SEO strategy and tactics - interview with Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz
Rand Fishkin is the CEO and Co-Founder of SEOmoz one of one of the most visible companies in the search marketing world. He is also the main author of the SEOmoz blog that is a constant resource of new ideas, strategies and tactics for SEO. In the following interview he talks about his company and the new tool “Linkscape” that can actually perform a crawl that covers more than 30 billion pages.
Tell us a little bit about SEOmoz?
SEOmoz is a company founded by my Mom and I. Originally, we did primarily SEO consulting, but now the free sections of the site (the blog, marketplace, free tools and guides) and PRO membership (which includes Q+A, upgraded tools and Linkscape) are the focus of the company. We’ve got 17 employees - 8 developers, 3 SEOs and some marketing and support staff. We’re also hiring right now so if you know any great SEOs in Seattle, we’d love a reference :-)
When and how did you start?
Gillian and I started doing web work in 1997, but in 2002 we began SEO projects and by 2004, SEOmoz had a name and was a small blog and set of tools. In 2005 we officially began projects under the SEOmoz brand name.
What kind of services do you offer?
Most of what we do today is focused on PRO membership, which includes a Q+A service, where members can ask questions on any SEO-related topic and get answers from us online, lots of cool tools for SEO analysis and common SEO tasks (including our new link intelligence tool - Linkscape), and tons of content for learning and honing SEO skills.
Who are your customers/clients?
We’ve got more than 3,000 members - everyone from the SEO departments at HP.com and the NYTimes.com to small SEO shops and individual webmasters who run their own affiliate or ad-backed blogs and sites.
Do you have a german website?
We don’t have a German website, and I’m not terribily familiar with the German SEO landscape. I do have some good friends in Germany, though - Christoph Cemper (cemper.com), Thomas Bindl (Refined Labs) and Marcus Tandler (mediadonis.net).
Tell us about your new tool “Linkscape”? How does it actually work?
Linkscape works on a link graph of the web, based on a crawl we built that covers more than 30 billion pages. Using this massive dataset, you can see metrics and links to virtually any domain and page on the web. It’s a fantastic tool for link analysis, comparing websites and pages that rank well in the engines and understanding how they’ve earned their rankings and, of course, for link building, too - finding where the competition is earning good links and pursuing them.
Could small or medium size german online-shops use this tool?
Absolutely. The index is currently a bit biased towards English-language sites, but we’ve been surprised several times to find that we actually show more links to a .de (German) site than Yahoo! Site Explorer!
What’s the idea behind your blog?
We really wanted a place with a high signal to noise ratio, that would provide daily value and interest for our readers. We also didn’t want to cover the same topics as the other search industry sites - there’s plenty of news out there, so we’re much more of a tactics and strategy focused content portal.
What are you’re favourite 5 SEO blogs?
Well, I already mentioned some German SEOs I like, so I’ll shoot for my favorite blogs in the space:
- searchengineland.com - if you’re not reading it, you simply won’t know what’s going on in the world of search
- searchenginejournal.com - lately, their articles have been terrific - covering lots of tools and techniques in the SEO world
- seobook.com - Since Aaron picked up Peter as a co-blogger, the quality of the posts and content there has gone even higher.
- stonetemple.com - Eric Enge puts together phenomenal posts on SEO and great interviews to boot.
- vanessafoxnude.com - Even though she doesn’t post often, the content quality is tremendous, and you can count on the fact that Vanessa knows what she’s talking about :)
So what’s coming down the pipe, what’s next with SEOmoz?
Well…. We’ve got a lot of improvements coming to Linkscape, and a toolbar that will let you see mozRank and our other metrics across the web. We’ve also got another secret project unveiling early next year :-)
