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.
Four Great Twitter Applications
Toanswer is a very useful Twitter application. It is very similar to Yahoo answers. You ask a question and then it is indexed, and you wait for other uses to respond back. Here is how you get started! You simply add the profiles Toask & Toanswer to your Twitter account. You can post a twitter update in the following format: “@ToAsk are there any good websites for a computer themed Wordpress theme?”
Toanswers scours the twitterverse, then finds the answer and will post it on the homepage. It may take a few minutes to appear due to Twitter’s API limitation.
Twitter Search (Formerly Summize). Twitter is also a good functional tool itself. You can go to the website and search for whatever you like i.e. your company name or your industry related keywords. You can track conversations about a particular topic as well. You can also see who is talking about you, your brand or a topic you are interested in. For example, a user can type in “SEO” and you can find hundreds of useful tips and people in the SEO field.
Have you ever been on twitter and you are trying to keep up with all your tweeples at a conference, or even try to keep up with an important conversation? Hashtags will be your weapon of choice. Hashtags are a way to group twitter messages of choice. Hashtags is an opt-in service. You must follow @hashtags for the service to index your tweets. To see all tweets for a hashtag simply add the hashtag name at the end of this URL: http://hashtags.org/tag/”keyword” (i.e. http://hashtags.org/tag/SEO).
Twitter Local helps you find local people who use Twitter in your area. This is a great networking tool to find other users in your area who may be in the same line of business or whom have similar interests in your field. It also shows a leader board of what users have tweeted the most in your area (i.e. @cyandle for our area). The results only show people who have sent tweets within the last 24 hours. If you want a run down of who uses twitter locally to you, but not posted lately, you can always use a Google query command such as site: twitter.com location Raleigh NC.
These are just some of the tools we use with our twitter accounts here at Regency Interactive. Feel free to contact us today for your free, no obligation consultation and free Internet visibility report. Just 10-15 minutes with one of our search engine marketing consultants could be the difference in your business just getting by or becoming a major player in your industry.
Tags: regency interactive, regency interactive corporation, social media, twitterI Ask You, What Is Twitter?
Several days walking around the office and reading my daily blogs, I kept seeing the word twitter. “What is twitter?” I ask myself. I turned to the almighty Google and typed in “twitter” and began my search.
It turns out that Twitter is a free social powerful networking and micro blogging service which allows users to send “update” or “tweets” up to 140 characters long on Twitter’s website. The updates are displayed on the users profile page and instantly delivered to other users have subscribed to them. You can even have your Twitter updates show up on your personal/business website as well as a few social networks such as Myspace and Facebook. There are also Twitter clients that you can use to see updates the people you are “following” have issued as well as post your own updates.
Twitter is also a helpful writing tool when it comes to writing title tags as well as description tags. For SEO purposes, title tags should be between 60-80 characters and description tags should be between 150-225 characters. You can start learning how to summarize your ideas and thoughts and thus incorporate that into your work.
What else is Twitter good for you ask? Well you can also use it to network with people in your industry as well as indirectly talk about your products and services. With Regency Interactive being in the Internet marketing / SEO industry, I find it a fascinating and amazing tool. It’s also very addictive I might add so be careful!
Tags: regency interactive, regency interactive corporation, social media, twitterBlogging: What Nutella (and Jennifer Laycock) Can Teach You About Blog Marketing
Yesterday, Jennifer Laycock from Search Engine Guide spoke at a conference given by Ohio Web Leaders on “What Nutella (and I) Can Teach You About Blog Marketing” and she posted an article about her speech on her website today.
In the article, she references a conversation that had transpired during one of their morning sessions and how she later used it to demonstrate what her speech was going to be about. Even though we at Regency Interactive are familiar with what her speech topic was about, we feel the example she gave definitely allowed the audience to understand what she was trying to convey about social media and how it can influence users.
Make sure you read her whole article as it makes for a great read as the people at Search Engine Guide always provide in depth and intuitive articles!
Tags: blogging, blogs, jennifer laycock, social media
