Kane Jamison
Seattle, WA
Male, 26
I've been managing and marketing websites since 2005, for wide variety of sites. I now run a content and search marketing company where I focus on creating content and getting more traffic to client's websites. We focused on SEO from 2009-2012 and have since made content development the focus of our efforts. I spend my time doing everything from editing code to coming up with content ideas to auditing websites to finding creative ways to get more links to a website we're working with.
That always depends on the business. Both communities will be most successful if you've got an engaged employee or social media person proactively representing your company. If you can identify any sort of community or key interests surrounding your customer base, that will also carry you a long way in building a following and actually giving value to your fans. I can give examples where I have recommended to businesses that they not focus on a social network. I have seen a vacation rental company that serves mostly older clientele - 40 to 70 is probably the average age. They do great on Facebook, but Twitter has never been a factor and I don't see it getting bigger in the near future. As far as Facebook, Business-to-Business (B2B) providers typically have a hard time gaining traction and value from being active. There are exceptions, especially if you're delivering a great service that people love, but for the most part these companies have a hard time on Facebook since people aren't really looking to get updates from examples such as a paper shredding company or a DUI attorney.
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I figured this would be one of the first questions asked. There is definitely plenty of snake oil and useless services being sold in the name of SEO. I think the best way to answer this question is to give you some examples of signals I use to determine the legitimacy and quality of an SEO provider: Lofty promises are the first sign. If they're making broad promises to all customers of #1 rankings or first page rankings, that's a sign that either (A) they're full of it, (B) they're using spammy links that can hurt you in the long-run, or (C) they're talking about paid advertising, which isn't SEO at all. B is the most likely scenario for a company promising great results. The second signal is what they say they will do. If they're talking any of the following I'd run away: number of web 2.0 properties they'll build for you, linkwheels, tons of article submissions, lots of squidoo lenses and hub articles, lots of social bookmarking, submission to RSS and ping aggregators, 1000s of directory submissions. These are all thinly-veiled ways to say that they're going to hire foreign writers of poor quality to create a bunch of terrible useless content, and they're going to spam the internet with that content and a link back to your site. It can be tricky to hire a quality SEO. For a typical small or local business, I'd expect to spend $500 to a few thousand a month depending on the type of company (lead-driven small businesses with high-ticket transactions like dentists, lawyers, chiropractors, etc will typically have to pay more). I personally offer a few lower priced options than that, but they're for just a few hours of work each month and they're targeted at businesses looking for a basic service, and I'm a freelancer with lower overhead than most agencies. Larger businesses and corporate level companies can expect to pay $100 to $1000+ per hour depending on the provider they choose. Here's a good idea of overall rates for the SEO profession as of late 2011: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seo-pricing-costs-of-services Another excellent resource to read is the Google Blog Post on tips for hiring an SEO. They give some good 'best practices' advice and other signals of quality to look for, as well as questions to ask: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291
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I can't give any specific businesses as an example, but I think starting with a new website, or one that has absolutely no traffic, and building it up from scratch is the most exciting and rewarding. Since I work with a lot of small business clients, that's often the case. Knowing that you've created all of that traffic and revenue for the company from thin air feels powerful, and every bit of it is attributed to your work. As far as the tipping point, it tends to happen after a couple months of work. There will always be small initial increases or bursts of traffic from links that you create, but when the site finally pops up in the rankings and all of a sudden the business is getting 50 or 100 visitors a day instead of the 3 that they were getting before, that's when you know it's real and your efforts are paying off. From there, a few more hundred visitors each day isn't far off, and at that point you're earning the business more than you're costing them, which is job security at its finest.
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Broadly I'd say that 45% of ranking is the content on your site, 45% of ranking is related to quality and quantity of links from other sites pointing at your site, and maybe 10% is related to how users interact with your site (such as how many pages they look at, how long they spend on the site, how quickly they leave the site, etc.). To continue the broad recommendations, most sites I review need to do two things to rank better: (A) produce more content, including written content, images, video, etc., and (B) get more backlinks to their site from quality sources. Both can have their challenges depending on your niche. A lot of people will such building great content and the links will come naturally. That's not quite true. You need to build great content, and then proactively go find places that should be linking to you, and tactfully find a way to get them to link to you. There's a billion recommendations hiding within those two suggestions, so feel free to ask another question if you want details on a particular topic. The most reputable source for more specific ranking factors is SEOMoz's annual ranking factors report, which is based on consensus of a number of SEO practitioners: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors In regards to small / local businesses ranking on Google maps and other local searches, I'd also recommend the annual Local Search Ranking factors done by David Mihm: http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml
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Tattoo Artist
Have you ever messed up while giving someone a tattoo?
Subway Store Manager
The 6" sub is too small and the 12" is too big. Why no 9-inch sub?
Security / Bodyguard
Have you ever had to disarm an attacker?
Yes, absolutely. I subscribe to about 10 or 15 different SEO and website marketing blogs that send daily or weekly updates, to give you an idea of how much time I have to spend keeping up to date on practices and trends.
In terms of basic understanding of SEO, however, here are the initial resources I would recommend:
SEOMoz Beginner's Guide to SEO: It's free, it's pretty to look at, and most importantly I can recommend every tip in there as quality information. Find it here: http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo
Google's SEO Starter Guide: The content is basic and doesn't always go into depth, but getting the information straight from the horse's mouth is worthwhile in the beginning. Go to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html and download the PDF link.
Search Engine Land's Periodic Table of Ranking Factors gives a good broad overview of the factors that affect search engine rankings, and the visual layout can be very easy to digest compared to written versions: http://searchengineland.com/seotable
Search Engine Land's Video, What is SEO? is also a good one to review. http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo - Further down that page they also have links to their own "Guide to SEO," which is worth reading.
Books: There are some decent books written about SEO, although I have only perused most of them. I'd look at The Art of SEO (multiple authors including Rand Fishkin) as well as SEO Secrets by Danny Dover. The only trouble with SEO books is that it's a fast-changing industry, so certain aspects can change frequently. That said, I respect the authors of both books and I'm sure they both have plenty of timeless suggestions that won't be affected by smaller day to day changes in the industry, which is why I'd recommend them above other books if that's your preferred method of learning.
Classes: There are tons of courses, both local and online, so it's hard to single out a few. http://inboundmarketing.com/ is completely free and is focused on website marketing in general as opposed to just SEO, but I've heard decent things about their training and again, I respect the authors of those classes as well.
There are a ton of quality resources that I haven't mentioned, but these are ones that I'd recommend starting with to make sure you're on the right track and not learning from the wrong sources.
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UnPinterested, great name! I feel like I'm answering a Dear Abby column for internet marketing. Just like Facebook & Twitter, it's not a must-use site for every brand. That said, I think most brands can get a little value from it, but shouldn't necessarily prioritize it over proven online marketing methods that are already working. There was some initial hype among the SEO crowd because Pinterest had followed links, although that ended a week or two ago. The links are now "nofollow", which means they're not quite as valuable as they once were. The obvious benefits of ramping up on Pinterest are that it's growing exponentially, and it's supposedly being used by many as an "exploration site" to find things to purchase (whether that's clothes, travel, gifts, home decorations, etc.). The brands that benefit most will be those that offer a cool or interesting product or community, especially one that is visually interesting. That could mean things like photos from a photographer, portfolio examples from a landscaper who does great work, a clothing company that has attractive models (we're talking eye candy here, remember?), or perhaps a blog with great photos. If your site can be interesting to someone, then I think there's plenty of reason to get a Pinterest strategy into place, that coordinates with the rest of your content & social media strategy. The downside is that there is growing evidence that traffic coming from Pinterest to your site is going to be of similar quality to a site like StumbleUpon. What I mean by that is that most visitors will glance at the page and bounce, and few will stick around for more content or to buy something. Before you go overboard with it, test it out. Get a few succesful pieces of content shared on there and see how the traffic performs. Does it bring in email subscribers? Does it bring in sales? Does it bring in repeat visitors? A lot of the value is going to be long-term and related to brand awareness, so you'll have to look at metrics other than just sales. Here's a few tips for making the most of it: 1 - Make awesome content that is branded or gives people a reason to click through to your site. If you share a bunch of photos that look cool, people might repin them but nobody is going to click through to see the link. If you share a bunch of photos that have your logo on them, or an incredibly good title that gives people a reason to want more info, you'll have better luck getting click-throughs. 2 - Once you get the click-through, take immediate advantage of the fact that they're there and try to get them to stick around. For a blog or content producer that might mean, having a Subscribe/Like/Follow-on-Twitter box at the top of the screen whenever your traffic comes from Pinterest (use a plugin like WP Greet Box if you use Wordpress). Those people aren't around for long, so this will have to be way cooler than your average email subscribe box. Offer them something of value and you might get better results. 3 - Dabble with creating Pinterest-focused content. One example is what I have been calling "tall content." If you take a look at the homepage feed on Pinterest, you'll occasionally notice really long images that take up a large vertical space in the Pinterest feed. Here are two examples: http://pinterest.com/pin/146367056609064888/ & http://pinterest.com/pin/162340761537430037/ - Content like this will catch on quickly, so this tactic may not work for long, but that type of cool, Pinterest-only content is pretty clever still and I think it will perform well for repins and likes. Good luck, feel free to ask any clarification questions.
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To be honest, I personally have seen quite a few less of these over the last year or so. That said, they definitely had been out of control for a few years prior to 2011, and there is certainly plenty of "crap" left to get rid of. In February 2011 Google rolled out the first of a series of updates referred to as "Panda" updates (no special meaning, just the name for this series of updates). Since February, there have been a number of large and minor Panda updates, many of which have been aimed at content farms, sites with excessive ads, sites with lots of stolen & duplicated content, and other forms of crap. If you're interested in specifics, here's an ongoing log of Google updates: http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change So, yes, the SEO world in general is very aware of these issues, and many of us are the people running the sites with *good* content, which means we're the ones trying to outrank the crap, so we're certainly monitoring search results closely. If you're still seeing a lot in your search results, try testing other search options - can't hurt right? Blekko is one that has banned all content farms in general, even the farms like eHow that *occasionally* have useful content: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/blekko-bans-content-farms/
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