An Interview of Casey Yandle (@cyandle) Written By Jim Spencer (@fairminder)
A friend of mine on Twitter @fairminder sent me these questions to answer as part of an interview so I am posting the interview on our blog and he will also post the interview on his blog as well. So here is our interview from this morning. Hope you like!
Jim: Morning Casey! Thank you for taking this time to do answer some questions for me.
Casey: Morning! It’s not a problem at all. I’m happy to participate!
Jim: Alright so let’s get started!
1. How long have you been working in (insert your industry) and what attracted you to it?
I started in SEO in 2002 after being laid off as a webmaster for a town’s community portal website. I just happen upon the job position by accident actually. I needed to get my “quote” of resumes submitted for unemployment so I figured I would just drop off my resume and be done with it. Six and a half years later I’m still here grinding away at it because I like seeing the results that we can produce for our clients.
2. In your opinion, what’s the measure of a good SEO/PR/Blogging professional?
To me, a good SEO / PR / Blogging professional is someone who stays within the Google Webmaster guidelines and continues to provide users with resourceful information whether it’s original content, experiments that they’ve conducted or keeping users up-to-date with what’s going on in the industry.
3. Whose blog do you read the most?
I think it’s a close tie between the blogs at SEOmoz and SEOBook actually with several others coming in behind them namely anything written by Lisa Barone and Jennifer Laycock.
4. What’s your best “SEO secret” or blogging tactic?
If I told you a SEO secret now would it still be a secret? 
So, a great blogging tactic. Well we tend to recap great posts that we have read that we think others should be reading as well since we find the posts so informative. There’s so much out there that sometimes it’s best to let others know what posts you think were some of the stronger posts rather than having our users have to search throughout the Internet for those articles.
5. Search engine algorithms are getting smarter, and a lot of people predict organic SEO services will become obsolete. How do you plan to adapt?
I really don’t see it becoming obsolete. We carefully point out to our clients what pitfalls they currently have with their website and how to fix those issues. And besides we stay within Google’s Guidelines. As long as you stay within what they want there’s no reason for you to have to adapt your services. We’ll keep up-to-date with what’s going on, but our services are services that are only geared for the long term for our clients.
6. Please describe the biggest challenge you face in your current job.
Not having enough time in the day to try out the services and techniques that we want to try out for our clients as well as offer our clients. Although, as we grow, I see this not being a BIG problem for that long.
7. Do you have any advice for someone who is interested in SEO / SEM / Social Media, but doesn’t have a background in it, on how to get started in this field?
Well obviously there’s not too many classes you can take that will educate yourself. I do recommend taking a creative writing class though as writing great content is very beneficial. My other recommendations are to check out websites such as SEOmoz, SEOBook, Webmaster World, Search Engine Land, and Marketing Pilgrim as well as anything written by Lisa Barone and Jennifer Laycock as well as studying up on analytical programs for tracking conversions.
8. If you could rank for any keyword phrase you don’t currently rank for, what would it be?
Although we’re mostly an search engine optimization company, we are currently trying to provide more Google Adwords management services for our clients right now. So the keyword that we would like to be ranked for right now is Google Adwords Professional.
9. Assuming you had never gone into SEO / SEM, what would you be doing now (professionally)?
I would probably still be a web designer / webmaster of some sorts since I still love designing websites. To me a great design is a work of art so I would probably would still be in the design industry working for a design firm dishing out designs.
10. Do you have any interest in politics? (or what’s your favorite professional sports team and why? If you don’t want to do the politics thing.)
Well since I stay away from mixing religion and politics with business I’ll take the sports question. My two favorites sports teams are the Chicago Bears and the Toronto Blue Jays. They’re an odd pair yes I know! I started pulling for both teams because when I was a little kid I would collect baseball and football cards. Mostly it was just Topps cards with the bubble gum inside. All I would get would be the common cards for those two teams. I did manage to get a Walter Payton card though. After getting so many team common cards I decided those would be my favorite teams to watch/pull for. To this day I still pull for both teams even through the bad times.
Well that’s the end of our interview. Thank you to @MelaniePhung for writing the questions for everyone. Feel free to follow me on Twitter (@cyandle) if you’d like!
@almacy - A Digital Strategy Expert.
@melaniephung - A DC SEO Strategist.
@martinbowling - A lover of Zima.
@utahseopro - A Utah SEO Consultant.
@fairminder - A Boston Website Design and SEO specialist.
@cyandle - A Google Adwords Professional.
@melanienathan - An Edmonton SEO specialist.
@jackleblond - A VP of Internet Strategy.
@djpaisley - A Digital Communications Strategist.
@vinceblackham - A Utah SEO specialist.
@researchgoddess - A Staffing Social Media Specialist.
@monicawright - A Maine SEO professional.
Link Building: I Ask You, What Is Yahoo! Buzz?
Throughout some of the various blogs I read I always noticed a button labeled Yahoo! Buzz at the end of each post, but I never knew what exactly is was until now. Kind of like Digg, Yahoo! Buzz allows its users to determine what are the most “remarkable” stories and videos around on the Internet. By voting for a particular article or video that you think is “remarkable” it will give that article the attention it deserves. Basically, Yahoo! Buzz showcases the best of the best voted by us everyday people as instead of editors, the Yahoo! users get to decide what is the best story / video out there on the Internet and these becomes to top-rated stories / videos around. Thus, you can see the resemblance to Digg and how Digg works.
According to Yahoo! Buzz’s website here it how it works:
- First, we determine the most popular topics that people are searching for on Yahoo!.
- Then, we showcase the most popular stories within those topics, based on activities like voting and emailing stories to friends.
- Stories with most Buzz may be published on the Yahoo! home page - you can impact what millions will see on Yahoo!.
You can also email any top story / video that you think is interesting to your friends as well as download Yahoo! Buzz widgets for your website. And, they even have a buzz log to show you what everyone is “talking” about on the Internet. It looks like this will be a very useful site for Yahoo!’s users. Now the question to answer is; which will be more popular: Yahoo! Buzz or Digg?
Tags: regency interactive, regency interactive corporation, search engine optimization, seo company, yahoo, yahoo buzzSearch Engine Optimization: How To Improve SEO On Your Website!
Interested in learning how to improve the SEO on your website? Jim Newsome posted an article today on Search Engine Land that gives you the Top 10 SEO tips to implement onto your website. He identifies the key concepts in SEO (gives credit to Vanessa Fox for the inspiration) being relevance, discoverability, and crawlability.
Below are the key points that Jim discusses in the article. To continue reading the article to learn more about each key point, click here.
- Keyword research is the first step in SEO.
- Get trustworthy advice from SEO sources on the web.
- Look after your code.
- Make navigation easy.
- Get links from trusted, relevant sources.
- Build a sitemap page and an XML sitemap.
- Don’t forget the technical stuff.
- Track your progress with a web analytics program.
- Tell search engines where you are.
- Remember that content is king.
As Jim points out there are more than just these Top 10 tips to do to improve the SEO on your website, but these are tried and true methods to help get your website moving in the right direction on the major search engines. If you’re interested in discovering what other methods you can do to your website, feel free to contact Regency Interactive today! Our experience with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) began in 1999 with an emphasis on developing focused and relevant websites. Known techniques along with our extensive knowledge allow Regency Interactive to consistently deliver page one placement across the search engines. Over eight years of SEO experience and research have molded our proven methodology to provide full service solutions for today’s websites from content enhancement to site code analysis.
Tags: regency interactive corporation, search engine optimization, search engine optimization firms, seo, seo company, seo firm, seo firms, seo tipsSearch Engine Optimization: Title Tags, Title Tags & Title Tags
Here’s a summarization of a good article from Stoney deGeyter from Pole Position Marketing that was posted on Search Engine Guide.
The title tag is one of the most important real estate areas on your website. Your title tags will appear on the clickable links within a search engine’s results page. Just fixing your title tags can often generate quickly an appreciable difference to your rankings. If you have lots of products or pages, it is worth the time to fix all your title tags so that they are unique to that specific page. Here is an example of a good title tag:
Page Keyword 1, Page Keyword 2 & Page Keyword 3 - Company Name
Here are some tips for title tags:
- Do whatever you need to make your title tags unique on each page of your website. Make sure it is not tied to anything else.
- You can use the business name in the title tag; though try to have it at the end! The people who already know your company by name can find you faster. Even though, you’re not a brand name yet, chances are you’ll eventually be one.
- Title tags should use specific keyword phrases. It should accurately reflect page content.
- Your title tag should not be more than 60-80 characters.
Title tags are one of the strongest ways to impact your rankings within the major search engines so if you have time to only do one thing on your website, work on those title tags ASAP! Make sure to contact Regency Interactive today to learn more about how we can best optimize your website.
Tags: search engine optimization, seo, seo company, title tagsSEM: Why There’s A Need For Search Marketing Standards
The support team at Regency Interactive read a good blog article last week from Ken Clark titled “The Next Frontier for Search Marketing Standards” that was posted on Search Engine Journal. Ken Clark is the Executive Vice President of Onward Search.
According to Ken, (and we agree) there are no standards for accessing the skills and knowledge level of a search engine marketing professional. In this line of work, it is critical that the person you hire to do you SEO / SEM work on your website is very knowledgeable and skilled.
The basic criteria for search marketing skills assessment should include the following:
- A goal to validate a candidate’s knowledge, as opposed to measuring his or her tactical approach;
- Frequent and regular content updates to adjust to changes in the search marketing environment;
- Using a quantitative, and therefore comparative, measurement to assess a company’s skills.
- Providing different assessments for each search marketing discipline, i.e. SEO, SEM, analytics, etc.
Every professional industry has developed tools for skills assessment so hiring organizations can accurately assess the professional workforce. For instance, in the IT industry, the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) certification has become the standard for Windows administration positions and NurseTesting has a variety of skill assessment tests for the nursing industry.
Developing skill assessment standards for the SEO industry provides benefits to both the company that is trying to locate and retain talented SEO / SEM employees and the search marketing professional who is focused on growing his or her SEO / SEM career. You can read more of his article here.
Tags: search marketing assessment, sem company, sem firm, sem skills, seo company, seo firm, seo skills
