SEO Mentor

I had the wonderful honor of spending some time with Lee Odden of Top Rank. He gave great insight on the changing SEO Industry and the up and coming Social Media industry. Also Within the interview that you can listen to above or read the transcript below you will find that Lee is not only smart but a really great guy and down to earth. So take a listen or check out & read the transcript below:

Garrett: Hello, it’s Garrett Pierson, Your SEO Mentor, here today with Lee Odden. Lee is known for his TopRankBlog.com and TopRankMarketing.com sites. How are you, Lee?

Lee: I’m very good Garrett. How are you?

Garrett: I’m good. It’s good to have you. I really appreciate you taking time to spend some time with me and my listeners. It’s a great honor to talk with you. I’ve been following your stuff for a long time now and I really appreciate your wonderful content for the industry that we’re in.

Lee: That’s very kind of you to say that. I appreciate the opportunity. I also appreciate that you’re one of the few people who actually says my last name is “Oh-den”. Most people say “Aw-den” or some other variation of that. They are kind of like key word permutations or something. I don’t know.

Garrett: That’s a big reason why I do these short and to the point interviews. A lot of us follow you, or follow some great authorities within the industry, but we don’t know a lot about you. That brings me to my first, introduction question. What could you tell us about yourself that we might not know about you your background in the SEO, social media industry, your family, and your hobbies, anything you want to talk about?

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For this SEO & Social Media Monday Interview Podcast Series I had the opportunity to interview myself. Yea I know I am weird but hey your chance to learn a bit more about me Garrett Pierson Your SEO Mentor. I also go into depth of why and how I do these interviews and stay tuned to my next interview with Lee Odden of TopRankBlog.com on Monday August 25, 2008!

So check out and listen to the podcast above or check out the transcript of the recording below:

Hello everyone, this is Garrett Pierson here; Your SEO Mentor. You’re here for my Monday interview series. Welcome, and thank you for being here.

Today, I have the opportunity to interview myself, Garrett Pierson. The interviewee that I was going to interview fell through but that is okay. I have the opportunity to interview myself. That’s a good thing, because I’ve had a lot of listeners, people who follow me, and friend ask, “Garrett, you’re doing these great interviews with some great experts in the SEO and Social Media communities and industries, but we don’t know a lot about you.” This is a great opportunity for me to tell you all a little bit about myself, to tell you why I do these interviews, and to go through what these interview series are all about. Thank you for this opportunity. Hopefully you guys will stick around and listen. I’m going to make this very quick and to the point.

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I had the best time with my Monday Interview Podcast with Dave Snyder aka the cry baby! Take a listen above or read the transcript below to get total access to Dave admitting that he cries, a lot!

Garrett: Hello everyone. This is Garrett Pierson, YourSEOMentor. I’m here with Dave Snyder of Snydeysense.com, and SearchandSocial.com. How are you Dave?

Dave: I’m doing well. How are you doing?

Garrett: I’m good. It’s great to have you here, I’m excited. Why don’t you tell us a bit more about yourself, for those who might not know you; a little bit of your background in SEO, online marketing, social media, your family; anything you want to talk about?

Dave: I used to be a teacher for three years, when I first got out of school. I actually played music for a year when I first got out of school and just hung out. I didn’t know what to do with myself so I became a teacher. I’d always wanted to be a writer. My love for writing, and my huge love for sports, led me to start working for some content sites. They were a lot of fantasy football and basketball sites.

From that writing I started my own site and got into affiliate marketing just to keep the revenue up, to actually have the site pay for itself. I then got into SEO and all kinds of things. From there I decided that maybe the Web was the place for me to go. I really just wanted to start off as a content writer and editor. I ended up looking into SEO and getting more into it. I took a job in the agency world.

From there I worked with an agency for a while and I toiled in an agency in an online marketing manager. We all know how agency work can go. It can be pretty grueling sometimes. I learned a lot; mostly from just being thrown into the fire.

Now I’m the search and social media strategist for JRDunn.com. We’re the world’s largest designer jewelry store. I’m also the cofounder of SearchandSocial.com, with Jordan Kasteler. We’re a SEO and social media consultancy. We also do our own online media.

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With the influx of new Web 2.0 sites online there is a growing concern with businesses both online and offline and how to benefit from Social Networking and Media sites that are currently rocking the online world.

The president of the company I used to work for asked me the following,

“How can Social Media help my company and why should I waste time with it.”

I went through a couple examples of how social marketing would help his business grow and showed him a couple of sites that I thought he should check out like Facebook.com, Squidoo.com, Twitter.com, and Stumbleupon.com just to name a few. Once I said ‘Facebook’ his eyes lit up and he said how fun he has had on Facebook and how he has come across old friends that he hasn’t talked to for years. I then saw a light go on in his head realizing the power of Social Media and Social Networking sites.

A recent article called “Why is Social Media So Hard For Businesses?” by Mark Collier of SearchEngineGuide.com stated:

“More businesses than ever are exploring the possibility of using social media tools and sites to help grow their business. But many of these efforts aren’t very effective, and I think that is due to many businesses simply misunderstanding what social media is, and why it’s so important.

First, what exactly IS social media? Asking 10 people might result in 10 different answers, but for simplicity sake, lets say that social media is a group of tools and sites that let you easily create and share content online. Blogs, social networks, and podcasts are the common forms of social media that most of us are at least somewhat familiar with.

The problem that I think many businesses have, is how they view social media. I believe many businesses (of all sizes) see social media sites and tools as new channels to publish content into. In order words, they view social media as being marketing channels.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Notice in the above definition of social media, I said that these sites and tools are ways to create and share content. Why use the word ’share’ instead of ‘publish’ or ‘distribute’?”

I totally agree with Mark and believe that not only businesses but in general people are misunderstanding the purpose of these social media sites that are now getting more pageviews than even the major search engines. Think of a search engine as a quick search for something and then leave. With these social media sites people are not only viewing more pages on the sites but they are also staying on these sites up to 5 times longer than they stay in the search engines, meaning you as a business owner now have five times as long to catch your viewers attention. THIS IS POWERFUL!!!

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So if you haven’t heard of Twitter.com yet then you must be living underneath a rock. Twitter whether you like it or not has been changing the online world and has created a lot of buzz. Everyone and their dogs are all on Twitter, so the question is “Are YOU?” If you want to learn a bit more about what Twitter is then check out what Wikipedia is saying about it.

So if you remember each month I will be posting my monthly SEO Cartoons, so here is this months cartoon about Twitterholics:

Guess what there is actually a website about Twitterholics at Twitterholic.com. CRAZY!

Here are a couple articles that you should take a look at about Twitter:

Are You Using Twitter Yet? - by Aaron Wall

Twitter: Is it really worth using? - by Neil Patel

Twitter Poll: Ultimate Time Waster, or Great Tool? - by Lee Odden

Tweet Wars - check out this funny video

To see more posts about Twitter check out all Twitter article posts at Sphinn.com