PalatnikFactor.com

10 SEO Questions with Ann Smarty from SEOSmarty.com

December 10, 2008 by Pablo Palatnik

Following the PalatnikFactor.com interview series, this week our interview guest is Ann Smarty. For those of you who dont’ know Ann, she writes probably one of the most popular blog posts’ on SEO in Search Engine Journal and you can follow her SEJ post here. She also writes on her blog, SEOSmarty.com and has built a great following and reputation over the last couple of months.

1- Q: Ann, thanks for taking the time to do this interview with me. I’ll start with the same question I started with Aaron. I think, as many people do, SEO is still growing in terms of people getting into it, as well as the demand for it. What do you think is the state of the industry as it is now and going into 2009?

A: First, thanks for the questions – I love being interviewed Now to the question: I am glad the industry is evolving. Probably it’s just me but I have an impression that SEO is moving to a more quality level. It’s not just trying to cheat search engines any more – it’s about creating value and applying creative approaches.

2- Q: What are your most successful link building strategies? (I’m sure the readers will appreciate this but only list what you’d like =) ) Or to rephrase, which link building strategies do you find most effective?

A: Building relationships with bloggers… I’ve done quite a few posts on that recently sharing my secrets. Besides, competitive research has been awesome help too: select your competitors and combine all their most successful tactics in one.

3- Q:What are you favorite SEO tools?

A: Link Diagnosis, and recently launched SEMrush (by Russian developers).

4- Q: What are your top 5 SEO blogs?

A:I have already listed them in one of the previous interviews. But they are always the same, so:
Search Engine Journal - I love blogging for the site and it now feels like home;
SEOmoz – that’s the first place I joined when deciding to start my own SEO company, that’s where I met most of the friends and that’s where all smartest people in SEO share ideas!
SEOroundtable – the best resource for SEO forum news;
SEO Book – who doesn’t love Aaron?
SEO ROI - Gab is a good friend and clever guy! I enjoy reading his blog.

5- Q: How does this latest Google promote feature factor into your SEO strategies (with Google)?

A:It hasn’t influenced my strategy in any way yet (and I doubt if it will). To me SEO is doing things right (clean code, good content, right keywords) – this is not going to change, I guess

6- Q: You wrote an article on SEJ which I’ve blogged about recently on Google sitelinks which is still a mystery to many. From the theories you listed in that post, have you found one to be the most on-point?

A:From my experience factors that really matter include:
- term competitiveness;
- domain age + external backlinks;
- internal structure

As for the last one, I am sure it is important and saw evidence to that (changing the internal anchor text and interlinking to get the page appear in the sitelinks) but I can’t say I can control that much. With some sites, it works, with others – don’t. You can try searching [seosmarty] to see that Google picked up some really unexpected pages to show as my site sitelinks.

7- Q: Five most important on page SEO Factors?

A:For the page (not the site / domain)
- Page titles;
- Page unique content (versus template driven / sitewide elements);
- Page H-tags;
- Page links (both internal and external);
- Page HTML code (make sure everything is seen by the Googlebot).

8- Q: Three most important off page SEO Factors?

A: – Internal interlinking and internal anchor text;
- Site architecture;
- Robots.txt (it’s often used wrong and prevents the site from doing well);

Off-site factors:
- Links No matter how much we are trying to guess if Google takes other factors into account (traffic, bounce rate, etc) backlinks are still most important.
- Domain age;
- Domain past records (reputation).

9- Q: No-follow tag. Should it be used, when and how?

A:Nofollow attribute you mean? On the link level (versus the nofollow page meta tag I mean).
I am using it to link to dynamic pages (e.g. Google search results) or to link to site sub pages that contain nothing but a form. I don’t believe it flags the site or there is anything wrong with it but I am not getting obsessed by it (I know people that nofollow every single external link).

10- Q: What do you think is the next big “thing” for SEO such as social media became?

A:Tough question… I’d say I wish I knew The Internet is changing so fast and I am having hard time predicting what is going to stick. Social search? Not sure… Anyway, if you know what it’s going to be please let me know so that I had time to get prepared

More Interviews:

- 10 SEO Questions with Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com