Interview with Rand Fishkin, seomoz.org

Today's interview is with Rand Fishkin, CEO and Co-Founder of SEOmoz.org. His website is one of the most popular and famous search marketing resources in the world.

When did you first get involved with search marketing?

My first experience with SEO was in the late 1990's when I played around with getting pages listed on Yahoo!, Lycos, NorthernLight and AltaVista. I became more serious and more professional about the process in 2002-3 when we first had a client that needed search traffic to grow their small e-commerce site.

Seomoz.org is one of the most popular SEO resources in the world. What is the average number of daily visitors at your site?

We get between 12-16,000 visits a day during the week, and about 8,000 a day on weekends and holidays. On days when our content is heavily linked-to or we have some viral success, the numbers can spike up to 60-80,000.

What's the key behind popularity of Seomoz.org?

I'd say it's the community we've built by providing valuable content and tools. There's no secret here, just a lot of hard work and smart moves about what will interest the community and how to present it. Early on, we saw the need for a Beginner's Guide to SEO and wrote one. Later, we noted that a lot of folks in the SEO sphere wanted to know what was in Google's algorithm, so we made the Search Engine Ranking Factors document. I think that paying attention to the needs of the market by getting out there on the other blogs, forums and to community events and conferences has been key.

Seomoz.org blog has more than 23K of RSS readers. What is the best way to gain RSS subscribers?

Quality of writing and value of subject matter. If you can write intelligently about subjects that impact people's jobs or lives in a meaningful way, they're going to subscribe to your feed.

Rand, what are your favorite social networks?

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I'm a big fan of Twitter lately 🙂 Getting news before anyone else is a lot of fun, and being able to broadcast my own activities and see what friends and industry notables are up to has been great, too. Along with Twitter, I'm heavily addicted to Reddit and Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) where I find a lot of great material on a wide variety of subjects. I don't spend much time on Facebook, MySpace or LinkedIn, though we have folks here at the SEOmoz offices that are more invested in those networks.

What's the greatest thing about search marketing?

Almost certainly the people. I think this industry has introduced me to a phenomenal number of truly caring, well-intentioned, interesting people. It's one of the reasons I participate so much in the blogosphere and social world of SEO as well as the business side of things.

What's the worst?

Probably the perception - the search marketing field has been fighting for legitimacy and a better image for years, and I think we're still a long ways away. Being seen as a spammer or a huckster is never fun, and it hurts efforts to gain credibility inside organizations that need help and in the media (which loves to portray the engines vs. SEOs storyline as a conflict).

Your vision of the Web's Future?

I think we're going to almost certainly see greater globalization, greater adoption of the web on mobile devices and the elimination of desktop-style software. I'm also a big believer that we're not far away from the web overtaking devices like stereos and televisions and providing the content that was previously delivered via those channels in an online incarnation.

Thank you very much, Rand! What is your final word to Russian bloggers?

They rock! And we'd love to see more of them at SEOmoz and learn more about how search and the web work in Russia. Most English-speaking SEOs have no experience at all with Yandex or how to do SEO in Russia, so it would be terrific to hear from the experts.

Mike Globator

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