Posts Tagged ‘Interviews’

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.

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Monday I was interviewed by Jennifer Evans Laycock and Ross Dunn on Webmaster Radio. Aside from me talking over Ross quite a bit I think it all went well.

The topic of the show is SEO 101 so Jennifer and Ross asked me about my SEMMY winning article, Best Damn Webmarketing Checklist, Period. We talked a bit about things we look for first when optimizing and what might be most important in terms of architecture and usability.

You can listen to the SEO 101 Interview here.

I loved the interviews as part of the narrowing down process in the first few seasons of The Apprentice. I think the last couple of seasons they moved away from that, but now they brought it back. Considering that none of these people will actually be working for Trump, this time it seems kind of superfluous. What’s the point? Let’s get back to the game… and the lessons!

Business Lesson One: The quality of the team can make or break your success.

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Upon first glance, The Search Engine Marketing Kit, authored by Dan Thies and Dave Davies, appears to be a more daunting read than it really is. The material stands about three inches thick complete with 4-inch three-ring binder. The thickness is deceptive in that the pages are printed only on one side. But running at over 350 pages, the SEM kit is no slouch in dishing out the info.

Designed to be the go-to manual for all things SEM related, the SEM Kit successfully delivers. The kit, which includes a CD loaded with documents, covers search engines, SEO basics, advanced SEO, PPC, and link building; giving the reader a well-rounded knowledge base for developing successful SEO and SEM strategies. The authors have even included a chapter on running an SEM firm, which can be particularly insightful at understanding the various strategies and options available to anyone running, or thinking of running an SEO business. Normally I’m not one much for interviews, but I did find the interviews chapter to be particularly worthy of a read (I’ve copied the pages and passed them around the office.)

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Recently I got a hold of a 2006 AAEE Job Search Handbook from a friend of mine. Thumbing through it I thought this information would be helpful to businesses as they perform interviews.

Guidelines for Pre-Employment Interview

Name

Acceptable: “To enable us to check on your work and education record, is any additional information necessary relative to change of name, use of an assumed name or a nick name? If yes, Please explain.”

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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.

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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?

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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…

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