Rand Fishkin will be speaking about “SEO Tools” at SearchFest 2010, which will take place on March 9th at the Governor Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Tickets are available now. To purchase, please click the following link.
1) Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.
I started working on the web in 1997 while in college and transitioned to SEO in 2002 as our webdev clients started needing those services. In 2004 I founded SEOmoz.org as a hobby blog, which then turned into a consulting business. In 2007, we launched a self-service SaaS product called "PRO membership" that has fueled the company’s growth ever since. Today, I’m the CEO of a profitable, venture-backed startup with 20 employees and a large International audience. My job is to inspire SEOmoz’s culture, drive strategy, evangelize our products and build the executive team.
2) Do you think Venture Capitalists care about the search marketing efforts of a company they would consider funding? (…taking the typical VC scenario, not yours…)
Many do, some don’t. For example, Benchmark Capital in Silicon Valley looks very closely at the SEO ability of their portfolio companies, and even invests to help train up the marketing staff of those firms. Union Square Ventures in New York has a full-time SEO employed to help analyze potential opportunities and assist existing investments. Ignition Partners (who invested in SEOmoz), has their EIR, Vanessa Fox, assist companies with SEO issues. Another local VC in Seattle, Madrona, makes similar efforts.
It’s probably not yet typical, but I think it’s an emerging trend for VCs to provide this type of service to their investments and, thus, to analyze SEO in investments they consider. The issue of whether many/most have the experience and knowledge to do this effectively is another matter.
3) Has Twitter muted many of the conversations that use to take place elsewhere (e.g. blog comments, Sphinn)?
In my opinion, yes. I wrote about it here, but to put it succinctly, much of the sharing activity that once happened in blogs, forums, personal sites and resources pages has now shifted to Twitter and Facebook. These create unique link graphs separate from the one the search engines are accustomed to crawling, processing and using. Either the engines need to find a way to use this information, or a way to operate effectively without it (I’m leaning towards the former over the latter).
Todd Mintz knows PPC…knows Social Media…knows SEO…knows Blogging…knows Domaining…and knows them all real well. He runs growth marketing for )and is also a Director & Founding Member of SEMpdx: Portland, Oregon’s Search Engine Marketing Association, and he can be found here on Twitter and Facebook.