Continuing with our SEO Interviews, today I got an opportunity to interview Kalena Jordan of Search Engine College. Kalena is a beauty with brains. Highly professional and adorable. Take a hot cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy this great interview. Quite a lot of information within. Here it goes!

1. For the people who don’t know you Kalena, please introduce yourself. (Who kalena is, where was she born, where she studied, where she worked, and when did she start in SEO.)

[Kalena] My name is Kalena Jordan and I was born in Sydney Australia, where I’ve spent most of my working life. My career background is in marketing for the corporate sector in Australia and New Zealand. I’ve worke for major PR and Internet companies throughout the Asia Pacific region but I really found my niche in SEO while working for a computer systems company from 1996 - 1999. I am currently Director of Studies for Search Engine College and Chief Executive Officer of search engine marketing firm Jordan Consulting Group. Jordan Consulting Group began life as Web Rank, my freelance SEO business that I started in 2000 after working for a major web design agency in New Zealand. In 2004 I went into business partnership with my husband and we renamed the company Jordan Consulting Group. JCG is an Internet consultancy that helps businesses achieve the highest possible return on investment from their web sites. Our services include web site strategy, consulting and training. I founded Search Engine College in 2004 as a result of years being asked questions relating to search engine optimization and marketing. I realized there was a market in online search engine marketing training so we hired the industry’s best tutors and created SEC to fill that market. I’m currently responsible for all student liaison and tutor for SEO and PPC courses.

2. What is your view on SEO? (Its marketing strategy, and effectiveness.)

[Kalena] I live and breathe SEO and have spent the past 12 years demonstrating the power and cost-effectiveness of SEO to sceptical companies. One of the most exciting things about SEO and something that has kept me interested all these years is the ability to create a major income stream for small companies via search engines where there was none before. Nothing beats the reaction from a client when they see that first traffic report after their site’s been optimized. Knowing you can be responsible for a 700 percent jump in their site traffic and a 200 percent increase in their income is an awesome feeling!

3. What is your view on Link Building? (Directories, Article submission, Paid links.)

[Kalena] It’s still very important. I would say building one way links from authority sites such as directories and portals is the best use of a link building campaign. Article submission and distribution is also a very powerful and effective way to build links and PageRank, but it’s extremely time-consuming. I don’t believe in paid links but the whole argument about what constitutes a paid link is a minefield that is difficult for webmasters to negotiate. I’m still not comfortable with Google’s current way of determining intent with links or whether a link is paid or not. I’m not quite ready to add “no follow” to all my links yet.

4. What is you view on Link Baiting? (How to start with it).

[Kalena] Don’t approach it as link baiting. Build interesting, quality content and you’ll build an audience naturally. The links will follow. Social media is a great medium to achieve this.

5. Where do you see SEO heading in future?

[Kalena] I think content is more important than ever. Links are still important, but not the focus anymore. Traffic and domain age have become more important in the past few years, as well as freshness of content. Optimize your pages for phrases that people are searching for and concentrate on these areas I mentioned and you really can’t go wrong with SEO.

6. What is your view on Social Media Marketing?

[Kalena] It goes hand in hand with SEO now. I don’t believe any SEO campaign can work in isolation anymore - it really needs to go hand in hand with content development and social media / marketing strategy.

7. Do you believe that Social Media Marketing is the next SEO? (Yes or No, and Why?)

[Kalena] It’s certainly a big part of things for reasons I mention above. When you use social media networks to promote your content, you are building links from related sites and (hopefully) juicy anchor text links so it contributes to your SEO efforts in a short period of time. That’s very powerful and can shorten the success timeframe of an SEO project.

8. What is your view about the importance of education in the search industry?

[Kalena] It’s incredibly important, because there is just so much misinformation out there. What’s that they say? A little bit of information is a dangerous thing. The wrong SEO information can make or break your site’s visibility in the search engines and threaten it’s future success. So webmasters need to know where they can learn the *right* approach to SEO. Our courses all teach methodologies that are encouraged by the search engines themselves in their Webmaster Guidelines, so anyone taking our courses can rest assured they are being taught the most effective and ethical ways to optimize their sites.

9. What would you suggest new bloggers should do to reach their goals?

[Kalena] Socialize! Make contacts in the social media networks. Read voraciously and apply what they learn. Provide useful, interesting content on a regular basis and promote others who do the same. It’s not about you! It’s about contributing to the education of others so if your competitor writes a particularly helpful post, link to it!

10. How many hours do you spend blogging each week?

[Kalena] Oh my gosh. I would say about 20 hours because I write for several other blogs beside my own www.ask-kalena.com.

11. Any other projects that you are currently involved in besides your your blog? (Here you could talk about Search Engine College and other stuffs.)

[Kalena] As the Director of Studies for www.SearchEngineCollege.com, I’m constantly liaising with students and potential students interested in our courses or already taking them. I’m also tutor for all SEO and Pay Per Click courses so I have my hands full grading assignments most days. We have students in 32 countries so it keeps me quite busy! Apart from that, I’m a regular blogger and writer for www.sitepronews.com and I am often called away for speaking engagements at various search engine conferences in Australia and New Zealand.

12. What’s the secret to creating great content?

[Kalena] Write from the heart and be honest. Talk about your own experiences, good and bad. Build a useful tool from existing technology e.g. Google Maps API. Appeal to the essential human nature. Build a community around your product or service. Take holidays and get out of your comfort zone!

13. What would you like to say to our readers before we end this interview?
[Kalena] Anyone can build a great blog or site if they put their mind to it. But you have to LOVE what you are building. You have to wake up in the morning and look forward to working on your site. If you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, how can you expect anyone else to?

In the end, I would like to thank Kalena for taking out her time to do the interview. Much appreciated.

Popularity: 20% [?]

I got an opportunity to interview Jeff Quipp CEO of Search Engine People. Jeff is indeed one of the best SEOs and Marketing guys around in the arena. Take a hot cup of coffee, sit back and enjoy this great interview. Quite a lot of information within. Here it goes!

1. For people who don’t know you Jeff, please introduce yourself. (Who Jeff is, where was he born, where he studied, where he worked, when did he started in SEO and what motivated him to opt SEO as a career.)

Answer - I’m a 42 year old father of 3, happily married, and a sports, science and technology nut. I’m President of Search Engine People Inc. … we’re based out of Toronto Canada.

I started in search in the mid 90’s. At that time I worked for the original search engine … Canada’s Yellow Pages. Started in Sales, went to Marketing (in charge of headings at one point in time), progressed to Business development where I launched the first speech enabled portal in North America (VoiceNet it was called at the time). After that I took on YellowPages.ca, and we were spun off into Sympatico-Lycos Inc. (SL). My role evolved again, and I found myself in charge of traffic and distribution for all SL sites. Obviously search played quite prominently into achieving my objectives, but we couldn’t find any really good honest search companies at the time. I saw this as a tremendous opportunity and challenge, and in 2001 launched Search Engine People Inc.

2. What is your view on SEO? (Its marketing strategy, and ROI.) Do you think SEO is the same, like it used to be 5 years ago?

Answer - Great question! SEO is a great medium … but its only part of the marketing mix. SEO works best when someone isn’t too invested in it, because we cannot control search results. Companies need to be using other media too. I’ve seen some great research that says search increases the effectiveness of all other media, and visa versa. That said, I’m a firm believer in ROI. Each medium must justify its own costs, and fortunately that much easier to do with search than with other more creative media.

Do I think search is the same as it was five year ago? Yes and no. Yes from the perspective that the search engines’ goals haven’t really changed, only their tactics. So, if 5 years ago you optimized with the engines’ long term goals in mind, you haven’t had to change your tactics too drastically. If a company is more reactionary, they’ll have had to undergo massive changes in their tactics. In the end, they search engines are still trying to differentiate real from artificial links.

3. What is your view on Link Building? (Directories, Article submission, Paid links.)

Answer - Let me begin by saying … link building is a crucial element to SEO!!! Links are thought to account for a high percentage of the algorithms of the major search engines. That said I’m all about diversifying risk. I like to think we take a mutual fund type approach to link building, meaning we use many many different approaches. Too much reliance on any one approach and you could find yourself in trouble if Google changes. Accordingly, sure we submit sites to relevant directories, engage in article submission, and yes even buy links where the links generate a respectable ROI (before even considering the ranking value). The aforementioned link building tactics also permit you to control the pages being linked to, and the anchor text being used. Generally as we see it. Link Building helps us create awareness of unique content that the client has on their site.

4. What is you view on Link Baiting? Is it a big daddy’s work or newbies could also do it. (How should a newbie start with it).

Answer - I’m not sure I like the term “link baiting” … its got a negative connotation. Essentially the concept is to generate content that you know others will like enough to want to share it with friends and yes link to it. If that’s the case, I’m all for it. So in reality, in its simplest form its about:
a) making sure the site and content is SEO friendly
b) making sure there is lots of high quality content on a site, and that more is being constantly added
c) promoting that content to make sure many people know about it

How should a newbie start? First, just start doing it … get in and get your hands dirty. We learn more through trial and error than we do by learning vicariously (by watching others). Goto Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, and other social voting sites, and look for patterns in the pieces that reach the front page. Talk to friends about their ideas. Brainstorm with the client if need be. Look for missing content, and create it.

I also think there is a tremendous opportunity for video and images at the moment. Most people are still trying to wrap their heads around using video and images, so newbies are not as far behind in that realm.

5. Where do you see SEO heading in future? Will it die or will take a re-birth? (Advice for newbies.)

Answer - SEO will never die. People will always need to search to find what they are looking for. Will it change … sure. Will it die … NO!

Instead, I see a number of things happening that will permit search to evolve to become much more efficient yet:
a) much more personalization … the engines learning your preferences
b) more integration of friends thoughts and opinions, which will help to reorder the search results for you (I wrote a more detailed post about this here.)
c) search will be available 24/7 via mobile devices
d) multi-modal means of input and output (text, speech, brainwaves … threw that in there just in case someone was dozing off ).

6. What is your view on Social Media Marketing?

Answer - Currently, social media marketing is an exceptionally broad term … too broad. Accordingly, lets narrow the view to encompass social bookmarking and voting sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit.

Currently, these sites do not really produce great quality traffic, although can produce tremendous volumes of traffic, and links. Also, depending on what your goals are, these social media can help you achieve other goals such as RSS Subscribers, awareness, etc.

Longer term, as word-of-mouth aspects from social media (eh. Thumbs ups from Stumbleupon, Delicious saves, etc.) are intergrated into the search results, and begin to affect the ordering of the search results, the job of seos will change substantially. SEO will become less about link building, and more about influencing key influencers, and managing reputations and perceptions of reputations. As powerful as word of mouth is currently … it will become much more powerful yet once the integration of word-of-mouth into search occurs.

7. Do you believe that Social Media Marketing is the next SEO? (Yes or No, and Why?)

Answer - No … I believe the word-of mouth aspect of social media will be integrated into SEO (see answer above).

8. How many hours did you spend blogging each week at your initial stages and now?

Answer - Initially, I spent likely 5-6 hours blogging a week. Now, I probably spend 6-8 hours a week, just because I’m more experienced and efficient, though now write between 3 and 4 postings a week.

9. What would you suggest new bloggers should do to reach their goals in SEO and SMO?

Answer - Great great question!
1) Read Skellie and DoshDosh, and learn from them. Both are infinitely talented, and all around stellar bloggers.
2) Read Sphinn… lots of great information surfaces there too.
3) Think outside the box … don’t write about what everyone else is writing about. Find and break new ground based on your background and interests. Hopefully you’ll find a niche for yourself.
4) Experiment, Experiment, Experiment … then experiment again! If your successful from the get go … you’re doing something wrong, or you’re damn lucky.
5) A good friend of mine (Brian Wallace from Nowsourcing) told me early on … Jeff, only 16% of people actually read what you write, the rest just scan. So, read this to learn how to write scannable content.
6) Network! Join Sphinn, StumbleUpon, Delicious, MyBlogLog, and make friends. Then expand these friends to other social media like Digg, Reddit, Mixx, etc.
7) Enjoy yourself! If you ever stop enjoying yourself, it will show, and readers will become disinterested. Its got to be a passion!

10. What’s the secret to creating great content?

Answer - I don’t think there is a secret so to speak. Though I think there are a number of things one can do to help.

1) read everything you can get your hands on - often unique content is just the ability to marry two or more separate concepts together. The more you read, the more separate concepts you become aware of, and the more likely you’ll find something that binds or links them.

2) talk with others - when two people get together to hash out an idea, you inevitably build on each others ideas, and the result is larger than either of the two of you could have conceived of individually. I’ve heard it referred to as `the Third Mind” principle.

3) Run current concepts in your space through your “experience filter”. Your life/job experiences are unique to you. No one else has those experiences … so you see things differently than everyone else. If you’ve got a sales background, apply sales theories and tactics to the topic you blog about.

11. Any other projects that you are currently involved in besides your SEO company?

Answer - Hehe … raising 3 kids. That’s the project I have the most fun with. Trying to raise them to become confident, smart, well behaved hockey players and fellow SEOs (just kidding). Seriously … between blogging, running Search Engine People, my addiction hmmm passion for social media, and the three kids, there’s no time for anything else.

12. What would you like to say to our readers before we end this interview? Any trade secrets of your own that would help the readers! What should one do to succeed in this highly competitive arena!

Answer - Honestly, my biggest secret … think outside the box and create great content. I try never to repackage what’s been written previously … and least not if I don’t have a different spin or perspective. Search is more about marketing than technology. Its not about trying to fool Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Ask … its about giving them exactly what they want. They want superior content! There are some fantastic opportunities with image and video content at the moment, as well as with widgets and gadgets. Text content is a little more competitive, although if you’ve got someone who can think outside the box to come up with original ideas, or who can write well enough to capture the attention of the masses … you’ll get a following, and become an authority in your space.

In the end I would like to thank you Jeff, for taking out the time for the interview.

Popularity: 13% [?]