SEO Mentor

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I had the wonderful opportunity to talk a bit with the crazy and funny Dave Harry aka TheGypsy. If you dont know who Dave is then shame on you because you are totally missing out on his very valuable and hilarious content at his famous SEO Blog Huomah.com. So listen to my interview podcast with Dave and get into the mind of this master of words! (P.S. He didn’t even swear once, NEW RECORD!)

If you would rather read then listen to the streaming podcast above, here is the transcript of the interview:

Garrett: Hello everyone, Garrett Pierson here. I’m excited to have Dave Harry here for my Monday series. Hi there, Dave.

Dave: How are you doing?

Garrett: Good Thanks Dave. Just to get started, let’s ask a simple question. Those who might not know who you are can get to know you a little bit more. What’s your background in the SEO industry, family, kids; whatever you want to talk about. Let’s just get to know you a little bit more.

Dave: Easy stuff; I spent ten years offline as an entrepreneur, doing a variety of things. We started web design in 1998 or so. Had a web design company, got into hosting, and obviously through that SEO became something that clients were asking for. We started offering that. SEO has been probably for six to six and a half years, or something like that.

Personally, I have a bunch of crazy animals; some snakes, lizards and spiders. I studied martial arts for about twenty years and have played music on and off for about the same.

Garrett: You have two kids, right?

Dave: Yes. The little guy’s, six years old and my daughter’s eight. He’s starting school full time, which will be nice in the fall, since we have a home office. It will make things a lot better.

Garrett: Tell us, one of your websites is Reliable-SEO.com. Is that correct?

Dave: Yes, that’s sort of home base, but I’m more known for the blogging, obviously.

Garrett: Tell me how you say your website name. I butcher it every time; your blog.

Dave: ‘homah’. I’ve tried a million ways. I’ve heard it a million ways. Usually it’s ‘whomah’, which is not working. Huomah; it’s fire horse. It’s an astrological symbol. Originally the blog wasn’t a blog. It was an internet where I kept notes for my work. Eventually I started writing answers there because questions from the clients were always the same. It became a blog. The name was not picked for any kind of branding purposes, obviously.

Garrett: I’m sorry for all the times I butchered it.

Dave: It happens a lot.

Garrett: What are some of the things you really enjoy about search engine marketing, SEO and the industry, and your career?

Dave: It’s the old answer; people. SEO itself, I have a competitive nature. I like meeting other guys. In a query space I’m always competitive. I want to get that top ranking. SEO, to me was that. I also enjoy numbers so when I started reading Bill Slawski and different patents, I’m a patent freak. I like all the numbers.

I guess in the industry side of things, it’s just the people. I’ve met a lot of good people, nice people. Lately it’s been a little insane, but all in all it’s just nice. A lot of people who love what you do and in a small town where I am, there is not anyone who even knows what SEO is, let alone have a conversation with. Communication and talking to people is part of what it is all about, as far as the industry goes.

Garrett: If you could give one gold nugget of advice to somebody, a newbie or somebody who is trying to learn SEO and social media, what would it be?

Dave: I guess we get that a lot too. I don’t know; I always go back to quality. Because I’m kind of picky about the clients I pick, SEO is a lot easier because they have a quality website, and they have quality products and offerings. Link building is one of the hardest things to do. If you have something worth linking to, your job is a lot easier. You don’t have to do as much; quality in your structure, quality in your onsite. Just don’t cut corners. That’s the easiest way to go about it. It makes everything easier.

Social media and stuff, for me it’s the stuff that’s been talked about like transparency. I don’t think sock puppets and all that is my style of things. I prefer what it’s meant to be; to reach out to consumers, to people who support your brand and your product, and talk to them; understand what they want better.

Garrett: Those are some great tips there. Dave, you’ve been known for your very informative and valuable rants. In your opinion, which of those rants has been the most misinterpreted?

Dave: I’m not sure, but a lot of people don’t seem to react too badly to them. I think maybe the most recent one, with my ranting about social media. But, I’ve always been kind of been like that. For the most part, I don’t get misunderstood a lot; at least no one is going to say it publicly. I don’t get a lot of it.

Garrett: That’s good. For those who want to read Dave’s Huomah.com blog, it’s got some great, valuable content. I actually enjoy some of your rants. They’re very well put.

Dave: I’m just passionate. I’m passionate. As you can tell, I just start talking. I don’t stop. If I get into something, I’m very passionate about it. I’m emotional. I’m running around the house kicking things half the time, when I get upset. Like I said, Slawski, technical and stuff like that, I still enjoy that. But, since it is my personal space I figured, “Okay, forget it.” I get to do my own thing once in a while, which is just to lose it.

Garrett: There’s nothing wrong with that. In your opinion, Dave, what is the most exciting trend in SEO and the social media industry today?

Dave: Personally, I guess SEO is almost social, but personalization, personalized search, behavioral metrics and things, ranking signals; along those lines. I’m not a big fan of link centric search engines, but it help to also target spam. If you have to get links to rank, it’s easier to find spammers. The more signals you have, the more things Matt has to monitor. For me, I’d like to see more use of the behavioral metrics and query analysis because it lends itself. I test people. A lot of people say, “Come on, search for something; here’s the topic.” People are using three and four word sentences. They’re not as ignorant as search engines used to be. Tense is changing, as far as I see, and the metrics is good for that.

Social media though; I’m a qualitative guy. If anything, I’m gravitating towards qualitative market research and social medium; something to reach out and talk to people. Once again, we’re communicating.

Garrett: Talking about social media, with the rise of it, it’s kind of a new trend. How do you see it changing the web within the next year or two?

Dave: I suppose once again, it comes back to spam control and stocker control and the ability to make people feel comfortable. If anyone has any complaint, it’s always the spam and the stocking and the issues that happen on social media sites. To me, if something like that isn’t controlled in a lot of ways, the first social media site was a personalized little community that says, “You pay ten bucks a month, you get a personalized community.” People are going to go for that because they’re controlled.

Garrett: That’s true. What is your favorite social media site online, and why?

Dave: I’m kind of up and down and all over the place with that lately. I’m gravitating toward more of the social networking myself. I’m an old forum hound, social networking 1.0. I’m kind of gravitating back toward that. I’m enjoying talking to people, going back to forums; places like Plurk aren’t bad, Twitter; places where there are conversations and things to talk about; social media bookmarking, not as much anymore. It’s okay, but it’s starting to become inundated between spammers and link builders and other people of that nature. It’s hard to get to the signal from the noise these days. I guess Plurk is something I’m on and I’m starting to go back to forums and I’m planning on doing more blog commenting and having conversations where the hosts are there, instead of a third party site.

Garrett: I like to ask those people I interview, what their favorite people, authorities, in the SEO and social media industry; the ones that they like to follow. Who are some of those in your atmosphere?

Dave: Once again, Bill Slawski was kind of one of the reasons I started blogging because I learned a lot there. I thought, “Okay, teaching is okay.” A lot of blogging used to be just people ranting. I know how to do that. So I enjoy Bill Slawski. Michael Martinez at SEO Theory has some good stuff. He’s not afraid of ranting either. Hamlet Batista is another smart guy. There are others. I’ve had young people that were writing; there’s Jordan Kasteler, you, Ann Smarty, and Gabs, James Duthie; guys like that have been fun. Then there are crazy people like Aaron Mad Hat, Chris Hooley, Brian Carter is also a little crazy and humorous fun. I enjoy funny people.

Social media, I don’t know. Most of the people that I enjoy in that space are from Collective Thoughts.

For reading, probably still Bill Slawski and stuff like that; the boring stuff. No one likes it, but I do.

Garrett: I do too, so that’s okay. So, what’s the collective thoughts website? Give that to everybody again. I’ll put a link to it.

Dave: Come on, you’re in the search business. Search collective thoughts, my friend. Collective thoughts is a social media site with a bunch of people. There’s Andy Beard, who is kind of a multi-faceted marketer. You have Tim Nash, who is like our programming madman. You’ve got Shana, who is our emotional tie, Brian Wallace, who is this social media circus master, and Mark Laymon, who is more of a technical guy too. There’s a nice mix of people and we all write about different things around social media, which I thought was good. I want to keep my blog about SEO mostly. It’s reading there. It’s a good one. We’re like the A-Team. It’s nice. (To learn more about all these people check them out at http://collective-thoughts.com/about/)

Garrett: That’s great to know. So, finally, to end the interview; for my listeners, if they’d like to find out more about you and your services online, where is the best place for them to go?

Dave: Well, once again, you can just Google Reliable SEO. I even have little site links, I’m not sure why. It’s reliable-seo.com. Of course there is the happy blog at Huomah. I’m sure you can just put a link instead of confusing people with the spelling. Or you can search ‘thegypsy’. That pretty much brings up my blog as well.

Garrett: That’s true.

Dave: That’s my online moniker.

Garrett: ‘The Gypsy’. Dave Harry, the Gypsy. I like that.

Dave: One word; ‘thegypsy’. Search that. I pop up everywhere. I’m a gypsy; I get around.

Garrett: I appreciate it, Dave. I’ve had a good time. Again, these interviews are just really quick and straight to the point; getting to know you a bit more. You’ve given some great tips and good ideas.

Dave: I didn’t curse or swear or nothing.

Garrett: I know.

Dave: People this morning said, “You’re not going to make it Dave.” I said, “No, I can do this.”

Garrett: Yeah, I was surprised. I do appreciate it.

Dave: It’s still early in the day. I don’t start ranting until at least 2 p.m.

Garrett: Oh, okay. Next time, we’ll do another interview after 2 p.m. and we’ll have some expletives in there.

Dave: We’ll have the x-rated version for the big people.

Garrett: Again, thank you, Dave; appreciate it.

Dave: It was a pleasure.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 6:20 am and is filed under Google, MSN, Monday Interviews, SEO, SEO Friends, Social Media, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Your SEO Mentor Podcasts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Bill Slawski, Blogging, Brian Carter, Chris Hooley, Collective Thoughts, Dave Harry, Garrett Pierson, Hamlet Batista, huomah.com, James Duthie, Jordan Kasteler, Michael Martinez, Monday Interviews, Plurk, Podcast, Reliable SEO, SEO, SEO Blog, SEO theory, Social Media, TheGypsy