It’s already the middle of July. In these days we are reading a lot about people leaving the fantastic SEO world. To be honest I don’t know if ‘fantastic’ is the right word, but for sure I’m learning a lot and let’s see how things will proceed. One thing I know for sure: it’s more cool to be involved not only in the SEO but in other things as well, as UX, designs, social media, PR. Maybe SEO itself comprehends all these things together. Keep your mind open wide, think beyond the 4 walls around you, look around, amazing stuff is going on. It’s up to you to find them and implement them.
Few days ago, Peter Handley told me a shocking and upsetting truth: “I never listened too much to Nine Inch Nails”. I thought for 5 minutes how to handle this situation, and I even decided to unfollow him for few months. But then I did an amazing playlist with some of Nine Inch Nails music, and I’m here to share it with you. It’s extremely important for you to listen to NIN. Just trust me 😀
Ok, today we are gonna meet Chris Countey. Chris is director of SEO for Webimax, an SEO company with offices in US, Canada, Australia, UK and Spain. Chris is also the mind behind SEO Rewind, that covers – citing here – ‘search news from another dimension’.
OK Chris, now it’s your turn.
When did you enter the SEO world, and why ?
In 2006 I was the IT Help Desk Administrator, web designer, under-the-desk IT guy and a few other things for Appletree, a very professional answering service in Wilmington, DE. Since I was redesigning the website and we were starting in PPC, SEO came up as an additional marketing vehicle. Bruce Clay provided me with a lot of information about content and website architecture, and even had the privilege of spending a week with their staff in Simi Valley, CA learning as much as I could about SEO in that short time.
A great tip about onpage optimization?
The law of diminishing returns applies. There are some things you should always do, such as making sure the site can be fully crawled and doesn’t take 3 minutes to load. Instead of trying to figure out what Google likes (except speed), figure out what the top ranking websites are doing and do it better.
The most stupid thing people believe about onpage optimization?
Using nofollow internally to “sculpt” PageRank. To me, that’s a bad idea. Pages that don’t add value should first have their existence questioned and then be set to noindex,nofollow.
A great tip on how you build links?
Find your “ultimate” links as soon as possible and gear your content, social media and supporting link building to reach your target. Discover who the humans behind the scenes of your target website and stalk them (nicely). If you’re lucky enough to get their email addresses, Rapportive can make it easy to find their other social media profiles. Discuss or expand on something they’ve written and link to it from your own website. I know that I’m more likely to see what a site’s about if I see a new incoming link in Analytics as opposed to a cold, unwanted email.
The most stupid thing you heard about linkbuilding?
That it’s dead.
If you have to explain what you do at a 10 year-old kid , what are you gonna say?
“Google [a word]. Who has two thumbs and made that link show up first? This guy.”
What do you drink when seoing?
At work – Pepsi or water with a 5 Hour Energy or Red Bull IV
What do you think about SEO community?
There’s nothing like it! Forget intelligence, we know they’re smart. But I think I go to meetups and conferences, and read blogs just as much to laugh as to learn. Funny mofos, those SEOs.
Make yourself a question and give an answer: How do you spell your last name?
S-H-U-T-U-P
Who is your biggest SEO influence?
Pat Sajak: Dude finds new keywords one letter at a time.
Kidding aside, there are too many great SEOs that influence me on a daily basis and it wouldn’t fair to pick just one. Just check out my Twitter profile and see who I’ve been following longest. 😀
If you weren’t an SEO, what would you like to do?
I’d probably be a teacher. Or a fireman. Or an astronaut. Oh noes, 5th grade me has taken over.