Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category

Below is the second set of questions from an interview I had given late last year. If you started this series with the introduction, you already know that the answers here differ from the answers given in the interview. One of the reasons I like written interviews is that it gives you a better opportunity to provide a more thorough and thought-filled answer. While these may not be life-changing questions, I hope they are at least thought provoking for the small business owner who doesn’t know a lot about SEO.

Click here to keep learning

A while back, I was asked to participate in an over-the-phone interview that would be later broadcast online. This is one of those interviews where they ask you to provide a list of questions up front so they know what to ask. Sadly, I don’t even remember who it was or where the interview ran. But, what I do remember is my faltering missteps during the interview. Yeah, don’t pretend it’s never happened to you!

I submitted 17 questions and a few weeks later they called to do the interview. Fortunately, for me, I didn’t have to worry about any trick questions, because I wrote them. Unfortunately, for me, what seemed like an obvious answer when I wrote the questions, somehow escaped me during the interview.

Click here to keep learning

Over the last dozen plus years, unscrupulous SEO’s have given the entire search engine optimization industry a bad rep. It seems like every few months some high profile person in the Internet world says something about how SEO is snake oil, sending ripples throughout the SEO community.

To be fair, some of the complaints about SEOs are deserved. Not for the entire SEO community, but for a small segment of “SEO providers.” Unfortunately, like sleezy lawyers, it only takes one to ruin the whole batch, perceptively.

I’m sure many readers have either heard about, or know someone who has had (or have themselves had) an extremely negative SEO experience. I talk to many business owners who are skeptical about SEO because their last SEO didn’t perform as expected, either over-promised and under-delivered, dropped out of contact, or just wasn’t doing the job as promised.

Click here to keep learning

A [link no longer available] mini interview of yours truly was posted yesterday over at the SEMpdx website. Just three quick questions, the first being an overview of my presentation that I’ll be giving and then two more quickies about keywords and keyword research.

You can also read their [link no longer available] mini-interview with Matt McGee as well.

Most business cards get ditched within the first two hours of being taken. That’s the problem with handing out business cards; the act is actually 90 percent ineffective.

Your business card shouldn’t be a substitute for your networking capabilities. You have to do the hard work first, become memorable. Identify the people you know can help you achieve your goals and those who you can help to achieve theirs. Don’t just hand out the card while sipping cocktails at a seminar or your card will be amongst the thousands thrown away every week.

After you’ve determined who may be a valuable ally, convince them that your resources can be beneficial. Give them the desire to have a professional relationship with you. Successful networking takes energy, but if accomplished they’ll want your business card and more importantly, they’ll hold on to it. It won’t be another bit of cardboard that gets tossed out.

Click here to keep learning

When you think of keyword research Dan Thies’ name often comes to mind. Dan’s expertise, however goes far beyond keyword research as he has become one of the most sought after SEO coaches/educators out there also being one of the most well-known and respected voices in SEO. Dan was gracious to allow me to interview him and get his thoughts on what’s important and what’s not in terms of SEO.

1) Aside from SEO education programs you provide, you’re known as a keyword research expert. What do you feel are the most important aspects of researching and selecting keywords for an optimization campaign?

Click here to keep learning

Matt Cutts is a well known Google software engineer who got into search engines in college while he was working on his Ph.D.

“The computer science department there makes you take two outside classes, so I took classes from the Information and Library Science department about search engines. It turned out that search engines were really exciting stuff: term frequency times inverse document frequency and all that stuff.”

Aaron Wall’s interview with Matt is very informative as they talk about everything from spam to algorithms to…volleyball. I think this is one of the better interviews Aaron Wall has gotten to do.

I haven’t picked out an interview for a while, so I decided now was the time to do it. This time, it’s an interview with LotsO, an SEO veteran who isn’t afraid to be blunt.

” In the spring of 1998 I started working with my first paying SEO client. By 2000 I was overwhelmed with clients and by 2003 I had dropped most all of my clients.

I guess you could say that; I came, I saw and then I left…

Click here to keep learning

Some might not know who Ron McArthur is or why he’s special enough for an interview. Well guess what? Now you too can know about this man. Ron McArthur is the President of WSI Internet, apparently the fastest growing internet francise. And now Jason Manheim has been given the opportunity to interview him. So go ahead, it’s okay to read the “Interview with the President of the Fastest Growing Internet Franchise”

“With so many franchise opportunities available throughout the world, it can be quite a daunting task for a person seeking a franchise opportunity to narrow down to the one that fits their interest and expertise.”

Click here to keep learning

Founder of WeBuildPages, Jim Boykin talks about search optimization, training good employees, and more in his interview with Aaron Wall

“I like knowing my clients and knowing my employees, and knowing what my employees know. Our current team now has good experience and it took years to build that knowledge…”

“Bad clients call or email often. Problem is, if I sold them, then they want to talk to me, and if 80 clients all called and chatted 1 hour per month I’d have no time.”

Click here to keep learning