Martin Reed is an online community builder who got in touch with us recently. He’s been in the industry for quite a while now and started his latest community, aimed at women and called Female Forum, last year. His blog, Community Spark, is a mine of information and intelligent discussion on the subject.

He kindly agreed to an interview and has some great insights and practical advice for anyone interested in the art of online communities. In particular, I like his closing advice about building relationships online: be honest, professional and generous. If you like this interview and want more, check out our interview with Rich Millington from Feverbee.

Well, my name is Martin Reed, I am 28 years old and have been developing online communities for about nine years. They have become a real passion of mine – I love the unpredictability of online community development and the fact that there is no ‘right way’ to develop them. Every community is different (or at least it should be) which keeps things interesting!

I love to travel; I am originally from the UK but now live in New York City with my American wife. I have also lived and worked in Australia and Canada. In 2006 I ran the London Marathon and raised around $2,000 for charity – a real buzz.

It was a complete accident! I got my own Internet connection in 1999 and found online chat rooms absolutely fascinating. The fact I could communicate with someone on the other side of the world in realtime floored me. I began to get frustrated however, with all the chat sites that made you register just to gain access so I started up my own website, Just Chat as a place where people could chat without registering. The site is still going strong to this day, although it now has the addition of message boards, a free email penpals section and free ecards.

A community builder is someone who facilitates the development of relationships. It is all too easy to forget that behind every successful online community are real life people. All too often community builders focus on technology and advertising to bring in new members. This is a mistake – your focus should be on developing relationships amongst your existing members. If you build a successful community, your members will do the majority of your external promotion – free of charge.

I don’t think there is a universal determinant of what makes a successful online community. Every online community should be unique and have its own goals. Some may want to reach 1,000 members. Others may want to reach 500,000 forum posts. Some may want to develop a community with engaging discussion and mature, friendly members. This raises another important issue when it comes to developing online communities – measuring success with numbers isn’t appropriate. You might have 100,000 posts but they might be full of abuse – is that a sign of success? On the other hand you may only have 100 members but they are creating valuable content and representing everything good about your community. Harder to measure, but I would take the second scenario over the first every time.

I would have to include my own community, Female Forum as an example of a successful community. The site only launched in September, yet is has exceeded the goals I had in place for it for the first three months. We have a great bunch of members who have struck up real friendships with people that were once strangers. I can’t think of any job better than community building – bringing people together is an amazing feeling.

I am passionate about online communities. Although I recommend people who are thinking about launching an online community to only develop one based on something they are passionate about, for me the subject doesn’t matter.

I wanted to give myself a big new challenge and develop a new online community from scratch. When I develop online communities, I want to do something different. There is no point setting up a ‘cookie cutter’ online community that is no different to those that already exist. It took me a few months to find a niche that I thought would be worth pursuing – namely an online community for women.

It seemed that the existing websites that catered solely for women were overly complex. The community features tended to be hidden away and unintuitive. I thought I could do better. Sure, I am a man – but developing and facilitating relationships is basically the same regardless of your audience.

I have written more about the development of Female Forum on my blog, Community Spark.

It depends. When you start, you can realistically operate a successful community completely by yourself. It’s hard work, but it can be done. As your community grows, you will need additional help to prevent chaos and potential anarchy – that’s when you bring in your most valuable members who will often be more than happy to help moderate the community and alleviate your workload.

This is something I have been thinking about over the past couple of weeks. We had one man join a couple of months ago as he wanted advice from a female audience. At the time, we let him join and post his question. We are a little further down the line with the development of Female Forum now, so I need to ask my members what they think.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with a handful of men joining the community, however I can perfectly understand and would be willing to accept my members telling me they don’t want this to happen.

I only want change if my members want it, too.

Getting a brand new online community moving is extremely challenging. You shouldn’t launch an online community until you already have members. I know that sounds odd, but I’ll explain.

When you are developing your community, you need to already be looking for members. You should have a splash page up at your URL outlining what the community will offer. You should also allow people to register for updates. Over the development period, this should give you a number of potential new members – give them a sneak peek of the site before anyone else. Make them feel special and honoured. Involve them in your plans and make them feel like influencers, and they may just turn into them.

If you have friends that may be interested in the community, bring them in to help get the forum off the ground. If there are only a few posts per day, you need to step in and create content yourself. If you don’t create content, you wont create members, and you won’t develop relationships. People won’t join a community without content. They won’t stick around if there isn’t fresh content, either. Work hard, create content, make the members you have feel valued and you’ll get there.

‘In Jokes’ shouldn’t be discouraged. They bring your community together. At the same time, you want your community to be open and inviting to new members. You can strike a balance – you just need to lead by example. Every now and then, be cheeky. One of my members on Female Forum loves reading The Daily Mail (a British tabloid newspaper) and is always mentioning specific stories. I started a poll asking other members if we should ban her from ever reading the newspaper again. Most came out in support of her – they saw the humour. Sure, it was silly but members loved it. Now, whenever this member mentions a story from that newspaper, it puts a cheeky grin on the faces of a number of members as they picture me cringing in the background after my motion was ‘defeated’.

At the same time, I also welcome new members publicly. This prompts other members to do the same. I have even designated some of the community’s strongest members as ‘Welcome Reps’ who have the specific job of making new members feel welcome.

Spam will always be a problem. I think I was dealing with spam on Female Forum pretty much from day one. You need to be vigilant, and you need to deal with it. If you leave spam on your community, you are sending the wrong message to your members and new visitors alike. You need to incorporate as many automated spam protection features as possible, but at the same time keep the community as accessible as possible. It’s a challenge.

You’ll also come across members that aren’t particularly pleasant. Your online community needs to have rules/guidelines so your members know how they are expected to behave. You can’t expect your members to refrain from certain behaviour if they don’t know it isn’t allowed. Once you have rules and guidelines, you need to enforce them in a consistent and professional manner. This is a huge area, and I would recommend people pick up Patrick O’Keefe’s book ‘Managing Online Forums‘ for more advice.

It depends. If the blog, forum, twitter account etc are based on the same niche and share the same members, then it doesn’t make any sense to keep them separate. This is something I grappled with on Just Chat – we have separate sections to the site, namely chat rooms, forums and an email penpals section. You should leverage your existing traffic and brand loyalty as much as you can – keep everything together, if possible. Why create more work for yourself by building separate communities that consist largely of the same members or target audience?

SEO isn’t really my area of expertise, so I don’t like to offer advice on this area – instead, I prefer to refer people to companies like Distilled! Networking and relationship building is important though, regardless of whether you are developing an online community or a static website. I have always considered the most valuable element of link exchanges to be the relationship you develop with others who work in your niche or area of expertise. You can never know too many people. Your competitors are one of your greatest assets – you can learn from them and be motivated by them.

When networking or building relationships, you should be honest. You should be professional, and you should be generous – name drop, offer your time and you’ll find most people will reciprocate.

Thanks again Martin- some great answers in there.

Tom recently posted on SEOmoz about the nature of online communities and we got in touch with Richard Millington at Feverbee to find out a bit more about the subject. Rich is an expert in building online communities and is currently working with Seth Godin in New York.

Before we get stuck in, a big thank you to Rich, who answered our questions very thoughtfully and thoroughly. There’s some really useful stuff here; read on to find out Rich’s thoughts on how to become an irresistible expenditure to clients, the importance of online communities for SEO and how to come up with ideas that work.

At 15, I became addicted to an online computer game called Counter-Strike. At the time all the online communities about Counter-Strike were exactly that, communities about Counter-Strike. They talked about the new guns in version 1.3, showed screenshots of the new levels in design. None discussed what mattered most, the people playing games.

Myself and a few began starting communities talking about the top teams and players. We talked about the rivalries. If a top player decided to change teams, that was a big scoop. Before a major event we would create previews of how they thought they would do, we reported on their preparations and highlights the key fixtures. We did play by play analyses of the top-games. We even had commentators for the bigger events.

It fostered an amazing spirit of community. In the summer of 2002, about 800 gamers stayed up until 4am to watch the top UK team compete live (over the internet) in the quarter-finals of the world championships. That’s community!

Today all the big gaming sites do this. If you ever need inspiration about building online communities, I would start at places like Gotfrag and SK-Gaming.

I went on to work for several online gaming communities and a few magazines. I would have stayed on as a community manager had my careers advisor predicted there wasn’t a future doing it.

More recently I drifted back through PR, marketing and social media to building online communities. I’m happy here, I’m doing something I always want to be better at. That’s a good place to be.

There are four key things here. The first, the most successful communities have been more about the members than the products. That’s not a golden rule, but it helps if your community develops a 70/30 focus between members and the product.

The second is to forget technology and figure out what will make people talk to each other. Do they need to talk with people to achieve something? Do they need to exchange information to improve their lives? Are they looking to enjoy the experience of talking to people? Find that raw emotional drive, and work harder to develop it.

Thirdly, you really need to develop the structure that takes the work load off you. You don’t want to have to invite every member to join your community. So plan ahead, what’s going to cause people to invite their friends, and them invite their friends? How can you make it worth their time.

If you’re vague here, you’re going to fail. If your plan is to “generate buzz that will get people to join” that’s way too vague. Be specific, precise and meticulous in your planning. Why and how will Mark invite his friends? Is he recruiting his friends to defend his point of view? Or for a reward? Does the top recruiter get invited to meet the CEO?

Finally, relax. Tell your boss to relax too. You didn’t hear about Facebook or Google until years after that launched. You don’t need as many members as you think you do. You just need people engaging at a decent level and the community will continually grow from there. Measure the stuff that matters, forget what doesn’t. Don’t compare yourself to anyone.

Seth’s my hero. He thinks on a different level and with a unique clarity. As for practising what he preaches? Of course. He’s too high profile to say one thing and do another. He’d be found out in a heartbeat.

Working with Seth Godin is an experience I wish everyone could have. He provides me with the platform and the resources to act like an entrepreneur. It’s the ultimate test of any employee I think. Give them the resources and let them loose upon the world. No excuses, no lifelines and no-one to coast along with.

I hope everyone gets to work with their hero. I hope you all have a hero!

I Want To Work With Seth Godin is an old blog which had one objective, get Seth’s attention. It worked. It wasn’t so much a blog about Seth, as it was about using this approach to get your dream job. It worked for my friend Jed Hallam at Wolfstar and Matthew Watson at Rainier. Focus on the jobs you want, then build up your own marketing campaign to get them.

Over time it became more of a broader riff on careers, and I really enjoyed writing it. I want to launch another career blog in the near future. I think there’s a lot to talk about. This massive change from salaried employment to picking up talent for one project at a time.

Without meaning to go all Sarah Palin on you, I want to answer a different question. What happens when you get rejected?

If you come to someone with an idea for an online community, they’ll probably say no. There’s no budget for it. It’s too risky. Or “What do you mean we can’t advertise or sell to our own community”?

My suggestion is just to do it anyway. If you want to build an online community for someone, anyone, just go ahead and do it. They can’t stop you. You don’t even have to be directly involved, just enthuse a few great customers with the idea and support them whenever they need it.

If you come to someone a few months later with a community of 3,000 people are they going to turn you (and their loyal customers) away? Are they going to pass up on the free-advertising and WOM for life? Are they going to turn down the free market research? I bet they wont. In fact, I suspect they’re willing to pay a good price to keep you and your community right where it is.

As an aside, recently I’ve dabbled with the idea of hijacking Dell’s Digital Nomads campaign. The blog is too dry and it’s not becoming the hub for nomads like it should. What would happen if we created a thriving online community of Digital Nomads and then approached Dell for support?

Would they turn us away?

Once you get past the basic internal stuff, SEO is about the external relationships you build. Who’s linking to you? What’s the anchor text? How important are they?

Whatever your client sells, you want to rank highly for it. If your client sells cheap flight tickets, creating a budget travel community makes a lot of sense. If your client sells upmarket sofas, then an interior designer or home-living community might be a great idea.

Specifically, the content generated by the community increases its search engine authority. It’s updated frequently, it has lots of different members and becomes a great resource looking for people to find cheap flight tickets.

Second, everyone links to communities they think will help. “Oh I saw this discussion about where to find cheap flight tickets taking place”. That helps, it helps a lot.

Third, Communities tend to attract the people with the most authority. The people whos links do matter. You can do so much with your community. Especially the best ones. You can give members a badge they can display on their Facebook page, or blog, which links to your site.

Finally, you hit all the bizarre search terms. I believe something like 40% of Google’s search results have been been search for before. When someone searches for “tickets under $100 to fly from romania to barcelona” – they might find a conversation that took place on your forum many moons ago.

An online community is an offline community that realises the internet makes participating easier.

People forget that.

I get upset when the top community builders talk about technology. Pretty much every great idea community developers have been using for centuries, can be adapted for the internet. At the very core of building an online community isn’t technology, it’s people. What motivates people to take actions? If you figure that out, you’ve figured out how to build an online community.

First, there is this great big business blogosphere of ours. We’re all pretty engrossed in this community, made more so by the joy that no company owns it. All these blogs, all these thoughts and all these ideas are without a real strategic objective. It’s brilliant.

I spend time on Brazen Careerist, in two Facebook groups and Seth’s Tribes network.

I’m also a member of an online community for people with a stutter. This is a really interesting one, because members, ideally, want to get out of this community. It’s amazing that even here, where people go for advice about overcoming or dealing with their stutter (self-interest community), you get the same problems. There is a divide in the moment about whether people like me, with a light stutter, should be allowed to participate in the same forums as those with a more deep stutter.

Think about that. Those who suffer most from the problem, are the insiders. The elites. The rest of us are the outsiders, the less important members. I think that’s a good thing. I think the extra wall lets them get far more out of the community than they otherwise might.

I hope speech therapists and book authors discover the right way to interact with these groups.

I steal my best ideas. I steal them from books, from blogs, from the news, on the subway and from hotels. I go back to whatever i’ve done that’s worked, and used that. At the core of every blog post is at least one raw motivation.

I also try to be specific with ideas. It’s better to have an idea that’s wrong but can be adapted and improved, than a vague abstract thought. You probably read hundreds of blog posts a week, but remember less than 5? I’m betting it’s the 5 that were simple, specific and useful.

As for writing the posts. I use Windows Live Writer and have about 30 potential posts in draft form. When an idea crops into my head, I enter it into the headline of a draft post and come back to it later. I delete about half the thoughts and try to write out the rest. Of these, about half will become blog posts, the other half either ramble or don’t add enough value.

Before posting, I rewrite every blog entry to remove as many words as possible. The hardest thing is to delete a paragraph you’re proud to have written, but doesn’t absolutely have to be there. I try to keep mine under 200 words. I’m a stronger believer that what you don’t say is as important as what you do.

Thanks again Rich. And to those of you that enjoyed the interview, please feel free to build our community by commenting below!

I was recently contacted by Björn Wigeman who is head of international development at Veosearch – a charity search engine that has just launched in the UK. They are trying to encourage people to use them as their regular search engine in order to give some money to charity as they search.

Since I wasn’t familiar with them, I had a quick chat with Björn and put together the following interview to give everyone a little background.

Just to prove that it does work, the picture below shows Guillaume and Arthur on the left and right (founders of Veosearch – see below) giving a cheque to the head of direct marketing at WWF in France:

Without further ado, into the questions:

Tell me a bit about what inspired Veosearch

Guillaume and Arthur started VeoSearch just about a year ago because they wanted to help the voluntary sector especially within Sustainable Development. Their goal was to create a benefit for charities and NGOs through people’s everyday activities whilst being free and open to everyone.

Where does the money go – what proportion do you manage to give to charities and how are those charities chosen?

In the UK, we are currently working with around 50 charities (British Red Cross, SOS Children’s Villages, Care International, Fairtrade Foundation and many more). Every user chooses itself which charity or charities he/she wants to support. For each search he then makes, 50 % of the revenues goes to that or those charities.

Which search engine powers your results by default? Which do users use the most?

We have recently gone into an exclusive deal with Yahoo. They understand our values and the deal really benefits us and our partner charities. The results our users get from searching on our site is the best there is.

How much do you think about optimising your site for the other search engines – e.g. for people searching for ‘charity search engine’ at Google or Yahoo!? Note that I haven’t done detailed keyword research, but on the assumption that charity search engine is a good phrase, that was the anchor text I chose for Veosearch’s link above

As we are a start-up still, we can’t afford such luxury yet. By letting our partner charities post information on us and cross-link to their websites, we hope to drive more trafic both to them and to us.

What other marketing do you do – do you run PPC advertising? Across which countries? Is there anything else you can tell us about this?

On our site, we use the same sponsored links as Yahoo, but other than that we don’t drive any online marketing at the moment. We want this to spread organically and are working close to the media.

What growth have you experienced and what are your ambitions for what happens next? How big do you think your search engine could become?

In France we have become market leaders within 5 months. For our launch in the UK, we expect to grow even faster. Other search engines working for charitable causes in the UK are powered by weaker search engines and people seem to leave them to return to their usual search engine after a while. If we keep on growing as we’ve had so far, the sky is really the limit.

It’s going to be interesting to see where Veosearch goes – we’ll have to watch out for them in our analytics and the analytics of our clients. I wish them all the best and look forward to hearing an update later in the year.

Geo location is becoming increasingly relevant to search engine optimisation. This interview aims to ask questions about some of the hottest issues out there.

I spoke to 5 experts who are all active in the SEO world. The answers here have only been edited in the lightest sense of the word. No-one saw the replies of others before submitting their own responses so any overlaps have been included for interest’s sake.

(A quick nod should made in the direction of Sugar Rae’s excellent interview with five link development experts, which inspired the format of this post. If you haven’t read it, you should.)

Tadeusz Szewczyk of onreact.com- a German specialist in white-hat SEO techniques with an SEO 2.0 blog. He was born in Poland but now lives and works in Germany and answers our questions with respect to these two languages.

Maria Soledad Balayan is based in Argentina and works as an online marketing consultant for La Di Tella Marketing Club

Joost de Valk is an SEO consultant and webdesigner based in the Netherlands who works at Onetomarket.

Ciarán Norris is based in the UK and works just around the corner from us in London as the SEO & Social Media Director at Altogether Digital.

Duncan Morris is a Director here at Distilled in London and has been involved in web design and SEO for more years than he can remember.

Maria- would there be any differences optimising café instead of cafe?

You need to decide if you are thinking purely for SEO or for the impression you want users to get from your site as well. I will always go for the proper way of spelling. Misspelling could be really bad for reputation and trust; even though people make a lot of mistakes when writing, they expect you don’t. Sometimes if people search using accents they do it because they are expecting to get that exact result. An accent can change the meaning of the entire sentence.

You can always run an AdWords campaign paying for the word without the accent to see what impact it has.

Last year Spain announced that the letter “ñ” was going to be accepted when registering domains and this will clearly cause changes in the way people from Spain and other Spanish speaking countries use it in domains. In the long run that affect will be translated to SERPs too, but it will take a lot of time to see that happen.

From the SEO point of view I am not sure if I will register a domain with a word that contains the letter “ñ” on it unless it is a powerful word or if I don’t have any intentions to appeal to other languages.

Tad – would you optimise with or without an umlaut or does this not make any difference?

German umlauts do affect SEO. Also Polish letters do, but in a different way. German umlauts are easy to mimic in that you write “ae”, “oe” or “ue”. You will notice though that an umlaut and its mimicked representation rank differently.

In Polish you have plenty of letters that do not exist in English or other languages. Thus you have to take into account that many people using non-Polish keyboards will not be able to spell correctly. In German this happens also but not that often.

For both languages you need to make sure the umlauts or special characters are rewritten correctly in your URLs. In German you get the above mentioned “ae” etc. but in Polish you just take the English equivalent. You should tag your pages (the Web 2.0 way) with additional spelling variations.

Ciarán- do you have any experience of this?

We have an interesting case study here – my name! A Google for my full name (Ciarán Norris) with and without the accent (or fotha to give it its correct, Gaelic, name) shows only very minor differences suggesting that the engines are getting better at determining that words with & without an accent may well be the same thing.

And the same question to number 5, Duncan- any thoughts?

Since english doesn’t have any accented characters this isn’t really something I have come across. There are definitely differences, though I think most of these are jusified, i.e. the addition of the accent changes the meaning of the word. If you search for cafe you get a different set of results (with overlap) than if you search for café. The most obvious change being which wikipedia page is indented.

From a usability point of view unless a native speaker said otherwise, I would always advise ensuring the URL doesn’t contain any accented characters. The following URL just looks messy to me, and I’m fairly sure that native speakers don’t read %C3%A9 as é!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9

(To be fair to wikipedia, in this case the page that ranks takes you to a non accented version, and they do redirect between the two. However, a search for Zurich returns a wikipedia page with the ‘less attractive’ URL.)

Joost I’d pick the domain extension that would work for the biggest group of people

Duncan As with many things, its a balancing act. Whilst a .com is likely to appeal to a wider range of people it can make it harder to get it to rank in the local search results.

Ciarán I actually think that a .fr might well be more likely to appeal to French speakers which highlights the fact that ther are two elements to decisions like this- cultural and technical.

If I was aiming to target a group of English speakers (across UK, US, Aus, NZ etc..) I’d probably go for a .com, based in the US as that’s where the biggest market is and therefore where the biggest potential SEO win is. I’d then rely on PR/buzz marketing to raise the profile of the site in other English territories.

There would have to be a similar decision making process for any group of languages (also remembering that as in many ways what may seem to be the same language actually isn’t- French Canadian for instance is a distant dialect).

Tad I’d use local TLD and servers: .de, .at and .ch for German, .pl for Poland. I’d also use local hosting for each country and of course translate the site in question.

When targeting a new market in a different language the most important thing is to do new market and keyword research. If you assume the people want and search for exactly the same things everywhere then you’ve already lost.

You should also strive to get links in the particular language you target, ideally from sites based in the respective country.

Maria Even when people speak the same language, if they live in different countries that could mean that they have cultural differences and different usage of words (slang). You need to be aware of that and consider those things when writing copy, managing website content and optimizing that content for specific keywords.

Joost It’s easier because there’s less competition.

Tad It’s easier due to less competition. It’s harder due to smaller market (less traffic).

Maria Locally, I think that when you have less competition everything is easier, like in any industry. Fewer amounts of SERPs mean less websites to compete with and better chances to get ranked on top. Of course, if you need to compete with the whole world, it’s more complicated.

Duncan I think the law of averages should make it easier since there won’t be as many competitors. The flip side is a lot of the major sources of traffic (certainly from a social media standpoint), don’t have such a presence in the smaller countries.

Duncan I don’t envisage any massive leaps forwards. It wouldn’t surprise me to see another tweak to the display of local results.

I’d like to think these local results will continue to improve. I think there is still too much of a bias on how close you are to the arbitrary centre of the town / city you are in.

I’d also like to see changes (or clarification) on what exactly google.com is meant to be when the searcher is in the UK. Given that the default search engine for firefox is google.com the percentage of people using google.com from the UK is, in my opinion, likely to increase. It seems a shame for these people to see less optimal results than those people using google.co.uk. Currently it appears to be a (random?) mix of American results and UK results.

Maria As the amount of websites increases, localisation is going to have an important role because is going to provide (at least it should) more accurate results to users. I would love to have the “find business” feature from Google maps applied on other countries.

Ciarán All of the engines are looking to provide more & more locally relevant results, and the growth of mobile is only likely to fuel this. Take for example the search for coffee on a mobile: Google presents Wikipedia, Yahoo! aims to return the nearest café. If they can translate this to web searches (where they admittedly lack GPS) it could be a huge change in the SERPS. The release of Android is only likely to fuel this.

Tad More inclusion of geotargeting into ranking algos plus more reliance on reviews and local review sites.

Joost I think search engines will become even better in recognizing and dealing with smaller languages. Especially Google has been getting increasingly better in Dutch over the last years.

Tad There is still a difference but some changes are rolled out simultaneously while others that have been in the US still are not online in German. Poland is more often left behind.

Maria It used to happen but it is getting better with time.

Joost Yeah, we lag behind up to 3 months behind the UK and the US

Ciarán Sorry – no real opinion on this one!

Duncan I don’t think the algorithmic updates lag behind, though I do think the tactics used by (your average) UK SEO-er do. The SEO industry from the eyes of marketing departments is also a couple of years behind.

A topic fairly close to our hearts is reputation management. If you look at the ‘cleanliness’ of the politicians over here versus those in the US you will see that at the moment we don’t appear to have a clue!

Tad It depends. For tourism related sites you want a site from the destination country not the country you are from.

Joost Yes, absolutely, especially in countries like France and Germany, where people are a bit more “nationalistic”.

Duncan I think UK searchers are equally as comfortable seeing and using .co.uk and .com. However I believe (though have no first hand knowledge) that in most of the other european languages the tld is more important. That would make sense for anywhere where english isn’t the first language, since the majority of .com domains are written in english (or american, sorry small dig!).

Ciarán We’ve seen examples of local TLDs receiving more clicks, however again it varies; we in the UK seem less bothered about using a dot com (and indeed often think of this as normal) than many other countries.

Maria I think it could have an impact depending on the user’s experience. If people use local search engines they will expect to receive local results. And more experienced users may use additional keywords to let the search engine know that.

There is a feature that you can use when searching locally that tells the engine to show only results of the specific country (example: google.com.ar let you filter only pages from Argentina) and some people use it. Sometimes these results show .com results too because robots recognize the location or the language. Some websites are not recognized in these SERPs and in those cases they could loose some traffic.

If your business is locally focused you need to know that you will get better ctr if you are able to address that with the information you provide on the website. In this sense the long tail is going to get stronger because as times pass by more results are going to show up so there will be more competition for keywords. On the other hand users will get more advanced with more knowledge and they will apply that to the search phrases they use.

Maria I would say that for international geo-location purposes using .fr vs subdirectories could be a better choice. I am sure there are other factors (non SEO related) that made those companies decide to go for one or the other. That could be a good question to ask Matt Cutts.

Tad For Google it’s the tld domain. For the users in many cases a /de subdirectory would be best. For instance I would love to browse through Amazon or Ebay in English, German and Polish at the same time. I do not like the subdomain thing, it combines the disadvantages of both. Yes, for me (freelancers) .com is best as I rank well everywhere without the need for several domains.

Ciarán Again, this is a situation where more than just SEO is going to come into the equation. By having sub-domains (a la Apple) you can utilise a common URL in all advertising & packaging. We’re currently working with a major global brand who plan to have a single URL for just this reason; they need the URL on the product but they produce all their products in one location and then box them locally.

The Amazon method however allows you to totally own the SERPS and would probably be the method would we recommend if the only consideration is SEO.

Joost I prefer the different TLD’s, but in most cases there’s a solution already there, and you have to work with it. In my work with KLM, who use subdirectories, I’ve noticed that Google is pretty damn good in sending people to the right subdirectory, even if they’re searching in english in say Brazil, they would send them to /travel/br_en/

Duncan There are issues to overcome with either route. I think I’m currently leaning slightly towards having one domain and doing it at the folder level.

The problem with the amazon route is that you split link juice across the various domains you own. Even for a company the size of amazon, this is a problem, since the de-facto URL is always amazon.com. I often see amazon.com outranking amazon.co.uk and have to manually alter the URL.

The nice thing about having multiple tlds is that you have a local tld which can have a homepage in the local language. It also helps you to dominate the SERPS for branded search.

It wouldn’t surprise me to see the search engines changing their algorithms slightly in an attempt to help get the relevant results in local searches. For example, I could believe that in the future you will be able to link domains via webmaster central (or the other equivalents) which could somehow pass some of the domain trust of the .com to the local languages.

Going down the apple route solves the domain weight issue, since all links are to the root domain. This route makes geo location harder since you will break a couple of the guidelines in order to rank locally (local tld, server hosted locally). There are a couple of issues with the apple route:

Firstly, if you check the ‘pages from the UK’ button, apple disappears. The 15% [NBED LINK) of people that use this option, will not be able to find apple at all.

The other issue is similar to the amazon.co.uk / amazon.com problem. If you search ipod on google.co.uk and click on the indented result (wtf!) you get to the ipodclassic page, with prices in dollars. If you then click on the Store, you end up in the american store, and have to click a couple more links before you can find a UK store. Here in the UK we often get pages targeting americans.

For smaller budgets there is also a duplicate content issue, or a cost invovled with saying something different when you target the UK than the US.

Ciarán Not as well as they’d like!

Joost Getting better, but not there yet, sometimes you’re expecting a map to show up and it doesn’t and sometimes it’s there when it shouldn’t be. I’m hardly ever annoyed by it though, which is probably a good sign.

Duncan I’d give them 7 or 8 out of 10. As with most things you can always find edge cases that aren’t caught, but most of the time they get it right. (Assuming you are a fan of the local results, which I’m not!)

Tad They do OK by now. Vertical (local) search engines do better of course

Maria I am not sure how well they do it but I don’t think it is an easy job either! I think they will need to improve a lot since results are increasing and that will make it even harder for users to find what they are looking for. Because of this, companies need to be informed and should make it easy for search engines to recognize if their website is locally focused or not.

Joost Yes. It’s had some impact, but not a huge one… Can’t share the details unfortunately.

Tad I did for testing purposes, could not see any real results, did not monitor the results in the long run yet though.

Maria I have never used Google’s webmaster central. I am a marketer that uses SEO as a Marketing strategy and the tool I use most of the time to analyze user behavior is web traffic analytics. I work with a team of programmers for everything that is coded related and they don’t use Google webmaster central either. I may consider use it in the future because I know is really useful for most webmasters.

Ciarán Not as yet – we try to set things up so that we don’t need to.

Duncan Haven’t really used them. We always try to get the fundamentals right so the geo-location settings are redundant. If you rely on this setting there is probably something wrong with the setup that you should get fixed.

Duncan Who? You mean Google isn’t the only search engine!?

Tad They fail completely as the do barely exist or not at all in Germany and Poland. So I don’t even bother.

Joost Don’t know them that well. With Google having a 90%+ market share in most countries I work in, I tend to focus on Google…

Maria To tell you the truth I am only focus on Google. Google has more than 80% search market share in Latin American countries so focusing on Google can give you pretty good results, at least for now.

Ciarán It varies – but certainly Yahoo’s advances in mobile have given them some pretty neat case studies.

Thanks to everyone for contributing. I’m sure you’ll agree there’s some really interesting opinions in there to think about.

The keen-eyed amongst you may have noticed a certain penchant here at Distilled for blogging on the subject of mobile search. In this interview, we were lucky enough to speak to Thomas Roberts, co-founder of The Texperts, an award winning text-based Internet answering service that leads the field in human powered mobile search.

For those of you who think you’ve seen the name ‘Texperts’ somewhere on this blog before, you’d be right: it was one of the options listed in Will’s recent post on the possible future of mobile search.

We caught up with Thomas earlier today to have a chat about mobile search, geo-location and his mum.

So Thomas, tell us a bit about the basics…

[Thomas]: Well, we’ve been going for about four years now and the service, in its simplest form, answers questions asked via text message. However, it gets a lot more complicated once you look at the actual delivery of this. There are a lot of systems in place to make the process more efficient and cost-effective; in service terms, we have an expertise in finding answers.

There are about 250 Texperts. The majority of these work from home in the UK, but we have several employees in South Africa, Canada and the US. Demand for these jobs is high. The Tex-factor Challenge is part of our recruitment process and only 2% of those who take the test pass and can then be considered for work.

Thomas tells us that the Texperts make themselves experts by using the best possible resources out there. For example, they have negotiated a relationship with Guinness World Records which gives them full access to the whole database. Normal users only get a fraction of this and the books themselves only contain about 5% of the total records. Obviously, there’s some pretty random stuff on there, but then they get asked some random questions!

This kind of categorised searching is apparently really important; Thomas estimates that only about 10% of texperts’ searches go through google. Each question is slotted into one of about 100 categories and each of these is kitted out with a range of vertical search engines, which are then presented to the Texpert as the best place to start finding an answer.

Do you ever use, for example, wikipedia as a source?

Our current thinking on wikipedia is that it’s a great place to start searching for the right place to search, if you see what I mean…. Obviously, because it’s user generated, we don’t use it as a reliable source. If a situation arises where the only information we can find is unreliable, then we’ll say so in the answer.

This is a rule used across the board with unreliable sources. If a question asks, for example, ‘Is it true that Paris Hilton has a new boyfriend?’, then the Texperts might reply with something like ‘We can’t be sure, but according to a few unverified sources online, Paris was getting cosy with a certain Benji Madden’. Thomas emphasises how transparent the whole search process is. Users can log-in online at any point and see exactly where their previous answers came from.

Ok, so you can compete on an information level, but how do you shape up against the search engines?

Our service does not compete (or attempt to compete) with the experience of searching at your desktop computer. Primarily, it’s a service for people who are busy doing something else at the same time as needing the information, like trying to get somewhere or socialising with friends in the pub. Speed-wise, if you were sitting in front of google and asked for a definition or something then, yes, you’re going to beat the Texperts. But, in my experience, when I’m out and about, I’ll nearly always get a quicker service from the Texperts than I would from a mobile search.

Similarly, phones that have a bearable level of multimedia browsing suit another purpose. If you’re rushing to the airport and need to find the right terminal, you’re probably not going to have the time to search on your phone, however fancy it is. You’d use your iphone if you were sitting in a waiting room with time to spare.

Thomas tells us about Google’s SMS service (only available in the US), which can answer simple queries like ‘pizza in new york’. This sort of question would probably deliver some addresses and phone numbers, much like the first results in a desktop search might. However, the difference between this kind of response and texpert answers is that the Google SMS doesn’t offer any kind of qualitative element. If the Texperts are asked about pizzas in New York, they will provide information on the best pizza that they can find- the best value, best quality, best location.

And I suppose, thrown into this, is the problem (or rather the advantage for you guys) that a lot of people just don’t know how to search?

Yeah, absolutely. My mum is a classic example of this. She’s perfectly capable of using the Internet and does so regularly. But if she wants to find a good hotel in Paris then she will simply type ‘Paris hotel’ into google and, as a result, have nothing very reliable to go on. In contrast, asking the Texperts this kind of question will deliver a response in about five minutes and would give a really useful answer.

We got a bit side-tracked here…. Generally speaking, people are bad at searching aren’t they? We decided that, for a lot of people with a query, even if they’re sitting in front of a ready-to-go search page on the computer, they would be a lot better simply using a service like the Texperts rather than trying to find the information themselves. They are the experts, after all.

To go back to mobile search, how do you intend to protect your company and your revenue stream as your users become more and more accustomed to having free mobile internet at their fingertips?

Interestingly, a lot of our best users are the ‘early adopters’- ie. the sort of people who would buy an iphone and use mobile browsing. We figure this happens because they’re the kind of crowd who are willing to pay for something that works well. In our eyes (and theirs presumably), the cost for the relevancy and timeliness of the information is justified.

We actually see phones like the iphone as an opportunity for us to give an even richer answer. For example, it might be possible to send an image of that hotel in Paris along with the reply.

Have you considered the possibility of running a free ad-supported model to compete with free wireless internet mindset?

The possibilities presented by ad revenue are something we’re keen to understand, and we intend to keep a close eye on its progress elsewhere in the field. Having said that, objectivity is really important to us. As soon as the user feels they’re being sold something in their answer then trust is lost.

We take this conversation a step further and discuss how, despite this trust issue, an ad that’s really relevant and comes in response to an action by the user (rather than out of the blue), can be well received.

In Thomas’ words:

Pull rather than push marketing is far more important in mobile search. People don’t want to be bothered with needless information when they haven’t asked for it but are far more likely to be ok with it if they’ve already asked for relevant information.

For example, if someone was to text in asking for the nearest Borders, the Texperts might text back saying ‘your closest Borders is here but Waterstones is closer and if you take this message in you’ll get 10% off’. We agree that that sort of thing might conceivably have a future as it offers an opportunity for some highly targeted advertising.

In the same vein, would you ever consider paid listings? In other words, could a hotel pay to be recommended by you?

We don’t accept paid listings. If a hotel wants to be recommended by us then it has to be the best possible solution to our user’s query. If it has good reviews and is good value for money etc, then it might make it on to one of the vertical search engines that we regularly use.

In your opinion, would it be worth these hotels aiming for a spot on those search engines. Can you give us any idea of search volume?

Obviously, I can’t give you exact numbers, but we’re in the hundreds of thousands per month now.

So yes, it probably is worth making sure you’ve got a few positive and prominent reviews out there. We go on to discuss how, for every one of these questions that concerns a location, an optional link to a map is sent with the answer. It’s surprising how popular this service is: according to Thomas, it results in an uptake 10 times the industry standard for paid extras. He reasons this is partly because the link takes you straight to the right map, rather than anything more complicated.

One of the other things we’re really interested in (as well as mobile search) is geo-location and the issues surrounding it.

Yeah, it interests us too. When we were starting up the business, we did actually think about buying the technology (that’s already available) that would allow us to know a mobile’s location, but it was quite an expensive process and there were of course the privacy issues surrounding it…

So do you not get a lot of questions asking for information about the user’s location, with them sort of assuming that you’ll know where they are?

Actually, no, not really. We had the same concerns when we were starting out but it’s really not an issue. It’s interesting how the majority of questions on that theme ask about a location that’s going to be visited in the future. It’s much more rare to be asked stuff about where the user is right now.

Thomas explains that the person texting in is usually very understanding when asked to confirm his location. This means that geo-location is not a high priority for the Texperts as, when necessary, it can simply be asked for. This surprises us at Distilled; we were expecting the same sort of issues that the search engines are dealing with at the moment to come up.

Let’s talk a bit about the future. Where do you see your biggest threats coming from? Algorithms or competing companies, or something else we haven’t thought of?!

There’s no way algorithms can compete with us. Rather, we see them helping us to push the cost of the service down and make it more efficient. We already use a few clever algorithms to answer some of the most straightforward questions.

In term of other threats, it’s a tough call. The company is still relatively small and this area of business is very much starting to have its day. This means it’s a really exciting space but that also, potentially, there’s a lot of money that could compete with us.

Just to wrap up… Obviously, we’re really interested in your ‘online’ presence. How do you integrate your ‘offline’ mobile searching and your online brand?

As you may know, we had a big re-brand over the summer so we did, and still do, quite a lot of advertising offline. But our website is still important. Our users can sign up to the website, buy credits and, as mentioned, check their question and answer history. We’ve got a few plans on how we want to develop this. One of them is to provide the opportunity for users to feedback on the answers they receive. They can already do this via text, but people are far less likely to do this with their mobile than they are while at a computer.

Thomas went on to explain some further perks of the website.

Our blogs are really popular. Because we have such a huge volume of information passing through our systems, both from the users and their niches, and from the various vertical searches our Texperts use, we really know what the zeitgeist is, we know what people are interested in right now.

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Just to end by saying thanks to Thomas. We were on the phone for nearly an hour and I hope you’ll find the topics covered as interesting as we did!

It’s that time again – another interview in our series. This time the man on the other side of the tape recorder (ok, email) is David Mihm, the web designer in Portland, Oregon (or at least he will be when he moves up the coast in a few weeks).

I got to know David through SEOmoz (SEOmoz profile and marketplace entry) – his eye-catching avatar / logo (what do you expect from a designer) and his love of basketball made him stand out. Oh, and his insightful comments, of course.

We have had a few interviews with people who focus on different areas important to SEO: Hamlet Batista on techie stuff, Dr. Pete on usability, Lyndoman (aka Cornwall SEO) on linkbait. Here David and I discuss design and small business challenges. Hope you like it:

Can you introduce yourself for our readers?

[David]: Sure. I’m David Mihm, 25 years old, currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I’ll soon be a new resident of Portland, Oregon, a smaller metropolitan area about 9 hours up the U.S. West Coast (3 hours south of Seattle). I started my own website design / SEO / consulting firm in 2006, after working in-house handling offline AND online marketing at a law firm for about a year.

I’m originally from a small, blue-collar farming town in Illinois about 3 hours south of Chicago & I attended college at Williams, a small school of 2,000 students near Boston. While at Williams, I studied for a semester in London, living at the south end of Islington just off Farringdon Road, so I’m a huge Anglophile & was extremely distraught to learn that England did not qualify for the Euro championship this summer.

I also started a college basketball website called Bracketography when I was at Williams, which has led to some EXTREMELY minor celebrity among NCAA Tournament aficionados, including a brief appearance on ESPN and an article in the New York Times in 2006, and a freelancing gig with NBC Sports last year.

I tried a year of graduate school in architecture but was disillusioned by the program at Ohio State and so left in 2004, before getting my degree.

I love traveling and golf, and somehow combining both of those would probably be my ideal retirement. I try to make at least one trip every two years back to Ireland or Scotland to play the world’s greatest links courses.

We share a few things in common (some of the work-related ones might lead people to think we are competitors, but luckily our industry’s friendly). You love basketball. Tell us about your local team. Do you play?

[David]: Well, first off, if people think we are competitors, it’d be an honor to be included in the company of Distilled. I’ve been following you guys since my first days on the SEOmoz blog back in the summer of 2006. The camaraderie is one of the MANY things I love about our industry. It’s so amazing to me that I have friends from all over the world (some of them in what I’d consider very high places no less!) not even two full-time years into my career. So many people have gone out of their way to give me not just practical SEO tips, but tips on growing my business, where and how to position myself, how to stay on top of all the changes in the field, etc. Rand Fishkin, Gillian Muessig & the entire SEOmoz team have been a great influence, and there are a ton of people in the San Francisco Bay Area who have been tremendous informal mentors for me: Bob Charlton, Laura Lippay, Scott Smith, Roger Montti, Lawrence Coburn to name just a few. There’s also an unnamed SEO who prefers to stay under the radar who did a great job of mentoring me at my former in-house job.

But back to your question. Not sure how it works in the UK, but my “local” team is actually the one I grew up rooting for, based near my hometown: the University of Illinois Fighting Illini. Illini fans are not having such a great season in 2008, but two years ago, our team came within a few points of winning the national championship, and our most notable recent alumnus, Deron Williams, is currently dominating the NBA as the starting point guard for the NBA’s Utah Jazz.

I’ve since moved to the West Coast & have picked up an affinity for most Pac-10 teams, particularly the Oregon Ducks, UCLA Bruins, and Arizona Wildcats. The NBA isn’t really my thing (too much isolation offense and no defense whatsoever), but I’ll root for the Portland Trailblazers, and of course the Jazz, on occasion.

I’m a TERRIBLE basketball player and have never played a competitive minute in my life. (Except for my Williams College intramural team, the Purple People Eaters, where I led the league in number of inbounds passes and fewest points per possession. I just enjoy watching other people play the game well; in particular well-coached teams executing structured plays and playing intense defense.)

You also talk about golf on your blog. I’m not a golfer (or rather, I’m a very bad, occasional golfer) but I can appreciate the mind-control needed to excel here. It’s a very different kind of pressure to the teamwork of basketball (even though that’s often about the individual as well). Are there any lessons you feel you learn from sport that apply to business?

[David]: Golf is a terrific sport for business, and it’s not just the networking. As you and Pete discussed with respect to your graduate studies in your last email, golf teaches you a number of techniques that can be applied to business, at least indirectly:

• strategic thinking (at least if you’re playing a well-designed golf course; thinking about a problem from back to front (i.e. green-to-tee, rather than tee-to-green) is a tremendous asset in our industry)
• self-discipline and focus (critical when you work for yourself like I do)
• persistence / confidence to overcome less-than-ideal situations

There are aspects of all three which can be learned from any sport, but because YOU are the only one accountable in golf, I think the benefits are amplified.

I’m also always intrigued by the business side of things. Is it just you working away over there, or are you growing a larger company (I guess this compares to the team vs. individual discussion above)? Do you have any plans that you can share on that side of things?

[David]: I really enjoy working alone, being responsible only for myself, and setting my own hours and agendas, etc. Part of that derives from the fact that I’m an only child, I suppose, but I’ve always felt more productive whether in school or in the real world when I’ve had the latitude to make decisions and control the pace of things by myself. I’m well aware that I miss out on the opportunity to bounce ideas off of other people & grow in that respect, but I think the blogosphere & communities like SEOmoz alleviate some of that downside.

Having said that, I’m well aware that I am essentially throwing away money by referring out the amount of business that I have been for the last four or five months, simply because I don’t have the bandwidth to take on so many projects. Money isn’t the main reason I’m in business, though; I’m passionate about creating great things and seeing clients succeed. But I realize that in order to grow my reputation further than I have, I’m going to have to take on some additional help for larger projects.

My expectation in 2008 is to develop partnerships with freelancers (rather than taking on the bookkeeping headache of full-time employees) to farm out some of the tasks that I either don’t enjoy doing or am not as good at. Linkbuilding is a great example. I recently had some discussions with Mike Belasco, aka Mike the Internet Guy, about doing some partnership work related to that. I would also like to find a top-class PHP programmer for some of the more tedious Wordpress slicing that I do; that person should also be great with shopping cart integration. Then there’s the paid side, which I don’t really dabble in at all. And of course a firm or individual that really knows viral marketing well. But rather than try to bring them under my umbrella, I’d rather let them operate independently & either white label it to the client or be up-front that someone else was handling that part of their marketing. Again, that’s just my philosophy that I operate best when given full latitude. It’s only fair that I would afford the same opportunity to others in similar positions. (Btw, I would love resumes & work experience from anyone reading this who fits those descriptions!)

Conversely, it was really fun for me to help Matt McGee out with The SEMMYs recently, so that may be another route I go in, farming myself out to bigger, smarter fish than I am & learning and growing my personal brand that way.

I think when I first started full-time in SEO / web design back in 2005, it was possible for one person to do it all. But even in the last three years, the field has grown at a remarkable pace, and at the same time become specialized into so many areas that it’s simply impossible for one person to be good at everything anymore. I think that’s a good thing, because it signals that the industry is reaching a certain level of maturity.

I think you at Distilled have a great business model because you’re still small enough to provide a great client experience, but you have enough people on staff to handle all (or virtually all) aspects of the online marketing space. Maybe one day I’ll get to that point, but I’d rather start with a lower-risk model like freelancing partnerships.

I love a lot of your website designs. You came into SEO from the design side of things primarily, didn’t you? That contrasts with me – I can’t design for toffee and came in through maths, statistics and probability. As a result, creativity intrigues me. How do you work? How do you come up with your designs? Do you do anything else creative or even arty?

[David]: Thanks for your kind words! I definitely got into SEO through design. I’ve been into art and design since primary school, and the opportunity to integrate great design into something that is good business (i.e. on-page SEO) just seems a perfect fit for my inclinations and skill sets. My secondary school art teacher, Steve Spangler, deserves a ton of credit for getting me where I am today, because he set up a flexible curriculum specially targeted to me and a few other classmates, that allowed me to simply experiment in the early days of Photoshop and Illustrator. I first worked on Illustrator 3 for Mac; we’re on 13 now, as you know.

(Incidentally, one of my classmates & best friends, Toby Grubb, I believe is now the lead graphic & web designer for Burton Snowboards. Another classmate is a high-end Flash designer for major record labels. There a ton of other classmates doing equally cool things in art and design. I’m one of the lower rungs on the MacArthur High School Art Alumni ladder. It’s an incredible set of people to come from such a small school in the middle of nowhere.)

Once I got to college, I took a class called “Intro to the Web” (it was actually a much tougher class than it sounds) that got me going on HTML. It was more a basic conceptual class on things like cryptography and data transfer, but needless to say, the taste of HTML coding set me on my way. One of my biggest regrets from college is that I didn’t take the follow-up class called something like “Intro to Java” because it would have made my life a whole lot easier now!

I get the most inspiration from peers around the web, to be honest. I’m always StumblingUpon & Digging cool designs (even Flash–horrors!), and my del.icio.us bookmarks are basically a completely unordered set of websites that I think look really cool. Typically at the start of a project I will ask a client to give me a set of websites he or she likes & a set that he or she doesn’t like to get an idea of his/her sensibilities. I’m blessed with a darn good photographic memory (part of that comes from studying & having a passion for art and architectural history) so usually I can recall a number of different techniques & the sites that use them. I’ll then try to blend those in a way that makes sense for each client & industry. I suppose that makes me a Post-Modernist (at least what is considered Post-Modern in the field of architecture) that way.

Before I touch Photoshop, though, I’ll almost always (and by that I mean 99% of the time) sketch out a series of rough thematics for the layout of the homepage, product pages, etc. These are often doodled on napkins or coasters during trips to my local watering hole.

I’m still REALLY into architecture & may get back into it at some point down the road, but I’ve curtailed outlet for my creativity for the last couple of years.

We have a lot of discussion in our office about the optimum computer set-up for designers, developers and everyone else. Duncan and I have pretty much subscribed to the view that it’s worth spending money for more screen real estate (though we aren’t up to shoemoney levels yet). I run two 19″ monitors (as does our web developer), Duncan and our graphic designer have 24″ iMacs (whenever they’re not being stolen!), and we have a mixture of linux, Mac OS X and Windows around the office (only linux on the servers though). What do you run? Are you an evangelist for anything in particular?

[David]: Yeah, I was really bummed to hear about your break-in! Hopefully insurance covered everything.

I’m not an evangelist for anything in particular, having learned on a Mac at school, but using a PC at home. I do use the right mouse button an awful lot, though, so for years the PC had an advantage there. Although Macs look absolutely gorgeous these days & I hear are way more reliable, all of my files are in PC format, and I’ve kind of adjusted to life on Windows. I’m waiting for whatever’s coming after Vista before I buy another OS, though…XP is working fine for me right now & I am not about to upset that delicate balance.

You might be shocked to learn that I only have a 1280px Dell Inspiron laptop. Part of that is me being stingy & keeping my overhead low, but part of it is a desire to design within a space that most people will view my work in. I might upgrade to a 19″ or 21″ monitor when I move to Portland in a couple months, but 24″ just seems unnecessary. I’d be much more likely to spend money on a system with a ton of RAM than on a fancy monitor. I love being able to take my laptop & work anywhere, including at clients’ offices. I think it’s great that you guys are doing well enough to afford all of your high-end equipment, I’m just not ready to take that leap yet

I don’t host any of my own websites, but I do love mySQL and PHP (as opposed to ASP / Windows servers). And I’m a HUGE Wordpress and Firefox evangelist, as I’m sure is every designer.

On a similar note, one of our interview questions for web dev roles is about preferred development environment (notepad, vim, emacs, textmate, dreamweaver(ugh)). What do you use?

[David]: I write 99% of my code by hand these days, but I used to do everything in the WYSIWYG of Dreamweaver, back before I knew a lot of code. So I still use the text editor in DW because it highlights tags in various colors & makes it easy to glance at a piece of code and see content vs structure. But you’re right, anything that Dreamweaver “writes” for you tends to be pretty messy, and the WYSIWYG never seems to display CSS-styled documents properly.

Getting back away from work stuff, you mentioned on your blog that you don’t drink coffee – is that because (a) you don’t like the taste, (b) you don’t like the effects of caffeine, or (c) you drink vodka at your desk?

[David]: It’s so nice to know that people actually read my blog, even if it’s the posts that are just for fun! The answer is mostly (a) and (c). I don’t drink a ton, except when I go to conferences, but I do enjoy a nice Greyhound or G&T every now and again at the end of a long day. I used to drink a lot of RedBull, but these days I am into a “natural” energy supplement called Zenergize which apparently isn’t as bad for you as Taurine or Caffeine. I do find myself getting a little addicted to it, which is bothersome, but I sleep a lot as it is (8.5 hrs most nights) and I just think my body is wired such that I would sleep 10 or 11 hours without some kind of boost.

The success Pat Sexton is having with SEOish is making me strongly consider microbrews as my breakfast beverage, however.

Staying with the alcohol theme, what will you be drinking at SMX West, so we know what to buy you if we beat you to the bar?

[David]: Hard to know because my preferences change on a weekly basis, but I’ve recently been enjoying dirty martinis. Basically anything dry and not sugary will probably be a welcome concoction.

The one thing I’d tell you to stay away from is a Long Island Iced Tea. Apparently bartenders in the San Jose area simply don’t know how to make a good one. You’ll have to ask Rebecca when you see her about the one she ordered at SES last year, but needless to say I finished it for her & regretted it on two separate occasions the next morning.

Finally, to bring the interview slightly back on-topic and end with a bit of geekiness, what’s your favourite html tag, and have you ever found a real need for definition lists (dl / dt)?

[David]: My favorite HTML tag. Wow. That’s a good one. As a designer, I’d say the <link rel=”stylesheet”> meta tag, and as an SEO, without a doubt, the <title> tag!

I have NOT ever used DL’s or DT’s & would submit those tags could probably be deprecated without a major outcry from web designers everywhere

Introducing, ladies, gentlemen and digg-citizens our next interview with Lyndon Antcliff. I’m sure Lyndon (aka Lyndoman on most social media sites) needs very little introduction but here’s the background anyway. I first stumbled upon (hahaha ha.. ha… ahem) Lyndon’s blog about a year ago when I was looking for some advice on how to excel at writing and submitting linkbait. Since then, I would say his blog is the only one in my Google Reader which has a CTR of 100%. Why? Because he writes killer headlines which you can’t help but click on. Originally I’d put a few examples here but they’re so appealing that I thought they were too distracting so I’ve put them further down the page!

As well as writing killer headlines though, I’ve learned a LOT from reading his blog and also watching how he uses the social media sites (yes Lyndon, I stalk you. Might as well get that out in the open!).

I found the interview very insightful and there’s some great responses in there so hope you enjoy it and if you’re in the market to hire a master linkbaiter then give Lyndon a call.

On to the questions!

Firstly, can you introduce yourself both professionally and personally to our readers.

[Lyndon]: Certainly, my name is Lyndon Antcliff and I am a professional linkbaiter. Sounds odd when written out doesn’t it, like professional Monopoly player. Probably because there are so many amateur linkbaiters around these days who produce excellent stuff- but I am getting ahead of myself. By professional I mean I earn my crust by writing compelling content for the World Wide Web which is then disseminated through social media.

I am someone who accidentally tripped up the kerb, whilst crossing Oxford St and ended up in the strange world of getting-people-to-go-to-a-website-and-making-money-from-them, over ten years ago. It wasn’t the call of the geek or anything, more a need to cease the bohemian life I had created for myself and make some serious money. I’ve now carved out a snug little niche for myself as a social media consultant and linkbaiter.

Talk us through your entry into the world of search marketing. From what I’ve gathered you’ve worked in many different fields before settling on SEO/Social media – is that right? Name a few of the most interesting!

[Lyndon]:Well, started out setting up and running a fantasy, celebrity, stock market game. It was fun, a wild ride and I learned a lot about communities and how users of a system can take advantages of its weaknesses. I had a couple of niche content sites associated with our stock market game site and they took off like a mad man in an avalance. Before I even knew what seo was I was getting 30k a day in uniques, mainly by taking advantage of the long tail and predictive seo.

It was fun whilst it lasted, then over a year ago Google decided I had way too much fun and I now had to work for a living. The plug was pulled on my site and it was sent into the outer darkness. It wasn’t blackhat, but I was certainly pushing the envelope.

I’m actually quite interested in black hat techniques, but I’m no programmer and do not have the frame of mind to make it really work.

Whilst we are here, a word on seo ethics. I don’t apply ethics to seo, for me, if it works it works and I’m not going to let a search engine decide how I view actions morally. Too many seo’s allow themselves to be locked into an agenda set by multi-million pound corporations, but back to the interview.

And you’re a one man band at the moment is that right? Do you plan on keeping it that way or do you plan on expanding into a social media consulting firm and hiring staff?

[Lyndon]: You know, I ask myself that question a lot. I like the idea of an office, with minions running around churning out linkbait on an industrial scale, but it’s really not who I am or where I want to go. I’m basically a writer, with a writers mentality. I love working on my own and crafting linkbait in a very up close and personal way, sure it’s not like writing a novel or winning the Booker prize, but it’s a lot better paid.

Although I do outsource some aspects of the business I don’t think I am going to be interviewing staff anytime soon.

Within the SEO community you’re known and respected as a social media geek (in the nicest possible way ) how did you get that reputation and what does it involve?

[Lyndon]: Am I? I’ve never heard that before, “social media geek”. I like it. Well, the first thing it involves is a lot of time, time spent reading everything there is on the subject. Which when I started was possible. I don’t think you can do it now as there are so many “social media” blogs out there you can physically never get through them all. And of course they all seem to be on the same level, maybe we can talk about this later.

Reputation is an interesting thing. Because I do not what happens in other peoples heads, I can only hypothesise on the process which leads a person to respect another. I say this because although I am a confident and somewhat brash individual, yet I am surprised at the level of positive comments about my work. At first I thought people were talking about someone else or that they wanted to borrow money.

I mean, I know I’m brilliant, but for other people to think that too, they’re crazy. lol

To be honest I did set out to build a rep within the space. It involves looking at what people want and then giving it to them. It’s relatively easy when you have been in the trenches for many years to simply pop your head up and make a bit of a name for yourself. I definitely think you have to put in the hours though, there are no overnight successes in this business.

You’ve mentioned before how important you think the avatar is in social media and how it brands you online. If you were forced to change avatars, how much of a blow do you think that would be to your social media profiles?

[Lyndon]: A change in anything like an avatar can be leveraged into links. In fact I have just had a thought, I’ve wanted to get rid of the red skinhead avatar for a while. As I am not a skinhead or red. It wouldn’t be a blow at all as I would make it into an event and make sure people knew who I morphed into. Actually on digg I am represented by Iggle Piggle.

So I don’t think it would be a blow at all, it’s not what happens that’s important, it’s the perception of others that is the focus. In other words, it’s not what you say, but what people think you say. So any change in avatar would be inconsequential, it will be what people think about the change which is important and of course that can be influenced.

How much time do you spend on digg/SU/reddit each day? Are there any other social media sites you spend a lot of time on?

[Lyndon]: Pretty much most of my waking hours, other than those hours where I am pinned down by my kids and forced to play “lets squash daddy”. It would be fine except they are both in their 20’s.

Actually that’s not true they are 2 and 3 years old.

But, I am constantly checking social media sites, even when writing linkbait, as it helps to keep me anchored. It’s important to remind myself of the audience I am writing for.

I remember when I started down the social media route and I would spend so much time on them I would have dreams about digg, now that’s sad. But I spend more time writing now.

Do you use any tools to help you find and submit stories? (social media for FireFox for example)

[Lyndon]: Yes I use that and a right click to digg the page I’m on, can’t remember what it’s called. My FireFox browser is jam packed with extensions, I use SEO for Firefox a lot too. I’m also in the process of putting together a bunch of tools for my clients to use.

How do you see the face of social media changing over the next 6 – 12 months? Everyone (myself included!) seems to be raving about SU these days, do you see them gaining more of a market share? Do you see the social media market diversifying or do you see only a few big players being left standing?

[Lyndon]: It’s interesting, SU came up on my radar by sending traffic to one of my sites in 2005. SU is great because it’s hard to game and is a great community, unlike at digg which seems to be packed full of people too insane to be prescribed Prozac. But, the problem is at SU is a lot of short term marketers who care little for branding and the long term are throwing as much crap at it as possible and of course this creates a backlash and non spammy seo’s can get caught up in and at times it can be nasty.

My advice when trying to utilise a social media site for financial reasons is stay under the radar and blend with the natives.

It’s impossible for anyone to predict what the social media scene will be like in a years time, that’s what makes this sector interesting. It also means you have to keep on your toes to keep up with developments, I mean if you’re not plugged into what is happening at digg right now it could be very confusing.

But back to SU, yes they are definitely doing things right over there and are growing. I don’t see fewer players, I see a continuing flux of players. Like Mixx is the new kid on the block, problem is, he’s the new kid and has no friends. Thing I hate about Mixx is you have to do stuff to make it work, at digg, they do all the work for you, now this may appeal to the tinkerers out there, but I don’t have time to tinker with organising my feeds or whatever they call it, I think they may take the Propeller spot, which is spamola city right now. Plus the fact that Propeller banned my site because….actually I don’t know why they have banned my site, digg has too.

Amazing, banning a site that sells services to help people pay their way to the front page, who would have thought Actually what makes me laugh are the sites that offer to get people to the front page of digg and then complain that they get buried. Well duh!

Being a high profile social media consultant you must get approached by many SEO firms and SEO bloggers wanting to book you for some linkbait. Do you accept these requests? Does that cause you any difficulties with conflicts of interest? Are there any markets you won’t work in?

[Lyndon]: About 50% of my clients are seo’s and seo firms, it makes sense to outsource, I have seen some of the efforts by big shot seo companies and they are pathetic. An seo is naturally a linkbaiter like a tabby cat is a Tiger. They are extremely different mind sets, especially blackhat seo, which is why you get a lot of big time seo’s slagging off digg whilst those who know how to carefully milk the beast have our buckets overflowing with milk.

I have had a few clients who are in the same sector, however, my work tends to be individually suited to the client. Each linkbait is a new creation, I do not use the same techniques over and over, rather I develop new ones, the format may be similar with some but the ideas they represent are unique.

I wouldn’t work in porn or anything illegal or something like booze and tobacco. There are certain publishers I would not work for and…… actually, thinking about it there are quite a few clients I would not work for, but I am trying to keep this as short as possible,

Do you find some industries to be much tougher than others? Do you enjoy linkbaiting some sites more than others?

[Lyndon]: Oh yes, it’s not that the subject is hard, it’s that the hard subjects tend to be boring and run by people who don’t understand that including “sex” for example, in the title will mean it will get noticed more. Not that any of my linkbait has ever had sex in the title come to think of it. But, there is a sensational nature which lends itself to linkbait which can scare off some of my more sedate clients.

I relish linkbaiting the hard ones, it makes me think more, and I find that it’s the thinking of the idea which takes the most work. To be honest, it’s not really the industry as you can tickle any sector into a juicy idea.

One thing you’ve taught me is that headline writing is extremely important. Your posts always have incredible headlines I can’t help but click through on. Where did you learn to write headlines so well? And how would you recommend people learn to write headlines in today’s environment?

[Lyndon]: Read.

That’s the short answer, the long answer – First ask the question, “Am I really the person to write the headline”, I say this because not everyone has a natural talent for this and it’s much more efficient to outsource. There are plenty of books and websites that offer a good grounding in copy writing.

I don’t really know where I learned, sure I read a bunch of copy writing book, but they can only teach you technique. I think it’s been drip fed me over the years. Actually, thinking about it now, I will tell you who taught me headline writing, Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Slaine, all characters from a comic called 2000AD. You look at a comic and you consider the amount of space each speech bubble has, each utterance is a headline. It has to convey the most meaning in the shortest possible time.

I would like to give the intellectual answer and say Poetry taught me, but it’s probably comics. I’m a big fan of the screenplay writer William Goldman, huge fan. For years I toyed with the idea of getting into the movie buisness as a writer but it’s a shockingly bad industry for the artist and I ended up writing scripts which I only showed to friends. But, writing those screenplays taught me to compress meaning into a sentence using the fewest amount of words and to make it feel like honey.

So I guess the answer to your question is spend your childhood reading comics, your teens writing poety (great for picking up girls) and your 20’s writing screenplays, then spent ten years in online marketing and after that should be easy.

Either that or just pinch what works on digg

Do you have any experience of writing headlines for offline media (or offline advertising). Can you share any tips about the differences between online and offline headline writing

[Lyndon]: Nope, absolutely none. I did think about becoming a copywriter but the linkbait took off before I had chance to give it a shot. I would love to write one of those long, psychologically crafted sales letters you see around. Dying to write, “But wait, there’s more.”

With your headline writing skills, have you ever thought about branching out into PPC advert writing?

[Lyndon]: Yes and no. I think PPC gives such quick feedback you don’t have to have great headline writing skills, you can pretty much follow a formula and test test test.

If you could have the chance to submit an event from the last century (like the moon landings) to digg, which would you choose and what would your headline be?

[Lyndon]: This is a tricky question as we could discuss this all day. I think I would go for “Hitler Dead”, but there are so many. It also raises the question about what digg is, is it a place to get breaking news? How would it have handled 9/11 and so on.

You mentioned a little while ago you were writing an ebook on linkbaiting and social media. How is that coming along? When do you see that being released?

[Lyndon]: The ebook idea is dead, I actually don’t like the ebook format as a way of teaching people social media marketing, the space moves so fast and people want such different things that an ebook would be of little use except as a primer and as there are so many blogs out there it’s not hard to get up to speed.

Although, I’m glad you asked. I do feel a need to help people with their linkbait and social media marketing campaigns, so I am putting together a little something for my clients and a few other people. It’s more of a social media marketing mastermind group. which I will personally coach and provide advice, ideas and consult in a closed forum.

In fact, I am pretty much going to give up offering to linkbait to clients and instead devoting most of my time to the mastermind group. It makes much more sense to do it this way than an ebook. You get to talk to the expert and ask questions.

At present it’s invite only, and I will announce developments through my blog and email newsletter.

You also mentioned that it would be marketed in a truly innovative way which I am very much looking forward to! Can you tell us any more about this?

[Lyndon]: See above

Aside from the blog, your ebook and client work – are there any other projects you’re working on? Do you have any personal sites you linkbait for (aside from your blog)?

[Lyndon]: See above

Something we’ve been discussing in the office recently – when you launch a piece of linkbait how do you define a success and how do you report on that to clients? Do you simply report on number of links or do you factor in visits as well?

[Lyndon]: Well a lot of people seem to think that success is only getting a front page digg, but that is only a part of the whole process. Ultimately you want to acquire those natural high pr links within the clients niche, social media sites like digg represent an efficient way to deliver potential linkerati to the clients site. I would like to see each of my clients get at least 40 natural, dofollow links from sites within their niche. But some clients simply want the traffic or the branding or even to attract new rss subscribers.

At the end of the day the client is really the only one who can judge the success.

What’s been your greatest linkbaiting success story? Not necessarily in terms of results, but in terms of the piece you were most proud of?

[Lyndon]: It’s an interesting, because I have sweated every linkbaiting job I have had. I’m notorious for late delivery as I like to get very into the job and end up throwing away a lot of ideas, even after working on them for a day or two. So I look at all of them with a sense of pride, but I did like the Google Maps Mash up I did of the most isolated popular islands, that was fun to research and was pleased with the results. Funny thing was, that was in the early days when I was selling at £250, now it’s £1,000 a pop.

Aside from social media and seo, what do you enjoy getting up to, what are your hobbies? You’ve mentioned in the past script writing, poetry and all manner of creative ideas (which you can only expect from a master linkbaiter!) – do you have any of these on the go at the moment?

[Lyndon]: Between family time and the linkbaiting there is little fun time. My non linkbait related book on the go at the moment is Barbarians, by Terry Jones, very much interested in history. Although saying that, did you know that Archimedes invented the ray gun? Something I intend to use as linkbait someday, or if your readers want to use it go for it.

Mostly these days it’s watching DVD’s with my significant other. West Wing, 24, Heroes, but my fav DVD at the moment is the complete Larry David collection, I love Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Thanks for the interview, hopefully it entertained your readers and gave them something to think about. I know it took a while to secure the interview Tom, but I got there in the end. bye.

Thanks for doing the interview Lyndon – some great responses in there!

As promised at the start of the post, in case you need any more eivdence of the genius of this man here’s a few examples of his headlines which just FORCE you to click them. Go on, I DARE you not to click on them…

How to blog the SEO fishbowl

Stick your linkbuilding strategy on crack

ʎ11ıs ʇsnظ sı uʍop ǝpısdn buıʇıɹʍ

Title Tags and the secret story of the hairy golf ball

She is Excited and gives her link freely

Peter Meyers is an expert in website usability and is better known to many around the worlds of usability and SEO as ‘Dr. Pete’ (not without cause – see below). He is the head honcho of User Effect and he has kindly agreed to be our first victi… interviewee of 2008 (and the first real post of the new-look blog). I was really excited about interviewing Pete. His input to SEOmoz (which is how we have got to know one another) is incredibly valuable and he is one of the most liked and respected members of that community.

Coming from a serious academic background and with a focus on usability, the doctor has a different perspective to many mainstream SEOs and it is this that really sets him apart and around which he is building a great brand.

Although we play feuding competitors on TV, I have great respect for Pete’s opinions, so on that note, we jump straight into the questions:

Some people might be aware that we have an ongoing battle for points at SEOmoz (this whole interview is a ploy to appear friendly before launching vicious rumours designed to get you more thumbs-down). Your personal brand over on SEOmoz is very strong – has it brought you work?

[Dr. Pete]: It’s good to take a break from the feuding once in a while. Last year was a good one for me when it came to personal branding, and SEOmoz was a pretty big part of that. I’ve definitely seen some interest and leads come out of that, and have used it to better define my niche and business direction. One of my new year’s resolutions for 2008 is to work on turning that brand into client work.

Before starting User Effect, you helped create an Internet startup. Can you tell us a bit more about that experience, and what led you back to “strategic usability”

[Dr. Pete]: I was the first full-time employee for an ISP back before the dot-com bubble burst (1997). The internet had really hit the mainstream while I was in graduate school, so I decided to give a start-up a shot. I’ve been a coder since I was a kid and my boss was a coder, so we quickly realized that our talents were a good fit for developing database-driven websites and applications, and we made the shift to being an ASP. My boss consulted 3 days/week, leaving me with the clients, and I found I was pretty good with clients. To make a long story short (not one of my talents, I know), I saw some opportunity with a couple of those clients and sold them on long-term contracts. Those clients asked for our help developing web-based tools for a couple of tradeshows, and we eventually developed a tradeshow management system.

In 2005, the company had grown to about 15 people and I was Executive VP, when I started realizing that 8 years was long enough and I really wasn’t interested in the tradeshow business long-term. So, I took some time off and realized that I really loved helping small businesses and wanted to get back to my “roots” in psychology. I had done usability work, informally, and realized it was the perfect fit. I take a broad view of usability, and, since I work with small companies, really focus on the entire process of converting motivated visitors into buyers. I’ve taken to calling that “strategic usability”, which I’m sure I’m stealing from someone

The ‘Dr.’ in Dr. Pete refers to a PhD in cognitive psychology, doesn’t it? My academic background is in maths and statistics and I find it occasionally directly helpful but more often useful for the logical and theoretical thought processes. Is it similar for you? Do you find the training helpful for getting you to think in a particular way or do you actually use specific things from your academic work?

[Dr. Pete]: Guilty as charged. I think graduate school is mostly about teaching you how to think critically and learn on your own, and that’s been valuable in just about every aspect of my life. I was a computer science undergrad, and have found that while the specifics are long gone (no one’s coding in Pascal and Lisp these days), the theory is still going strong. As a cognitivist, a lot of my training had to do with how people perceive and process information, and that certainly comes in handy in my line of work.

I think too much of the web fails to think about usability. If you could give just one piece of advice to the average web designer, the average web developer or the average SEO, what would they be?

[Dr. Pete]: To put it bluntly: Don’t get cocky. Whether you’re a designer, coder, or SEO, we all sometimes start to think we know everything or that our personal opinions are somehow the last word. End users don’t care what we think, and they don’t care about the latest and greatest technology or design technique. They want what they want, and the first step towards better usability is to shut up and listen.

On the same vein, in the SEO industry, too many clients only consult us quite a long way down the process (when they should have thought about usability quite a lot sooner). If we can persuade clients to include some kind of usability stages into the design / build process, what should they care about most? If the budget is there, we could bring in a specialist like you: what can you do at different price points?

[Dr. Pete]: It’s funny you should mention that, as I’m working on putting together a couple of options for small companies, in the form of some simple but customized reports. I think the key for a small business is to (1) help them define their website’s business goals, and (2) give them concrete action items they can put to use immediately. Any business that makes money online can benefit from better usability and SEO, and it’s our job to educate and find ways to make those services cost effective. Part of my personal mission is to help people understand that usability doesn’t have to mean laser eye-tracking and $20K in laboratory testing.

For smaller businesses, or if budgets are really limited, what can they do on their own / with their existing web designer / developer?

[Dr. Pete]: The best thing they can do is step back from the design and technical side and think about how their business translates onto the web. You can’t convert visitors if you don’t know what your goals are. It’s amazing how many companies have no idea what they’re trying to achieve online.

Getting away from the boring seriousness, what do you do to relax? Tell us about something you are passionate about…

[Dr. Pete]: I hate to admit that I’m terribly undisciplined, so I’m fascinated by physical/mental disciplines, like the martial arts and yoga. I’ve practiced Chinese kung fu off and on and just started taking some Iyengar yoga. My wife and I are also trying to learn Chinese, which is a bit of a challenge. She also got me into skiing a few years back; she’s a lot better than I am, but I’m finally getting to the point where I’m not afraid for my life Other than that, I’m a pretty big geek; I spend too much time surfing the net and watching the TiVo.

At some point we’ll get to meet up and share a drink. What should we buy you?

[Dr. Pete]: The last time I was on your side of the pond, I had a hard cider called Scrumpy Jack’s, and I’ve been trying to find it ever since. I’m also partial to a well-crafted half-and-half; I know it’s probably blasphemy to some people, but I’ve always preferred Harp to Bass.

One final work-related question: we are doing a lot of work at the moment understanding localisation and geo-targeting etc. What would differ in your approach when multiple languages / countries are involved?

[Dr. Pete]: Multicultural usability is something we’re really just beginning to try to understand, IMO. On the one hand, I think the internet has standardized some of the ways we do things. If you take a major Chinese website and ignore the characters for a minute, it looks a lot like a major English website; it even reads left-to-right. On the other hand, the cultural underpinnings of what motivates people, what their expectations are, and why they do what they do, are very strong. It’s a fascinating area with huge potential for growth.

Thank you Dr. Pete, for your insightful and interesting answers! I hope our readers needing an expert in website usability beat a path to your door.

Welcome to the second interview on our blog, if you missed the first one with Scott from SEOmoz then check it out here!

This time we caught up with Hamlet Batista from, well hamletbatista.com! Although relatively new to the blogosphere he’s no beginner and he often blogs about the more advanced aspects of SEO and internet marketing on his blog. I’ve learned a lot from Hamlet’s posts and urge anyone serious about SEO to check it out.

I first came across the brand that is Hamlet Batista in the SEOmoz comments when he posted a link to a great post talking about how to automate passing pagerank between your low pagerank pages. Since then I’ve loved the technical and insightful posts he makes and look forward to many more!

But anyway, before I gush out my love for Hamlet on our blog let’s move on to the interview. (Note: Rebecca – even though we have a microphone image there’s no audio. Sorry to disappoint. Doesn’t stop you clicking away to your heart’s content though )

The Interview!

First up, can you introduce yourself?

[Hamlet:] Hey, I finally got my first interview! I was wondering how many Youmoz promotions and front-page Sphinn posts it was going to take. Thanks a lot; I appreciate the invitation and recognition.

My name is Hamlet Batista. I suppose those who have seen my blog or my comments on other blogs have not been able to miss my name, as I use it in all my public profiles. I am a native of the Dominican Republic, a beautiful and tropical country that shares an island with Haiti. Spanish is my first language, but I learned English at school and by watching American TV via satellite. I graduated with Telecommunications Engineering (Ingeniería Telemática) in 1996, spent about five years in various jobs, and I’ve been running my own businesses now since 2002.

In your bio you mention that you have a strong programming background but that you moved to start your own search marketing company. How much did you know about SEO when you made the jump?

[Hamlet:] Actually, I knew nothing about SEO when I made the jump. Everything was circumstantial—my original idea was to offer programming/consulting services. I learned about search marketing when my initial business idea didn’t work as well as I’d expected.

I had quit my job as Director of Technical Services for iGlobalmedia (now PartyGaming) when they had their operation in my country. They are the owners of PartyPoker and several online casinos, and by now I assume many online and offline properties. I know the owners personally: Anurag, Ruth, Russ, Vikrant. They were in Forbes list of billionaires last time I checked. I can say I learned a lot about being competitive from those guys. It is amazing how they were able to move from a tiny room with a couple of servers and some desks to the operation they are in now. They were severely affected by the US law banning online gambling, though.

I remember how some days we struggled to keep pace with those guys. They were able to work several days without sleep and were extremely demanding, which was an important reason driving me to move faster with my own startup plans.

Prior to working for them, I was a Senior System Administrator, maintaining Solaris and Linux servers for the Internet operations of Verizon Dominicana (now Claro/Codetel). It was a more calm and corporate type of environment. I learned a lot about organization, things that I still try to do with my business.

And how did you learn about SEO and where did all this advanced knowledge come from?!

[Hamlet:] He, he, he. It is really funny and interesting how I got started. As I mention in my About page, my initial market was Viagra. One day I noticed that one of my Adwords competitors was showing up in the regular search results as well. I was extremely curious as to what the guy was doing. How come he was showing up there? I decided I needed to understand how he did it.

I signed up to several newsletters: Sumantra’s Roy, Jill’s HighRanking Advisor, and others, adapted my content to match his use of the keywords, and then I started following his links. Most of his links were from other sites’ home pages, but when I visited them I noticed that the links were invisible. To make the long story short, he was subscribed to a service called AutomatedLinks. I managed to sign up for the service and my site started ranking too. A couple of weeks after achieving high rankings (I was #15 for Viagra and higher for other variations) AutomatedLinks and all the sites in the network were banned, including mine.

After that experience, and most importantly after seeing how profitable it was to be ranking so high, I decided I needed to learn more about search engine optimization. It was when I read the paper describing Google’s search engine that I clearly understood why AutomatedLinks was able to help us rank high: the ALT text in the invisible images was keyword rich, and served as anchor text. Understanding the power of anchor text when nobody was talking about it was a gigantic opportunity. The money I made during 2002–2005 when I had fewer staff was more than what I make now with more people.

When you are targeting highly competitive markets, you need to know something that your competitor doesn’t. Back then you didn’t have Aaron Wall or Rand spilling the beans. In one way it was good because the limited knowledge provided a big competitive advantage. Now, it is a lot more difficult because a lot of people know how to game the search engines. But I can tell you that you will not find a competitive edge in public forums, blogs or e-books. You need to go to the source: research papers.

The beauty of research papers is that they are really scary to non-technical types. I feel a great deal of respect for Bill Slawsky for the great work he does deciphering patents. Even so, if you are not a programmer or don’t know linear algebra you will miss some interesting concepts and ideas. That is still where I find my competitive edge today.

You mention on your about page that you got into SEO after hearing about “pay-per-click, Viagra, and the almighty dollar”. Do you play in competitive markets for your own sites, or are you mainly focusing on client work at the moment?

[Hamlet:] We play with our own sites and projects in highly competitive markets. We do mostly affiliate marketing. We refer customers to other merchants and we have our own affiliates as well. Our most profitable project to date was our online pharmacy affiliate network opanetwork.com. It’s been a tough industry as US laws and regulation keep getting more difficult and we’ve needed to adapt to stay in business. I am not sure I want to continue doing that specific business. I’ve missed a lot of vacation time the last couple of years.

You have your own search marketing company Nemedia but you don’t promote them on your blog – rather you promote your own personal brand in the blogosphere. Why did you make that decision?

[Hamlet:] Nemedia is not a traditional search engine marketing company. Our plan is not to focus on client work, but to support RankSense customers. The idea is to complement the product offering with a guiding hand of related services (PPC, Analytics, etc.). I am not convinced yet that offering consulting services is as scalable and profitable as selling a packaged product. And since RankSense is not yet released, I haven’t had the need to promote Nemedia.

Further to that – what are your goals for your blog? What would you like to achieve?

[Hamlet:] I am a serial entrepreneur, and sharing my ideas and experiences in my blog accomplishes several positive things:

1. I can build up authority in my domains of expertise.
2. I can create/improve products/services based on the feedback/critiques I receive via the comments to my posts.
3. I can gradually build a following that can potentially buy and/or recommend my products/services to others, as I have established a relationship based on trust and on delivering high quality.
4. I can interact with my peers and meet highly-regarded figures in the industry. For example, I recently demoed my software via WebEx to Bill Slawsky, Andy Beard and Halfdeck. I received great feedback, critiques and ideas that I took back to the developers and we have implemented most of them. Those guys would not have listened if we hadn’t ‘met’ in the blogosphere.

My goals are to keep growing readership, share and get more ideas, announce new products, both free and paid. Along with the feedback I hope to get some sales and recommendations.

You are currently building RankSense – a software suite for search marketers and business owners alike. Talk us through the product.

[Hamlet:] I could probably fill out many pages talking about our product. In essence, RankSense has been a dream of mine for some time. A few years ago, I saw that SEO, while extremely effective, is a little hard to grasp for people with no technical background (even though I myself love the complex stuff ). Additionally, most home-based and small business owners are not able to afford the services of reliable SEO companies. We all know that good SEO costs a lot of money, but large companies that can afford SEO services or have the talent in-house can also afford other marketing channels. This leaves the little guy without many options. Books, training and seminars are a popular alternative at the moment. Integrated tools are losing popularity because they are still trapped in SEO 1997. How does submitting your site to thousands of unknown search engines help nowadays?

We designed RankSense thinking primarily of the little guys, similar to the way you have accounting packages like Quickbooks and Peachtree that make bookkeeping easy and efficient for small businesses. In three years, we’ve invested more than 20,000 man-hours into RankSense to make the complex processes of today’s SEO easy and accessible to virtually anybody.

RankSense has integrated tools that can make your site search engine friendly, identify keywords opportunities, research competitors and do advanced link analysis and on-page optimization. It is fully integrated with popular blogging platforms and can work with your website files whether they are on your computer disk or on your hosting web server.

You can learn more about the product by visiting the RankSense website.

Once that’s out the way, what’s next? Do you plan on releasing more tools or going in a completely different direction?

[Hamlet:] We obviously will need to keep updating the software. Moving forward we’ve thought about getting into automated bid management, but I feel like Google will eventually make third-party offerings less attractive by incorporating more features (like portfolio-based bidding) into their paid platform. Another possibility is to create a version that focuses on social media, but I haven’t seen any concept yet that does not look like spamming.

We just started working on our next big project, which is an affiliate network with a radical new concept, but I don’t think it is wise for me to share the details at this moment.

Now, you grew up in the Dominican Republic and still live there. That probably makes you the highest profile non-English-language search marketer out there (at least within my feeds you are!). How has being based outside of the US and the UK affected your experience of SEO?

[Hamlet:] I am not really high profile yet, but working hard to get there! The beauty of the Internet is that it is as if everybody around the world is sitting right next to you. I probably don’t read or write as well as my native English-speaking peers, or have a full understanding of your culture. I live in a developing country where finding highly qualified talent is extremely difficult. That is not the case in developed countries and you also have many people to look up to and inspire you. My situation here is dramatically the opposite. My challenges haven’t been geographical, but rather resource and cultural constraints.

As a result of that – have you had to deal with a lot of international or multilingual seo clients and projects?

[Hamlet:] Not really. As I mentioned, at the moment I work primarily on my own sites and projects. I am just starting to work with a handful of clients. I chose to do SEO in English because that is where the biggest market is.

I feel geo-targeting is a hot topic right now, particularly with the release of the new geo-targeting tools within Google’s webmaster central. How do you see geo-location affecting SEO over the next 12 months?

[Hamlet:] We used geo-targeting a lot in some of our other projects and it is definitely an excellent tool when you think about delivering the right content to the user. From the SEO point of view, I’d use the new geo-targeting tools in Google’s Webmaster Central if I were trying to target a local audience. I am sure a lot of SEOs have clients with such requirements. On the other hand if you are targeting the wider audience, it might not be a good idea to limit the scope of your site and pages in the index.

You have mentioned PPC a few times in your blog but the main focus seems to be on SEO – do you see SEO as a bigger market? Is that where your focus lies?

[Hamlet:] As I work on my own sites, the ability to generate revenue is critical. Personally, I always do PPC, even if I am doing really well with the organic results. I start my campaigns with PPC and use the information to better define my SEO tweaks. I can test titles, descriptions, positions and, most importantly, conversions. It is really nice to just hit start and start receiving traffic. If I were doing client work, I’d probably be doing mostly SEO because that is what they ask for. The ever-increasing bid prices are not appealing for many.

I spend more time writing about SEO on my blog, because SEO poses greater challenges and is more interesting to study and research. Also, it seems that it is what my readers enjoy the most.

On a more personal note – you published some pictures of your golf villa on your blog and you have a pool table in there, if you’re ever in the UK drop me a line and we’ll have a game What would you class as your hobbies outside of search? What do you enjoy getting up to? Tell us a bit about the man behind the SEO guru!

[Hamlet:] You will probably eviscerate me. Sadly, I bought that villa almost two years ago and I’ve only been there five times. I mostly rent it out. My main problem is finding time to do things I enjoy. I haven’t had a decent vacation in a while

I guess my hobbies are little bit boring for many. I enjoy playing chess, going to the movies or reading science fiction novels; Michael Crichton is my favorite author. I am a churchgoer, but I don’t think you would call that a hobby. . When I visit the States or Canada I like to visit theme parks, IMAX theaters, and eat crab legs (I love them). I’ve never been to the UK, but I went to Spain and I loved it, especially the great food. The cigar smoke was a little bit hard for me to take, though.

Some things that I’ve never done but I’d like to when I squeeze in the time are skydiving, scuba diving and sailing.

Your new redesign has a speedboat in it. Do you own a speedboat? Is that yours!?

[Hamlet:] Sadly, no. I put that picture up to remind me of my goal: free time to sail the world’s seas and experience new adventures!

Thanks a lot for the invitation, Best, Hamlet

And thank you Hamlet for stopping by and answering all our questions! We wish you the best of luck with RankSense (and the speedboat )

So we thought it would be a good idea to introduce an interviews category onto the blog in order to give us an excuse to chat with friends around the search industry. To kick off the category, we have Scott Willoughby, from SEOmoz.

Before we let Scott introduce himself, let’s see what kind of a job we can do. Most people reading this blog will know who SEOmoz are. For anyone who found us without knowing them (how?), SEOmoz is one of the most high-profile SEO companies in the world. Based in Seattle in the sunny(?) Pacific North-West of the USA, they have worked with many of the great names of the Internet and, earlier this year, started the move towards a subscription-based business-model around their hugely popular blog whereby they offer tools and premium content to those willing to pay for it (including us). SEOmoz premium content.

Duncan and I met Scott when he, Rand and Rebecca came to London earlier in the year for SES. I had already spent some time with Rebecca on her previous trip to London and had corresponded with them all before that. When they were all over here, we had a great time at Boisdale restaurant (still no idea how to pronounce it) near Victoria in London. A few whiskies, some haggis and some fine steak later, we felt like we’d known them for ever.

Very kindly (and with no alcohol involved), Scott agreed to answer a few of our questions to kick off our interview series. It makes for quite a long post, but I think the answers are entertaining and well worth a read all the way through.

So, into the interview:

First up, can you introduce yourself (business-wise and outside work)?

[Scott:] First off, thanks so much for inviting me to do this interview, I really appreciate it; hopefully I’ll give you some decent answers. My name’s Scott Willoughby (aka great_scott! on the blog) and I’ve been at SEOmoz for almost exactly a year. My educational background is in Communications, Theatre, Film, and Science. My vocational background before SEOmoz was equally as diverse: merchandising, creative development in film, political campaign work, and healthcare administration.

I fell completely backwards into SEOmoz when I saw their job post and, knowing nothing about SEO, thought, “I could definitely enjoy working with whoever wrote this job ad.” Jane actually got that position, but after Andy Beal suggested that the company should hire someone to help manage their client campaigns, they offered to bring me on and I’ve been enjoying myself ever since.

Rand recently wrote about how you had found your niche in business development at the ‘moz after starting out in a different role – can you tell us a little about what you’re doing now relative to when you started?

[Scott:] As mentioned, when I first started it was primarily to handle client campaigns, but we began to shift away from a consulting-based model not long after I came on. Our Premium Membership numbers grew very quickly and we realized that we’d be able to move away from client work sooner than anticipated.

As we moved away from that, I began discussing and working with Rand and Gillian on strategy and ways to partner and better expand our offerings, as well as helping to negotiate some large contracts and monitor operational and reputation-oriented matters. Currently, Rand’s handing off the reigns and I’m running point on all of our business development efforts. It’s all work I really love doing, so I’m glad to see how my role in the company has begun to evolve.

And where do you see that going? What do you expect to do differently as the make-up of SEOmoz changes (with expansion, focus on internal projects, external funding, etc.)?

[Scott:] I imagine that my role will continue to develop in the same general direction. As we grow and work with more capital, I imagine I’ll begin to focus more on larger-scale, high-value partnerships and marketing efforts as well as, hopefully, continuing to offer input on the strategic direction of the company and our projects.

Your profile on SEOmoz.org says “I’m Batman.” Care to expand? (It also says you worked as a Campaign Manager for the DNC during the 2004 Presidential race – how much like the West Wing was that?)

[Scott:] Hahaha…yeah, well, I wish I could say I literally had a Batcave, Batmobile, Bat Utility Belt, and (especially) Bat Shark Repellant, but alas, it’s just me being goofy on my profile. One of the greatest things about working at SEOmoz is how relaxed and fun our office culture is. I wouldn’t say we’re an immature bunch around here, but we definitely have a good time.

As to the 2004 Presidential race, my involvement wasn’t much like the West Wing at all, unfortunately. I was a Campaign Field Manager for the Seattle office of the Democratic National Committee’s grassroots campaign. It was a lot of hands-on, face-to-face campaigning and fund-raising. It was an exhausting job, but incredibly fulfilling. Unfortunately my side lost the election…sorry about that. I’ve often thought of getting involved in law and politics, and I still may one day. For now though, I’m loving the SEO industry and SEOmoz, so no plans to go anywhere for a while.

We know you have been a major driving force behind the Whiteboard Fridays and do a lot of the video work – and Jane alluded to the professional lighting rig, etc. you are gradually acquiring. How professional do you see this getting – where does it end? Tom also wants to ask: the first SEOmoz video was a roundtable and that was good fun (and would be even better if the sound levels were sorted better) – do you have plans to revisit this format?

[Scott:] We definitely plan to upgrade our equipment and provide more video content, as it’s proven to be very popular with our readers. Our interview series from SMX Advanced in Seattle was very well received, and we’d like to do more on-camera interviews and even multi-person discussions at future events. We’re also producing a video training series based on the seminar we put on at the beginning of October. That should be finished sometime in early 2008.

As far as Whiteboard Friday goes, I love being part of what has become our most consistent content piece. People really seem to enjoy Whiteboard Friday and it’s great to read the feedback, especially when people mention that they look forward to it every week. In fact, several months ago I began posting WBF late Thursday night (in Seattle) so you folks across the pond would be able to watch it during the work day on Friday. We’ve discussed doing more group roundtable-type videos, and we may in the future. Unfortunately, it can be difficult to get everybody away from their work at the same time and, since I’m not a huge fan of long, static shots, I’d either have to operate the camera or wait until we have at least one more for editing purposes…but that’s mostly just me being picky.

We had a fun night out drinking Scotch whisky when you guys were in London. What’s your poison of choice?

[Scott:] Well, Rebecca and her boyfriend recently threw a Scotch party (Scotchtoberfest, natch), so I got to sample some really nice Scotches, including a 21-year Balvenie Portwood (that you and Duncan recommended, thanks!) that was spectacular. Although I’m a big Scotch fan, it’s a bit too pricey to be a default, so my usual cocktail is Whiskey and Diet Coke, which Jane and Rebecca affectionately refer to as “The Willoughby.”

To get back (slightly) on-topic,

One of the areas I specifically wanted to ask you about was to do with managing your (business’) reputation when under fire. Recently SEOmoz was the subject of some controversy and you guys found yourselves in the middle of a firestorm of responding to negative and heated comments and with an escalating situation on your hands as it got more and more personal.

My intention isn’t to go back over the issues behind the issue – that has been done, done again and done to death, but I am interested in your approach to the situation. As the conversation got more heated, you left a comment (paraphrased below) that was both measured and reasonable. Watching from the outside, it seemed to me to be the tipping point in the issue when sanity and reason (somewhat) returned to the conversation (and it has been cited by people on the other side of the debate as such).

Can you tell us a bit about what was going through your mind at the time? How do you think this approach generalises to other situations when you are under fire?

[Scott:] I’ve heard similar feedback from several people, and I certainly appreciate it and take it as a huge compliment. As I mentioned in the comment, I didn’t agree with what Rand had done and I could even see how some people could have misinterpreted the tone and intent of some of my other co-workers’ comments. I did, however, take umbrage once the attacks seemed to become personal and well beyond the scope of legitimate criticism in my view.

I noted in the post that we here at SEOmoz are all good friends and the comments got to a point where I felt it necessary to try and bring things back down to reality because they were way too heated and occasionally out of line. I deeply respect my co-workers and I’m very proud of what SEOmoz has been able to accomplish while I’ve been here. I believe we do far more good than harm in the search world than our critics at the time were giving us credit for. I simply wanted to make a statement that, while people may have taken issue with the situation at hand, it was unfair to dismiss everything else SEOmoz has done because of what was, admittedly, an unfortunate mistake. I think that sentiment resonated with a lot of people following the thread: we may have screwed up, but we’re good people and a good company, and we definitely didn’t and don’t set out to do harm to anyone. I added the last bit because I wanted people to know my comment came from me, it wasn’t “authorized” or intended as a corporate statement, as there had been some criticism that Rand wasn’t exercising enough prior restraint on some comments from staff.

I wasn’t thinking “strategically” per-se at the time, but I do think that when things get heated, people can tend to get both over-defensive and over-aggressive, usually over minor points of contention. Helping everyone to step back and see that there is common ground so they can re-evaluate the true issues and realistic scope of the argument can often ratchet things back a bit. I’m fond of saying that people often think they’re arguing against each other when really they’re arguing beside each other. A slight difference of viewpoint can lead people to think they’re opposed when they actually agree—they’re just focusing on different aspects of the same argument.

Extracts from Scott’s comment:

We’re not perfect and sometimes mistakes are made and statements are taken the wrong way. Overall though, we try to treat people fairly and openly. We don’t speak in press release jargon and we don’t vet comments on our blog. We respond to criticism when we feel it’s warranted …

I appreciate differences of opinion, but to immediately call professionalism into question when you don’t agree with one of us is beyond hypocritical, it’s just mean.

This reply is my view and opinion. Neither Rand, nor any other member of SEOmoz has read it or, to my knowledge, is even aware I’m writing it.

SEOmoz offers fantastic premium SEO content (we subscribe and my testimonial got all over the place after being used in the landing page contest). In the modern world, the search engines play a massive part in reputation monitoring and management (and we write a lot about that here – since our reputation monitoring tool is designed to help with that). Have you thought much about how the tools in your portfolio might help these kinds of areas?

[Scott:] We have certainly thought about it and found it to be a deficiency in our current offerings. We currently have several new tools in development, including one that will allow Premium Members to track tons of different data for multiple keywords per URL over time. This will be a huge asset for measuring the effectiveness of SEO campaigns, as well as monitoring reputation-related issues.

Do you pro-actively monitor things that are said about you / your company or do you find that tend to hear about anything you need to hear about (and does this change when you are in the middle of a firestorm?).

If you do pro-actively monitor things, how much of your time do you find it takes (and what percentage of the time you spent reading blogs can you claim is ‘reputation monitoring and research’!)?

[Scott:] I get automatic updates from Google Blog Search every couple of days in order to keep an eye on any mentions of us. GBS tends to be pretty thorough and catches most everything out there. I also take a quick glance at Sphinn every morning. That will usually alert me to anything controversial that may arise within the industry.

That said, Rand, voracious blog devourer that he is, usually catches wind of anything on the far ends of the positive/negative spectrum almost as soon as it emerges. We’ve also had several members on the site graciously and vigilantly give us a heads up when they see something questionable. As you know, news (especially the gossip variety) travels fast in the SEO world, so we usually don’t have to dig very hard to see when and where we’re mentioned. Since I don’t focus as much on strict SEO as Rebecca, Jane, and Rand do, I’d actually say the majority of my blog reading time is related to reputation monitoring and management.

Going back to the fun stuff

We’re going to wrap up with a couple of questions from the floor (ok, the rest of the Distilled office):

Having worked in LA on big film productions, is it your dream to write/direct/star in your own film? If so, what would it be about? (And will it be full of famous SEOs playing bit parts – I can just see Rand playing “taxi driver #4″ and Rebecca as “ninja on right”)

[Scott:] I love movies and I loved working in producing and creative development, but the industry and the town require one to adopt certain personality traits if you want to make a career there. It wasn’t something I felt comfortable with after a certain point, so I doubt I’ll go back to the film industry anytime in the foreseeable future. That said, Rand wrote a blog post a while back with a title that played off of a lyric from the musical “Rent.” I think it’d be hysterical to do a parody called “Rank,” wherein myriad SEO figures are fighting to eek out their marginalized existences in the face of a disapproving world and the oppressive powers of Google.

You don’t tend to blog as much as the other mozzers – why is that?

[Scott:] I’d like to say I don’t have much time for it, but Rand’s ridiculous schedule nullifies that argument. In reality, I only like to blog when I feel like I have something really valuable or interesting to write about. There’re a ton of good SEO blogs out there (ours included), so I feel like a lot of mainstream, search-oriented material is already covered by Rand and others who know way more about SEO than I do. As it is, I only usually write when I find something I feel I can speak with some knowledge about that I think others will find unique and valuable, and that’s not already being well covered in the industry. As we continue to develop our business model and marketing efforts I hope to blog more and, hopefully, do some speaking in the near future.

When you started you said you knew nothing about SEO – what was it like working for an SEO company not knowing the industry? And quite how deep was the deep end Rand threw you in when you started?!

[Scott:] It’s always been great working here, even when I didn’t know the industry. I was excited to come to SEOmoz because I saw a lot of traits in both the company and the industry that I’d really enjoyed about previous positions. Turns out it was a pretty good evaluation, as I’m very happy where I’m at.

Looking back, the end I was thrown into was pretty damn deep! Two of the first things I did in order to learn SEO when I got here were to do a site review of on-page factors for a major client (with Rand’s editorial supervision, of course) and write “The Professional’s Guide to Link Building,” which truly proved the adage, “the best way to learn is to teach.” There’s no better way to force somebody to learn SEO than to task them with writing a best-practice guide on how to do it! To be fair, Rand also gave me some pool toys to play with, in the form of letting me write a bunch of ridiculous content for Drivl.

From our end, I just wanted to end by saying thank you to Scott, for taking the time to answer so many questions in such an entertaining and informative manner. Thanks Scott – you’re definitely one of the good guys