Todd Malicoat is an independent marketing and business consultant from the SEO school of thought . He's done strategic consulting for companies large and small, and built and sold several sites of his own.

by Michael Estrin

Confused about when and how to link? Our panel of SEO gurus dishes the straight dirt on the best practices for inbound linking.

For anyone with a website, linking can be a confounding process. Part science, part art, questions of when to link and how to do so are not easily answered. Indeed, the practice of linking is a field unto itself within the often confusing world of SEO.

After a recent review of iMedia’s own linking policy (something all websites should do from time to time), we formulated a series of seven questions for a panel of linking experts. Here are their answers, as well as some additional free resources they were gracious enough to provide.

There is significant natural search ranking value with respect to a website’s link profile, for example, the quality and quantity of inbound links. What, if any, ranking value exists within a website’s internal linking structure?

Seth Besmertnik, CEO, Conductor
A site’s internal linking structure plays a significant role in establishing and improving visibility in organic search results. Think of the internet as a vast plumbing system, with individual domains representing a city’s homes, shops, and offices. Link authority flows throughout the internet like water through the city’s pipes. Just like buildings route water to the rooms that need it, marketers must route link authority to the appropriate pages in order for them to rank well.

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOMoz
While a large portion of search engine algorithms do focus on external links, I’d certainly say that internal linking is a big part of a successful search engine optimization campaign. The basic theory with internal linking is to focus on both relevance and breadth. In general, you want a site with a flat link architecture, not just for search engines, but for users as well (so few clicks are required to reach any given piece of content). From there, you want to use relevant anchor text and a sensible site structure, leveraging category and sub-category pages to link to deeper content pages.

We’ve written several posts on these topics at SEOMoz, including: “PageRank, Link Patterns & The New Flow of Link Juice,” “Link and Ranking Strategies for Enterprise Sites,” and “Diagrams That Can Help You Define the Proper Anchor Text of Internal Links.”

Todd D. Malicoat, founder, Stuntdubl.com
Internal link structure is probably in the top three most important variables to optimal site creation for rankings. Internal link text, along with a sitemap and navigation, create the foundation of a site and its meaning. It’s based on this taxonomy that rankings will occur within a specific keyword and industry set.

Eric Ward, president, EricWard.com
The search ranking value of internal linking structure is far greater for sites that have shown the ability to attracting links and publicity organically. In fact, to borrow from the artist formally known as Prince, I’m pretty comfortable saying that if the engines like you and trust you, you can optimize your site like it’s 1999. The tricky thing is recognizing that internal linking is a slippery slope even for trusted sites. You don’t want to abuse the trust you’ve earned.

Debra Mastaler, president of Alliance-Link
There is some value to on-page links from a content standpoint, anchor text using keywords can be considered on-page content and weighted as such. Well linked pages allow for search engine spiders to easily navigate and index pages. It also allows for the flow of link popularity to internal pages, which is needed to keep pages in the main search indexes.

From an SEO point of view, when is it advisable to link out to a resource, and will linking out actually help my natural search rankings? If so, can you explain why?

Seth Besmertnik
Linking out to trusted, relevant sites is a great way to provide additional value to users, but it’s not going to have a dramatic impact on a site’s organic search visibility. However, search engines have said that “hub” sites must have links going in and out to demonstrate their authority. That being said, marketers should avoid linking to poor-quality and/or irrelevant sites for two reasons: they are not as useful to users, and search engines may associate the linking site with a “bad neighborhood.”

Todd D. Malicoat
Optimal websites link out. Great sites link to other great sites where it is worthwhile to do so. Logic follows that linking out is something excellent sites do and should be a part of your website creation equation. I’m pretty willing to bet that in most instances, linking to other sites with the internal anchor text that you want a page to rank for is not a terrible idea for a higher rankings variable in search engines.

See also: “Don’t be Afraid to Link Out,” and “Outbound Link Case Study.”

Eric Ward
In my opinion it is never advisable to link out for any SEO-driven purpose. I ask my clients this question: If there were no search engines at all, and I mean none, would you still consider linking to this site? If the answer is “no,” that’s a flag to me and a frank discussion of user intent and experience needs to take place.

Debra Mastaler
From a business standpoint, it’s advisable to link out when a source will help reinforce a position or statement you’re making, add credibility to your products or be of value to your users as a reference.

From a ranking standpoint, linking out to sources that use the same/similar verbiage and keyword phrases helps to establish relevancy for your terms. Keep in mind, even outbound links using keywords in the anchors are on-page content for you. Keep your anchors relevant to your on-page topic and pointing to pages similar to your own.

Rand Fishkin
Linking out is something I recommend all sites do, not just for SEO purposes, but to help their perception as good internet citizens and to help earn links back in. A recent study of news sites confirmed that “in general there is a strong relationship between news websites linking out and getting links in return.”

As far as SEO goes, I’m generally of a mind that search engines certainly don’t want to punish external linking — or their entire link graph would break — and probably want to reward it in many cases. Link to good sites, become a good resource, and visitors will come back to you again and again. When search engines see this type of behavior, they’ll find ways to encourage linking in their algorithms.

Will I be passing link value to my competitor if I link out to their website?

Rand Fishkin
If you do so without a “no-follow” tag or a JavaScript redirect, technically, you will be passing link value. However, this doesn’t stop me from doing it on sites that I control. I think that when a competitor has done something worthy of notice, I get more value and trust from my audience by pointing it out than by staying silent.

Seth Besmertnik
In some cases. Think of a link as an endorsement from one site to another. If you sell computer equipment, would you want to recommend other computer equipment companies to your customers? Probably not. In the event marketers want to link out but not pass authority, the no-follow attribute may be used to signal to search engines that the link does not imply an endorsement.

Debra Mastaler
Yes, unless you stem the flow of link popularity by using an attribute such as no-follow. Link value passes in two ways: algorithmically through the transfer of link popularity and “humanly” through the transfer of trust.

Algorithmic trust or link popularity passes through links from page to page. When linking out, you pass along some of that link popularity to the destination web page through the link itself. Human trust is shown through the physical act of linking out. While this has no algorithmic effect on your business, it does establish professional goodwill and hopefully a reciprocal link.

Eric Ward
Yes. And while you could no-follow or use several other technical methods to diminish or even eliminate any SEO-related benefit of such links, I think such efforts are a waste of time and energy. There are plenty of sound reasons to link to a competitor’s site and stop obsessing over passing link juice to them.

Todd D. Malicoat
Yes. It’s probably even a good idea. Unless you’re duking it out in a very high competition, low search volume, ultra high value marketplace, it’s probably fine. Start a good dialogue with your competitors, and pass them some juice. You can potentially use no-follow links, but that’s just bad mojo, in my opinion.

How does the actual text in a hyperlink play a role in SEO?

Todd D. Malicoat
You are what your links say you are. That applies to both internal and external anchor text. Anchor text (and the surrounding text) plays a critical role in rankings. See: “Amish GoKarts.”

Eric Ward
It’s one signal, similar to the way a weatherman looks for certain mathematical signals to make a forecast. The visible text within the link (aka anchor text) can help the search engines make a forecast as to what content lies at the end of that link if clicked. If that happens often enough, and if the originating sites are of high quality, then the engine can use that signal as part of the ranking process. For example, search the phrase “click here,” and not surprisingly, the top three results are for Adobe Acrobat, Shockwave, and iTunes. That’s because there are millions of web pages that have the words “click here” as the anchor text of the link pointing to those sites. Think how often you come across sites that say, “To download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat, click here.”

Debra Mastaler
Link text, or anchor text, plays a key role in how a web page ranks. It’s the clickable part of the link you see and is considered a strong query ranking factor used by both humans and search engines to provide information on destination content.

For example, if the term “running shoes” is hyperlinked, you expect to be taken to a page hosting additional information on running shoes. A search engine has the same expectation and imparts importance to the anchor text and the page it points to whenever it finds and spiders links using the term. The more links it finds using the term and pointing to your URL, the more it associates the phrase with your web page. Which hopefully means the next time someone searches for “running shoes,” your pages will show in the top search results. The goal of most link building campaigns is to secure a large number of links from quality pages using a mixture of keyword anchor text and pointing to a variety of your internal pages.

Seth Besmertnik
If we think of a link is an endorsement between two sites, the text of the link (called anchor text) provides context. For example, a link with the text, “computer equipment” is interpreted by search engines as an indication that the origin site trusts the target site as a provider of computer equipment. As such, search engines will rank the target page higher when users are searching for computer equipment.

Rand Fishkin
Anchor text is used by the search engines as a measure of what a page is considered to be about. If many links point to a page with a given keyword, the engines will often rank that page very highly when someone searches for that term because so many relevant votes are pointing in its direction.

Once you’ve established SEO best practices for internal linking procedures, is it worth the time to go back and adjust the entire website? Or should you just move forward with these new practices?h

Rand Fishkin
It really depends. But for virtually every site we work with, the goal is to apply the best practices on legacy content as well as future works.

Seth Besmertnik
It depends. If the website’s structure does not impede crawling and there are no other technical issues, marketers can usually phase-in internal linking best practices. Start from scratch if the current structure is causing poor indexation (how many pages of a site are included in a search engine’s index) or other issues that cannot be addressed with on-the-spot changes. Evaluate these types of decisions based upon opportunity cost. Can you afford not to rank alongside your competitors?

Debra Mastaler
It’s tough to comment and make blanket statements on something like that since each website is unique. However, if the time invested warrants a positive ROI, then yes, go back and change it. Start building new pages with the new practices. It shouldn’t be hard to change navigational links and HTML sitemaps to use the terms/structure you want. Another option might be to buy a new URL, set the internal structure the way you want it, and 301 redirect the old site to the new.

Eric Ward
I would not recommend a link text retrofit for the entire site page by page, but I would recommend, as a starting point, to make sure the pages that collectively represent the top 25 percent of your search and click traffic are analyzed to see if the links can be better anchored.

Todd D. Malicoat
It’s always worth revisiting certain aspects of your website. Internal anchor linking is one of those aspects. Taking the time to test different anchor text and how it affects rankings is a great idea for any site. It’s always tougher to retrofit a site, but often very worthwhile.

How does PageRank play into natural search rankings and what does PageRank really mean?

Todd D. Malicoat
There is a big difference between ToolBar PageRank (TBPR), and Actual PageRank. Actual PageRank is what SEOs refer to as “link juice,” “authority,” or other similar terms. PageRank is only as good as the phrases you’re ranking for. You can be a TBPR 7 and not actually pass authority to others or rank for things of much importance. I’ll take rankings over pretty green pixels any day of the week. For more resources, click here.

Eric Ward
The definition of PageRank is best understood by reading what the inventors of it said it is. Now, as to the role PageRank plays with search rankings, there are two very separate and distinct PageRank measures. There’s the Google Toolbar PageRank, which is the green bar chart widget we all have at the top of our browser window, and there’s the private PageRank values assigned by Google and used in whatever way it uses them for ranking pages. Nobody outside Google can say with full confidence what and how either of them really
work, but it doesn’t stop folks from trying.

Debra Mastaler
PageRank is exclusive to Google and is part of its overall ranking algorithm. It’s not a primary algorithm, nor does it exclusively power Google’s ranking. It’s part of the overall process Google uses to determine the quality of a given web page. Google provides a visual representation of PageRank for a URL through it’s Google Toolbar, but we know (from Google) this is merely a representation and doesn’t accurately portray the internal PageRank Google uses in its ranking algorithm.

There is a very good discussion on PageRank by Google engineer Matt Cutts here.

Rand Fishkin
PageRank is simply a raw measure of links across the web, taken into a graph that ranks pages from most important to least and considers votes/links from more important pages to have more weight and value than those from less important pages. While the underlying concept of PageRank is still very much alive (links as votes, metrics for establishing more important vs. less important pages, etc.), the green pixels in the Google toolbar are a very rough estimation that’s often massively out of date (since it’s only updated once every 3-6 months) and occasionally deliberately misleading.

Seth Besmertnik
PageRank is an algorithm designed to measure a page’s relative importance on the internet by analyzing the links pointed to it. PageRank is specific to Google, but each major engine has similar methods of determining a page’s link authority. The important thing to remember is that PageRank is only one of many factors that go into ranking a page, and many times high-quality content on lower PageRank sites will outrank their higher PageRank counterparts. The same is true when acquiring links. Focus more on high-quality, relevant content and not on the page’s PageRank score.

What are the three most important criteria a search engine robot might consider when it is evaluating an inbound link?

Seth Besmertnik
First, the anchor text of the link, providing search engines with context to the endorsement being made. Second, the authority and trustworthiness of the page where the link resides is evaluated to determine how much weight the link is given. Finally, the two linked pages are evaluated from a relevancy standpoint, with highly relevant links having the most influence on rankings. The best case scenario is to have links from highly authoritative, trustworthy, and relevant sites with anchor text representative of the products or services being marketed by the target site.

Eric Ward
Who is the creator, what is their intent, what does their own back-link pedigree look like?

Todd D. Malicoat
First, unique linking domains to the sites in question (qualitative and quantitative). Second, anchor text of the link. Third, topical authority of the link.

Debra Mastaler
The anchor text, the quality factor of the page hosting the link, and the age of the page hosting the link.

Rand Fishkin
I posed this question to 37 of the smartest SEO folks I know in our Search Engine Ranking Factors survey and got:

1. Anchor text
2. Global link popularity of the linking site (how important is the domain providing the link).
3. Topical relationship of linking page (how relevant is the page providing the link).

(Source)

Interview with Csutora, Malicoat & Winfield (source)

MARK: We’re sitting here with Chris Winfield, Todd Malicoat, and Brent Csutoras. This is an all star crew, and we’re at SES New York, March 2008. We’re just going to talk about what got you guys into search, how you got started and some of the obstacles you ran into when you first got going.

BRENT: When I got into search, I had started a consulting company that was unrelated to search and I wanted to try and find clients like a lot of small start up websites and whatnot. I was looking at any possible way that I could do that. I started actually going out and focusing on trying to find forums and sites and things like that that would be related to the niche that I was trying to sell. Basically, it wasn’t about ranking so much at the time, it was just about finding a way to plaster my spam in some way shape or form. I tried to be pretty conservative about it, tried to make it real subtle. It was about trying to get links and trying to get things to point back at my site. At some point it was interesting, I was searching on Google or MSN or something like that and I was curious on how people would show up in these search engines. So it’s kind of similar to most people’s stories.

MARK: What year was that?

BRENT: That was probably early 2005. So, I got into this and I started reading a little bit and I actually bumped into Aaron Wall’s SEO book and started reading on his blog and I started learning about the basics. Even then it wasn’t so much about the proper way to do it, it was just that title tags had some value, so the first thing was like 50 characters, 100 words in my title tag, and keyword spam like crazy, and anything I could to get the usage of the terms that I want on there, but even with that I was able to rank pretty quickly for some pretty effective terms and I started getting a lot of traffic and a lot of leads from it. It got me interested in trying to do it better and better and better. So that’s kind of how I got into it. Then I just started learning more. I bumped into WebMasterRadio, which was really a huge turning point for me. By finding Darren’s WebMasterRadio, I started getting introduced directly to a lot of the top people in the industry right away and it was an opportunity to ask questions and find out tips and hints on how to do things better. It gave me a direction. Then I think the other huge turning point was when I went to the first conference. I went to Pubcon for the very first time. Even at a conference, where it’s very spread out and it’s very active and hard to nail people down, I was able to network a little bit, make some friends, and get into it. It really kind of turned into a lot of studying, a lot of listening to the people in the industry talk and mention certain tools and things, and then researching those and applying them to what I was doing. That kind of lead me into social media and it was still more of just grabbing links at the time; I wanted a link on every one of these sites to point to me because “links have a value.” So, in the process of doing that I ended up hitting the front page of Digg and I was blown away. My site got totally hosed and they actually kicked me off of the server company; I was on DreamHost, and they just told me, “Look, we are never going to let you bring your site back up unless you can never have this happen again.” That was a turning point then, because it was like, “Wait a minute, social media is amazing.” And then the links coming in from what was happening on social was so quick and so fast and my ranking shot so high, I literally got on a little social media high from it. I started getting more and more into it, and that’s kind of where I am today.

CHRIS: That’s what we call the social media crack.

MARK: Who besides Aaron Wall were some of your early influencers?

BRENT: I would definitely say Greg Bowser, Todd Friesen, the “SEO Rock Stars,” were a huge inspiration to me. They really got me going. Shoemoney was one, and Malicoat and once I got into social, definitely Chris here was a big one that got me more turned into how to actually do it right, instead of just throwing crap at the wall and seeing what sticks. We are definitely about trying to be more intuitive about the way that it works and the best way to go about it. Of course Danny Sullivan - all the key figures at that time were a part of WebMasterRadio and were involved, so I really went and grabbed every show that I could that was on there and I really started listening to all of the old archives and writing down notes. I remember, it’s funny now looking back, it was like 301??????. It seems very important you know? (Laughs) So I really give a lot of credit to WebMasterRadio, the “Rock Stars,” and a couple key figures in the industry that really got me going.

MARK: That’s cool. What about some early road blocks or obstacles? Maybe you ran into a wall, tried something and it didn’t work?

BRENT: You know with SEO, I was kind of new back when Black Hat was just kind of running off, so I never got too much into the cloaking or anything like that at that time period. I never got too much into the spamming, so I never hit any real major search obstacles, but in social I was banned numerous times from every single social engine there is. I’ve been banned twice from Reddit, three times from Digg; it was just a regular thing for me to get pretty much knocked out on those.

MARK: So what do you do? How do you fix that?

BRENT: Well at the time Digg used to actually communicate with you and you could have a chance to email them and talk it out, so I would email them and say, “I had no idea this was happening. I didn’t know that I was caught stealing everybody else’s content and putting it on my own domain and submitting it. It was a total accident.” (Laughs) I mean it was an opportunity that you had to talk to them; you don’t have that anymore so the answer of what I did then really doesn’t match up to the answer of what you do now. Back then it was start a new account. Start from fresh with the knowledge that you have now. It’s good to do. A lot of times you get into social and you’re going to make a bunch of mistakes and the best thing to do if you don’t really know how to do it right from the start is to play around and when you do figure out what you’re going to do your probably going to have to start over. Start with a fresh account. Start with a fresh persona and do it right the second time, because to really get into it you have to do it all the time. It’s not something you can do once a week or for a couple hours here and there; make an account, throw something at it, and then leave it for two or three weeks and come back to it. It’s an everyday all day thing and you’re going to make mistakes. You can definitely get burned in social very easily.

TODD: There are a lot of parallels between social and SEO. Four years ago, SEO verses social now, only social has caught up so quickly - people don’t give it enough credit for how far it has come in such a short period of time because they caught all of the things that Google had caught that took Google years to catch. They caught onto reciprocal friending and stuff like that which is the equivalent to reciprocal linking.

CHRIS: It’s so similar too with domains as well. Trusted Domains on Digg now are so much easier to get there than a brand new piece of garbage blog or something like that, not that it should be anyway, but a year ago that piece of garbage was pretty easy.

TODD: A year ago Digg was pretty easy in general but they caught up really quick, as soon as we started beating on it, it was like, “Ok, we’ve got to catch up with what’s going on here,” and they really did.

CHRIS: And they were really good also because they had the background. I mean, a lot of the outing of what was good for spammer in SEO was already known, so going in the algorithms of a lot of these social sites were quick to say authority aspects key figures of what a user is that’s a good user and what is the aspects of a site that’s a good site; how do you fix it quickly. So they definitely had a jump on it.

TODD: Even little things like doing away with voting on your friends. I used to have my friends set up a home page so I would just log in each morning and vote on ten of my friends home pages. Now they put in one additional click, and that one additional click takes, a whole lot of extra effort.

MARK: When did you start Todd?

TODD: I started really right out of college. I went to school and dabbled in web design. I ended up doing computer stuff kind of by default. I was always the computer guy that was that much better than everybody else, so I was working in IT fixing printers and that kind of stuff; I was terrible at it. I dabbled in programming and I would always miss a comma and I was terrible at that. I got into Photoshop and I was ok at Photoshop and I could do a little bit of that. So put them all together and it was like I as the Jack of all trades, master of none, but it was enough that I knew about design, I knew about development, I knew about servers and everything else. Then one day, I was working for a hospitality company, and I ended up taking over the website because the graphic designer left. I was the Junior Network Admin, so I’m working under the head computer geek fixing printers and everything and then I took over the website because I kind of did that on the side. I ended up working between the head of IT and the VP of Marketing and it really hold true to this day that that’s really what I still do; it’s right in-between those two worlds of marketing and tech. The two guys were at each other’s throats all the time! They would sit down in a meeting and one guy would say, “I need this by this date,” and the IT guy would say, “It’s going to take three months.” Then the next day of the week the marketing guy would come into the IT guys office and say, “I need this by Friday,” and it was something that would take three months to do, so it kind of balanced itself out, but it was still this huge game of BS the whole time and just that communication, not talking to each other and not understanding each other made me kind of the bridge at that point stuck between those two worlds. At that same time, I had a bunch of down time because nobody knew what I was doing. So it was like I had every day as long as the printers were working and the website was getting updated at some point, I had a lot of down time. I spent a lot of time researching on WebmasterWorld. At that point in time there was WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch, and mainly just forums.

MARK: What year was that?

TODD: I think it was 2001 to early 2002. Maybe even a little bit before that. I think my sign on date was mid-2002 and I had been kind of lurking for a while before that. Then the same kind of thing, the first conference I went to was really a turn-around. I look back at that as just meeting people in person and going, “Wow. There are all of these other people out here doing this hard core, and there’s really a market for this.” We were laughing before, “Why do you do this?” and we’re like, “The money!” (Laughs), and also the social media rush that you got, I got the same thing from SEO the first time you hit that number one ranking for whatever. I did SEO consulting.

BRENT: I actually got my first job because of a number one ranking in SEO. I went in and said, “Hey look what I can do,” and ended up getting a job.

TODD: … and when you can just show it, I mean, people are like, “Oh wow, how did you do that?” And you can’t explain it really. You try to explain it but people don’t want to hear about it most of the time because at the end of the day it’s a lot of work. We put a lot of hours in on the computer- more that we would like sometimes.

MARK: Was WebmasterWorld your first show?

TODD: WebmasterWorld. I did PubCon Orlando in 2004. It was a great show. It was at this little crappy hotel, there was a bunch of people in one spot and it was really phenomenal.

CHRIS: It was right after Yahoo! had bagged Google, remember? That’s why there were so many people, because Yahoo! had just dropped Google right before and their sign ups went through the roof.

TODD: It was right after the Florida update too. So I kind of got into it at that point. Really, I haven’t been at it all that long. That was five or six years ago but it seems like a lifetime.

CHRIS: That’s like 35 years I think in SEO years. I think dog years are basically the same in Internet.

MARK: So what kind of challenges did you run into?

TODD: I think explaining it to people for awhile. I really lucked out, you know everybody has an SEO blog now, but when I started doing it it’s not like I had been doing it all that long, I just wanted a place where I could write and keep my ideas down and I came across blogger and I was like, “Oh wow, this is kind of cool.” There was no Del.icio.us,there was no social, there wasn’t anything. I thought, “I’ll just put bookmarks up here and write a couple notes,” and then it came about that people had read my stuff at Webmaster World that I had posted there for a long time; so that really helped out with that. In terms of challenges, it’s been an easy ride; nothing but smooth sailing.

MARK: (Laughs)

TODD: I’m actually getting worked on and not going to conferences and wanting to party with SEOs all the time is a constant struggle.

BRENT: That’s our vacation man. We work freaking seven days a week, fourteen hours a day, and then we go to conferences as a chance to go hang out and relax a little bit and still make deals.

MARK: … Talk to people who understand what you do.

BRENT: Yeah, it’s great. It’s a huge motivator. When you get around a bunch of people who do the same things that you do, and swap ideas, and shoot holes in what you’re doing, you go back with a little bit of a boost.

TODD: Yeah, motivation is probably the biggest challenge, and it’s great for motivation; you get around a bunch of like-minded people. I’d say that was definitely one of the things that motivated me most was early on I had a local web group and when I came across them it was the coolest thing in the world. I was like, “There is someone else who can tell me why my Meta tags aren’t working, or why this Hex code doesn’t give me the right color,” and that was even before I found forums to ask questions on the web.

CHRIS: VOICE: And even outside of just hanging out, the first conference you go to even attending all of the sessions, you get so much that gets you into so many different directions of research it’s really a great jump off point.

TODD: I think being able to answer questions that come up, as the come up, quickly, that was one of the biggest frustrations for me, like programming or design - if I came across something I could bang my head against the wall for an hour for one thing. Now we have this network of people where I can be like, “Chris how do I do this on social?” and bang I’ve got an answer within minutes and that’s huge in terms of building up that network of people that you trust for different answers.

BRENT: And then you can follow all of us on Twitter and you can get a bunch of good stuff on there too.

MARK: When did you step out and say, “Hey I’m going to sell these services to other companies?”

TODD: I actually did it almost right away; it was ridiculous. I’d make no qualms about it and I think really everybody should as long as their roots are reasonable and they’re doing good work. Say you’re an SEO consultant… you’ve become one at some point. I did it myself. (Laughs) One of the first things I did was, I had a web design site and I was just doing web design and that sort of thing and I was like, “I wonder how hard this SEO stuff is?” So I went out and bought a runner site link. Bottom of page 10,000 or 100,000 page rank, 7 joke site, now you’re remotely related, and two months later I was number three for “SEO Consultant.” I’m like, “These guys suck!” (Laughs). Granted, now I know that nobody is actually going for terms like that, but there really wasn’t that much competition and that was what it took to rank for anything at that time was just a run of site links, so I was like, “Wow, this is easy.” Then I applied that same principle to a couple different clients and it worked for them. It’s obviously evolved from there and it’s taken some dives and stuff like that, but that was the technique at the time - you did that and some title tags and you were golden. The value of that was so enormous that to charge somebody fifty bucks an hour, or whatever I was charging at the time, was a steal! I don’t feel bad at all that I call myself an SEO Consultant when I had been one for two days or whatever (Laughs). Honestly, I think everybody else should do that as well - as much as people give crap for that. As long as you’re delivering value and you’re not just, “I’m going to do this and it’s not going to show them any return.”

BRENT: As long as your intent is not to rip somebody off, then I think it’s perfectly fine.

TODD: Yeah, the idea of there being a return is the important part. Even at this point, we all charge sick money for what we do but it’s not without merit. Maybe on occasion there have been instances where I haven’t provided value but I always try to make that up to whomever. I did social stuff for a little while and if they didn’t make it that’s kind of why I got out of it, because if they didn’t make it then there was no value, so I had to do it three or four times until it delivered the value. I think that applies to anyone - as long as you don’t get frustrated and you can deliver the value, call yourself an SEO Consultant. Fake it till you make it.

MARK: How about a background Chris?

CHRIS: My background… my first job right out of college was with a web design company. I was brought in as a sales guy. This was right at the tail end of the .com days, and Razorfish was trading at $175, all these ridiculous valuations. So these four guys got together: one guide, two stock brokers, one venture capitalist, and one pharmaceutical executive. They were like, “We’re going to start a web design company. We’re going to sell the thing. We’re going to make a whole lot of money.” That was basically their whole background. They had a Boiler Room type of thing going, and I was one of the Boilers (Laughs). So, I was on the phone making cold calls; that’s kind of my background. Now, I can pick up the phone any time because I don’t care. I could never get intimidated. Within a couple months, I was like their VP of Operations (Laughs); things were screwed up. But I started to realize, “Wow, there is no value. They are creating these websites and nobody is doing anything. They could care less about marketing.”

MARK: Is this 2000?

CHRIS: A little bit past that, so maybe 2001?

MARK: So the bomb had already dropped?

CHRIS: Maybe it was 2000? I don’t know. I can’t even remember last week.

TODD: That’s like 35 SEO years ago.

CHRIS: Exactly! So I was like, “Wow.” Luckily that was where I met my wife. We were both working there; she was brought in as a designer and a couple months later she was the VP of Design or Production or whatever it was. We were both like, “Wow, there is no value being provided.” Nobody is getting any results because they didn’t care about the market. They didn’t care about SEO. They would pay some guy to list them in a directory or something. So I’m thinking, “Wow, this is really messed up,” and we both ended up leaving the company. I was burnt out after only a year. I was like, “I don’t want to even do anything with web design.” So I got involved with a friend of our family who had a small recording studio on the lower east side. He wanted me to help him build his business, so I was like, “Alright, I’ll help.” What do you know, the first thing that I said was, “We’ve got to build you a website.” So we start building a website, and then I just start learning about SEO. I was reading a lot on Search Engine Watch, Danny’s site at the time; I learned a ton through there. That was definitely my main influence. I think it was like $79 a year for the premium membership that I got. So I took this recording studio and I started building links and doing everything with it. Really quickly they were ranking number one for any recording studio term you could imagine; they were just a little tiny place on the lower east side. The guy who I was working with was a lazy engineer; he was like, “We’ve got to take the phone number off the website, people are calling too much.” He’s like, “It’s not like a shoe store where you can order more shoes, you know. There are only a limited number of hours.” So then I was like, “Alright, we’ll remove that.” Then he says, “We’ve got to take the address off, people are stopping by!” (Laughs). I was like, “You’re crazy!” So it got to a point where there was just one form on this site. You had to go through all of these hoops… trust me, this was not Abby Road, this was not this Hit Factor or anything. This was a little recording studio. So I was like, “I’m done with my job here.” Then all of these record labels are asking him how he was getting all of this business, so he said, “Oh, you’ve got to talk to Chris.” So anyway, we had clients before I had an actual company. My wife was working for Ralph Lauren, she has a fashion background, and pretty soon she was working with me on the side and from work. So we formed the company and our turning points really were I got really involved with press right away, public relations. I was like, “I’ve got to differentiate ourselves.” So the first time SEO was in the mainstream news, it was in a USA Today article, I was in that article. Those are some of my spikes in terms of when that article hit, boom, a ton of great clients came directly from there; like Entrepreneur Magazine, different things like that, so that was something I really embraced right from the beginning. I was like, “this is what is going to set us apart.”

MARK: The PR side?

CHRIS: The PR side, yeah.

MARK: What’s the name of your company?

CHRIS: 10e20. So 915 Broadway and 10 East 21st Street is the side entrance; that’s where we were when we came up with it. At the time the Yahoo! directory drove traffic, as crazy as that seems now, they just did. So I was like, “Alright, I want to always be at the top but I’m not going to be AAA Web Design SEO,” you know. So I was like, “10e20? That’s cool.” It’s like programming lingo, and it means 10 to the 20th power. Now the great thing is with any blog role, we’re always at the top. So that’s where 10e20 comes from.

MARK: What year did you start that company?

CHRIS: That was probably 2002. I think it was the beginning of 2002. My wife started with me maybe around this time which is March, of 2002.

TODD: Where did you get into social?

CHRIS: I didn’t feel like getting links (Laughs).

TODD: It’s like now we have the distribution channel because everybody has been saying quality content forever and now it’s ringing true because if you do the quality content you can actually get it out there.

CHRIS: And that’s the whole thing with the social network, they’re influencers. Digg is the great influence in my opinion. There are seventy zillion blogs out there.

TODD: I’d say 70% of Diggers have a website.

CHRIS: Exactly, or the people who don’t go there looking for cool content. I was talking to someone the other day that has her own business and works from online. I volunteered to help her out and said, “Oh we can help upload some of these and get them going on Flickr.” She said, “What’s Flickr?” I was saying to my wife after, “Whoa, that just shows you. All of us think it’s so saturated.” We live in our own little world. Even as much as MySpace or Facebook has been on the news, you say it to a lot of people and they still don’t know. I’ve asked someone to explain to me what Google is, who doesn’t do any of this stuff, and you can get 8,000 different answers every single time.

BRENT: …and they’re also behind. Because even now, with MySpace, if you’re not into that kid spam stuff then you’re pretty much not even going to bother with MySpace at this point but MySpace is still one of the few things now years later that the average public is kind of like, “Oh, I’ve heard of that.” Now that’s like two years behind.

CHRIS: But MySpace can still be extremely effective. Like if you’re a musician or anything in that, don’t even think about Facebook. Your MySpace page is more important than your website. Look at commercials; - it’ll say myspace.com/nelly, or whatever.

MARK: What about some obstacles that came up along the way? Anything?

CHRIS: My biggest obstacle is being able to concentrate. I have ADD, and there is so much I can do and there is so much opportunity; every single day my biggest thing is being able to prioritize and being able to focus. That has definitely always been my biggest problem.

BRENT: Yeah I have like three “to do” lists: my dream list, my need to do in the near future list, and then I have every day lists. So when I wake up in the morning and I get my coffee, I’m not really too sharp to start doing work, but I sit there and I look at my to do list from yesterday that I didn’t finish and I sit there and write down like five things that have to happen today, and I put them in the priority of which they need to happen, then I sit there and I just have to knock those out in order. I figure once I finish those five things, if there is something I want to do then I get to play after that, because you can get so lost so quick.

TODD: You can get lost in Log Land, Lost in Facebook. You can waist your entire day real easy.

BRENT: We get a lot of invites because of our involvement in a lot of these programs and these communities, and these different techniques; people are like, “We really want your feedback, so we’ll give you a beta account.” I get beta accounts to everything!

CHRIS: I give them two words, “PAY ME.” (Laughs) That’s how I cut that down. I know what you mean, yeah. That’s one of the things I was saying too, you have to cut down the noise. Get rid of most of the blogs you read, unless you are some kind of maniac.

TODD: When you’re learning that’s fine but at a certain point you have to say, “Ok, I know what I’m doing.” And you did that real quickly, it took me a long time to do that.

BRENT: That really comes at the point when you’ve networked enough. When you know enough people that are in the “know” all of your strong points complement each other. So when you’re having a conversation and someone says, “Oh, well you’ve got to check out Flickr for this, this, and this.” And you say, “Oh, I didn’t think about it that way.”

CHRIS: It’s also about knowing what people you can actually trust. If I ask one of these guys something, I know it’s going to be an honest answer. That’s a really important thing.

TODD: Learn who to listen to and who to learn from.

CHRIS: Exactly, and I’d rather somebody say, “Hey, I don’t know what this is,” then say, “Oh I think I heard this,” and they’re doing a Google search to find it out and you’re like, “Ok jerk, I could have done that myself.” But if you have those people that you can actually trust and you know what those people are good at and nobody knows everything about how people do things and what their sites are, your significant other barley knows everything, but I know what Todd’s proficiency is and I know what Brent’s Proficiency is. So I can tap into that and ask, “Do you ever have this problem,” or “Do you ever do this?” or “Where are you going to get this kind of link?” That’s huge, small things like that. Having someone even make an introduction to somebody else who might wind up coming out to help you. One of my good friends put me in touch with these people who do stuff for me, and it was one of the best possible things. He totally could have kept that person and said, “Hey, I don’t want anyone knowing about him,” because that would probably be the smart thing to do.

TODD: We share a lot, because there is a community of successful people together, more-so than if you’re out on your own island and not being a part of the community. Like I said earlier, if you’re ranking for “SEO Consultant” you can get crappy leads all day, and filter through those yourself, or you can have a network of people that says, “I’m kind of busy this week, Chris here is a lead.” You may be slowing down, or I may be slowing down, and Brent says, “Hey Todd, here’s a lead, check this one out. These guys look decent.” Then beyond that, for example, I had a guy not too long ago send the RFP to ten different people off of Rand’s list. I literally wrote the guy back and was like, “Dude, this is not going to fly. Nobody good is going to fill out this RFP and you’re going to end up *****.”

BRENT: We were talking about that just the other day. We don’t do RFP.

TODD: Mainly because we’re not going to take the time and we’re not going to compete with each other and we know that anybody who wants to go through that link then try to build people is not somebody we want to work with and we’re lucky enough that we can choose who we work with. Life is too short to work with people that you don’t like.

BRENT: But I absolutely love working with people like Chris and Todd because honestly I’ll have moments where I’m like, “I need some help,” and it’s nice to know that I can reach out and have somebody work on my problem like it was their problem, and just solve it and to be able to do that in return. It makes our business so much easier. It’s really good because at these conferences you just find Todd Malicoat and you just become his friend.

MARK: So who besides Danny Sullivan were some of your early influencers?

CHRIS: I don’t know specifically who I would say, other than so many people from Threadwatch, which was a site that I used to love, and Webmaster World. There are so many that it’s hard to categorize a couple people because I don’t know if I could say, “This person was the one,” because there would be so many different ones.

MARK: But Danny was way early with Search Engine Watch.

BRENT: Danny is everybody’s. You have to take Danny out of it and just make it a known.

TODD: Danny was one of the few that were just writing to a bunch of people. He was writing in newsletter style and everyone else started learning from it. After that it turned into a community where everyone was talking and everyone was listening. His was the first one where it was like, “Here’s how you do this stuff.” Detlev kind of does that now with a newsletter and people contribute, and there are lots of people that do it now. Even Jill Whalen and the other gal did that for High Rankings, but they were the early ones that were one to many instead of to a community of people. Rather than having “influencers,” I had influencers and people I looked up to before I went to the conferences, now I just think of them as buddies that I talk with and bounce ideas off of verses somebody I hold on a pedestal.

CHRIS: There is nobody on a pedestal.

TODD: Yeah. There are certainly people that now I know influence the industry as much as they did, but they weren’t all that much different than a lot of other people. I get people that come up and are like, “I love your blog,” and I’m like, “That’s awesome but dude just talk to me about whatever…” and everybody else here is like that; you can just go up and talk to people. I did the SEO conference thing, “How not to be that guy at the conferences.”

BRENT: The thing that was really effective for me as a first timer going to conferences was to make friends, not to try to get one question answered; to be somebody that was welcomed to be around every time, so that you can have multiple conversations with people, and not be the person that’s like, “Hey Greg, how do you do this?” And then that was the end of it.

TODD: Yeah, have a conversation with someone on a personal level before asking them to do your 301 redirects for you.

CHRIS: That’s actually a good point though because at the beginning of my company, I really didn’t try to get involved that much, it was more just listening or that type of thing, or I was kind of like, “Oh, who cares?” This is the thing I always stress even with social, the articles I’ll right for Search Engine about social media, the most important thing is your contacts. What is in your IM, and I think for most people if you look at their IM list you can kind of tell where their level is.

BRENT: That makes me laugh because I remember even a year ago I had four people in my contacts list and now it’s like 2 pages. It’s amazing.

CHRIS: And it’s not even just quantity…

TODD: Quality.

BRENT: No, I know. (Laughs)

TODD: (Laughs) Like, I know I’m never getting messages from either of you guys unless it’s something that’s important. It’s not like Chris is going to chat with me to ask me about the weather and say, “What’s going on, how you doing?”

MARK: Would you guys connect once a day for this and that?

TODD: I’ve gotten less and less so, but I’ve gotten more to the point of using the phone. If something is urgent, I’ll call on the phone or send a text message or something like that.

CHRIS: And then we have the IMNY group where it’s all internet marketers from New York, not all – probably ten or fifteen trusted ones that it’s like once a month, even though Todd has had fifteen going away parties, but we sit down once a month and throw ideas out and say, “Ok, here is how this is working now. Here’s what’s not working. Here’s how to get over this.” And just to say anything. That’s the biggest take-away that I think people should have…

TODD: I’m really surprised that there’s not a lot in the other cities. I mean, San Francisco is starting…

BRENT: Yeah, we’ve got a couple different things in San Francisco.

TODD: But even there, it’s not really consolidated. Dallas has had one for the longest time.

BRENT: Well I think that in San Francisco it’s a huge geek environment. So what happens is that once you open that up, people do it on Facebook and there is no private Facebook groups… that’s one thing I wish they would make is a private invite only group section, because when you make a group and it’s like, “Hey we’re the SEOs of San Francisco, San Francisco meet up!” and then there are like 9,000 people who consider themselves SEOs in that area…

CHRIS: And that’s the most important thing. We have something where you have to either be nominated…

BRENT: Well that’s what we’ve done with Fight Night. Fight Night is an SEO meet up where…

CHRIS: It’s not the same thing… (Laughs)

BRENT: Why? (Laughs)

MARK: So what would you tell a new person starting out who somehow got drawn into search; they want to do something…

CHRIS: I would say differentiate yourself somehow. Again with as many blogs as there are out there it seems like there are that many SEOs. So “How are you going to be different? What’s your thing?” And I would really recommend owning something; trying to be known for being that person, whatever it is. There are a lot of different verticals even within SEO. Even if there is someone already that’s “known” keyword research, that guy can only do so much, you could be that guy. Be a kick a** link builder.

TODD: And you’re guaranteed a speaking spot that way.

BRENT: And if you become a kick a** link builder, email me, and I’ll hire you.

TODD: But that’s what I did with SEO Tools basically and kind of doing link development at Jim’s but it was just the right timing. Now you can’t do that because there are a million people talking about tools, and there are a million people talking about whatever else. You pick something specific. Another one that started that actually and I think he’s doing pretty good with it is Brian Mark. I had actually told him this repeatedly. He had beat up the One Box over and over, and I’m like, “Dude, that’s awesome information, you know all about this.”

CHRIS: Be the guy for universal search. I don’t know that guy. The best guy I know with universal search is a chiropractor. Be that guy.

MARK: I heard earlier you saying it are a growing market. We think we know all of these things because the “community” does, but there are a whole lot of folks that still have never heard of Digg, and that makes me think there is lots of opportunity…

BRENT: What I would say for new people coming in, honestly, is I would definitely make sure that you get involved in some kind of community, some kind of forum or whatever community you find for an SEO type of interaction community, whether it be Twitter or whatever. Make sure you find out who the influential people are and start reading their blogs because they are going to have stuff to say.

MARK: Who are they?

CHRIS: (Laughs)

BRENT: It’s really easy because most of the influential people out there link to each other in the blog world. So go to Danny Sullivan’s site and start looking down his blog roll, go to the next one and look at his blog roll, go to the next one and look at his blog roll, and you’ll see a lot of…

CHRIS: I actually think that the people who don’t really write that much stuff, like I would even say Todd until these last two posts, (laughs) no, but Todd is like… like I hardly read anything… but the one I’ll always read is Andy Hagans for the most part, where you know that you’re going to get something good out of that. Blogs are hard because every single thing has been talked about.

TODD: But if you keep it down like he does, where it’s just good posts, I used to do that and now I just kind of whore out my blog. (Laughs) Not so much now, I just promote my friends and slam my enemies.

MARK: (Laughs)

BRENT: In addition, I think it’s very very important to make it out to some of these conferences and not just to be a session hound.

CHRIS: You have to be careful though, because there is so many, you can’t be like one of those guys that are like, “I’m going to go to every single one.”

BRENT: No, but I mean definitely one or two a year.

CHRIS: Exactly. It is worth the investment. And now they are so close no matter where you are.

TODD: And there’s such good return on it. Everything we talk about it so intangible, but we’re all about… why we got into this… it’s very intangible and you can’t say, “If you come to a conference then you’ll make more money.” But…

MARK: Wait, are you guys saying it’s just the money?

TODD, CHRIS, BRENT: No, no, no.

BRENT: That’s just fun to say.

CHRIS: Exactly.

TODD: It’s a great motivator though, with anybody, whether it’s myself or the people around me, self interest is a good motivator.

CHRIS: Definitely, and the things is it changes every day. You never have two days that are the same no matter what. You don’t even have two hours that are the same. And you have to like competition.

TODD: And the excitement… the “SEO Crack” you see that top ranking, even if it’s not for a money term, even if it’s for something stupid that you just said, “I want to rank for this,” and it works…

CHRIS: There is a self interest, but there is also a great feeling of actually having that much love in something and then making a lot of money from it.

BRENT: Oh that’s sweet.

CHRIS: Yeah, it’s all nice and cuddly.

MARK: There’s a big group hug going on right now. You guys have been great. We might have a follow up if you’re open to that, and I thank you for your time so much, this is going to help a lot of people I hope.

CHRIS: I’m sure it will.
(LAUGHS)

MARK: Thanks again.

by Rhea Drysdale

The SEO Expert Series continues with Todd Malicoat, perhaps best known to the SEO community as Stuntdubl.

When the opportunity arose to discuss one advanced subject with the SEO expert, who is respectfully tight-lipped on specific techniques, the next best subject was how he manages to stay relevant in a sea of noise. The self-proclaimed shameless marketing whore and adrenaline junkie has been noticeably absent from sites like Sphinn and much of the back and forth chatter on Twitter (until recently, follow Todd!). So, I had to ask, how can he possibly stay informed on major trends without getting overwhelmed? I was hoping for a kernel of time balancing genius, a secret time machine that only SEOs of a certain stature received a key to. Todd didn’t have the “Easy” button, but he did have some excellent business advice.

How do you balance everything?

Todd: With my career progression, I’ve had to spend more time working and less blogging. In the last two years I’ve gone to less sessions at conferences not because I didn’t want to learn, but because I’d end up wasting more time trying to put new things into action. I have to channel the ADD!

The thing is blogging can be core to building a brand or a business, but others just do it to waste time or keep their name out there. If you’re a solo consultant or boutique agency with dedicated clients you don’t really need the attention. Besides, the same articles have been written over and over. When I started most people were blogging about SEO news versus specific techniques. It’s more worthwhile having one or two great articles because I don’t want to be a blogger, I want to be a competitive web marketer.

Todd’s adrenaline junkie reputation precedes him when Matt Cutts joins the interview to discuss the exhilarating sport of indoor sky diving. Someone mentioned a YouTube video of a guy breaking his arm. After finally watching “2 girls, 1 cup” my YouTube tolerance is maxed out, so find that one yourselves.

Getting back on track, which tools are invaluable for running your business?

Todd: Time management is key, which is why I’m addicted to using the best tools.

• Basecamp for project management
• SoloSEO is the best premium content tool*

*Disclaimer: Todd doesn’t promote the product, but he does have an affiliate relationship with them.

How do you balance work with industry research?

Todd: Doing versus research is definitely the biggest dilemma. How do I balance my time? I used to do an hour or two of research in the morning and a little more at end. Now I try to keep it to less than an hour a day and a few hours of email. Between the calls, Twitter and email, my time goes back and forth and then it’s 4pm!

Besides research and email, what else eats up your time?

Todd: I’m addicted to domaining tools and buying domains. Here’s the thing, you have to pick your battle though, if you have two hundred sites and twenty that could be really big, what do you focus on?

Why do so many SEOs have their own sites vs just clients?

Todd: It’s a place to test the waters, push the envelope and not be scared of taking a risk. It comes back to that career progression from client work to your own properties. If you’re going to spend time on your own site, you have to risk the time and investment up front to be successful. To quote Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko‚ “greed is good.”

It comes back to being an adrenaline junkie, too, because success is taking the leap. I always reinvest profits from one site into another. It’s easy to fall back on “consulting crack” because it’s a steady source of income, but I get jealous when I see my work help a client’s site succeed. Yeah, I got paid well, but it could have been my idea instead.

What are the biggest challenges as a business owner?

Todd: There really isn’t anymore security in a 9-5 job versus your own gig. The biggest difficulties though are business accounting, insurance (tip: join small business associations or local chambers of commerce and you can get insurance through them) and personal savings (it’s an education curve‚ start early… compound interest is your friend).

The thing is it’s easy to waste time doing the administrative stuff because you have to manage yourself not just your tasks. Getting bogged down with administration will eat you alive if you let it. You need to delegate to people more experienced than yourself. Know the basics though so you don’t get burned.

I consider my free time at the same hourly rate as work. It’s a huge expense and valuable. A solid four hour day of real work versus administration is high quality. The problem is, I’m obviously an adrenaline junkie and I probably won’t be able to jump out of airplanes later in life, so it’s important that I live it up now.

I don’t really track my hours. I used QuickBooks Timer for awhile and hated it as an employee, but it was a good exercise in seeing how much time I spent on real work, email, Twitter, personal projects, etc.

How do you stay relevant in the industry?

Todd: Specialization. I specialize in what I’m good at and refer the other stuff.

How do you choose your clients?

Todd: Personal enjoyment and the value I can deliver to a client. When I got more popular it became necessary to either get more people and scale or become more selective. I chose not to settle for clients that drain time and I can’t deliver value to.If my client isn’t happy then I won’t be happy either.
Have you had unhappy clients that refused to pay?

Todd: Only happened once. The best red flags to keep in mind, do you they have a bad business model? Do they complain about your prices? You have to be willing to fire a client.

How many clients have you fired?

Todd: I’ve re-assigned but not fired. I try not to do more than a month contract or month-to-month. I’ll plan a six month strategy even if it’s a month contract though. It’s important to remember that I’m working myself out of a job, so the beginning value is bigger than future. It gives customers more faith in you if you give them a strategy versus a one-time gig plus it manages their expectations. I also always give them an opt-out clause, but I’ve never had anyone take it. I always bill the month before the start of the project. Paying up front is a hard sell‚ sometimes I’ll do 50% up front, whatever works best. There’s a retainer for general questions, because lots of clients just want reassurance.

A lot of my clients in the last year have been an in-house SEO needing reassurance more than anything. They know their business, so they’re more informed than me, but the techniques and expert answers are what I bring to the table. The biggest struggle is usually internal politics with corporate and bigger companies. I end up playing diplomat as a consultant more than an actual SEO because they already have an experienced team that isn’t being listened to.

How do you decide on which conferences to attend?

Todd: Conferences are more about friends now. It’s more vacation than business. I try to get one new contract, business partner or client at the conference, but that’s about it.

How much do you rely on others in the industry?

Todd: A HUGE amount. If I have a PPC question, need help with a policy change, new product development, etc. I’ll often wait until a few others dabble in a new area before adopting it and diving into the research. I’m not always going to be the first person to discover the latest and greatest. With Twitter I signed up year and a half ago, but then I let it hang until more people joined.
How do you stay in touch with your industry contacts?

Todd: I’ll travel home‚ talk over IM or Twitter, or attend conferences. You have to make the time for your friends. You can’t go into a conference and expect that people are just going to give, give, give. You have to pay your dues. Walking into a room and expecting to be buddy buddy just isn’t realistic. And you have to question your transparency in the industry. If you’re too open, you’ll get banned.

Have you been burned?

Todd: Not too much. For the “Buying Sites for SEO” panel at SMX Advanced I was really reluctant to talk about buying sites. Techniques get over exposed and lose their ability to perform. Diminishing value with critical mass.

I did that with social sites, I built a big user account for Digg. I didn’t know if I should give a how-to on creating a power account. I wrote a whole document and came close to sending out, but chose not to. Others did. It’s the difference of 10 people knowing vs 100 vs 1,000 vs 10,000.

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by Barry Hurd

“Other Smart People” aims at helping you with informational overload. Every week we select someone who provides rich, useful, and informative articles demonstrating exceptional expertise and talent. These professionals share useful insight into building amazing things online, and help educate readers with everything from fundamental “how to” guides to advanced information on the leading edge of technology. As professionals, we appreciate these individuals as educators and peers, and enjoy the fact that we (the staff at 123) have learned something by reading them.

The weekly “Other Smart Person” is Todd Malicoat (a.k.a. Stuntdubl). Todd has been doing search engine optimization work since 2001, and I have been reading his materials for about a year or so. He caught my eye originally when I came across his “SEO Marketing Manifesto” and it related to my own Social Media Manifesto. He also has a funny tagline - “Getting hit by traffic, not cars.”

He has written articles that are especially informative for business owners looking for online promotion and business development. I recommend browsing through the other articles he has on his site, but if you are pressed for time start with these three:

Top 10 SEO Lies- many “SEO” companies don’t know anything really. They sell nothing but a contract which is designed to delay a result that never comes, and laugh all the way to the bank while doing it.

18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website - This is a great article about some fundamental questions you should ask before blowing your budget on an online campaign. Asking a few questions in the beginning will SAVE you thousands of dollars.

How to be a crappy SEO client - if you are shopping around for online promotion services, don’t be a crappy client. As professionals, companies like 123 and service consultants like Todd want to provide exceptional service. If you start with unrealistic expectations, complain every other hour about X item, or shoot yourself in the foot- it will make any relationship sour.

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by Joe Whyte

Here is another interview from our SES series. This one is with Todd Malicoat, aka stuntdubl, one of the leading SEM experts in the industry. Todd is currently working on two very interesting projects, SEO Class and MarketMotive (be sure to check them out, if you haven’t already). Joe caught up with Todd in San Jose to talk about SEM industry, training, its future and its current image. Enjoy!

SMS: So, Todd, you’ve got a couple of projects that you’re working on right now, Marketing Motive and SEO Class. How are those going?

Todd: Very good. We just had our second SEO Class in New York and had a pretty good turnout. We are going to be doing another one in LA. I forget the exact dates, but it’s on SEOclass.com. All the info is there.

The other one, MarketMotive, just got started. We are planning to push that out. We have about 4 or 5 experts now in different areas. It’ll be more online-based training so it’ll be podcasts, and stuff over PowerPoint and kind of more premium types of training.

SMS: So do they get a certification at the end?

Todd: We’re looking at that. For the most part now we just want solid and trusted information from the people that have good reputations, and then taking it a step beyond what you would see on the regular blog.

SMS: Speaking to that, there have been a lot of classes and training courses. There are even actual college courses starting to offer something like this. It seems to me there is going to be a definitive line between the people that know what they are doing through experience and those who learn something through these courses. What is your opinion on that?

Todd: It’s been pretty easy traditionally for anyone to just throw up a website and say “I do SEO,” and I’m guilty of that myself. Four or five years ago I did the same thing. I said “today I’m going to do SEO.” I put up my website and became an SEO. It’s a self-fulfilling prophesy. And anybody can do that.

There is really no regulation within the industry, which is fine, but it is kind of self-policing at the same time. Having gone to a couple of conferences, you find out who knows what they are doing and who is just BS’ing all the time. It really started as a handful of guys, first PubCon and SES – just small groups of people. And a lot of those same guys are still around and are still practicing. And then they went off and taught a handful of people, and it has sort of grown from there.

From what I found, it’s about the people who are really active in the community and have a high respect for the community, learning all it’s about instead of just going in and saying “teach me how to redirect subdomains and cloak.” There are some people that come in and certainly do that. But it’s more of a trust-based community than that. It is those people that learn that who will end up doing well and succeeding.

SMS: One thing I would be concerned with in the upcoming years of this particular industry is that a lot of businesses are not going to differentiate between those two types of people.

Todd: And going in, a lot of times they don’t. And that’s what’s unfortunate. That’s why people have bad experiences. And some people learn from those experiences and try to search for better ways to find an SEO. And some don’t. They just walk away and say “it’s a terrible industry, it sucks.”

One cool technique is just to ask 10 SEOs who they would suggest if they were too busy. A lot of the best SEOs are going to be busy and they will be happy to do that. That’s a good way to learn who’s good and trustworthy.

SMS: That’s a really good point for businesses that are looking to do SEO. Obviously, if they are signing up for something like SEO Class or any of these others, they know they have been started by people that founded the industry. That definitely adds a level of credibility.

Todd: Yeah, I get so many requests and as much as I want to work with everybody, I can’t. The more that I work with somebody, train somebody one-on-one or on a company basis, the more it takes away from self projects and other clients. You have to be picky. Whereas with SEO Class or MarketMotive, we can teach a whole lot of people at one time, which I enjoy.

SMS: I know that you’re really branded as a link guy and I know I’ve talked to you tons of times about links. What do you think of Pownce, Twitter, and sites like that? Do you see any link value from these sites?

Todd: I don’t see a lot in terms of link value. It’s probably similar to the other social media sites as a distribution point to push your content out to, then get it linked to from the decent places. That would be the main value, I think. With a lot of the Web 2.0 stuff in general, the users are so fickle. Everybody was on Twitter and then Pownce comes along and everybody jumps over to Pownce and leaves Twitter.

A lot of Web 2.0 sites just go for the traffic, where SEO is kind of the opposite of that. Yeah, we might want the traffic but my first question generally always is “what’s the business model? Where are we going to make our money here?” It’s kind of the opposite with those communities.

Nine times out of ten, generally one of my very first questions is where are you guys making your money. And it’s a touchy question. That’s like asking someone his religion or political beliefs. But you got to get right to it, otherwise you’re wasting everybody’s time.

SMS: Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Todd. Good luck with your ventures.

(Source)

by Andy Beal

We’re only half-way through SES San Jose but I think we’ve already seen the best panel discussion of the event.

“Are Paid Links Evil” saw Matt Cutts go head to head with Greg Boser, Michael Gray, Todd Malicoat, Todd Friesen and Andy Baio.

The room was packed with marketers all hoping the session would live up to the hype of its carefully crafted title - “session bait” anyone?

We weren’t disappointed and the panel did a fantastic job of discussing such a heated topic. I’m not going to go through the session blow-by-blow because Lisa Barone, Tamar Weinberg, and Rand Fishkin all took fantastic notes.

I encourage you to read the notes and digest the information. Like me, you’ll probably come to the conclusion that buying select links from highly relevant pages isn’t going to get you into trouble with Google. Buying tons of spammy, non-relevant, run of site links, probably will.

Lastly, Rentvine–in a brilliant piece of linkbait–created a video parody of how the panel should have gone.

(Source)

by Karl Ribas

Sitting in with me today to share his incredible insider point-of-view on search engine optimization, online marketing, and the importance of link development is none other than independent marketing consultant Todd Malicoat, or as some of you may know him as… Stuntdubl. Todd is a well known expert in the field of Internet marketing and has worked for some very reputable companies throughout his 5 - 9 year career; one of which that immediately stands out is Jim Boykin’s company We Build Pages.

I am very excited to be interviewing Todd, as he is, in my opinion, one of the brightest minds in our industry, and is very knowledgeable when it comes to marketing websites. I’m a long time reader of his Stuntdubl Blog, which features some very informative insights on web development and marketing, and would definitely recommend it to anybody looking for ways to improve-on their own marketing efforts.

And without any further ado, let’s get right to it:

Hey Todd… welcome to the Klog. As I mentioned above I am a pretty big fan of the posts, articles, and resources you provide, and I am very excited to be doing this interview. Thank you for taking the time away from your very busy schedule to come and chat.

Hey Karl - The Klog idea rocks man - I love it. I really enjoy taking pictures of places I visit, and the Klog is a really cool addition to that. I hope this makes for an interesting read for folks.

Awesome man… thanks. Hey, before we get this thing rolling, I want to take this opportunity to publicly “Thank You” for publishing one of my articles a few months back. At that time, I was just starting to make a name for myself (lol… still am today) and your support then and now is very much appreciated. I’m not sure if “How to Choose an SEO” was indeed “Stuntdubl” quality, however it was a true pleasure to guest post on your Blog!

Actually, I was glad to have some well written content on a good topic. I don’t get to add to my site near as much as I would like to these days, so I am happy to let other folks post articles, so long as their genuine and well written (which yours was). I think you’re well on your way to becoming an SEO household name with your writing and creativity.

Wow… thanks Todd! Coming from you that sure means a lot. Ok… first things first. Your website’s slogan “…Getting Hit By Traffic… Not By Cars” is definitely one of the better ones I’ve ever come across in this business. What’s the story behind it and the “Stuntdubl” alias?

I really wish I had a cool answer for this, but unfortunately I don’t. My younger brother who looks strikingly similar to me was in a band, and I always joked that if they made it to the big-time, I could be his stunt-double. It kind of stuck with me, as I needed an alter-ego for my terrible scratch DJ remixes - it carried over from there to WebmasterWorld, and then at my first conference in February of 2004 (Orlando PubCon) - I realized more people knew me by my nickname, than by my real name - I registered my domain and started blogging on the site shortly after that.

Chris Pirillo chided me once that I must have been web 2.0 before it’s time by dropping the consonant. The truth is that I just liked to be a little different, and the mis-spelling seemed cool at the time, since I was also “dubbing” a lot of music to CD’s.

Very cool story! It’s actually hard to believe that it was that easy. My memory of you only goes back as far as the days of We Build Pages. Tell me a little about life before WBP. How did you first get started in the Search Engine Marketing industry?

I don’t think there was a real definitive day for me to be honest, that I just woke up and said “now I’m an SEO”. My first realization that SEO was fun and somewhat easy was buying my first link for “seo services” on a big high profile site, and ranking for it shortly after. I figured it had to be a somewhat desirable phrase (though in retrospect an SEO “vanity” phrase), and I was excited to have figured out how to get it. To me, that’s a big part of what SEO is - the inquisitive nature to find out what works, and then poke at it for fun or profit. Of course, I kind of like Dave Naylor’s definition from threadwatch as well “knowing what the search engines want and giving it to them… so hard they f*cking bleed”.

I actually cut my teeth on SEO, spending near obsessive amounts of time reading webmasterworld in early 2002. I had been dabbling in design and development (albeit not doing it real well) for several years before that, so I was familiar with most of the terminology, and fascinated by how to rank high on the search engines. It was especially fascinating because I had created an ecommerce site with a friend that failed miserably, and I could never understand why. That drove me to learn a lot more as well.

I was just about finished with my 7+ year (attending part-time) business degree shortly after, and got a job with an IT company in Michigan called SAMSA, who had an amazing owner who believed in my pitch. I was lucky to have spent that time with a great group who believed in me, and they maintain some solid rankings to this day. During my time at SAMSA, I was forced to develop an “SEO sales pitch” that I thankfully rarely have to practice. Luckily, my SEO services were always something I strongly believed was valuable. After demonstrating it over time, I’ve been lucky enough to no longer have to preach the virtues of SEO, like I did back then. The experience really helped me to understand business owner’s concerns much better though I think.

Looking back to those early days, how have you and the Stuntdubl brand progressed?

I guess I’ve really only just started to think of stuntdubl as a “brand”. It seems a bit arrogant to think of it that way in my mind sometimes, and I’ve really just been extremely lucky to have learned from some great people at the right times. I do give some buy in to Hugh MacLeod’s theory of “global microbrands”.

The beauty of microbrands is that they can be REAL - unlike the branding that we have traditionally been bombarded by from big business. My “brand” has so far always been just a catchy log and tagline, and me. I tried to add value with posting quality information rather than regurgitated search news, and not piss of too many people in the process. I’m starting to care a little less about ruffling the occasional feather, so I suppose that’s one way I may have changed personally.

Personally speaking, I think there is a ton of value in reading your Blog. As an avid reader, I would definitely recommend it to anyone serious about improving the overall quality of their web presence. Moving forward… you’ve no doubt answered this question a few times already, and I thank you in advance for doing so now, but at what point in your career did you first decide it was necessary to leave We Build Pages, and take the Stuntdubl brand solo?

I always knew at some point we would most likely hit a wall with growth at WBP. We kind of hit that wall, and I really wasn’t prepared to put in the work to get over it. I really just had some different directions that I wanted to pursue. I’m glad to see that Jim has overcome some of the issues with the company growth, and I will definitely continue to wish him nothing but success in the future. He’s put in a ton of hard work to make WBP thrive - and he’ll certainly continue to grow and succeed in the future.

To be honest, I just kind of wanted to be a bit lazy, and try out the “bath-robbing” thing for a while, as well as reprioritize some other areas of my life (exercise is a good thing). Most of my goals were to move more into the business realm of things, and actually move AWAY from SEO. SEO is no doubt a valuable skill that I will always love to have in my toolbox, but I’m interested in many of the other areas of business as well.

In your opinion, what are some of the major differences, both positive and negative, between working for a Search Marketing company as prestige as We Build Pages, and now as a one-man operation?

I am really enjoying working solo - the positive aspects have certainly been the ability to make my own hours, and choosing my own clients and projects. As I mentioned, I’m pursuing some goals beyond just SEO consulting, which is really exciting to me. SEO is essentially two things to me - 1. Project Management and 2. A School of Thought. I’ll always retain the SEO philosophy - I just want to do some project management on my own rather than JUST for others. No risk, no reward ya know.

The drawbacks of being a lone gun operation is that I sometimes miss having a team - despite working hand in hand with many talented people - it was nice to have friends in the office too. The biggest drawback to me is that I can’t stand accounting, and managing stuff like benefits, but these little inconveniences are far overshadowed by the positive aspects I have to say.

The funny thing is, I’ve always thought that working from home meant waking up minutes before 8am, using the facilities, stopping by the kitchen for some juice and toast, and sitting in a recliner working on a laptop while catching the previous day’s sports scores and watching re-runs of the “Price Is Right”… does that about sum up your mornings? What is a typical Stuntdubl work day?

Oh man. I don’t think you REALLY want to know. Readers - please skip this section if you get enough about people telling you about their lives that you don’t really care about on MySpace.

I’ve never been much of a morning person to be honest. Even as I type this it’s 2:15 a.m. Another great thing about being my own boss is being able to work when inspiration strikes (as well as sleep in and get over the guilt associated with it). I joke that I am generally more on “west coast time” despite being on the east coast and hate to admit that I often get up later than 9a.m.

In the mornings I’ll generally read e-mail and blogs for a couple hours while scarfing down some breakfast (shredded wheat, hard boiled egg, and a banana is a normal one). I’ll normally talk with a bunch of people (contractors, clients, vendors, etc.) throughout the day via chat and phone. I’m pretty diligent about keeping a list of things I’d like to accomplish for the week. It’s generally more than I can ever possibly DO - but it pushes me to prioritize and do the stuff that will be most beneficial.

I’ve been becoming a better cook lately with the aid of allrecipes.com - so I’ll generally cook some dinner and jump on my elliptical machine for a bit, then sit down and relax and read or watch TV most evenings - sometimes with laptop in tow, doing some of the more tedious type work that I wanted to get done.

How about weekends, holidays, and days off? What can you usually be found doing when not working or on a computer?

You get days off? Maybe I should go back to working for someone else. I like mountain biking, traveling, scratching records, deep sea fishing, movies, great meals, and having the occasional drink or two.

Wow! You definitely have a variety of hobbies, which is something that I truly feel is necessary when you’re a search engine marketer, or any other form of an Internet geek. “All work and no play makes Todd a dull boy”. On your Blog, I noticed references to a “Mr. Ploppy”. What’s the story behind it?

Ahh… good old Mr. Ploppy. I started doing lists of tools for different tasks on my website, and for some reason I just dubbed the first one “Mr. Ploppy’s Monday Morning Tool List”.

The story behind Mr. Ploppy - It basically stemmed from an offhand comment made by someone at WMW in response to about the 721st “Google sandbox” question of the week. Someone asked “how do I know if I’m in the sandbox”, and some smartass responded that there was a Google command to find out: mrploppy sez: www.yoursite.com * - Being the smartass I can sometimes be, I laughed a whole lot, and decided to use it later.

Now that’s a funny story! I wonder if anyone actually tried it. In case you’re all wondering (and I know you are), I just tried it, and nothing happened. LOL. Speaking of tools… as an SEO, what are some of the tools and resources that you use on a daily basis and which would you recommend to other SEOs?

Search marketing is about information. Finding tools to gather and interpret the correct information is critical to success. I have a list of public SEO tools that I use for various tidbits - but more so for understanding conceptual principles of building bigger, better, faster tools. I spend a lot of time digging through blogs, forums, looking for interesting tidbits. It’s really cool to me how social networks have further increased the rapidity with which information is shared. Things like Digg and del.icio.us are probably among my favorite tools now because of all the cool tools that can be harvested FROM them.

The best tool is being able to interpret the data that you are given. Search marketing has now become as much about “people pushing” as “button pushing”, and people don’t like being pushed by tools. Maybe SEO should be search engine inspiration instead of optimization. I like to inspire people with something good, witty, or mention worthy.

I too use / experiment with social networking websites, and find them among my favorite “tools” as well. Regarding SEO techniques and strategies, there are obviously many that one can choose to implement into their own SEO efforts. Which do you feel is/are the most important?

Solid tracking and analytics is very crucial. Customers will always want the bottom line, and PROOF that you are responsible for the improvements they are seeing. If you don’t adequately demonstrate results and sell yourself through the process, you are doing yourself a disservice. Above and beyond though, the very most important strategy to me is the mindset. The willingness to poke and prod at every aspect of a system and find out its strengths and weaknesses, and recognize change and what caused it. At the end of the day you need content, links, and value to your users. It’s very cliche, but so true.

The question of “best techniques” gets asked a lot, and that was really a big rationale for why I wrote my “SEO is a philosophy, not a process” rant. I could tell you tweak your H1’s, titles, internal anchor text, etc., but you obviously know most of that. Even the average webmaster knows 80% of the SEO process - for the other 20%, they can read Rand’s search engine ranking factors article.

The mindset of where SEO evolved from is the unique technique in my mind. The inquisitive nature and the ability to find new strategies, angles, and methods for obtaining and monetizing traffic is what’s empowering about SEO. Learning who to listen to for different topics is pretty important as well - in a field filled with its share of snake oil - you’ll only be as good as the sources you learn from. Oh - and alt tag stuffing - you should definitely stuff the shit out of your alt tags with any keywords you can find, including multiple misspellings of “Britney Spears”.

Great answer Todd, thank you! I couldn’t agree with you more. Oh, and by the way, I absolutely loved “SEO is a philosophy, not a process”. That post and Rand’s Blog are great resources. In that respect… which do you feel is least important when it comes to ranking a website?

There’s probably several on this list these days. If it doesn’t help you to add content or links - it’s probably only of marginal benefit. It’s sad to see how many people spin their wheels still tweaking Meta-Tags when they could be working on creative ways for link acquisition.

Earlier in this interview you had mention that you were looking to move away from SEO. Looking ahead, what can we expect to see from Stuntdubl in the not too distant future?

I’ve been spending more and more time doing project management for some of my own ideas. I’d like to continue along that path. I’ll probably continue to write about SEO theory and topics, as well as do some consulting with fun clients. I’ve got a really fun viral project coming out for a client shortly that has been in the works since about June. I’ve been working on a LinkBaiting service as well, which so far has seemed pretty cool and well received.

The LinkBaiting service sounds very interesting and one that would prove to be a great addition to any company’s search campaign. How is the service going thus far? Can you tell us a little bit about how it works and what clients can expect as an outcome?

It’s pretty amazing to be honest. There are new diversified channels for marketing folks to get links from. I think it’s kind of like public relations 2.0 - presenting premium content in the most linkable form possible. It’s a matter of being able to tap into the pulse of your people rather than the company’s “target market”. The main drawback is there are no guarantees - the results can be amazing, but the content has to be remarkable.

The service definitely sounds fun… I hope it works out for you! You’ve mentioned many times throughout this interview that attaining quality links is extremely important to one’s SEO campaign… so much that you’ve taken the initiative to incorporate a “LinkBaiting” type service into your SEO arsenal. What advice would you offer those looking to improve on their own personal link-building efforts?

The best thing an SEO can do is learn to create top grade content for their niche, and distribute it effectively. There are volumes and volumes written on link building, or marketing from the “SEO perspective”. There is a new school of thought in marketing, and it’s all about the links (because it’s mainly about building towards top SERPS).

I really enjoy LinkBaiting - but it’s often a tough sell because there’s much less of a guarantee - though that goes with most things SEO in general. We often take calculated risks based on our past experience to form future observations. The risks involved is both an advantage - because most companies will be much slower to move on it, until they have powerpoints and excel spreadsheets that detail the precise ROI - and a disadvantage, because it’s a tough sell to get the budgets, and demonstrate the direct value at times.

As you’re well aware, Search Engine Marketing is a very fast-paced industry and has the ability to shift gears at the turn of a dime. In your opinion, where do you see the Search Engine Optimization industry being 5 to 10 years down the road?

It’ll probably be something like the movie “Minority Report” and we’ll have to fend off those creepy little soldier spiders with mirrors and magnets, and clone eyeballs to effectively market to people. Many will die in order to find the weak areas of the creepy spider AI algorithm.

That - or it will just continue to evolve as a form of expressing ideas and messages to people through whatever new communication mediums evolve. Optimizing the message for the channels that have the biggest, strongest, fastest, distribution. SEO may die - but the mindset of good SEOs never will.

Lol… if the first scenario were to come true, could you imagine what guys like Danny, Todd, and Jim would be teaching at the SES conferences? They’d be up on a panel wearing souped-up metal armor and demonstrating which angles we should be holding the mirrors in order to get the best results. Assuming that your second theory is to come true, instead of the first, where do you see yourself being at that time?

Hopefully I’ll be retired someplace with a fishing pole in one hand and an umbrella drink in the other. More likely I’ll be sitting at a computer with chronic back problems and carpal tunnel, reminiscing about the “good old days” of buying run of site anchor text links for top 10 search rankings with my retina being scanned periodically by those freakish big brother spiders reporting my information back to the mother ship.

Lol… very cool! Let’s hope that you’re retired with a fishing pole and an umbrella drink in hand, and not involved with retina scanning or any other form of spider-probing. Well Todd, with all that was said, I’m now out of questions and that means that you’re officially off the hook and free to go. On a more serious note, I think we were able to put down a GREAT interview (one that was equally informative as it was entertaining), and I thank you for your time and for sharing your SEO and Link-Building expertise with me and the Klog readers.

It’s been a pleasure to chatting with you.

I hope people got a laugh or too and maybe even learned something. I have to say - one of the most fun things about being “solo” is the ability to have a personality - and not worry too much about being “professional” all the time. I like working with really SMART people - but really FUN people is nearly as important. Thanks for lettin’ me have a little fun Karl. Keep up the great work on your site.

Business SEO Consulting Search engine optimization as an industry has grown in leaps and bounds in the last 10 years. Starting first as people building websites for themselves and others discovered the power of meta tags and words on the page, SEO has evolved to become an important part of the internet marketing industry.

Todd Malicoat of StuntDubl.com will share his perspective on SEO as someone involved as a client, a do-it-yourselfer and as a consultant. He will address the benefits and pitfalls of each.

Recorded Live October 27, 2006
The Consumer Perspective on SEO

Many people jump right in and build or have someone build a website for them. They figure the next logical step is marketing and in the traditional world, they would be correct. However, in the search marketing world and specifically when it comes to search engine optimization, there are many things that need to be taken into consideration before even starting the build of a website.

Do-it-Yourself SEO

Perhaps your budget doesn’t allow for outsourcing search engine optimization but you still want to do what you can to rank for your keywords in the search engines. Or at the very least you would like some visibility in the directories. I mean, how hard can it be, right?

Becoming a SEO Consultant

People become consultants for many reasons. Perhaps they were doing it themselves for their own website and started helping others. Or perhaps they were drawn to the industry because they were ready for a new challenge in their life. People choose career paths for all sorts of reasons and today Todd will share some of his own and tell us what it’s like to be a consultant.

Is There a Future for SEO?

A couple of years ago people were predicting that SEO would soon be a thing of the past. Were they wrong or just off base a bit?

StuntDubl.com
Business Search Marketing Consulting
Best Posts RoundUp

Todd Malicoat Summary

An independent internet marketing consultant and the founder of StuntDubl.com, Todd Malicoat chats with eMarketing Talk Show hosts Cindy Turrietta and Todd Sarouhan about SEO from all sides of the fence i.e. from a client’s perspective, a do-it-yourself perspective as well as from the perspective of an SEO consultant.

Involved in SEO and Internet marketing since 2001, Todd Malicoat began his career creating websites in 1997. A former Internet Marketing Consultant at System And Market Services of America (SAMSA), he has in the past has managed projects as well as the Internet marketing of a number of businesses, ranging from small firms to large corporations. With the SEO Industry growing in leaps and bounds over the last decade, Todd Malicoat in this show shares his views on Search Engine Optimization and its different perspectives.

According to Malicoat before you hire an SEO, be it a consultant or an agency, it is important for people to ask certain important questions. When searching for a consultant or company, one of the best ways is to go and search for an online listing. This will help you see what other companies are doing as well as find references.

On his preference of working with an SEO consultant or an SEO agency, Todd says it mainly depends on your needs. “Often smaller companies just need a push in the right direction.” In this case a consultant is probably a good start. But it also depends on what your needs are and the in-house resources at your disposal i.e. what you have to work with.

When asked if a consultant or agency should depend on the size of the company or website, Todd says that is should depend on your needs. If your need is to do Pay Per Click, SEO and shopping feeds along with a complete redesign or everything all at once almost, then its good to use an agency because they will tie it all together. But if you just want to know more about SEO and perhaps only do PPC then consultants are probably a good avenue.

Advocating the need for an SEO specialist to be involved from the onset of a project Todd Malicoat feels that the process side of creating a website is in reality project management. It’s making sure that “all the T’s are crossed and all the I’s are dotted” and from this perspective there are a number of ways that you can create a website. There are different ways to set up your webs server, as well as different ways you can design your site for usability. It’s all these little things that play a big role in SEO.

On the subject of DIY or Do-It-Yourself SEO, Malicoat says “SEO is definitely not rocket science and I think sometimes it just gets pitched that way because it’s easy to do so and it seems overwhelming from the onset.” One of the main keys of understanding SEO is learning who to listen to and who to learn from. “The difficult part is that you have to be constantly learning.” Figuring out where to learn from is also very hard, because if you listen to the wrong people or if you learn from the wrong places then you can get sites banned, or worse you might never rank at all.

On his SEO philosophy Todd Malicoat says that he thinks of all things business and online marketing related as SEO. His advice to people who want to learn more about SEO is to read the ‘Search Engine Ranking Factors’ on Rand Fishkin’s website SEOmoz.com. Reading this a couple of times, according to Malicoat, explains 95% of the SEO process.

Of the best blogs to learn SEO, his favorites are Rand Fishkin’s SEOmoz.com and Aaron Wall’s SEObook.com, where one can find other blog listings as well as quality information. The main reason for this, Malicoat says, is that these sites don’t have any bias and they are not trying to pitch people

In the third segment of the program, Todd talks about becoming an SEO Consultant and encourages people to get into internet marketing. He feels that an in-house job is a great place to start learning as you have fewer responsibilities.

When asked if he thought the industry had reached it saturation point, Todd thinks that there is still a lot of room, even in-house positions are in huge demand. For him the biggest responsibility of an SEO consultant is “finding a way for the return to be there for your customers.”

According to Todd, the future of SEO is bright with older processes fading away and giving rise to newer techniques. For him, things such as Meta tags, Meta descriptions, and Meta keywords are now less and less important along with Alt Tags as well. What is needed now are newer ways of improving SEO.

“In the end it’s all about the user. Reaching actual users is much more important than getting off topic users.” According to Malicoat, SEO is now all about encouraging people to vary their anchor text and as well as use their keywords and anchor text when people are linking to them. With websites getting harder and harder to rank, it’s going to be more worthwhile to be ranked in the first top 10 sites

(Source)

by Darren McGlaughlin

Welcome to the seventh installment of The SEO Interviews. The SEO Interviews are a series of 6 Question Interviews with some of the best and brightest minds in the field of SEO. This week we’re happy to talk to Todd Malicoat.

SEO Profile:

Todd Malicoat has been creating websites since 1997, and started doing SEO and Internet marketing in early 2001. He is a moderator at the World’s largest webmaster forum Webmasterworld.com, and maintains an Internet consulting journal at www.stuntdubl.com.

Todd has recently been a speaker on topics such at both Search Engine Strategies and Webmaster World’s world of search conferences on link development and search engine marketing. Todd offers a variety of search engine marketing services - for more information on Todd, please see his about page.

The SEO Interview

1) Todd, I read some of your writings about “abundance thinking”,
which is a subject I’m also interested in. Tell us how you apply the principles of abundance thinking to your SEO and link building efforts.

The internet has brought about a really interesting paradox with regards to the “abundance mentality̶