In just over a week, I’ll be presenting the Vertical Measures Webinar, “Protect Your Online Reputation While You Still Can!,” on September 9 at 11:30 a.m. EST (8:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 a.m. CST). I’ll discuss why you must protect your good online name, and simple techniques to do so . In preparation for my big day, I reached out to the very individuals who shaped my approach to Proactive Online Reputation Management. I even had the pleasure of speaking with the Andy Beal, CEO & Founder of  Trackur, an internet marketing consultant, award-winning blogger, professional speaker, and coauthor of the critically-acclaimed book Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online.

Elise Redlin-Cook: What’s the best way to prevent reputation crises?

Andy Beal: The best way to prevent a reputation crisis is to make sure that you are always delighting your stakeholders! Stakeholders, you may ask? Yes! We all know the importance of keeping your customers happy, but your stakeholders include your customers, your employees, your employees’ families, your business partners, and your investors. A reputation attack could come from any of these sources, so you need to make sure that for each of these you are exceeding their expectations of your business.

Elise: Can you give an example of a company that would qualify as an ORM Fail? How about an ORM Superstar?

An ORM Fail has to go to BP for the recent Gulf oil spill. What the American people wanted was the spill fixed, transparency in how it happened in the first place, a heartfelt apology, and assurances it will never happen again. What we got was a cover-up, carefully crafted PR soundbites, BP executives complaining about wanting to “get their life back” and reports that BP enjoyed a record quarter of profits.

An ORM Superstar? I’d give that to FedEx. During the recent launch of the iPhone 4, I impatiently waited for my shiny new phone to be delivered. Apple had promised it would be delivered early, but FedEx’s tracking system had crashed under the strain. Would it be delivered as promised? Should I still stay in? I, like many Apple fans, were freaking out. Fortunately, FedEx has a strong Twitter presence and their agents quickly jumped in to help me out. They offered a real contact email and delivered real action. Within minutes, I had assurances that my iPhone was out for delivery and would be in my hands by 3pm that day. Not only did FedEx save its own reputation, but you could argue that it saved Apple’s too!

Sidebar: When we think of reputation, we often mean its global perception. However, we forget about the personal experience. For example, me not receiving my iPhone on time would not have hurt Apple’s (or FedEx’s) global reputation, but in my subjective little world, their reputation would have been very-much tarnished.

Elise: So true! When a reputation crisis arises, where should one start?

Andy: The first, and most important step? Take a deep breath. When we learn of a reputation crisis, it’s all too easy to switch to what I call “Chicken Little” mode. We start panicking and run around like the sky is about to fall down on us…and sometimes we run around like headless chickens.

One of the reasons I built Trackur was to provide companies with an early alert to any pending crisis. Even if you are using something more basic–such as Google Alerts–simply becoming aware of a crisis, as it unfolds, gives you a head start. Instead of being alerted to that scathing newspaper article or blog rant only when your customers start canceling their orders, by monitoring your reputation, you buy yourself some valuable time. Time which you can use to collect the facts, meet with your key people, and plan how you’ll respond.

If you do determine that this crisis warrants a response, it should be one that is sincere, transparent, and consistent. Sincere means apologizing right away. The longer you delay in saying “sorry” the more damage will be inflicted on your brand. You then need to be transparent about how this event happened, what caused it, and what steps you are taking to ensure it’s an isolated incident that will never happen again. Then, you need to be consistent in your future actions–prove to your stakeholders that you have learned your lesson and that they can trust you again.

Elise: Great advice! Are there any kind of companies that simply can’t be helped?

Andy: Yes! Corrupt, lazy, apathetic companies that don’t care about their stakeholders. Your reputation can never be better than the character of your company, or as Abraham Lincoln put it: “Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Elise: Can you tell us a little bit about how you find out what people are saying about you online?  How do you monitor what others are saying about you?

Andy: First, you need to understand your own brand–or, more precisely–brands. What is it that people type into Google, when checking out your credentials? Take, for example, the drug giant GlaxoSmithKline. How many brands should it monitor? It’s company name? That’s a given! But, what about variations of its name, such as Glaxo Smith Kline, Glaxo, or simply GSK? What about its product brands? Which ones might be prone to side effects? Then you need to consider that drugs in the UK are often given different brand names than the US. Then you have trademarks and patent infringements to monitor. Potential animal activists and, lastly, important executive reputations such as these folks: Gsk.com

Once you know what to track, you can figure out what tools to use. Of course, Trackur does all the heavy lifting for just $18 a month, but there are many free tools that can provide a great safety net of monitoring. I posted my favorites in this Slideshare presentation:

Elise: I heard Trackur recently underwent an upgrade. What can you tell us about that?

Andy: I can talk about our awesome upgrades all day long! I’m not saying it’s powered by Steve Austin (under 30? you may want to Google that reference), but we did completely rebuild Trackur. Unfortunately, faster, cleaner code is hard for most people to get excited about. So, along with the new infrastructure, we added Facebook monitoring, improved our influence metrics and reporting, and added Klout.com scores, so you can see how much influence that Twitter users exerts on your brand. There are lots of other small enhancements and we have some more coming over the next month or two.

Elise: I personally loved your book Radically Transparent! Just what inspired you to put it together?

Andy: Thank you! Hearing that people love the book is a greater reward than any sales statement I get from my publisher!

To answer your question. I needed to write Radically Transparent for myself just as much as I needed to write it for all those that wanted to learn about online reputation management. I had been consulting on reputation management for a few years, but my advice was located across many posts, my strategies were inside my head, and I had never blue-printed a complete tactical campaign on paper. Writing Radically Transparent allowed me to organize what was swimming around inside my head and provide the definitive book for those seeking to build, manage, monitor and repair their reputation. Even to this day, I find myself referencing my own book!

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I’m getting excited for tomorrow’s (August 12th) Vertical Measures Monthly Webinar centered around “Onsite SEO: Building a Solid Foundation for Your Website,” at 11:30 a.m. EST (8:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 a.m. CST). My co-workers James Constable (Link Strategy Specialist) and Jason Hendricks SEO (Link Acquisition Specialist) are sure to have some good insights and reveal some secrets that they’ve uncovered first hand. Speaking of folks with a lot of experience in SEO this week, I got to speak with Dave Harry of Reliable-SEO. You may also know him as the “The Gypsy” as he is known on twitter and from www.huomah.com.

Elise Redlin-Cook: Would you consider yourself a “coder/programmer”?

Dave Harry: That one is hard to say really. Compared to the more hard core folks, most certainly not. But I have been building sites for some 12 years now and do know my way around code. But nothing more than the average every day hack really.

Elise: So, what do you think of PageRank?

Dave: What do I ‘think’ of it? That’s a strange one to be certain. I ‘think’ that it is the driving force behind all of modern search. All of the major engines use it. There is no avoiding it. It is a pretty interesting idea that has evolved greatly over the years. It is the genesis for the link economy and the scourge and bain of pain behind the mess that is the web these days. On the other hand, I also believe it will become less important in the coming years. How’s that?

Elise: Haha, perfect! How about your thoughts on using XML sitemaps?

Dave: Great idea… especially with video (aka video site maps) and news. I also don’t believe one should be doing away with the ever-faithful HTML site maps, but given the adoption of the major engines, it makes sense to be using them these days.

Elise: So in your opinion what areas are currently the most important in organically ranking a site?

Dave: All of them. No, seriously. I am a bit on the anal side in that I want to nail ALL of the on-site elements and keep semantic and other rules in mind when it comes to link building even. I tend to leave nothing to chance and hit ‘em all. On-site TITLE and IA structures are likely the most important. But I wouldn’t count out semantic relevance factors either. At the end of the day, all things being equal off-site, the site that nails down the on-site elements wins.

Elise: Explain to me what META tags matter in today’s world.

Dave: Interesting question deserving of an unorthodox answer. The TITLE element is important for ranking, the DESCRIPTION element is important for CTR. That’s the stuff we all know already. What is more interesting is the rise of RDFa and microformats and even semantic mark-up for Facebook’s social graph goodies. In the very near future we should see these types of meta-data on the rise. It is an area not a lot of SEOs are looking at, but should be.

Elise: What kind of strategies do you normally implement for back links?

Dave: Content programs, plain and simple. We aren’t really big into (comment) spamming types of link building. We use a combination of content strategy, outreach, placement and syndication. Sure, now and again I might fill in the link profile with some foundational stuff (directories and article marketing etc.) but I tend to not really do much of that these days. Back in the old days, before social, it was much harder to get the content out there. But that is no longer the case and if anything, link building has become much easier. People often don’t seem to understand that it is really ‘link marketing’ more than it is ‘building’. We want to not only use it for simply getting links, but to also build authority and traffic…. yes, TRAFFIC. Something that seems foreign to a lot of SEOs these days.

Elise: So, what role does social media play today in an SEO strategy?

Dave: Much as we discussed already, it is massively important in the link marketing process. It has given us unrivalled abilities to get our content out there like never before. That being said, one should also remember that it is about the secondary links. Social media is also huge in branding and authority building. Further down the scale it can be used for localization and citations as well. It should also be noted that the lines aren’t as blurred as many seem to think, something we covered in a recent episode of SEO Dojo Radio #4.

Elise: What are the main tools that you use in your SEO Site Audits?

Dave: My brain, my fingers and my keyboard. Seriously though, most of the work we do with audits is based on experience, not tools. That is another bone of contention for me in that far too many SEOs these days depend on their tools. Data is completely and utterly useless without the desire to find a given data set. The data doesn’t create the strategy, the strategy dictates what data you are after. Of the various tools we ‘regularly’ use in most cases are (Google/Bing) Webmaster Tools, Majestic (for link data) and a few custom ones we have. But once more, each situation is unique and for the most part our audits are done through the experience of the eye looking at the site. I don’t believe there is yet a tool that can replace it.

Elise: The Search Engine Optimization field has changed a great deal in the last couple of years. How does it differ from when you first began?

Dave: HA! Not sure about the ‘last couple of years’ in that it has been a constant evolution for me over the last 8+ years I have been at it. For me much has changed from the rise of anchor text (05 or so), the loss of value for things like meta-keywords, the incarnations of social (from forums to social media) as mentioned already and so much more. I even believe search engines have gotten much better at determining semantic relevance from an on-page perspective (which gave rise to phrase ratio’s over KW density concepts). Some of the most massive changes have been in the verticals… video, local, real time etc.. This is an area I have not seen SEOs very quick to catch onto. Just look at any SERP these days and you will likely see a LOT of differences in a universal SERP compared to the past days of the 10 blue links. Now we start to consider semantic meta data and well… things just keep on changing all the time. And what of implicit user feedback? Another area I believe will start to become more and more important over the coming years. SEO is dead? Puh-leeeaze…

Elise: What are the biggest obstacles that you face in getting clients and/or developers to execute your action plan?

Dave: Man, that’s probably the number one most frustrating aspect of performing SEO. I have solved it in two simple ways.

A. Be much more attentive during the sales process. In short, be sure to qualify your clients to ensure you are setting yourself up with the best chance to succeed. If the client is not going to take/implement the advice you give them, just walk. Or at very least be sure to spell out in contractual format that you are not entirely responsible for the results … and NEVER get into pay-for-performance.

B. Be a consultant. This is something I do more and more of these days. I do the research/reporting/planning and hand it over. Done…finished…out of there. This is one way that I have been able to alleviate the problem and frustration of seeing my hard work go down the crapper. Sad, but true.

I am pretty sure that’s not the angle you’re after… but it is the reality of the business. You really need to have clients that are on board and understand the SEO process… it can’t be an after-thought.

Elise: What advice would you give to those that are new to SEO and lack the knowledge, experience, and hindsight that you possess?

Dave: Earn information retrieval… plain and simple. I have long lamented that SEOs not understanding how search engines work is like a web developer that doesn’t know HTML. It is 2/3^rds of the initialization; ‘Search Engine’. The more one learns to ‘think like an engineer’ the easier it becomes to understand where things are headed. Being able to future-proof one’s SEO so that it stands the test of time is paramount as far as I am concerned. It also enables you to logically sort out what is and isn’t of value. Even for R&D (testing); how can one test anything when they have no grasp of how search engines work?

What other advice? Much like the above; don’t learn SEO from blogs. You must take your knowledge of search engines and apply it to your ongoing testing and research. Blogs are great, I write on a few, this interview is going on one, but that is NOT where one’s strategy should come from.

Elise: What search marketing conference do you most enjoy attending? Speaking at?

Dave: None. I don’t go to them and have traditionally turned down offers to speak at them. I am a family man first and foremost and while my kids are at the precious age (8&10) that is the golden moments, I don’t really see/feel the need to go. That being said, I do run a weekly chat session at the SEO Dojo and have enjoyed the many great guests we’ve had on there. Having a strong network (which would be ultimate value of them for me) is invaluable. Sorry… no recommendations beyond that here.

Elise: How about recommending some relevant reading materials to newcomer in the field?

Sure can… anything on these lists;

SEO Higher Learning

My Big Ass List of SEO Blogs

Or even Garrett French’s ebook (for link building)

At the end of the day the problem with a lot of tech books is that the information get’s outdated pretty damned fast. So I’d probably recommend joining a community such as Aaron Wall’s SEO Book gang and of course our own SEO Dojo. There are plenty of reading materials in those and forums to ask questions/further your knowledge. I’d also likely recommend taking in some as well…for the networking more than the sessions.

Elise: What inspired you to go into Search Engine Optimization? Did you follow a specific path into this field?

Dave: I sure did… hehe… I started a web design/development company back in 1998 and had been on the outside fringes when clients started to ask us about it. Then in about 2002 I decided it wasn’t great on my relationship to be working side-by-side with my wife and went into SEO full time. She still manages the original company and I am pretty sure our life is better for it.

Once I got into it though, I was just your average hack until I began to get geeky into IR patents and papers… The real turning point was likely through folks like Bill Slawski which was a watershed moment. There is simply nothing more fascinating in this world to me than the challenge of indexing and making meaningful sense of the world’s information. I don’t do PPC, I don’t do social… I am an organic search geek through-and-through.

Elise: Do you have any exciting projects that your involved in right now that you’d like to discuss?

Dave: Not really… we have a whack of those pesky NDAs which precludes me from talking about what we’re working on these days. I will say we have some interesting challenges we’re involved in and that’s what keeps me going. Beyond that, we have the aforementioned ‘SEO Dojo’ which is a growing community of SEO geeks (and webmasters) that was launched in late 2009. The best and most surprising part is that I am probably learning more than I am teaching… it has been a GREAT experience for me so far.

Elise: What made you decide to get involved in training SEO?

Dave: The total mass of complete GARBAGE that is out in the space. I was in the martial arts for more than 20yrs and one of the more important parts of that world is passing along the art. I decided long ago to try and do my part in helping to evolve the industry. Originally that was via blogging, more recently with the SEO Dojo. Nothing is more frustrating than to have clients asking questions (of ignorance) gleaned from some blogger or listening to the crap being spouted on the various forums in the SEO world. Instead of just ignoring it, I decided to be part of the solution.

That being said, there are many days when the sheer weight of it all makes me want to just pack it in and work for my own means. It can be a very thankless job out in the public eye and frustrating far beyond the benefits. I have been trying to ‘do my part’ for some 5 years now and how much longer I can take it, remains to be seen. Hopefully some of the newer generation will pick up the torch soon and I can fade back into anonymity.

Elise: Are you driven by any great passions outside of the business arena?

Dave: Oh you betcha’. Did I mention my family? Oh yes, I did… well, they are always first and foremost. Much of my present world enables me to spend lots of time with them and I do enjoy my summers together with the fam’. I am also an avid musician these days and manage to spend time playing around town and at gatherings. I started that back some 30yrs ago. As for the martial arts, not so much anymore, the tired ol body just doesn’t hold up for that as it used to.

And ultimately, learning is a passion. I don’t read fiction. I don’t watch reality TV. Most of my off-time is spent as a sponge sucking up more of the world’s endless information.

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As my co-workers James Constable, and Jason Hendricks prepare for this month’s Vertical Measures webinar scheduled “Onsite SEO: Building a Solid Foundation for Your Website,” scheduled to take place on Thursday, August 12 at 11:30 a.m. EST (8:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 a.m. CST) there has been a good amount of discussion on performing site audits. Luckily, I knew just the guy to ask! If you aren’t familiar with Alan Bleiwess,of Search Marketing Wisdom you should check him out. He is well known in the industry for his search engine optimization audits, consulting, blogging and speaks regularly on the topic.

Elise Redlin-Cook: What areas do you think are currently the most important in organically ranking a site? Alan Bleiweiss: Okay – I’ll play that game.  Because I always appreciate the opportunity to slap down all those “it’s all links” people out there… Here’s the low-down dirty little secret that apparently only some of us in the industry know.

Create a healthy organizational structure to contain your site.  Pick the best keyword phrases.  Properly seed the site accordingly.  Strategically embed links throughout the site to pages you want to drive more authority to, and from those pages, out to high quality related content.  Obtain high quality links into those pages.  But here’s where it gets complicated.

When you do all that, always, ALWAYS be sure that every single step you take, every single action, is based on your first having put yourself into the minds of site visitors AND site owners AND site marketers AND site developers AND site designers, AND site database/content managers…   You absolutely, without fail, must remember and factor in every single one of these if you truly want a site that will not only be highly optimized today, but that will stand the test of time.  Regardless of whether Google remains dominant or not.  Regardless of what other signals you’ll have to get from social media or tomorrow’s next great medium.

Why? Because that’s the web.  It’s the heart and soul of the web.  No matter how it changes and evolves, the core premise will always be the foundation from which all else operates and connects.  At least that’s the way it will be for the next 10 years.  Because that’s how long it would take for something new to come along that has the chops to replace the web as it’s existed for 15 years.

Elise: So, what are the main tools that you use in your SEO Site Audits?

Alan: Until this year, I only ever used Excel and performed all my work manually.  The theory was, I’m getting $125 an hour or $150 an hour to do this work, (or half to 3/4 that rate for agencies) so why not take the time?  As I’ve shifted my business so that I’m spending less time on client work and more time blogging, ranting and attending conferences, and as I’ve shifted to more and more enterprise scale clients, I’ve both raised my rates and begun testing a number of tools for all aspects of my work.  So far, I’ve found that the SEOBook Rank Checker plug-in for Firefox and the SEOMoz Open Site Explorer are both excellent tools and now use them religiously.  And of course, I still use Excel.  #Duh

Elise: What are the biggest obstacles that you face in getting clients and/or developers to execute your action plan?

Alan: Now that 80% of my audit work is for sites involving thousands of pages or tens of thousands of pages, the single biggest obstacle I face is where clients have limited budgets or staff, and when they get one of my audits and find out that there’s going to be 50, 100, or 250 hours of work required, they feel overwhelmed, because they had been hoping for quick fix solutions.

Another common obstacle I see comes from the fact that most of my clients are large corporations, such as financial institutions and my contact has to get internal buy-in from other departments or divisions.  So for example, if my contact is in marketing, they have to deal with political issues inside the company because perhaps the IT staff have a “protect our jobs” or a “we can’t do that” strangle-hold on anything to do with code-level site changes.

Elise: What advice would you give to those that are new to SEO and lack the 15 years of knowledge, experience, and hindsight that you possess? Alan: Hire me as your go-to resource.   no – seriously – the first couple projects I tried to optimize ended up completely lost organically because I took on extremely competitive markets and I had no clue what was involved.

So I’d say start with a scale you can truly master and move up from there.  Someone that doesn’t have the depth and breadth of knowledge I happen to have might very well need to focus initially on low hanging fruit- the mom & pop sites, sites that have a purely local  geo-targeted focus.  And for goodness sake, please spend every free waking moment of your existence teaching yourself more and more.  Build on what you know.  Don’t stop learning. Test, test, test!

Elise: Could you recommend some relevant reading materials to newcomers in the field?

Alan: Sure – my SEJ column and my blog!  (Warning, my blog is NSFW!).  Gosh – there’s so much good content out there.  But it’s typically mixed in with a lot of nonsense.  So I highly recommend going to Sphinn.com and scouring the articles in your particular area of focus – and read any article that’s gotten 35, 40 or more Sphinns.  Join sites like SEOMoz or WebmasterWorld, the SEO Dojo, read SearchEngineJournal.com… Join Twitter and follow people like Kim Krause Berg, Rae Hoffman, Tony Verre, Judith Lewis, Gerald Weber, Ann Smarty, Steve Plunkett, Ann Handley, Angie Nikoleychuk , Lisa Barone (these are just a few of the 80 or so people I pay a lot of attention to – because when they say something industry related, or write about it, or recommend the writing of others, it’s a gold mine of value).   But remember- sometimes even then, it’s not valid for your unique situation, or it’s outdated. Or it’s just not true.  So test, test, test!

Elise: What inspired you to go into Search Engine Optimization? Did you follow a specific path into this field?

Alan: It was a natural progression for me.  Long before the Internet, back in the day, as I was walking to and from work both ways up hill in the snow, (yea, on Long Island we really used to get 4′ deep snow) I considered myself a facilitator of the flow of information in business.  Whether it was as a customer service rep, sales manager, office manager, a business operations manager…

I’ve been in the web consulting business since January of 95 because the 1st day I was introduced to the web, that month, in that moment, I knew the web was my future – it was like a lightning bolt of awareness that the web is the ultimate form of free flowing information.

Since then, it’s just been a matter of following my intuitive path, and always adapting to whichever newest aspect of web offerings I felt the most passionate about.  At one point, I got fried – totally burnt out on the whole consulting thing.  Went into deep depression, walked away from it all.  Tried to switch careers, ended up on food stamps rather than working at Home Depot or in some 20th century office job.  That month, it hit me – WTH was I doing?  How could I walk away from the one path that in all my adult life, had always blessed me and came effortlessly to me?  That was when I really dove back in with everything like never before.  And it’s been a magical ride ever since.

Elise: Wow, good stuff! So, do you have any exciting projects that your involved in right now that you’d like to tell us about?

Alan: You mean besides avoiding lawsuits for my rants?  Yes, I do!  I’ve become pretty well known (in my mind) for my high end audits.  Yet as much as they consistently blow customers minds, I recently recognized that if I want to take this offering even further (beyond the $250 an hour I get for my audit work now), that I’d need to change things around.  – A sea-change, if you will.  I’ve been bouncing ideas off a few very trusted friends – in the industry and in my personal life, and what keeps coming back is what I intuitively recognized on my own.   So I’ve set out on a several-month plan to evolve how i conduct audits, how I rate the sites, client’s social footprint, and their competitive landscape, and ultimately, how I present my findings to them.

I don’t have any desire at this point to go into details, however I can say this much.  I’ve devised a brand new, from scratch, 500 point scoring system for a clients web presence split out into five groups or sub-areas.  The raw score from this is converted to a uniform weighted number for each sub-area, then gets cross-balanced against the difficulty factor of their particular market.  (Did I mention how important Excel is?)

It’s still got a long way to go, however it’s already helping me to be that much more thorough in my work, and it’s already helping sort out what were previously perceived as “of equal value” recommendations.  And that’s vital, because as I said earlier, client budgets are a bitch, and I always prioritize recommendations.  The better I can be at doing that, the more success they’ll see, sooner.

Elise: I know that you do a great deal of business traveling in general. In all of the places you’ve been, where would you most like to live?

Alan: Well I’ve been to 39 States, Canada, and Europe. I’ve also lived in five States and Germany.  So I’ve gotten to experience a lot of places in terms of what feels like home.  At the moment, I’ve got the most beyond-phenomenal massage therapist / energy worker here in Marin County.  So unless she and her family relocate to Santa Monica, I’m not going to be moving any time soon.  At least not until I can afford to live within a couple blocks of the beach in Santa Monica and fly back to Marin 3 or 4 times a month, because the value I get from those sessions is that important to my well being. 

Elise: Are you driven by any great passions outside of the business arena?

Alan: Absolutely.  To always evolve.  I have such a long way to go – so many flaws and short-comings.  Yet having come from the inner sanctum of hell on earth, twice, I can’t express how much happiness and how much freedom I have achieved over the past several years with each growth step I’ve taken.  And since I have had that success, why wouldn’t I want to continue that pattern?  Life really is a blessing, if you know how to learn how to get out of your own way.  So my goal is to eventually just be the co-pilot of my life spiritually, physically, emotionally…  It’s a part-time thing now, and every precious moment that it is, well, let’s just say #WIN!

But then again – there’s always the NFL – and the fact that Arnie K., Matt S., Matt M., and Tony V. are the best guys on earth to know when it comes to smack-talk…

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As August quickly approaches, I’ve begun prepping for the Vertical Measures August webinar “Onsite SEO: Building a Solid Foundation for Your Website” and I had the privilege of speaking to some of the great minds in SEO for the next few weeks of Expert Interviews on SEO. I’ve started by speaking with Dana Todd, the Co-founder and CMO of Newsforce, Inc. Press industry analysts and technology leaders frequently tap Dana for her knowledge of the search engine marketplace. She regularly appears as a top speaker at national and international conferences.

Elise Redlin-Cook: Would you consider yourself a “coder/ programmer”?

Dana Todd: Gosh, no. I wish I could code – I’m envious of programmers, but my brain is not entirely linear and my background is in classical marketing and advertising. My talents lie more in being able to DE-code rather than code. That is, sifting through verbal and visual clues to find patterns and unique opportunities. It works for creative brand development as well as quant-y keyword analysis. I have a gut instinct that’s faster than any software program, and it’s usually right, but I use a lot of proper research and tools to make sure I’m on track and to refine my strategies.

Elise: What are your thoughts on the direction of Web 2.0 technologies with regards to SEO?

Dana: The title “Web 2.0” technologies is pretty fuzzy. I’ve seen people apply the term to practically anything, including referencing web graphic styles that have rounded corners! But I think the biggest concern in SEO-land was regarding heavy use of Ajax and client-side technologies for rendering information. Obviously, if Google can’t read the page then you need to find alternate forms of providing this information. I don’t think it’s a deal-breaker, just make sure that all your critical information isn’t invisible to search engines. Most webmasters have figured out ways around it by making sure that shareable widgets, mashups, etc., are properly encased in meaningful content containers. Ajax seems to be most useful in back-end applications such as dashboards, that aren’t SEO fodder anyway.

Elise: Good stuff. Well, what role does social media play today in an SEO strategy?

Dana: While social media today has only a small impact on SEO, it may have more significant impact in the future. Google and Bing are both experimenting with how to integrate “real time” and social influence factors  – which typically come from social media sources – into the main search results. Pure “Social Search” sites and technologies have been around for a while, but they don’t seem to get a lot of traction with everyday users. People are starting to use Twitter and Facebook for searching out opinions, but the information gleaned for a user is fairly anecdotal.

One place that you can definitely point to an immediate opportunity is in the news and news search space. Highly referenced news sources that get Twitter traction and Facebook/LinkedIn exposure are more likely to get picked up in online media sources and blog content. Which of course can ultimately tip the scales in your favor for SEO if you succeed in securing a decent amount of reference links. So, utilizing your social media channels effectively to support a PR/breaking news strategy can have immediate payoff both in terms of organic SERP improvement and incremental social media traffic.

Elise: We get asked a good deal about on-site factors. I’m curious what are the main tools that you use in your SEO Site Audits?

Dana: I don’t do a lot of technical audits myself . My work is primarily executive strategy, but I am privileged to be an adviser to SyCara, a new enterprise SEO software tool in beta now. I and several other customers got to help build the specs on it so that it meets our institutional needs better than just the random collection of tools that most people use. I get a little frustrated with the software options out there right now, which don’t lend themselves to building a scalable service organization. Every time there’s employee turnover, all the history walks out the door which ultimately endangers your SEO investment.

Elise: The Search Engine Optimization field has changed a great deal in the last couple of years. How does it differ from when you first began?

Dana: First of all, there was no Google in 1996 when we first started doing SEO at SiteLab. A lot of people think that today’s SEO is more difficult, because you can’t get the “easy wins” that were possible back then, but I actually think that it was much more complicated back then in many ways. For one thing, we no longer have to make 5-6 copies of every page, one for each search engine (yes, there were six majors back in the day). Everything back then was “black hat.” Heck, there were no rules at all so everyone was throwing all kinds of things out there, very chaotic and ultimately bad for the industry in terms of perception. That cowboy mentality brought excitement to the field, but the damage can still be seen today in terms of how people outside the industry feel about SEO.

Elise: What are the biggest obstacles that you face in getting clients and/or developers to execute your action plan?

Dana: Most obstacles can be overcome by setting expectations from the beginning, and making sure that clients fully understand their role in the process. They’re resource constrained – that’s why they hired you. So, it’s up to you to deliver something they can act on. If they don’t act, it’s YOUR fault, not theirs. That’s right, I said it: your fault. You need to go back and figure out where you didn’t communicate well enough or project manage well enough, and make it super easy for them to execute. The most valuable SEO partners are those that can think through the business-readiness of their services, and who create the least pain in their customers’ lives.

Elise: What advice would you give to those that are new to SEO and lack the knowledge, experience, and hindsight that you possess?

Dana: Once you get a solid set of training wheels and you have tested your mettle on a few SEO cases, find a way to specialize so that you can stand out and get ahead. If you’re competing against SEO heavyweights or large teams, you may not win easily, so find niches such as video optimization, image optimization, real-time/news optimization, local search optimization, etc., that can help you pick up customers and build a name for yourself. Also, since you’re a specialist you will have a better chance of ranking for that specialist term than general SEO terms. Bonus! There’s a huge need for SEOs in the publishing world, which is an industry I am deeply involved in – particularly news. It’s a completely different kind of SEO, and creative minds can really have fun with this job.

Elise: As a co-founder and former board member of SEMPO, are you still involved with the organization?

Dana: Of course! I stepped off the Board this year, but I’m actively involved as a co-chair on the Education Committee which puts on free public webinars. Our topics and speakers are always fantastic, so I urge everyone to sign up for the mailing list at sempo.org/webinars. We also place SEMPO members as speakers at events all over the world and answer questions from people who ask for advice about working with search marketers, etc. The organization has really grown its local presence in 40 countries, and I’m excited that we’re getting a lot more traction in local markets to provide connection points around the world.

Elise: What search marketing conference do you most enjoy attending? Speaking at?

Dana: I have spoken at almost every US Search Engine Strategies conference since the program began, and have represented the search community at ad:tech, OMMA and other general advertising conferences. I have also spoken at SMX and Pubcon. I love talking about Internet marketing and educating folks no matter where I am – be it at a formal conference or in the back of a cab – so it’s hard to choose a favorite. Each has a unique audience and character, so they’re very different experiences and methods of engaging. I love the networking at any conference; SEMs are such an amazingly supportive and friendly community.

When speaking, what’s compelling for me is figuring out what they are interested in learning, and how to best model my teaching style around their mental patterns. Some of my most challenging, but fun, conferences are vertical associations where the audience is almost completely unfamiliar with the technical components of search and it’s not their job to understand at that level. You have to put all the SEO logic and tasks into a business decision framework and avoid talking “techie” so that your message is received and they can use the information to help drive their own success.

Elise: In 2004 you stated that you had serious doubts about the usefulness and quality of personalized search. How, if at all, has your view changed?

Dana: My opinion hasn’t changed much except for appreciating the geo-location component of personalized search. I must say that the technology has gotten MUCH better since 2004, and it’s more subtle now. It used to stick out like a sore thumb and interrupt my research thought-stream, and it annoyed me that it never offered a “Reset” button to clear the cache and start over when doing a seriously deep research project. I still log out of iGoogle most of the time, so that I get only same-session personalization. If I’m logged in and search for “cars” I get this random stuff in my results:

While I might like to check out what my Twitter crew thinks about cars, I can already get that from Twitter so I really don’t want it cluttering my Google. Frankly, though, I doubt most people even notice it which means I’m the only old crank in the user base who is bugged by it. I also don’t like my food to touch on the plate.

As far as SEO and personalization goes, there doesn’t seem to be any solid information on how to optimize for it. There are a lot of theories about how social media may ultimately influence personalized search, but I haven’t heard anything concrete about what to do/not to do to influence personal search.  Certainly, it’s impossible to get any reporting around what level of exposure you got on a term in a personalized search.

Elise: Could you recommend some relevant reading materials to newcomer in the field

Dana: I always recommend for newbies:

• The Truth About Search Engine Optimization, by Rebecca Lieb (fast read, condensed tightly and written at a high level – suitable for business managers as well as practitioners)
• Search Engine Optimization One Hour a Day, by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin (more of a workbook. It breaks the process down into bite-sized activities)
• The Art of SEO, by Jessie Stricchiola, Rand Fishkin and Stephan Spencer and Eric Enge (this is a bit more comprehensive but should be a “Bible” to anyone serious about SEO)

Of course I have to brag on the Insider’s Guide to Search Marketing course from the SEMPO Institute. We’ve trained several thousand people with this online course and it’s very accessible to newbies and even non-technical marketing people. Also, SEObook.com isn’t really a book, it’s an ongoing training series, but I hear great things about it. And, Bruce Clay has written an SEO for Dummies book that would be accessible to newcomers.

Elise: Awesome! Those are great recommendations. So, do you have any exciting projects that you’re involved in right now that you’d like to discuss?

Dana: I’ve always got my fingers in a bunch of pies. I’m a serial entrepreneur not by conscious choice but because I love creating things and taking leadership roles wherever the mood strikes me. Newsforce has been my obsession for the past four years, building a new type of engagement media that supports news sites with increased revenue, and is uniquely positioned to play in that unique space between news media and PR/brand awareness tactics. I’m also helping to grow a new organization called IIA, the International Institute for Analytics, which is a “big tent” peer research organization for analytics across business information (BI) and other applications such as web analytics. And, I just joined the Board of San Diego Software Industry Council, with the intent to help broadcast the long-held secret truth about how amazing the tech innovation is here in San Diego. There are many brilliant people and companies in SoCal (Southern California), but we don’t do a good job of bragging about it to our Northern cousins and beyond.

Elise: I know that you do a great deal of business traveling in general. In all of the places you’ve been, where would you most like to live?

Dana: I’m quite keen to get out of the US before I get too old for adventure, and try living in another country. I just haven’t decided which one yet. Asia seems fascinating, Europe is romantic and rich in arts, and on and on. I’ve been kicking around South Africa and New Zealand, both of which would be incredible adventures. Tell your readers to pitch me their countries! I’m still collecting data…

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To wrap up our Local Search Optimization interview series, I thought it only fitting to get first hand advice from David Mihm of DavidMihm.com and the Director & COO of GetListed.org, an online resource that helps small business owners claim and enhance their listings at major search engines. His 2008 Local Search Ranking Factors, and recently released 2010 version is recognized among the most important studies of Local Search Engine Optimization.

Elise Redlin-Cook: There are just so many local search sites out there. I’d like to know your opinion…Do you see the market continuing to grow, or narrowing down to a few key players?

David Mihm: Unfortunately for small business owners, I see the market continuing to fragment.  15 Miles does an annual study of the space–the most recent version from October 2009 and it seems like each year Google remains below 40% in Local market share…which is pretty astonishing when you consider its dominance in traditional search.  There are a bunch of long-tail players like Superpages, Insider Pages, Citysearch, and Yelp that cumulatively make up a major chunk of the market.  Now, this year, it looks like we’ll be adding Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare to the mix as significant players.  I say it’s unfortunate for small business owners because they’re typically the ones with the fewest resources to devote to online marketing, and it’s truly becoming important to be involved in a lot of different places in Local.  Even before the addition of Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, I illustrated the complexity of the Local Search Ecosystem last year.

Elise: What would you say are the best free local search sites today?

David: Well, I think we cover most of the big guys on GetListed.org — Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yelp, along with Best of the Web Local — and an even fuller list, for those who have the time, is on that same Local Search Ecosystem page I mentioned earlier.  It’s also important to note which directories and Internet Yellow Pages are ranking well organically for some of the keywords your business is trying to rank for & ensure you have plenty of visibility on those sites.

Elise: How about the best paid local search sites today?

David: As with any other branch of search marketing, it’s important to track ROI…and in Local, that means tracking ROI across individual verticals (for instance, paid ads on Yelp may be terrific for restaurants but not cost-effective for plumbers) and geographies (Kudzu ads may be great for Atlanta businesses but not so much for Seattlites).  As a general rule, though, three of the most worthwhile places to spend money are on the major data aggregators for local search sites–infoUSA, which has just launched a new product called Express Update, Localeze (enhanced listings only currently available in bulk), and Acxiom–currently only accessible via Universal Business Listing.

Elise: Merchant Circle allows you to add coupons, reviews, blog posts, etc. Will the other local search sites continue to adopt this trend of allowing more user generated content?

David Mihm: I wouldn’t single out MerchantCircle as a shining beacon of customer service, but they surely have done a nice job with their SEO and some of the features you note above help quite a bit with long-tail search traffic.  It’s going to be more important after Google’s MayDay update for IYP’s–already sucking wind since the introduction of the 10-pack–to create as much unique content alongside their business listings as they can.

Elise: Is it more important to be listed on niche sites that are specific to your industry, or the big sites with lots of traffic?

David: Depends completely on the vertical…not only for rankings at Google Maps/Google Universal, but also for the degree to which the particular players have established themselves in a particular market.  For instance, if you’re a hotel and you have a weak presence on TripAdvisor, you’re in serious trouble–both for searches at Google, and on TripAdvisor, because Google relies so heavily on TripAdvisor ratings, reviews, and business data for its own hotel/hospitality index.  There are plenty of longer-tail examples, including HealthGrades.com for doctors and medical professionals, AngiesList.com for plumbers, etc.  You can almost always count on the major IYPs to have a solid presence across multiple verticals, though.

Elise: So, I’ve got to ask…do you see value in the paid listings versus the free listings?

David: I think Google by-and-large has done a nice job with its flat-fee product offerings via Places…including Tags.  I’m not sure that their earlier Local Listing Ads wouldn’t ultimately make them more money, since they essentially guaranteed a slot in/near the 7-pack, but it certainly is easy–and relatively inexpensive–to set up a Tags campaign for a single-location business.  I think the more complex the paid offering, and the more complicated the billing procedures, the harder it is for small businesses to understand what they’re getting.

To answer this question from a marketer’s perspective, again, it’s important to track ROI using your analytics.  On some sites, paid listings might be incredibly worthwhile, but not so much on others.  Experiment frequently and track assiduously.

Elise: If a business doesn’t actually have a brick and mortar location, should they still try to list themselves on local search sites?

David: There’s no solution (PO Box, UPS Store, fake address, etc) that will really work in the long term.  Although Tim Coleman did quite a thought-provoking post recently about some of the difficulties Google may face in combating the latter.  Yes, Google recently started allowing go-to-client and service businesses to include service areas and hide their address, but given the reliance of its algorithm on location information, if the only place you’re listing yourself is Google, your chances at ranking are pretty poor.

Elise: That’s the perfect segue into my next question. What would you say are the top local search ranking factors right now?

David: Funny you should ask, given that this year’s Local Search Ranking Factors came out only a couple of weeks ago .  Most panelists felt that claiming your listing, having a physical location in the city being searched, categorization, and what I would call traditional citations (from IYPs and data providers) remained at the very top–where they’ve been since I began this survey in 2008.  I was somewhat surprised to see unstructured or non-traditional citations (such as those found in a newspaper article or blog as opposed to another local search site) ranking so highly since those haven’t been showing up for all that long–folks are obviously finding that those mentions of your physical location are critical for ranking, no matter where the search engine spiders find them.

Some of the other traditionally-important factors like keywords-in-business-title and proximity-to-centroid seem to be declining somewhat.  And frankly, I’m a bit surprised that review quality isn’t rated higher by the panel (positive ratings were only #42 out of 58 total positive factors)…but I can’t say I disagree, based on all the local search results I’ve looked at in the past year.

Elise: Well, thanks David. It sounds like I have some reading to do!

If you are interested in learning more about Local Search, check out our our  webinar, “Go Local or Go Home“, tomorrow, on  July 15th at 11:30 a.m. EST (8:30 a.m. PST, 10:30 a.m. CST). In this webinar, attendees will hear from Sarah Moraes, Internet Marketing Specialist, and Jason Hendricks, SEO and Link Acquisition Specialist of Vertical Measures as they explore everything from the basics of setting up a local search listing to what it means for SEO.

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