Rand Fishkin
Below we have an interview with Rand Fishkin of SeoMoz.org. Rand and the team over there really know what they are talking about and have one of the best blogs on the Internet about SEO.
1. Your blog has become an authority source in the SEO industry. How do you feel your blog has helped you grow your consulting business?
I honestly believe that the blog has been the biggest driver of branding, marketing and awareness for our business. I have so many people tell me that with all they’ve heard about us, mostly online, they can’t believe it’s just 8 people in a tiny Seattle office 
The blog reaches an incredibly wide swath of web professionals, and I think that’s a testament to how impressive the value of an educational, engaging blog can be.
2. How beneficial do you think a blog can be for a website with regards to SEO and why?
In terms of SEO, blogs do a lot of great things. Most blog software is inherently very search engine friendly, which means the engines easily spider it, the keywords are typically in the right places and there’s few indexing or retrieval problems. On the other side of the equation, blogs are remarkable marketing tools, not just because of their user-friendly format, but also due to the culture of linking that exists within the blogosphere. Since links are one of the biggest drivers of search engine rankings, a blog is a fantastic way to get high placement.
3. There is a lot of debate today around paid links. Search engines don’t like them since they can artificially inflate search engine rankings, but selling text link ads can be very profitable for bloggers? What is your stance on the issue? Do you think bloggers should stop selling link space?
I certainly don’t think anyone should stop engaging in a profitable revenue stream that doesn’t hurt anyone else. Bloggers should feel free to sell links as much as they like. The flip side is that Google should also feel free to find paid links and remove their value (if they like) or even penalize the sites selling that link juice. The current methodology of asking webmasters to use nofollow is flawed because that message can only reach so many ears, will be disobeyed by many of them and is thus, impossible to effectively scale. So, since Google is going to have to build algorithms to detect paid links and eliminate their value anyway, why bother to push the “nofollow” agenda? I’m a bit lost on the logic there, I must admit.
4. Tell us a little about social marketing. What is it and how can it help bloggers with promotion?
Well, there’s a ton to know, but Jane’s social media marketing article is probably a very good place to start. The concepts are fairly simple - use the social niches of the web to reach people for branding, marketing and link building purposes. If you do it well, you can attract thousands of visits and a lot of midshare.
5. You recently added YouMoz, a Web 2.0 element where your readers can submit stories and the best ones are promoted to the homepage. How has this affected the traffic, page views, time spent on the site, and other stats relating to your blog;s readership?What advantage have you seen on creating YouMoz?
YOUmoz probably accounts for about 10% of our daily traffic - about 1000 visits. It’s also a great way to get a diverse range of opinions and build a community in a way that hasn’t been done before. We’re big fans and we hope to grow it even more in the months to come.
6. You recently created a paid premium section to your blog with access to more in-depth articles and guides. What tips do you have for a blogger that would like to sell his/her own product?
Build a great product, provide great service, stay in constant contact with your buyers/members and make a great landing page. In order to do those things, you’ll need lots of contact with your customers, so prepare to listen to a lot of criticism and praise, sort through what’s valuable and take the best of it to heart.
7. What advice do you have for bloggers who aren’t getting much search engine traffic and would like to improve their rankings?
That’s a pretty broad question. I think I’d probably suggest they do some serious reading - probably first off - How to Choose What NOT to Blog About. Then I’d check out Darren Rowse’s SEO for Bloggers and How to Increase Blog Traffic . There’s a ton of material that goes into getting traffic from the engines, and the industry is so dynamic that it changes every few months. My only piece of advice that’s been universal from the start would be - write the best work you can on a subject that your audience will find addictive. The technical and marketing parts will help to bolster that, but without a solid base, you’re up a creek.
8. What is the number one piece of advice you have for new bloggers?
Don’t launch your blog on Wordpress’ or Blogspot’s domain. Put it on your own website, so you can control the site.
