PalatnikFactor.com

10 SEO Questions with Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz.org

August 24, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik

In this interview of the PalatnikFactor.com interview series we’ll be asking Rand Fishkin, owner of SEOmoz.org, 10 questions on SEO and super stoked he decided to join the series you guys have been enjoying.

As stated in his bio on SEOmoz, “Rand Fishkin is the CEO & Co-Founder of SEOmoz, a leader in the field of search engine optimization tools, resources & community. In 2009, he was named among the 30 Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs Under 30 by BusinessWeek, and has been written about it in The Seattle Times, Newsweek and the NY Times among others. Rand has keynoted conferences on search from Sydney to Reykjavik, Montreal to Munich and spoken at dozens of shows around the world. He’s particularly passionate about the SEOmoz blog, read by more than 40,000 search professionals each day. In his miniscule spare time, Rand enjoys the company of his amazing wife, Geraldine.”

Q: Rand, thanks for joining us. 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 2010?

A: At SEOmoz, we’ve been doing a lot of digging into the state of the SEO industry and what the future is likely to be. The conclusions we’ve come to are:

* The investment in SEO is going to increase at a dramatic pace over the next 5 years – marketers see more value in SEO than virtually any other tactic – online or off.

* The search marketing field is in a state of imbalance that can’t last forever. $14 billion dollars was spent on PPC last year and those paid search results received <10% of all clicks in the SERPs. SEO received $1.4 Billion in spend and more than 90% of the clicks. Disparities like this simply don't last forever.

* SEO is still very fragmented and still has a somewhat negative perception - that's been eroding and it's going to continue to do so as it becomes a more serious, standardized online marketing practice.

Q: People seem to be questioning the legitimacy of directories as a solid SEO tactic as they believe they don’t hold much weight anymore. Is paying $300 on a Business.com or Yahoo directory link still worth it?

A: I tend to think that for most businesses doing serious SEO and earning lots of revenue via the web, those listings are likely to be worthwhile, as are a few others. Where Google and the other engines (basically just Bing, now) are going to be reducing value is in the many pay-to-play directories that are essentially attempts to monetize links and PageRank.

Q: A link building strategy can be very diverse and very time consuming. Where do you start?

A: We recommend starting with analysis. Figure out what you need to do – who’s in front of you, how far ahead are they, what sort of links do you need to compete, etc.? Sometimes, you’re low on link diversity, other times it’s anchor text or raw juice (PageRank). You need to have goals in mind before you being a link campaign. Once you’ve set them out, you should also figure out what you’re good at and what will work? Is it manual link building, linkbait/viral content, embedded widgets, blogging, social media, etc.

There’s no doubt link building is challenging, but starting off by identifying the needs and the strategy is much wiser than just jumping in and trying to swim before you’ve figured out how far you need to go and what stroke to use.

Q: What are you favorite SEO tools?

A: C’mon, I’m totally biased here Obviously I think these – www.seomoz.org/tools – are terrific, but I also like www.seo-browser.com and DaveN’s Keyword Density Tool (even though keyword density is a complete myth). One thing I will say is that the SEOmoz toolbar (http://www.seomoz.org/mozbar) has gotten really excellent with the latest update. The “analyze page” button is possibly the most useful thing in my SEO toolbox of late.

Q:What are your top 5 SEO blogs?

I won’t even name ours, but I regularly read:

* www.searchengineland.com
* www.searchenginejournal.com
* www.seobook.com/blog
* www.marketingpilgrim.com
* www.davidnaylor.co.uk/blog

Q: As an authority in the SEO industry, how do you keep up with the industry, get the insights, etc?

A: Doing lots and lots of work on SEO topics, consulting, building tools that try to mimic the engines’ behavior and skimming everything I find on the subject keeps me on top of things. I think that the Q+A at SEOmoz – www.seomoz.org/qa – has also been really instructive in showing me the problems everyday SEOs face.

Q: Five most important on page SEO Factors?

A: I actually just wrote about this! http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization – basically, the list goes:

* Title Tag
* URL
* HTML Content
* Alt Attribute of an Image
* Meta Description

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

A: As I’ve said on the blog, I really don’t recommend it for new sites or sites that are undergoing re-architecting and re-designs. However, if you’re currently employing it now, it might actually be dangerous to simply remove all instances before you shore up the potential crawl/link bandwidth leaks that could make the engines focus their energies on all the wrong places.

Q: What is the most difficult aspect of SEO for you?

A: For me, personally, the biggest challenge of late has been convincing VCs that there’s a huge market potential in SEO. We’ve been out doing some fundraising (see http://www.seomoz.org/blog/my-startup-experience-vc-entrepreneurship-selfanalysis-the-road-ahead) and there’s still a distinct lack of awareness about the field and where SEO sits (and could sit) in the marketing food chain. My guess is that other SEOs struggle with this at client pitches and internally at marketing meetings (for in-house folks) and it’s going to continue to be hard for a long time to come. I suspect that’s also the reason this graphic was a hit:

Q: We’re almost nearing 2010, what trends do you see rising or upcoming in terms of new SEO strategies, etc?

A: I see a lot of SEOs putting time and energy into Twitter, but I’m not sure that it yet has the returns and SEO impact they’re hoping for. I do, however, see a ton of value in vertical search – Google Local, Product Search, Google Base, etc. I think many smart SEOs are on the cutting edge of vertical/universal search and find ways to take advantage of these results (which are, generally, much less competitive). I’d say that classic linkbait is getting harder, though creative strategies are still effective and anytime you can marry viral content with embedded badges/widegets, you’ve got a potentially winning formula.

Really appreciate your time Rand. If you guys want to check out a quality SEO blog filled with solid information, check out SEOmoz.org.