Ten Questions with: Jill
We are conducting
a series of interviews with
some of the main players in
the search industry. Next up
is Jill Whalen of High
Rankings.com. Jill is a
high profile search engine optimization
specialist and frequent speaker
at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine
Watch conferences.
In this interview,
Jill outlines her approach,
talks about her previous company
RankWrite and reveals her most
memorable conference experience.
Thanks for taking
the time to talk with us Jill.
Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
What is your background?
No problem Peter,
thanks for asking!
Like many who've
been in the SEO field since the
early days (1995), I basically
fell into it. I loved computers
from the moment I first sat down
at one. When I graduated college,
I worked for Prime Computer doing
Word Processing, until I had my
first child in 1987. After that,
I was your basic mom-at-home for
many years. In 1992, when my husband
went to law school, we needed
to get a computer and modem. I
read in the local newspaper about
an online BBS and couldn't wait
until my kids were napping so
I could try it out! It was so
cool to have e-mail group discussions
on Fidonet, participate in chats,
and e-mail back and forth with
my sister who had recently moved
to Hawaii. Eventually, the BBS
got full Internet access, and
I created my first Web site.
In
1995, I had a parenting Web
site (The Parentsroom)
and figured quickly how to get
it found in the search engines
for phrases like "parenting
advice" and "parenting
problems." (We didn't have
anything like WordTracker so it
was a real guessing game on what
words to optimize for!) Around
the same time, I started doing
freelance Web design, and always
included search engine optimization
in the package. (I don't think
we called it that back then, though.)
By 1997 I realized
I was so far ahead of the learning
curve compared to the general
Internet public when it came to
SEO, I decided to forget about
Web design (which was never really
my forte) to concentrate solely
on the search engine end of things.
The rest, as they say, is history!
What
have been the biggest changes
in the industry since you started?
I'd have to say
that would be the search engines
themselves. It used to be critical
to be listed in AltaVista, InfoSeek
and Excite, and now look at them!
Plus of course, the prevalence
of paid-listings has been a big
change.
You've
always been good at "branding
yourself", if you'll excuse
the term. What advice have you
got for marketers who are looking
to raise their profile?
Branding
myself was another one of those
things
that I just fell into. It was
never something that I set out
to do. I was lucky that the Internet
was the absolute perfect medium
for someone like me. I'm not much
of a talker in "real life" (yes,
the Internet is "fake life"!),
but I excel in expressing myself
through the written word. So,
you take a shy person like me
and unleash her into cyberspace
where everything is done through
writing, and -- watch out!
But I did learn
some things about branding along
the way. The main ingredient for
branding yourself on the Internet
is to belong to peer groups. You've
got to find other like-minded
individuals that share your passion,
and hang out with them. You learn
from them, they learn from you,
and you all share your knowledge
with others.
Beware of stretching
yourself too thin. Find a small
niche for your business, and stick
with it. Become an expert on everything
that has to do with your niche.
Live it, breathe it, and be it.
Once you are an expert at something
it becomes second nature. Which
means that the stuff you think
is easy as pie, is extremely valuable
to others! The only thing left
to do is to keep your name in
front of the people who could
use your expertise. Write articles,
post to discussion lists, start
a newsletter and/or join a forum.
Just get out there and be helpful!
To really brand yourself and/or
your company on the Internet,
you've got to know how to express
yourself really, really well with
the written word. If you can't
do that, partner with someone
else who can. Oh, and most of
all, be yourself!
You were
associated for a long time with
RankWrite, but no longer. Can
you talk a little about this?
Sure! I started
RankWrite in June 2000 with my
copywriting partner, Heather Lloyd-Martin.
We had been doing a ton of work
together and thought that a newsletter
which focused on search engine
optimization and copywriting would
be very useful to Webmasters and
others who were struggling to
understand how to obtain high
rankings. We had a lot of fun
with it -- nearly 2 years. Anyone
who's ever met us both in real
life knows that she and I are
as opposite as two people could
ever be. Eventually we started
to have different ideas of where
we wanted to take the newsletter,
and at that point it just seemed
best to call it quits and do our
own thing. Even though we're no
longer working together on a weekly
basis, we're still friends, and
we still do presentations together
at conferences. It's always great
to get a chance to catch up with
each other.
You've
been a long time proponent of
seo based around straightforward
content provision. Can you tell
us a bit about why you recommend
this approach?
Because it works!
I'm not one of those
who just theorize and opine. Everything
I write about is stuff that I
actually do every day. Even way
back in 1995 it was apparent to
me that the key to high rankings
was having your keywords fully
integrated into your body text
copy. Heck, even the spammers
knew this, which is why they used
invisible text!
The beauty of this
approach is that it's not only
good for the search engines, but
your audience benefits from the
end results too. Nobody wants
to get to a site and have no idea
what it's about. With my type
of optimization, that wouldn't
happen.
The
SEO world exists in a strange
place where the relationship
between the search engine and
the SEO is not clearly defined.
How do you think the search
engines feel about those who
practice SEO and do you ever
see a point in time where both
sides will see eye to eye?
Search engines don't
have a problem with someone fixing
up a site to more clearly state
what it is all about (through
the use of relevant keyword phrases
in the copy, and some HTML tag
tweaks). Nor will they ever. But
they do dislike the scammers and
spammers who fight with them at
every turn. You know, those who
try to reverse engineer algorithms,
or those that clutter the databases
with pages full of gibberish that
is never seen by the end-users.
Aside from striving for high rankings,
what they do and what I do are
not even remotely similar.
As
an interesting aside, the way
I currently work
has not changed much since 1995.
(I just did a search for "parenting
problems" at Google, and
my old site that hasn't been touched
in years was numbers 3 and 4!)
Sure, there are some things that
I do differently, but the basic
foundation of my method has remained
constant.
Can you talk
a little more about your method?
What is your advice for the webmaster
trying to optimize their site?
The cornerstone
of my method is ensuring that
the pages of your site have
professionally written, keyword-rich content. That means you need to figure
out a few highly relevant keyword phrases that are searched upon by people
looking for your products or services, and you've got to incorporate them into
the visible copy of your pages. If you have an existing site, some pages may
need to be totally rewritten. However, there are times when some pages can
be
edited for keywords. It's often as simple as being more descriptive with your
sentences. For example, instead of saying "our services" you'd edit
it to
say "our search engine optimization services." That's really the
basis for my
entire SEO method, and it's the way I've worked since the beginning. I've
found that once you've got your keywords and your copy down pat, you've already
won half the SEO battle.
You're
been an invited speaker at numerous
search engine conferences. What's
been your most memorable conference
experience?
For
me, the best part of the conferences
is the
socializing and networking done
after hours. Other than conferences,
I don't get out much! The most
memorable thing is the wonderful
feeling of elation I felt at the
first conference I went to in
Dallas 2000. It was so cool to
be surrounded by tons of people
who all spoke the same language
as me! Suddenly, I could talk
about my work out loud and people
knew what I was talking about!
Up until then, I rarely talked
about my work with people in "real
life" because their eyes
would usually glaze over. But
it was awesome to get to talk
search engine optimization all
day and all night with others
who enjoyed it as much as I did!
If you could build the ultimate search engine, what would it look like? How
would it operate?
I
really have no idea! All I know
is it would rank
all my optimized sites at #1! <g>
While
online marketing trends come
and go, search engine optimization
appears to have been a constant.
Where do you see SEO heading?
Where do you see yourself two
years from now?
That's
a tricky one as things do change
quickly
in this world. Who would have
thought a few years ago that we'd
really only need to optimize for
one engine at some point? Although
PPC and other paid ads should
continue to be popular, I don't
think that "natural" SEO
is going anywhere soon. It's been
gratifying to see SEO (the way
I do it) starting to become the
norm these days, and I think that
trend will continue. The ones
who insist on tricking the engines
are quickly becoming a dying breed,
and in a few years, they'll (hopefully)
be extinct.
As for me, who knows?
A lot of my work these days consists
of doing SEO site reviews for
companies, as opposed to doing
full-fledged optimization. Many
times clients just need to wrap
their head around the reasons
*why* their site isn't coming
up in searches. Once they realize
how to change their site architecture
so that it's more search engine
friendly, and figure out how to
integrate their relevant keyword
phrases into the site, it's easy
for them to do what needs to be
done to make it all happen.
As long as there
are search engines that rank sites
using algorithms (as opposed to
ranking them by who paid the most),
then I'll be here speaking and
writing about it!
Many thanks, Jill.
Sound advice, nicely stated :).
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