SEtalks.com is a platform to talk about SEO, Social and Inbound Marketing related topics. We

also offer SEO services to businesses.

My name is Moosa Hemani, and I am a SEO consultant, search blogger, a link builder, who now offers highly professional, and ethical search engine optimization services, to help my clients get better business visibility and growth through online channels.

Interview By Moosa Hemani

Interview With The Sharpest Brain In Search,

Bill SebaldA person who have over 13 years of SEO and digital marketing experience and music lover.

He is the Founder, Partner and SEO at Greenlane Search Marketing LLC. He previously worked but bigger brands like GNC, Ace Hardware, eBay and more.

Questions

& Answers

In this interview I am asking some important question about SEO related problems and Mr. Bill Sebald answered these question very properly, it’s very helpful hope you like it. Here I started…..

Before SEO I was a ratio presenter so I have an idea of how sexy this music business is so my question is, what makes you come back to web and SEO games?

I struck out as a rock star so I had to have a plan B. The truth is, my time in the music business was the best thing for my adult career.  I got into the web just as the music industry was accepting it as a real medium, and in parallel, was working on a music entertainment site. Rollingstone.com wasn’t even a thing yet. Just as I learned to play guitar to impress women, I created the website to interview, meet, and hang with celebrities. But the byproduct was being introduced to SEO, which I took to more than web design or coding. I really just enjoyed the work (and obviously still do). We had no budget, so we were all about the guerilla marketing – which SEO truly was at the time.

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Mobile Searches Are Increasing YOY, and Google is also giving more importance to the websites that are mobile friendly. Do you thing it is must for any website to the mobile friendly or one can survive even without it?`

I look at it as a matter of priority. Some sites don’t need a mobile site… yet. Let’s say you have a car accident. You’re standing on the highway frantically using your iPhone to find contact information on your insurance company’s website, and you’re looking for a collision center to come tow your heap. It makes perfect sense to create a mobile experience for what most people would use your mobile site for – quick, fast access to certain information. I just worked on a collision center’s site where they had 15 locations. Analytics told us that contact information and a mobile-friendly “store locator” were paramount. I’m a responsive guy at heart, though we were able to especially promote a select few site assets with some clever coding. However, if you’re a paper clip manufacturer, and nobody is searching you on a mobile device, I see no reason not to defer creating the mobile site until you have little else to do  If you have a website, you better

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have goals. If the data allowed, I might first recommend for the paper clip manufacturer to put their resources into achieving those marketing goals before going down the “mobile-redesign” road. I meet prospects all the time who think they should have a mobile site and a social presence, simply because they feel everyone has one. That’s a terrible reason. The problem is, sometimes they have nothing to promote or share, or any content strategy to speak of. Sometimes these companies would be better suited investing in marketing automation and investing marketing dollars into collateral for their business development department. Get to the mobile site when it makes sense, and maybe after achieving website goals or content initiatives. Unless you’re using a Blackberry from the 2008, most sites are passable on a smart phone anyway. If it’s not, you probably have bigger existing issues with your desktop site. I also think you shouldn’t just jump into bed with a standard “best practice” mobile design. It really needs to be thought out and designed to fit the needs of the mobile users. A lot of the mobile plugins I’ve seen are terrible. I read one section of an entertainment site every morning that just upgraded to include a mobile design. This design actually suppresses the section I like to read. Why?

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What is the one thing you think is most important for local business to implement and get most out of the search engine channel?

Local businesses always have the privilege of getting away with being really personal. I suggest leveraging that. It’s fun and engaging for searchers, but like any page, it won’t convert if it’s not the right flavor (is warm and fuzzy a flavor?).

Right now I find it quite easy to rank for local keywords due to much less competition (specific niche in a specific region), but in my opinion, ranking and converting are two separate things that should always be in the same sentence. If you’re going to really benefit from a local listing, be a personal company screaming your values in the first 3 seconds of a visit. Don’t be a faceless pizza parlor. Promote the hell out of your dining room, your awards, your owner,

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your ingredients, your videos, etc. Look like you have money to invest in your website, and you’ll look successful to visitors (neuromarketing for the win, especially on the local front!). People want to check out what they perceive to be the “most successful / friendly / award winning pizza place on the block!” Again, you choose your flavor.

Don’t be a website that looks like nobody loves it. It’s such an easy, fun thing a local company can do for conversions. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Yet, so many local sites are pure vanilla. I push this on all my local clients. After all, I want the traffic I bring them from search engines to convert. That’s how I keep my job.

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Talking about On-page Optimization, 3 areas that are most important in 2014?

Here’s the approach we’re taking at Greenlane (I asked Michael, Jon, and Keith on our team this question for their input too! Super brilliant guys): 1. Authority – Not the “authority” we generally tie to backlinking, but content that proves you’re an authority on your subject. Big brands win because they’re seen as the best. The immutable laws of marketing worked for them, and should be applied for SEO’s work. Bring marketing to SEO.

2. Entities and relationships – Google is clearly looking for new ways to rank pages, so we’re banking on building up these entities. Triples all day!

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3. Topics – Google has graduated to a 7th grade education, and they’re comprehension is getting better. So, our landing pages must play up to a smarter Google. Our pages are going to rank even better when they deserve to. The idea is to make them a must-have asset for potential visitors. Using the content to tell a story, answer a question or solve a problem, etc., in order to take better advantage of conversational search.

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We all know that content is important and if the content is powerful a little push of promotion can take it a long way! But what exactly is the powerful content? Some tips!

I’d say, don’t just make content that is nice. Everyone is making that content. Instead make content that changes the way people think. An infographic that someone will share, and maybe print out and put on their cubicle wall is nice, but an article that makes people say, “oh wow – I really need to relearn everything I’ve been taught,” will really give your website sticking power. Don’t phone it in, don’t be lazy… take a gamble. At Greenlane we take ideas to our clients like typical marketers. We’ve had clients tell us they’re surprised by the type of ideas we bring since it’s not what they traditionally thought of as SEO. We love the ideas like they’re our babies. It’s hard to give tips here, because it’s very client (and industry) specific. But as you browse the web, take notes of cool things you see. Our team is

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always trying to think of how something cool can be leveraged by our clients. My favorite part of the question is “a little push of promotion.” That’s the part that I feel gets too little play. Part of creating this content should be determining where the hell you’re going to release it. Going back to music for a little analogy – if a rock band plays in their garage, and never leaves their garage, nobody hears them. If the same band sets up their gear for an impromptu jam session on i95, traffic will back up for miles. That’s a band you’re going to pay attention to.

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Say no to Guest Blogging, 2014 is a year without guest blogging and more. These are few of the hot one line news in 2014. What is your take on this?

I’d be surprised if guest posting went away. I think there will be plenty of lazy SEOs still going down this road (which is a shame, but hey, nobody beats a tactic to death like an SEO). I wrote about guest posting in I’m Not Afraid Of A Google Update Against Guest Posting. Since I wrote it, Google came out with some statements that sort of side with my take. They’ve also come out with some absurd requests. Truthfully I’m not actively doing it for clients, but I think there’s perfectly valid use for it in a content strategy. Authorship feeds guest posting.

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Any Link Generation tactics that you have used in the past and got exponential results in terms of links and traffic!

Tons got SEO value and virtually no traffic value. Google has since squashed them. But now I think about link building – as often as I can – as a vehicle to get SEO value and referral traffic. I really like building the links that get clicked. The scholarship tactic for example; it hasn’t been abused yet that I can see (thought the SEO results appear to be softening), and students get a chance to benefit from the link in terms of receiving grants for their college education. Take it a step or two deeper, and create something with the same value specific to the niche of your clients. That’s good work! The trick is to be where the people are. They’re not in comment boards of outdated blog posts. They’re not in old forum boards. They’re not on abandoned websites. The trick is to create the

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information people are seeking, and make sure you’re where the traffic is to give directions. That takes research I think a lot of SEOs don’t tackle.

Or, like a Wiki or Freebase editor who cares about the quality and accuracy of information on the web, SEOs are usually really good at find information that’s outdated. We know the tricks – they can benefit us. I’ve had tons of success in updating content on the web with a link benefit to my clients’ expertise. We wrote a post about the tactic and created a tool called The Outdated Content Finder.

My best tip is to gather up the tactics (authored from all the SEOs who are way more clever than me) and figure out the non-lazy way to use them. But let me point you to 2014 Edition of Link Building Secrets Revealed – I just gave one in their eBook that has worked pretty well for me for ecommerce clients. It’s about being where the customers are, and serving their need.

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You have Work With giant Brands like eBay, NFL and more And now you are working with small and mid size business. What is the basic difference you see other than the fact that big brands got big dollars!!

Usually there’s less red tape. The big brands and the big dollars come with a lot of roadblocks. The smaller companies are nimble. Sometimes these are the companies of our actual point of contact (and not just a pit stop in someone’s career path). When you’re talking to the dude who actually owns the company, you get a whole different level of passion, support, and respect. I still work with a couple big brands now, and I do enjoy those challenges. Enterprise SEO is a whole different beast. It keeps you sharp. I hate throwing recommendations over a fence and hoping they get adopted, but sometimes that’s all you can do from a vendor perspective. I definitely try to avoid those kind of relationships, no matter what size the client is. Truthfully not all big brands are that way, which is a great thing to see.

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While doing SEO, 5 tools you use regularly and you would like to recommend to others as well.

5 is tough! I have several.

1. Buzzstream – It’s a CRM tool, a link manager and prospecting tool, and data retrieval system in one. I’m a huge fan of this tool.

2. Rank Ranger – I still care about rankings. I think they’re a great directional metric. Rank Ranger does daily rank tracking with a ton of different metrics and white labeled reports. You pay for the keywords, so we track our “vital” keywords here.

3. Advanced Web Rankings – for the big data research, Advanced Web Rankings can pull search metrics in addition to rankings for as many keywords as you throw at it.

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4. Screaming Frog – I’m in there on a weekly basis. This tool can do so much. I’m excited to watch it grow.

5. Cognitive SEO – Awesome back link analysis. This tool is really helpful (and visual).

6. I know you asked for 5, but I have to also say SEMrush. I’m all about competitive research, and from a SERP perspective, their core functionality is really brilliant.

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You are in this SEO game since a very long time, so how do you explain your job to your family and friends who have no idea of how this industry works?

My family has no idea what I do. I’m convinced they think I run porn sites. Surprisingly though, more people have heard of SEO than I would have expected. It’s more mainstream now than ever. If I’m at a party, and someone doesn’t know what it is, I say, “basically I get hired to help you rank #1 on Google.” Then they nod politely and walk away. The SEO is not the most popular guy at most parties.

Thanks To Him

Sir! Thank you very much for taking some time out of your busy schedule and answering some of my questions. I am sure your answers will help me and my readers to better understand how SEO works!

Interview Of Bill Sebald By Mossa Hemanihttp://www.setalks.com/seo-Interview-with-bill-sebald

Contact:www.setalks.com