when I started blogging about affiliate marketing and attracting conversions through organic search.

I’m passionate about search marketing, so I’d say my role is spread the word, and help businesses of all sizes realize how much they can accomplish by leveraging search.

Since then I’ve worked at firms such as Search Engine People as an SEO and Social Media Specialist, and at a Forex powerhouse called OANDA. Currently, I’m the Director of Online Marketing for a Yellow Pages advertising agency called Publipage.

Me : I’ve known you for some time online, Dev, and have seen you write some great articles on Local Search for SME’s – can you briefly bring us up-to-date what all this ‘Local SEO’ means?

Dev : Part of the reason for my move to Publipage was to help the traditional Yellow Pages print client – an SMB or SME client spending mega bucks on the print product, to get a better media mix by leveraging SEO/SEM and Local Search. To me, Local Search is the proverbial low hanging fruit for any business, because all business by nature have a local component – even national advertisers.

Simply stated, Local Search involves finding local business results, when searching for a business service or product in your own city or town. For example, garage doors toronto, or dentists ayrshire would yield local map results on Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Local search doesn’t stop at the tier 1 search engines though – it extends to IYP hybrids like Yelp, Praized, CitySearch, and MerchantCircle. In fact, the Yellow Pages and other publishers were the first truly local search engines.

Me : I understand the importance of YellowPages, but how do you put local search to work with a young, dynamic, company that has ideas of expansion, as its brand becomes better known?

Dev : Local search can be the feather in your cap no matter whether your brand is well known or not. Based on the premise that people are looking for ‘what you do more than who you are’, local search can present the unique opportunity to essentially ‘get-ahead’ of months of tedious organic SEO work, and score a top listing on Google, Yahoo, or MSN Maps. Furthermore, local search isn’t solely about having a business name and a phone number. The local business profile one creates can include images, videos, descriptions, and user reviews.

User reviews are a particularly good way to increase conversion rates. Adding videos to your profile, which can be linked from sites like Youtube offers another opportunity to rank well in local search, while giving one the opportunity to tell their brand’s story at the same time.

Me : I have witnessed an increase of manipulation to Google Business services, where a little tinkering can feature a company in the top-half of a localised search via Google Map display … do you feel Google needs to re-evaluate … say displaying its local business search results in less prominent positions, i.e. serve the first 4 / 5 organic results before the local business results?

Dev : In my opinion, Google’s giving small business owners a fair chance at leveraging the power of Google’s search product, and I quite like the fact that the maps are triggered for local queries. Local search is in its infancy, much like organic search was in 2001-2004. As Google keeps adding more variables into the local search algorithm, there should be more legitimate ways to rank well, and less occurrences of the map spam that is so prevalent today.

Me : How is it possible to run a social media campaign on the Internet that is strictly governed by boundary searches i.e. local submission.

Dev : That’s a tricky question that might need a little more definition to answer properly. One way to see a synergy between social media and local search is to make the two work with each other. I’d segment this out into two process of the customer life time cycle – a) Discovery b) Engagement.

In the discovery phase, one may find a particularly active local business through a generic local search term such as ‘pizza ayrshire’. Let’s say that this local pizzeria is doing some conscientious community outreach initiatives which are promoted through social media. In the ‘engagement process’ one can utilize tools such as hyperlocal blogging, twitter, facebook, wiki-like directories (eg: Yelp), and even Google coupons to engage the customer in their local offering and services. Not only do such social media sites help in promoting the business by engaging local customers, they help in their organic and local rankings too by generating inbound links. In the local search context, such links are known as ‘local citations’.

Me : What is the best way for a site to geotarget a number of towns / areas within a local seo campaign? I have myself built individual pages to target seperate towns, in the past, but found it extremely time consuming trying not to make the pages look similar in content, is this still the best way forward?

Dev : The best way to do so is to build city/town based landing pages. The approach I endorse is time consuming too, but has a great pay-off in attracting laser targeted local traffic. The first step is to build out the landing pages in a logical structure such as domain.com/state/city-kw1-kw2.html. The landing page needs to contain information a specific format and have certain elements such as:

- Address in hCard microformat (this seems to be a growing trend in local search)
- Address across the footer pages
- Main local keywords in an H1 tag. Eg: London Personal Injury Lawyer

You can find more about best practices for landing pages in this post that I wrote: Search Landing Page Design

Duplicate content doesn’t seem to be too big of an issue for me given that I use a couple of ways to get around it:

- Having a short blurb of the locality + services that are slightly different for each page.
- Submitting a geo-sitemap into Google Webmaster Tools.
- Submitting a KML file to http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlSearch.html
- Building links to the individual landing pages from local business directories such as Yelp.

Me : Quick fire round, Dev – Do dialects and spelling really work for local seo? Does the location of the server have any effect in running a local seo campaign? Is it best to get inbound links from other websites within your targetted region?

Dev : Dialects and Spelling: Yes, they do affect local search. For example, it’s ‘optimisation’ and not ‘optimization’ in the UK, so it’d make sense to utilize the spelling that folks in that region use. This is a simple task through basic keyword research because you’re just adding local cities based modifiers to the tail end or front end of the generic keywords pulled through keyword research

I haven’t seen any definitive evidence that server location specifically affects local search, although it definitely affects organic search. That said, the local search algorithm does borrow heavily on how well organic SEO is implemented on a particular website, so it might be a factor to consider. One way to increase this geo-targeting would be to associate the specific directory containing the local landing pages to your region or country.

Inbound links: The best way to assess if this is an effective strategy is to survey the IBL’s for the top 10 sites ranking organically for a competitive local search term. If they have common inbound links coming from local business directories, then you should go after those first, then follow up with your own arsenal of local link targets.

Me : OK, Dev, final question, can I have your view on how you feel the search engines will handle local searches in the future and how do you think personalisation will fit into this?

Dev : I wrote about how Google is taking both location and personalization into shaping user search behaviour at Google Suggests Local Keyword Searches. Essentially, Google is shaping queries such as ‘lawyer’, ‘dentist’, ‘dry cleaner’, into locally relevant queries. Once you’ve associated your Google profile to a particular city or postal/zip code, Google will always aim to deliver local results to you based on your search behaviour, and particularly searches involving local queries.

I think that in the future, Google will employ a mix of IP based targeting and personalization data that users provide to create a more relevant and robust local search algorithm.

Me : Thanks, Dev, for a thorough insightful view into Local SEO

Over the next few weeks I’ll be dipping into more ‘Parky’ mode and inviting guests from various search related niches to be interviewed as I try and get into the minds of people who understand how all this interwebby stuff works.

You know one of the most interesting things about social media is that it puts you in the picture with guys and gals who are at the cutting edge of on-line technology and marketing. These people who have hectic schedules and live by their flight itineraries are suddenly in reach and communicating through channels such as Twitter and Plurk. This is how I met my next guest, Patrick J Kearney, and the following interview is testament to how people always find time no matter how busy they are, as long as you ask nicely.

Me : Hi Patrick, can you please tell us a little about yourself, your company and how you got into digital media?

Patrick : The best way to describe my role is “digital media producer”, but with titles like “VP Technology & Platforms”, “COO” and “Director of Production”, it is easy to see why my mother has no clue what I do. So I just say, “I put things on screens.” It seems to satisfy her, or she at least says, “Oh, I see.” and walks off muttering to herself.

I started out wanting to be a Computer Science major, then when I was failing out of Calculus with a 33% average, decided it was time for a career shift, and went into film school. I wanted to be a director, and the girls were FAR hotter than the ones in the computer labs.

However, upon graduating and working at various post houses, the advent of Avid and Photoshop / After Effects meant I was much more effective on the computer as a producer than behind a camera. I quickly started producing for a number of clients who wanted expensive looking production, but could not afford the higher end stuff.

Today, I am VP Technology and Platforms for Participant Media, a media company specializing in creating entertainment that inspires and creates social change. Our movies include “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Syriana”, among others.

Me : What advice could you offer to someone looking to get into a similar position as yourself?

Patrick : Everyone who wants to be in the film business wants to be the director. No one is looking for a director. You won’t find Warner Bros putting an ad in “Variety” seeking a director for their next Batman movie. You’ll never get in the door that way. Instead, discover what they REALLY need and be darn good at THAT. Once you’re in the door, you’re in. You can go anywhere from there.

If you know Flash, be a great Flash artist and make sure the Creative Directors in every studio knows your work. Do a little freelance for them, and if it works out, these often evolve into full-time once you become ingrained into the team. Then, once you’re in, volunteer to shoot some video shorts for the site, etc. and suddenly, you’re directing for a Hollywood Studio. Go play softball for the company team and walk the head of Theatrical Production to first. Take it from there.

Me : Over the years we have seen the internet expand in terms of delivering information to the people browsing websites. Long gone are the days of flat html files riddled by dodgy animated gif images. What would you describe as the defining moment in the digital evolution? Also did you ever think it would evolve this fast?

Patrick : There are a series of defining moments, all of which involve bringing what was formerly an exclusive capability for big companies, into an affordable means for the average person. Democratizing Big Media has been the biggest game-changer in this industry. Two in particular come to mind…

Processing power and RAM becoming fast and cheap. I remember hocking a $5K engagement ring for 16MB of RAM for my Mac IIsi. It was worth it. Today on my laptop, I have Final Cut Pro, which has ten times the RAM and four times the hard drive storage as the $150K Avid rig I worked on circa 1992.

Affordable broadband reaches mass-market. When I worked for MediaOne, managing content and services for their Western US broadband rollout, I had very smart studio executives scoff at the notion that a consumer would ever pay $40/month for a broadband connection when they have perfectly good dialup access for $20. Those same studio execs are now sweating bullets and whining to the lawyers about Bittorrent screwing up their movie release windows. I certainly know they never expected it to evolve this fast, and both record labels and movie studios got caught with their pants down – but not without plenty of advance warning of exactly where things were going.

Me : I have been highly tempted to produce my own podcasts purely for enjoyment purposes mixed in with a little search marketing banter. Could you give me any tips to make my ideas audio?

Patrick : I would suggest picking a theme you enjoy and making that the focus of the podcast. If you have another theme, make a second show all about it. A frustrating thing about my show (for my listeners as well) is I don’t produce the shows on a regular schedule – rather when I feel I have enough to say about a topic to make a complete show. The other frustration is not being able to talk about much of the things I am working on, as it would violate the NDAs I’m under. So I try to keep the work-related stuff only to what is publicly-released knowledge, while all the cutting-edge things have to stay under wraps.

Before investing in tons of equipment and software, use the built-in mic and any of the multitude of free programs available. I am now using Garageband and a pro microphone.

Me : What is your whole take on social media and its importance in ‘getting the word out there’ ?

Patrick : The idea of interactive media being a participatory experience is one that many traditional content creators and providers are just now getting used to. Their bread and butter is based on being in complete control of the entire experience and brand. When you open that experience up to interpretation, manipulation and sharing, it becomes something new and (either intentionally or unfortunately) outside the control of the creatives. The lawyers especially have a tough time dealing with this reality, as it requires them to be ambiguous on the rights retained by the initial experience creator, and the law hates ambiguity.

Still, when done right, the power of end-user created context is awesome. It can blossom into a completely unintended thing that is often more interesting than the original. (See “The Grey Album“)

Me : Its obvious you are a man who is passionate about his work what pieces are you most proud of and what motivates you to create?

Patrick : I do what I do not to be the best of what’s out there, but to try to set the bar or push the envelope of what is possible. George Lucas doesn’t make the best movies out there, but he sets the bar. Same type of thing, only without Jar-Jar.

Me : Finally, Patrick, what level do you feel that podcasting sits in terms of advertising as in say against online video, blogging or social media?

Partick : Right now, there is a growing need for standardization in terms of audience metrics and measurement. Particularly with podcasting, as the nature of it involves downloading a piece of media to your computer, where it may or may not be synced to a portable device, played once, six times, or never. You also have no idea if the media file is shared, played halfway and deleted, or a particular section has been played repeatedly.

With online streaming video, you can count the streams (with streaming podcasts you can do this as well), with blogs, you have more standardized means of measuring page views, referring links and clickthroughs. Advertisers are looking for quantifiable performance based on the CPM being charged, and these other forms of online media give more tangible and trackable results.

Still, that’s not to dismiss the value of a large podcast audience. Whether that comes in the form of a GoDaddy sponsorship and show-related calls to action/discounts, or the value is more in brand expansion and audience building for a parent organization, like WineLibrary.TV – there is room to experiment. Watching “old media” bumble around in the space while the smaller, faster, less “legally encumbered” brands like Diggnation enjoy wild success is always inspirational. It proves that success in a new medium is not guaranteed to established brands in traditional media.

Patrick runs PJK Podcast and you can also follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pjk.

It is with great sadness that David Castle aka CTABUK passed away in August of this year, 2009, after a brave battle with Cancer. Although I only chatted to David a few times over Skype his dedication and passion to online marketing was made very clear from the start of the conversations. His humour was spot-on, he had me in stitches from the start… Cheers David, thanks for sharing such a brief moment of your life with myself, I am honoured…

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I haven’t done an interview for a while so I thought I better get a guest who has been in the SEO/Internet Marketing business for a lengthy period. And boy did i strike gold. Heck this guys username is probably one of the most respected around the online community. His name … David Castle but you can call him CTABUK!

Me: You want to tell me a brief history of yourself and what lead you to starting T.I.P also better known as The SEO Forum?

David: Crikey, Oh hum. I joined WebPro World around 6 years ago. In those days I was using PPC and knew nothing whatsoever about Natural Search – but I kept reading and learning over at WPW – I guess my new style approach to marketing on the Internet began to interest a few of the more staid members.

I hit on the idea of Google Alerts and together with a poster named faglork between us we devised a RSS style feed for placing new content daily on to a website. It was based on content and relevance.

WPW went through a few changes and some of us were getting a wee bit tired of answering the same old questions – so a guy who posted as Global Hostings Group and I split away from WPW and formed The In Place or TIP as it is better known.

Next thing I knew, loads of WPW members followed us over to TIP and I guess Admin in WPW must have noticed this. Indeed some Admin members came over as well! A compromise was reached and the two forums complimented each other and I moderated at WPW and still do to this very day.

Me: Your involved in the Mortgage business on-line – highly competitive market to rank well organically – have you noticed differing tactics recently?

David: Well CTAB are not General Mortgage Brokers – we operate in a defined market. We are Brokers to the UK Government Open Market Home Buy Scheme – so from an SEO standpoint I have created pages on my main site Council Tenants Mortages with separate pages Anchor Text to various search terms, then I link those pages based on links in and links out to authoritative sites ie .gov’s and Directories with the correct sections and that are Google friendly.

In todays SEO market Google is God so always think Google. I backed my own site SERP up with a number of mini sites with topic related URL’s – these compliment my home site and now we have something like 3,000 different keyword combinations all topic related that find at least one or two of our sites on page one of all UK Search Engines

Me: Why is it you don’t command a higher on-line profile. You probably have forgotten more than a majority of optimisers know. Why is it I don’t see your avatar at places like Sphinn, David?

David: I’m on Sphinn, somewhere! also on Digg, del.icio.us, Stumble and loads of others Facebook etc etc

Me: I guess with guys like Tim on-board you’ll know the benefit of social media optimisation. I have at times found it clumsy when first getting a foothold with these social sites. What’s your take on them?

David: They are very Americanised, but I also Moderate in the fastest IT marketing forum on the planet – the renowned Warriors – it was quite an accolade to be asked to moderate there. So I get dozens of invites from some of the best IT marketers on the planet – Kevin Riley – Asianlunatic and I have a heap of friends around the globe who ask me to endorse this and endorse that – I guess I get on well with the USA IT community.

Me: What’s your take on all this Anti-SEO/Marketing groups which are present at places like digg and Stumble? Do you think our little cottage industry is in for a hard time during 2008?

David: That’s a good question – my take on it is that most of the ‘SEO knockers’ simply cannot hack the discipline of constantly linking and promoting their websites – so they probably rely upon Adsense and PPC – really they are missing out.

I tend to read them and just think ‘more fool you mate’ Actually it does the industry no harm at all – if you think about it Google grew as large as it has by people paying for advertising – if they cannot be bothered to learn SEO methods then the more natural search results we get! 75% of people prefer Natural Search results – why? Because they assume that Google recommends the site.

So no – we are cool in SEO!

Me: LOL, You have mentioned you have been moderators at Web Pro World, TIP and Warriors. Have you seen any real bad flame wars and how do you act as pacifier when something gets really nasty?

David: Oh, where do I begin – Michael Martinez is a friend of mine, never met the guy but I have followed his advice and have benefited by listening, learning and implementing changes. But Michael gets attention wherever he posted and certain forum members simply love to pounce – I can think of two such guys IBrian and PhilC and there is no excuse for posters in major forums to use ‘gang tatics’ they think it both clever and amusing to find the slightest chink in someones armor.

In all cases where I see flamers there is ultimately only one winner – the Moderator who can defuse the situation – make certain people feel somewhat churlish, but without ever sinking to their levels. It gives you a buzz!

Me: Cool! 2007 was an interesting year for those of us (SEO’s, SEM’s, Webmasters, etc…) that work under the Google flag. What with the introduction of Google Blog Help, the disappearance of the Supplemental Results, Google’s Payola and Google Universal certainly made life interesting.

What do you expect from them this year? Or rather what would you like to see?

David: There is always an element of risk when looking at ‘What Google are doing for the SEO community’, Matt Cutt’s seems a nice enough guy and I know that Mike over at WPW has met him and interviewed him for WPW News and has said that he is a really nice guy – I have no need to doubt that.

However, Google pays his wages – and Google keep things pretty close to their chests. Personally I am fascinated by the rumour that Google is about to take on SKY TV and create a search and watch type system. That will be interesting especially if they start to show brand new movies that are at the cinema on a pay per view basis. Because I own the URL titles that they will need!

Me: Sounds like Death of the DVD/Video Stores to me.

David: It could well be.

Me: What is you favorite spots on the web that you visit to catch up on SEO related matters?

David: Favorite spots – Well, because I mod over at WPW we get an alert system on either spam posters, flamers etc etc – So I tend to pop in there first, then over to my place and onto Warriors – but I also use Google Alerts, and I keep a tag on my username and the all forum watch systems.

I really do love Warriors – they are so well behaved and thoughtful. If the people of this planet all belonged to forums I reckon the crime rate would plummet.

Me: I luv your humour!

David: Without humour all is lost – I use it in life so I use it in forums. It breaks down barriers.

Me: We are a young company here at North South Media and would largely like to start networking at some of the search marketing shows this year. Would you recommend any and why?

David: Ah, I never do shows and in all honesty they can be a complete waste of time – I used to, not in SEO but in Mortgages. Conservative Party Conferences – Housing conferences – etc etc – Waste of money – stick to forums and blogs etc …

Me: What do you feel about the commentators reporting that we are in the beginning of the death throes of the search engines (as we know it today), that the social interaction will play a major part in how our search results will be displayed (personalised results, social voting, hot links etc…)?

David: For as long as new films keep referring to ‘Google it’ and showing people logging on and searching – then Google will rule.

BUT – I’m on YouTube and I get a buzz from that – I’ll market my sites in any format that searcher trends dictate – I created the concept of using forum usernames as potential links to your sites. So if some guy sees me playing guitar on YouTube and searches my username – who knows they may be looking for a mortgage in my sector – rule out nothing – market anywhere that people visit.

Me: Finally David, why don’t you blog more. You have so much knowledge to give your blog would be an instant hit. Or are you content in forum participation?

David: I have 6 blogs and I HATE the WordPress log in system, I will probably take your advice and blog some more.

Me: Thanks David, I really think the TIP is an excellent place for advice for SEO and Internet Marketing.

David: Many thanks – now for some more posting.

The following is an interview with Jeff Quipp, President and CEO of Search Engine People, one of the most respected search marketing companies around today. Jeff is an extremely talented and knowledgeable individual and even in the short period that it took to put this interview together I truly feel that I have developed in taking another step into the search marketing world.

Me: Jeff you have been involved with marketing in the Internet for some considerable time now. Can you give me a brief history of how you got started up to the present position you currently hold today?

Jeff: I’ve always been entrepreneurial … and don’t do well with politics, red tape, and the struggles that are a part of life at most large companies. That said, after completing post graduate school, I went to work for Sympatico-Lycos (today Sympatico-MSN) 1995-2001 … Canada’s largest ISP and portal. My role changed frequently, but I was Product Manager for YellowPages.ca at one point, then graduated to Manager – Traffic and Distribution for many Sympatico-Lycos entities (including Yellowpages.ca, Sympatico.ca, all the city cites, etc.).

This introduced me to new kinds of search (given YellowPages were the original) … both organic and Goto (predecessor of todays Yahoo Search Marketing). We tried 2 different companies for organic, and both seemed very shady. I saw this as an opportunity for an honest business person, and began Search Engine People Inc. in 2001.

Me: Your a family man, Jeff, much like myself. Where do you find the time to balance being a President of one of Canada’s most influential Internet Marketing companies alongside family life?

Jeff: To be honest, I’ve found there are 3 keys to work-life balance.

a) Surround yourself with good people! I don’t have to be good at everything … I’m definitely not! However, we have been EXTREMELY fortunate to hire many exceptional people. That’s been the key for us. We look for exceptional people (not average), who are hard working, self-motivated, intelligent, and fun-loving team players.

b) Let people work to their strengths! If people love their work, are engaged, and look forward to coming into work everyday, they will excel!

c) Control Growth! Companies that grow too fast, outstrip the boundaries of their knowledge, abilities, and finances. Accordingly, we do walk the fine line growing as fast as we are, but are always careful not to grow too fast.

With these three elements firmly in place, I can focus on specific duties that work to my strengths (marketing and strategy), knowing all others take their jobs and responsibilities seriously, and are amongst the best in the business. Sure I still work hard … but now often its after the kids go to bed, and because I really enjoy what I’m doing. I don’t watch much television anymore.

Me: I recently read one of your posts regarding people leaving their digital footprints within the Internet. Is this something that you feel people should be more aware of and to what extremes do you feel that it may or could harm them in the future?

Jeff: Absolutely, digital footprints are something many people don’t give much consideration too … and it should be at the forefront of their thoughts. It is already a very important component of the job consideration process for many companies, and will only grow in importance. If its true also that most people ‘stretch the truth’ on their resumes, and will change careers much more frequently going forward … then your digital footprint will be very telling. Also, for the vast majority of us with little to hide, it won’t be that much of an issue. Mistakes are expected, and help us grow, both as individuals and professionals. For those individuals with more severe lapses in Judgment, finding jobs will be difficult without formally changing your name.

For companies, the problem is compounded. The world can see your mistakes on-line … and people/clients aren’t as forgiving of companies as they are of individuals. Companies will require specific strategies to deal with such issues as they arise … and they should begin planning those now as its already happening.

Me: There has been a plethora of comments written about paid links recently what is your honest opinion of it all and do you ever feel a compromise will be reached?

Jeff: Will a compromise ever be reached? Absolutely not! As long as links are an important part of search engine algorithms, people will buy and sell links, and attempt to artificially inflate their rankings. Its basic human behavior … accomplish the most with the least effort.

Can Google crack down on every paid link? Not in my lifetime. All they can do is seek to find and punish obvious abusers, scare possible suppliers, and reduce their algorithm’s reliance on links.

Longer term, as processors become more powerful, they’ll be able to:

a) add the ability to analyze the benefit (in terms of traffic) of individual links, and perhaps discount the value of all those links not actually clicked or traversed

b) migrate to rankings based on actual behaviors, and dramatically reduce their reliance on links (I can never see them completely removing link scores from their algorithm).

Behavioral weighted algorithms give them a real-time quality feedback loop that can self-adjust … far superior to the current ‘arm’s length inferences’ about the quality of search results.

Me: Would that mean that links would lose value the crustier they get by being buried in websites or even sites being buried in the rankings.
Have I got this right? Can you elaborate some on this answer, please Jeff, its an interesting concept.

Jeff: Sure, what I mean is if a link to your site appears on say searchenginejournal.com, and that link never gets clicked on … then the value of that link could be completely discounted because Google could then assume it wasn’t relevant. If it gets clicked on lots, then Google could assume its very relevant. They can make it very simple or complex … but its a possibility.

Google isn’t likely to ever have perfect information, but their toolbar, the cookies they set, and Google Analytics et al would provide an ample enough sample size to make these types of inferences.

Its very processor heavy though from their perspective which is why time would be needed.

Me: I have never met Matt Cutts but I study bitterly hard almost everything he writes and I genuinely feel that he’s up against a rock and a hard place. If you were to stand in the man’s shoes for a day and be allowed to post on his blog what would you say?

Jeff: I have to be completely honest, I’ve got a tremendous amount of respect for Matt Cutts and the difficult position he is in. I think the man is a veritable genius! I may poke fun at him from time to time on my posts, but that’s my job. He’s got the intellect, the will power, and the personality to bridge the gap between SEOs and Google in such a way that he makes people respect Google more. He’s the face and personality of Google to the SEO/Social media world, rather than leaving us to believe it’s a big faceless machine.

If I were in Matt’s job for a day – I’d probably sell my shares and buy a moderately sized Caribbean island. Seriously, I’d try my best to continue on the path he’s on. As I mentioned in my post on What Google Wants, Matt has to tow the company line, otherwise the wheels begin to fall off the proverbial Google bus. In the mean time, they’re diligently working at the next evolution of Google’s algo based on behavioral feedback (see great posts by Dave Harry and Bill Slawski) that will reduce their reliance on links. Its one of those really funny dilemmas … the foundation for Google’s amazing success (links and PR), has now become their biggest liability.

Me: One word answer time Jeff. Which do you prefer, SEO or PPC?

Jeff: Depends! Typically though SEO.

Me: Search Engine People have grown into such a formidable company that emits the “reliability factor”. Just how and when did the jigsaw snap into place and you could sit back and think “that’s it, we’ve cracked it”?

Jeff: Thanks Paul, but to be frank I hadn’t realized yet that all the pieces had snapped into place. Its still a work in progress. We’ve got so much more we want to accomplish yet. We been very fortunate of late that our active participation in the community has given us a good deal of visibility, but there’s so much more we want to accomplish.

I can say definitely though; we do feel that we’ve ‘cracked it’ with our team, and we’ve got all the requisite skills to get us where we want to go. Personally, I’ve never felt so good about a team! We now operate as a cohesive unit, all enjoy the same vision, and enjoy each other immensely. Its fun and challenging!

Me: One of the hardest things I have found recently is supplying a cost for SEO services. How do you manage that side of things Jeff and what tips can you give to fledgling companies like ourselves?

Jeff: I’ll be honest … its completely different now than it was a few years ago when there were only a few of us. We’ve migrated to a new model … more Account Management and hand holding. Its been an evolution. We couldn’t afford it at first, but now we’ve grown large enough, that we can hire really talented people in all facets of the business. A few years ago we differentiated primarily based on price, and gave little in the way of service and hand holding. We did what we had to do to survive and grow.

Now, we try to price on an hourly basis, knowing that account management will constitute a % of that time. We’re fortunate now in that we’ve got so much experience in every aspect of search and social media.

What tips can I give to new start-ups? I posted alot of my advice to start-ups in this piece (9 Biggest Learnings in running an SEO Business). It was as open and upfront as I could be about the challenges of starting an SEO business. The only other suggestion I have is to be flexible. Flexible with reporting. Flexible with pricing. Try different pricing methods … we still do

Me: I have recently become addicted to social bookmarking, esp. StumbleUpon. What words of advice can you give to anyone looking to become a power user in any of the social guises?

Jeff: Don’t lose perspective, and always track results against objectives. Social media can become all consuming, but the actual traffic is very difficult to convert. Its very easy to have spent a great deal of time and effort, with no real returns. So, begin by setting objectives (Benefits to Engaging in Social Media Marketing). Its not for every business … its merely a tool in our toolkit. So make sure the effort can satisfy specific goals.

2) Then; focus on getting really really good at blogging and content generation that people love. This content is the foundation! The key to making it work for clients is their content, and you’ll likely have to help create it.

3) Network … participate in these communities. Vote, comment, submit … in that order. Establish friendships in various social media, and migrate them to other platforms. Be loyal to your friends … follow their submissions religiously. Tip … use RSS to follow their submissions pages, and check every few hours. THIS WILL TAKE TIME … and continue to take time! If you really want to be a power social media user … its takes a lot of time and effort.

Me: You have been involved within the industry for a number of years now Jeff so can I be impertinent and ask which of your RSS subscriptions you enjoy the most?

Jeff: AH great question! I follow roughly 200-300 blogs daily through RSS. There are many that I would have difficulty living without. If I absolutely had to narrow it down to my favorite four, I would say my favorites are:

a) searchengineland.com
b) techipedia.com (Tamar’s blog … she’s a genius!)
c) skelliewag.org (another genius!)
d) doshdosh.com (social media guru extrordinaire)

Me: Thanks Jeff. That was awesome, truly awesome!

Our guest for this weeks interview is Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz fame. Rand has acclaimed a significant role in the search world and has risen to become one of the leading figureheads within the SEO community. So, without anymore ‘pillow-talk’, lets get this interview started.

Paul: Hi Rand, 2007 has certainly been an eventful year for yourself, what with your proposal to long term girlfriend ‘Mystery Guest’ and SEOMOZ continually hitting the headlines. How do you feel within yourself as to how the year has shaped out?

Rand: Hmm… within myself… I don’t know that I’ve really had time to reflect on the last 4 years, never mind 2007. It’s been a roller coaster in so many ways. I suppose I feel excited, a bit nervous, very grateful to have so many good people in my life and around me, personally and professionally. I feel a little overwhelmed sometimes, but in a good way.

Paul: Your position allows you to meet all sorts of people, from all walks of life. Whom would you say has been the most influential and why?

Rand: That’s a very tough call. I think I’d be hard pressed to say anything other than my mother, Gillian, who’s also SEOmoz’s cofounder. Along with raising me, she helped to build the business and helped to transform us into what we are today. Being raised by an entrepreneur, it’s no surprise I am where I am today.

Paul: I read recently that you turned down a 10 million dollar search marketing contract to a gambling site. I understood your reasonings as to why you shunned the deal to help focus on building SEOMOZ but do you ever find yourself waking up during the night and thinking “Jeez, I just snubbed 10 Million Dollars”?

Rand: Nah – I think there have plenty of other decisions I’ve thought about or struggled with far more than that one. The reporters who heard the story really blew it out of proportion (in my opinion). The deal was – build a white hat site with top 5 rankings for terms like “online poker” and “texas hold ‘em” and we’ll pay $10 million. That means all the work is upfront, and all the pay only comes when you’ve achieved success. Not only that, but you have to literally bring a knife to a gunfight – competing against spammers and black hats with only your white hat on. It was very easy to say no.

Paul: I appreciate the blog posts you release over at the Mozplex. The majority being high quality informative pieces but some of your posts have carried controversy recently. Are you aware, Rand, before you hit that “publish” button, the reaction from the community that specific posts might receive?

Rand: Actually, I’m generally terrible at predicting what will and won’t cause controversy. I’ve had posts that I’m really worried about get almost no reaction whatsoever and a couple that I thought were nothing remarkable at the time get serious negative attention. To be honest, I’m usually hitting that publish button around 1-2am in the morning, after getting through the rest of my work and I’m fairly sure that sometimes affects my judgment (particularly when I’m traveling or recovering from travel). The most frustrating part, though, is that every time there’s “controversy” on the blog, two odd things happen.

First, blog posts appear both supporting and denouncing my writing – this raises tough questions like, who’s judgment should I trust? Should I shy away from controversy or continue to be open, honest and unafraid to tackle any topic that comes up (even if it means I might make mistakes)? If I apologize for the actions or modify the posts, do I cause even more problems (by making the detractors believe they were right all along and making the supporters feel betrayed)?

Second, a lot of folks in the search marketing community make the assumption that the post was done for linkbait or press, when in fact, that’s got nothing to do with it. We get far more links and positive value out of a good post explaining keyword cannibalization or title tag optimization or viral content strategies than we do out of perceived negative or controversial blog posts. The last time we had a big controversy over my StumbleUpon screenshots outing link sellers, this exact assumption was implied in blog posts, comments and emails, yet if you look at our analytics, that was one of our worst-performing posts that week in terms of CTR from the feed, links earned and visits. It’s just a passionate community of participants who love drama. To be honest, though, I can’t blame them. Even to this day, if there’s a big fight on Sphinn (which has become controversy HQ for SEO) or the forums, I can’t help but look – maybe that’s just human nature.

Paul: You have a reputation of being an approachable and likeable guy, Rand, so how much does it hurt when you see some of the Mozbashing going on?

Rand: The first few times it happened, particularly over this summer, I was pretty torn up. I couldn’t understand the perspective or motivation of the person behind the attacks and I was shocked to see so many people I considered friends voting up the posts, leaving negative comments and appearing to support it. However, I’ve talked to a lot of people since then who’ve told me that it really is to be expected when you go from an underdog to a visible player in any community. Since then, we’ve had a few more negative posts bubble to the surface, but I’ve done much better with shaking them off, and understanding that it comes with the territory. I guess I still think of SEOmoz as really small – there’s still only 9 of us in the office, but I can empathize with the position of looking for chinks in the armor. Certainly, it’s an activity we all do with the search engines, the major social sites, industry notables like Calcanis or Scoble or Arrington, so really, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

I am certainly NOT suggesting I’m nearly as well-known or influential as any of the aforementioned companies or individuals – SEOmoz is still just a tiny blip on the radar.

Paul: What’s your take on Google’s relationship with the majority of webmasters and SEO’s. Do you feel as though their could be more room for communication between the groups?

Rand: Undeniably. However, I have to give Google immense credit for the strides they’ve taken over the last 4 years. When I first got into the industry, other than the occasional conversation at an SES conference between Matt Cutts and some SEOs, Google was an invisible player. No phone number, no emails, no blogs, forum participation only every 3-6 months by a mysterious, pseudonymed figure. We’ve come an incredibly long way since then, with Matt Cutts‘ blog, Webmaster Central, interviews online and more. Today, before Danny or Barry make a post on SELand, they can actually email Googlers and get responses before posting to help give the information some added authenticity.

The big problem with Google’s communication is that it doesn’t scale. They’d either have to offer a paid service for dispute resolution / troubleshooting (which would be viewed as corrupt by many folks) or provide the service pro bono, which would require tens of thousands of hours of manpower each day (maybe more).

Paul: Can we talk about the relevancy of the results getting pulled back from Google. What are your thoughts since universal kicked in? Do you feel that positioning for videos and books deserve the prominent positions they are given just because they come from an authoritative site?

Rand: In my opinion, Google still has the very best relevancy among the major engines for long and mid-tail queries. As far as universal search goes, I think that it’s something they’re continuing to test and tweak, but if we’re still seeing it in the results, that means only one thing – it’s improved the metrics Google cares about – return visits and searcher satisfaction. Just because I may not like it for certain results, or for results on my clients’ targeted phrases doesn’t mean that it isn’t working great for the majority of users.

The one word I’d shy away from using in your question is “deserve.” I think that question could be asked equally of virtually any site or page listed for a non-navigational query. “Deserve” is fundamentally subjective, and it implies that a human being’s judgment went into the process. While humans may be creating the algorithms behind the results, it’s pretty tough to say something like “Google must think they deserve to be here,” when in fact, if you actually surveyed every engineer at Google, they might say they think the result stinks and they’d like to find ways to get something better in its place. Yes – you can hold them responsible for creating Universal and putting certain types of results above others, but only at a macro level. Once you get down to a particular set of SERPs, you’ve got to remove the personal input from the query.

Paul: I think it was Jim Hedger who termed the phrase “webamorphosis”, not sure, but its where I read it first. You mentioned earlier that your only 4 years in with SEOmoz do you feel that everything is going as planned or has the goalposts moved so many times that the business is undergoing constant “webamorphosis” to deal with all the marketing potentials?

Rand: I’d certainly say the goalposts have been in perpetual motion. However, with this latest round of changes, we’re finally on a steady track with premium content as the driver of 95% of our future efforts. All of our marketing and promotion and content work from here on is centered around making premium content better and making it more visible to the web audience.

Paul: Out of all the SEO tools you have on offer over at SEOmoz (I don’t have Premium Membership but I’m working on that post count) which are your favourites and can you tell me more about SEOmoz developing a full scale SEO certification program?

Rand: My personal favorites… Hmm… I really love the new Marketplace (which is totally free), but that’s not really a tool. The tools I’ve been using most often lately are the Term Target (which Mel & Jeff recently revamped) and the Crawl Test. Both are fantastic for finding weak spots in on-page optimization. The juicy link finder tool is also an amazing resource – it’s amazingly efficient at making the link identification process clean and easy.

Paul: Finally, Rand, we have a fledgling but friendly community (Shaun, Mike, Colin, James etc…) here in Scotland. Andrew Girdwood from Big Mouth, is probably our most established export in the search world. What words of advice can you give to young SEO/SEM businessness that are in the process of earning those areas of trust and reliability?

Rand: Find something in the SEO world that you can do better than anyone else, even if it’s very niche, then write about it, present about it, make videos and podcasts about it, maybe even write a book about it. If you can show the SEO community that your work in a particular field is superior, they will welcome you with open arms (and thousands of links). Better yet, this community is so generous, you’ll find that folks will consistently refer projects your way.

Cheers, Rand!

Today I’m joined with the legendary SEO Consultant – Tim Nash. Tim has been active within the Search Engine Community for a number of years now and has a number of successful sites: Tim Nash, Venture Skills and Payment Blogger. He is also a moderator over at David Castle’s superb SEO Forum.

Tim is currently running an online seminar for Social Media Optimisation on the 14th of November. Places are limited so if your interested in social media optimisation then get in contact with Tim asap.

Me: Hi Tim, I noticed that you have branched out into private SEO training classes. Do you feel that a lot of companies are starting to turn towards “in-house” optimisation instead of seeking out proper agencies. What are the benefits of “in-house” SEO and the dangers in your opinion?

Tim: Hi Paul, well the training courses are something I have been doing for a while and not just for Web development companies or in-house SEOs. The advanced SEO Programming course has had a great take up by SEO companies here in the UK and as there is currently no real education or training schemes out there – these style courses fill a niche for an SEO company that wants to take what they do to another level.

That said I feel SEO is becoming more and more a part of the web development process and there has been an expansion in on-page SEOs/Accessibility developers working “in-house” as part of a core team with the linking building and social media side being hired out afterwards.

Me: I’m interested to know what your take on Jacob Nielsen’s saying that SEO has a shelf life of around 5 – 10 years?

Tim: That really depends how search engines adapt and change, people will always need to search in some way for information and there will always be people optimising sites in an effort to get their information in front of the searchers so I can’t see it dying, changing yes, maturing I hope and losing the peripheral hanger ons’ but I can’t see a day in the near future when people won’t be optimising and trying to maximise their sites visibility.

Me: I’m an avid reader of your blog posts and like the style that you use to get your point across. Some of your posts have recently targeted Google’s crackdown on paid links and Matt Cutts stating the way forward for webmasters is to sculpt their site with the use of NoFollow to get the best out of the pages they wish to seed well with the search engines. What is your view on this whole episode?

Tim: I think this debate was needed it has shown and I think shocked people into understanding what happens when you create a monopoly and then rely on it for your livelihoods. Ultimately you can scream and shout, put forward valid points, encourage debate until your blue in the face as Google or any other monopoly doesn’t have to listen.

I think the fall out will be greater then the event, Googles use of PageRank as a means of punishment was I think and about time the last death nail for that metric. As a cynic one might think the whole paid links issue was meant as a way to destabilise the industry surrounding PageRank rather then the purity of a an already spam filled index.

Me: There were a few casualties in the latest paid link conflict. Certain directories, marketing blogs and also a famous Seattle based SEO figurehead got caught in the tracer fire. Do you feel that Google’s actions has created divides in the community?

Tim: No, I think the community was already divided all they done is shown the divide. Having different views and opinions is not necessarily a bad thing as long as we also have common ground. What seems to being happening is that there is almost a sense of a witch hunt if know your competitor or an SEO consultant who is quoting for a job why not report them for paid links or “out them” on a blog.

This might sound some what unprofessional but I think the problem at the moment is as a community the SEO and in particular the bloggers have put certain people on pedestals almost idolising them, we are not talking about corporations here but tiny mom and pop companies thrown into a spot light that normally the likes of Google would be in. These companies do not have marketing departments and public relations people and are bound to make mistakes.

It’s worth remembering we placed them on the pedestal and there is only one thing we enjoy more, knocking them off. Lets hope we can stop the infighting and silly Google infatuation that seems to have come over people (“please sir he’s a paid linker sir”) and get back to being a collaborative community.

Me: You have blogged about your attempts to crack StumbleUpon’s algorithm.
Just how close did you really get?

Tim: We created a pretty accurate simulation of historical stumbles, though our model was not the one we published which was simplified when I originally wrote the blog post and handed it to a friend he suggested that if I needed to write the equations using LaTeX then I may need to simplify things.

The model we showed is a good basis of the basics but like all things its worth pointing out we can only match to historical data barring very generic statistical analysis I have no way of knowing how well content will do (mathematically) so hindsight being the exact science our algorithm is pretty good at hindsight.

Me: I have found that social media (such as stumble, digg, reddit etc…) traffic is pretty poor when it comes to conversion. Would you agree this traffic is better for promotion rather than selling?

Tim: Again pulling on our statistical data we have collected the gap is not as large as many people think with many “social groups” clicking ads almost as often as a normal user. That said you have to tailor what your selling or offering.

The average Digg user is less likely to be buying knitting patterns then other groups for example, but is far more tempted with free goodies particularly technology goodies and are susceptible to giving far more of their information freely then perhaps other groups.

Me: There are a number of social media sites out there – some more powerful than others. What are your favourites, Tim, and why?

Tim: Every social site is different each has a slightly different user base if I wish to promote a web seminar on social media I don’t do it on Digg, but if my client has some new videos of their latest gadget Digg is the first place I go.

However for my personal content I use Stumbleupon extensively both for submitting content and for finding new content.

I think I maybe unusual in the SEO community in that I actually use Stumbleupon, not really to game it or to become a “power user” just because it’s a really cool tool to find stuff most sites I stumble across I don’t thumb up or down leaving that for stuff that I genuinely like or dislike my like ratio is nearly 1:15 with a thumb down ratio close to 1:20 if I wanted to be a power Stumbler I would be rating every site.

Other sites I use include Dzone a great resource for programmers and developers and of course Sphinn which is turning into the golden boy of the SEO world, though I try not to self promote bits here I tend to think of Sphinn as a good sounding board of what the community is thinking and feels about content. It’s also made me realise how much snake oil selling is out there, even amongst “top SEOs”.

Me: I have found great success in running social media projects for clients’ sites and gaining some excellent rankings in the process for some of the more competitive generic keywords. Do you feel that Social Bookmarking will eventually oust the traditional way of gaining links (articles, directories, press releases) ?

Tim: Will? I think in many cases it already has, certainly the way we organise press releases for clients on the web has changed gone are submitting copy of the release to every PR site out their now, the press release sits on the clients site, along with a media and blogger information pack, as much media as we can and of course an announcement blog entry which is then promoted.

Many of the formal press releases that once would have been the stable of getting a corporate message are left more and more unread, yet the message is out in the blogosphere very quickly and with many journalists now using the same techniques as bloggers to get stories.

Using these techniques we can get information in front of them far quicker then we
ever could do through a traditional wire service. Directories another example of the changing web the traditional directory has been dying for years, the big ones will adapt to survive turning into CSS galleries or social media sites the smaller ones will just dry up to be replaced by something new.

We are shifting into a new time for the web with many walled gardens appearing such as Facebook and while there are many bridges Open Social also appearing trust is going to become a big thing along with an increasing pace what was new and fresh today will be old tomorrow as Google speeds its crawl and algorithm process ever closer to real time staying at the top will be as much about maintaining a continuous trusted presence as optimising a site.

Me: I want to ask you how you feel about the current state of the search engine ranking pages. For example if I were to type “SEO” into Google I’m confronted with 2 sometimes 3 sponsored links at the top of the page, a stock market quote, 2 wikipedia entries and then finally the first entry for an seo company on position 3 but forced below-the-fold thanks to the Google gloop beforehand.

Just how much importance do you feel is being given to organic listings today by the search engines?

Tim: As broadband penetration increases so does the uses of the Internet, the web is slowly turning away from the textual background and to a more media rich environment.

Google has like all of us to adapt to this changing world. The current way the SERPs work I think is a transitional state for Google who have to not only combine a search mechanism for all these new forms but balance them against each other.

So while it can be frustrating to see your hard work further down the page, than you would like, you can take some comfort that its there at all!

That said Wikipedia entries popping up for company names above the company shows perhaps an issue with a simple trust system that if only authority sites are ranked highly for non competitive keywords you effectively block out whole sets of results.

Me: Do you feel that the relevance of results has improved or gotten worse with the introduction of Google’s latest attempt to show a variety of different results (websites, video, images, product listings etc…) for a searched term?

Tim: I think the results have changed and we will have to live with that for the time being, it’s interesting to see how Google is coping with not so much the textual relevancy but that of the video and other media.

I noticed a few inappropriate video’s popping up from YouTube for a tennis player the other day in the SERPs certainly not suitable for young fans. The reason they were there is they had been tagged on YouTube with the player’s name, so for the video a single set of keyword caused its appearance in the SERPs on the front page.

Without some means to rank video content relevancy it will be difficult to avoid such things happening again and again. Spamming Google SERPs right now is very easy aim at YouTube.

Me: Do you think the layout has to be redesigned in order to compensate for all the media results that a search term may bring back i.e. Ask’s attempt to separate the results on a single page in a more structured format than that of Google’s current state?

Tim: Yes, But I think Google knows that to and is watching closely both Asks attempts with interest. While Google standard SERP has not changed dramatically in many years it has subtly been moving to a more modular system I expect we will continue to see modifications to the pages and through personalised search the options to fine tune how the page and content looks.

Me: I read that you feel that the horizontal rule tag – HR – carries some weight in on-page optimising. Have you ran any tests on this?

Tim: People seem to take everything on faith in our industry we all know that H1 tag helps us rank well but very few people stop to ask why, I used the fact that the HR might influence rankings not because I consider it a major factor but more that it hopefully got people to stop dead in their tracks and go what!

When asked for proof of heading tags improving rankings most people provide anecdotal evidence, a few people will quote a section from a local search patent, ironically the section they state is also the section which mentions that text above and below a hr tag “could” be weighted within a page for terms. The same evidence that suggests heading tag “could” be important indicates so “could” the horizontal rule.

Me: Finally, Tim, if you could get your hands on Google’s algorithm for a day, what would be the top 5 things that you would like to be considered before it determines a pages seeding in the search engines.

Tim: Do I need to cackle in a manic evil laugh?

1. Some basic logic
if (site = Wikipedia) {
SERP position = -10
}

Or at least provide a natural penalty against Wikipedia to prevent it ranking above companies own sites.

2. Actually rank content on relevancy and more importantly check for link relevancy (this is actually much more complicated than it sounds) and weight links not entirely on Authority but Authority plus relevancy. To put it another way an overriding command into the algorithm trust does not equal authority without relevancy.

3. Slow down the time between crawl and rankings to allow check for duplicate content. Most scraper spam is removed from the index pretty quick but wouldn’t it be better if it wasn’t there before?

4. If we are going to move to a rich media way lets think of a better way to determine relevancy then a set of 4 tags from a single user!

5. Insert an override switch allowing me to instantly rank a site?

Tim has said that he will handle a few Q&A sessions via the comments. So if you have any questions that you would like Tim to answer from SEO to Open Social then please add a comment below.

Some weeks back I received a telephone call. Some hours later I hung-up the phone after having one of the best conversations with an individual with whom I have never met. The man at the other end of the phone was Aman Singh one of the best kept marketing secrets within the online community.

Since that first call, both Aman and myself have kept in constant touch – having great conversations about everything to do with Search Engine Marketing. I eventually persuaded Aman to whip the cloak of disguise and announce his arrival onto the online marketing community. The following interview is his first step:

Me: Evening, Aman,

Aman: Evening Paul,

Me: You have been running PPC (Pay-Per-Click) campaigns now for a few years with great amounts of success with your company and other companies – how intimidating was it for non-marketing professional like yourself to get to grips with the workings of PPC?

Aman: Well to be honest it wasn’t that intimidating as I thoroughly obsessed and researched the subject prior to sepnding even a single penny, I read everything there was available to read on the subject, bought the books, did the courses, so to be honest it wasn’t really a case of me taking everything in my stride but more so that because of my obsessive nature and the addictive quality of adwords, I was actually really well versed with the whole set up even before I got started.

Me: Did you make any costly mistakes when you first started and if so what snippets of advice can you give to anyone considering PPC (Pay Per Click). What are the obvious pitfalls to avoid?

Aman: Mistakes yes, as no campaign is ever perfect but thankfully no costly mistakes – PPC in my opinion is a tool which allows so much control that if you’ve got half a brain then you shouldn’t be making any costly mistakes. Having said that I see campaigns everyday where the people running the campaigns are throwing money down the drain just because they don’t have a clue, that’s why there are so many quick entry and exits into the PPC advertising game.

It’s crazy when I see campaigns set up so poorly that they are doomed for failure.

Me: Can you elaborate any, Aman?

Aman: They get it all wrong in how they go about setting up the campaigns, realise they are not making money and then abandon PPC forever, so as not to throw away too much money. What these guys don’t realise is that they are not making money because they are doing it wrong not because of the market – the great thing with PPC is that you can switch off at any time so as to avoid those “costly mistakes” and the greatest thing is you always know or should know your ROI (return on investment) – but these so called marketers have got to realise that these other guys in the market are making money so if they do it right, there’s always good money to be made or significant ROI in almost all markets especially with Adwords, the Daddy of Pay Per Click.

No PPC account is ever perfect – they key to success is continual and gradual improvement of your campaigns and your accounts.

The obvious pitfalls, gosh where do i start…. lumping all keywords into one campaign (i.e. not having enough niche campaigns), not having enough keywords, not having the correct keywords, not having enough negative keywords, having poor ad copy (particularly not having the keyword inserted into the headline and body), not turning off content and search traffic, not concentrating on conversion, not turning off ad optimizer, not split testing ads, not using “phrase” and [exact match].

The key to success is to continue testing – Adwords in particular rewards smart advertisers – if you know what you are doing you will get more clicks for less money and get greatest ROI.

Me: Through time you have nurtured yourself into a self-taught expert in this field, in my opinion. Where there any on-line learning resources that you found that helped quicken your learning curve.

Aman: Yes, there are a number of courses out there which I found really helpful, but the PPC game is a changing game. Overture has recently done a massive overhaul of how there system works, it almost mimics Adwords now and those guys at Google don’t stop still for a moment, they are always changing the rules.

So much of the courses and books out there in my opinion are bit out of date and the so called world leading experts, are just rehashing the old stuff rather than coming out with the new cutting edge ways of staying on top of the PPC game. I now consider myself to perhaps be one of the leading Adword experts in the UK – my advice is get on the phone to someone like me for a half an hour and I guarantee that you will get so much important info on what you should really be doing to stay ahead of the competition.

That you will win at PPC and get the best ROI – they key thing to remember about Adwords is it generally only really rewards the very best advertisers, sure the other guys make a living from it but the ones that know what they are doing, now they really make money from PPC – unfortunately a lot of the resources or guides don’t really tell you what you should really be doing to get ahead.

Me: I have read on several blogs and email articles recently that the rising costs for the more popular keywords is driving smaller businesses to seek other alternatives as their budgets can’t compete with the escalating prices. What’s your thoughts on this, Aman?

Aman: I agree that costs are arising, people are cottoning onto the fact everyday that Adwords is the greatest direct marketing tool in history so naturally the bids for each keywords are increasing on a daily basis – I believe most marketers look at ROI and therefore those with the greatest knowledge and know-how are the ones that will win.

I do agree however that in some markets particularly the competitive ones then yes, if the multinationals have there way they will try and block out the little guy because the Tesco’s of this world can chuck money at marketing and make a loss for years just to gain a foothold in a new market – so I agree to some extent but knowledge is power Paul, knowledge is power!

Me: Do your see more and more smaller businesses going down the organic route to fulfill their on-line marketing potential.

Aman: I disagree with that view – that smaller businesses will turn to the organic route – because for the small guy it’s all about cash flow – Adwords in particular is a direct marketers dream, you can find out within minutes what works and what doesn’t without spending a fortune and wasting months of time.

With the organic route a small business may have to wait several months before they see any return or any results – now as cash flow is undoubtedly king to the little guy! Do you think they are going to want instant results and be able to turn the tap on and off as the heart desires or spend a small fortune optimising the site in the hope that at some time in the not-so-distant future they might rank highly for some of there chosen keywords?

The greatest thing with PPC is you can test what works and see how well it works pretty quickly – this is a godsend to smaller businesses.

Me: Granted, but tell me just how frustrating is it to get your message across within a box limited to around 10 to 15 words to sell your product or service.

Aman: Its brilliant! I love it! I don’t have a traditional marketing background and Ad copy of PPC is totally different to Ad’s on traditional paper copy – you want to starve a traditional Ad man then ask him to do PPC Ad’s – it’s a totally different principle and I love the fact that those guys just can’t write Adwords.

Me: Have you tried or tinkered with any other engines that offer PPC out-with the big 3 (Google, Yahoo, MSN) such as 7Search, GoClick, Kanoodle, SearchFeed etc…

Aman: Only the big 3 and I can say that Adwords is by far the best and by far the smartest. I value my time too much to run campaigns on the lesser PPC platforms.

My opinion is that they just don’t have the traffic so it’s not worth my time running the campaigns although I do have a few yell.com PPC campaigns but these are not run by me, I have set them up and a relationship manager sorts the rest – the traffic is very cheap but the low vol. doesn’t justify my time.

Me: Finally, Aman, is there anything that you would like to see incorporated into PPC? Whether it be a new tool functionality or a better way to allow the flow of the ad impressions in the top pages to help smaller businesses an in-turn level the playing field somewhat?

Aman: I’d love to make changes but not so much to level the playing field – I’m a great believer that PPC should reward smart marketers, people that give the user exactly what they want exactly when they are looking for it – I don’t think Adwords or any other PPC platform should be run as some sort of charity or have any ideology other than giving the user the best search experience – I hate some of the unethical big corporations as much as the next man, but PPC is business and big business at that!

In the first of a series of interviews, that North South Media are to be publishing in the up-and-coming months, we talk to Wolfgang Bartelme, one of the modern masters in online design and creativity.

Me: Hi Wolfgang!

Wolfgang Hey Paul!

Me: You are highly respected amongst your peers throughout the design world for the attention to detail you bring to your work. What got you started in designing for the web and at what stage did you actually decide to take this on as your chosen profession?

Wolfgang: I was already fascinated by the idea of the web back in the 90s and randomly started doing websites for fun. After a while I thought it would be nice to get a bit more professional and started to study “Information Design” at the university of applied sciences here in Graz.

Afterwards I worked as UI specialist at Hyperwave explored the depths of CSS – but it lacked variety. So I decided to run my own business’ and that was definitely the right decision!

Me: Is there anything that catches your eye, anything that makes you think WOW!

Wolfgang: Personally I love Apple’s recent redesign. It’s a perfect mixture of
a clean, thoroughly structured and yet visually appealing site. The layout is very flexible, so that they can use very distinct styles for their product pages etc. while keeping the over all look & feel. Well done!

Me: Being in the SEO business I come across a lot of badly designed sites and one aspect of my job is to reduce the bounce rate of a site. What are the top 3 things that makes you want to exit a site as soon as you enter it?

Wolfgang:

• Bad design – well I know it’s actually all about the content, but I
  can’t browse a site that’s hurts in the eye.
• Bad design – you know from a usability point of view.
• Bad design – accessibility wise. Stick to the standards wherever possible! But don’t be too religious either

Me: I have noticed that you have evolved onto designing mini Devkits for applications – is this something that you would like to take forward more?

Wolfgang: Yeah I hope you guys enjoy them as much as I do. Basically I started doing them because I got loads of customization requests – you know
customizing a certain wallpaper, button or icon – and wasn’t able to do them all.

So I thought it would be nice to publish the PSDs so that people can either do these tasks on their own or just play round – for instance the “Smiley Devkit” was just for fun and I enjoyed the different variants people posted to the respective Flickr group. And yes, this is definitely something I wanna take forward!

Me: This Blog [NorthSouthMedia] runs on your Fresh Theme – I’m also aware of the Dark Theme Blog you have out as well – any more waiting to be released?

Wolfgang: I indeed plan to release my current “deep blue” theme, as soon as I switch to a new one. However I can’t tell any specific dates, since I currently don’t have the time to work on my own site

Me: When I get a new clients site I can see straight straight-away why it was never ranking in the Search Engines. Do you feel that web designers should at least understand some of the basics of Search Engine Optimization such as unique descriptive Titles of what the page is all about or are you of the assumption that designers design and that’s it?

Wolfgang: Well it depends on how you define the role of a “designer”. Personally I love designing the look of a page, as well as its semantic structure and HTML – IMO both tasks are closely connected to each other.

Me: What’s your opinion on Flash sites? Do you love them or loathe them?

Wolfgang: Flash is great for doing web-based applications or games. Now it’s even accessible for visually impaired users – so that’s great as well. However, I doubt that it’s the best choice for doing web sites especially web sites that focus on content.

Me: What’s your take on all these Web 2.0 sites springing up everywhere? Do you like the social interactivity or can’t you wait for 2.0 bubble to burst?

Wolfgang: Well, actually, I don’t really care Personally I like the general
approach of all those community driven sites – however IMO it’s already far too distributed: 10 bookmark services here, dozens of social networks there. Honestly speaking I already lost track of all the services I subscribed to

Me: Which Search Engine do you prefer and what Browser do you use?

Wolfgang: Google and Safari.

Me: Finally Wolfgang, I sometimes get inspiration from the bottom of a bottle of red wine, probably saying a lot about myself there but what inspires yourself to create some of your work?

Wolfgang: Personally, I get inspiration from the bottom of a bottle of beer –
just kiddin’. I made the experience that a long shower, some running or even a short game on my PS3 boost my creativity

You can read and view more of Wolfgang’s work at Bartelme Design & Blog.