Rand is the CEO of SEOMoz, a company that develops state-of-the-art tools and software, and hosts one of the most popular SEO blogs in the world.
Rand answered interview questions posed by Todd Malicoat of Stuntdubl.com. The interview included some pertinent information.
Q: Define SEO in 200 words or less.
A: ~82% of all the clicks on search results in engines like Google & Bing go to the unpaid, organic results.
Only ~18% go to paid listings. SEO is the practice of attracting traffic from those unpaid results and involves a massive array of strategies and tactics.
Q: If you had to identify the TOP 10 ranking factors, what would they be?
A:
- Relevance
- User Experience
- Popularity
- Quality
- Accessibility
- Branding/Ubiquity
- UI/Design
- Engagement
- Freshness
- Speed
Q: What are the most common SEO mistakes?
A: Nearly all of them revolve around two fundamentally flawed (and often diametrically opposed) core beliefs:
#1 – SEO is about optimizing toward a perfect formula vs. building a great brand and optimizing that brand’s signals to the engines
#2 – SEO will take care of itself if you get the product right
Q: Define quality, relevance, value, and authority.
A: Quality – a combination of potentially subjective and objective measures of the experience provided by a product or service
Relevance – the degree to which something meets a desired intent
Value – the combination of psychological, physical, financial, or other subjective/objective return(s) provided by a given product or service
Authority – the perceived importance and reliability of a source, often based on historical performance/accuracy, brand association(s), and social proof
Q: What is the future of SEO?
A: The practice will continue to exist, but it will be less and less a silo and more of a piece of the broader earned/inbound/organic marketing puzzle. User experience, search, social, content, links, and branding are all connected. The engines are constantly working to make their algorithms reward those who build genuine interest and value across these channels and devalue those who exploit any individual signal.
Q: When asked about what he thinks about SEO, Rand answered…
A: I think of SEO just like any other facet of marketing – it’s an ongoing, competitive process that requires consistent, diligent effort and solid measurement to determine what’s working vs. not. SEO is also an extremely fast moving and constantly evolving field (even if you’re doing only the most white hat, timeless techniques, there are new opportunities presented by the engines and the marketplace every week!).
Here is the interview in its entirety: Rand Fishkin Interview
original article is in site-reference.com
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