I had a customer that last year after a few updates lost all this ranking.
At the start we though it was Penguin…. or a penalty, but after looking careful we realized it was mainly the site itself rather than external factors.

The site was a heavy CMS system, flooded with graphics,  with very little content, zero social presence and no type of freshness factor.

In a few words the site was created, never updated and the whole site was mainly created to create a WOW factor vs creating CONTENT.

Before the massive DROP I already warned them of the serious lack of content… in a few words, I had the feeling this was going to happen.

Then series of PANDA updates started to happen during 2012…. and clearly It WAS THE SEO GUY FAULT and they fire me.

Oh well…. I was out.

My comments of “we need to invest more time in the site” didn’t go well.

Our site is FINE – just do your job instead – was the general approach of the SEO.

So what happened?

The hire a fancy SEO company. One of that SEO companies that offer the whole ” RELAX we do the whole thing for you….”

In fat they promised the “you will be in first page in 90 days guaranteed”

5 Months later….

No ranking (still).

Not even with all the new crappy links from the new SEO company (no wonder), the client managed to recover his old ranking.

The reason?

The same fundamental problems still exist.

Their Fault?

You can judge that.

So they contacted me again…

So I guess we need to improve our site, can you get a writer and flood our site with outsourced articles?

No! No! no! No!

Once again they don’t get it – right?

The main problem that companies like the one that hired me – (fired me and then wanted to re-hire me)  is…. their lack of understanding of what online marketing as a whole is. They don’t understand or want to understand that SEO needs to be part of an overall solution.

Their fault?

No really, us, SEO people,  for the last years have made a small  fortune telling people not to worry, because we have it “sorted”

• We know Google
• We understand the Algorithm
• We have powerful link building tools
• We know the “secret”

Well, guess what?

We don’t have it sorted.

In fact we are always trying to guess what is going to be Google next move…

The only thing we can do is to LISTEN to what Google wants and start to do things RIGHT from the start.

In case you missed my SEO in 2013…. the main point you need to understand is that SEO, ranking, branding, positioning and social media is the same same deal.

Talking about SEO without Social media makes no sense.

Talking about Ranking keywords without talking about clients, traffic, and potential lead generation…  shows lack of understanding towards the purpose of SEO.

“Getting someone to put content in our site” shows that you, as web owner don’t really care about what is being put there and the approach STILL the same —> get someone to do that stuff that Google wants.

The reality is that this approach is spreading fast and the idea of content marketing and engagement and link earning (vs link building) is very difficult to teach to small business owners.

I just want you to rank my site… I’m just to busy to do anything with my site, go it for us… represent a real challenge for any SEO company, SEO professional, or guru, or whatever you want to call them

SEO guys need in 2013 to become coaches, need to become accountability buddies…. need to TEACH as much as they LINK BUILD, need to follow up website progress. Need to demand a social media strategy, need to be critical of the business efforts, need to impose some type of content marketing strategy.

If they don’t…. they are then just mercenaries of links.

And if you just want links, then go to Fiverr ad get yourself a “I build you 100000 spammy links in 22 minutes while you see your site CLIMB UP IN RANKINGS”.

Easy then.

10 weeks ago I was invited to become director of SEO and  Business partner in a new start up in Australia. (vep, very Fancy…. right?)

The company defined itself  as “a  digital company company ” <— nothing new there.

Dam. I was impressed.

In my first week “at work” they offered me $250.000 in shares and a salary.
“Once we got in the market” we will buy you out and offer you more shares – the CEO said.

WOW. Buying me out. I was impressed. WOW $250.000 then I can really buy a jetski !

8 Weeks ago I received their investor proposal. A fancy paper with tons of graphics where they show me how they planed to make 3 million dollars in the next 12 months from these amazing new products that will blew the world away.

YEP…. I was impressed

6 weeks ago I flew to Melbourne to see them. They show me  my future office, they offered me coffee and they made me feel at home…

I was impressed….

until I realized there was a problem:

They had no product
They had no creative people on board.
They had no entrepreneurs involved.
They had no ideas…..

and guess what…

The company  had no value.

This “Next generation startup” , wasn’t from the a next generation (Sorry Star Trek Fans) …. in fact there was nothing digital or marketing in the company.

In fact the only impressive thing about the company was their that  investors proposal. (not even the coffee was impressive!)

4 weeks ago I decided that I wasn’t ready to commit, so they ask me to stick with them for 6 months…
we give you $150.000 in shares, laptop, new iPhone, you can work from home…. – the CEO said

I asked them about their business plan and how they could justify raising money from investors when they clearly didn’t understand how they will reach their economical goals…

you have no product.
you have no new technology
you are not bringing any value to the market… – I said.

Well Gabriel:  that’s why we are getting you on board! -  Mr CEO said

…..

4 minutes ago I finally closed the  door with this DIGITAL COMPANY.

Clearly I don’t have $250.000 , and clearly I don’t have the $150.000 either.

The reason?

Companies like this one remind me of Emron – companies that want to grow regardless what they sell, produce or offer.

Companies with corporate zombies that decide to “start” companies inspired in the idea of build fast, create crap, and sell fast.

Companies with “executives” that love to go to meetings rather than create something valuable

Companies that will go to the stock market and dads and mums will buy shares not knowing they are buying shares on a boat with less future than the Costa Concordia.

Companies where they spend more time talking about designing their business cards vs how can we improve our product and provide more value for our customers.

That’s why I lost $250.000 …

because I didn’t agree with a company that their only  goal is to go to the stock market and inflate the value.

A company that thinks you need to raise capital and THEN think what to do with the money…

At the end they sent me to hell…. and they told me that I was just a crazy South American in a small town in Australia.
(and I’m afraid they are 100% right – I’m a bit nuts – ask my wife).

But the reality is that I want to be earn money by providing something that means something. (unusual idea right?)
If i was going to partner with a company, it would have to be with a company that is not going to produce more toxic shit in our economy.

DIGITAL MARKETING means nothing if you don’t build something that can provide a real economy.

Already many companies play the game of raising capital and justify insane costs on developing “products” that are not even products, and “services” that in fact don’t SERVE anyone.

So time to keep it real. If staying small give me the freedom of providing something with integrity… then let’s be the smallest entrepreneur in Australia.

The most interesting point is….
if I’m now $250.000 poorer why the heck do I feel soooo good right now?

*Disclaimer:  The information in this post should be only be read as fantasy, or science fiction. All the information written here, is just product of the imagination of the author.

Yes. Is a brand new world in the world of SEO and although many businesses are complaining about how unfair life is, how unfair Google is, or why their competitors are ahead of them…. it seems not many people are in fact ACTING. Doing stuff.

Doing stuff towards achieving awesomeness, doing stuff towards achieving authority status in your industry, in your marketing, for your business.

The problem of doing stuff is that takes time, and usually we don’t want to wait, ewe want to loose weight in 30 days, we want to make money online in 48 hours… we want to achieve success while we watch TV.

I have many customers, some of them CARE , some of them DON’T. The once that care will survive and will become stronger in this brave new world of SEO. It’s all about moving away from your comfort zone.

Say hello to 2013. Bye bye crazy 2012, where we saw tons of tears and updates from Google. This is a 20 minute video presentation about what to do and who will win the Search engine optimization battle in 2013.

I created this for customers, but decided to share for anyone interested in stepping up in the SEO game.

If you want to be on top, you need to check this video

My first book about ASO is up in Amazon, it took me 2 months and a bit to write it, mainly it was the coolest challenge ever and while doing it I had the opportunity to interview a lot of very cool people involved in the App Store Optimization world. During the last months I have been working with some inspiring App companies working in the process of optimizing their apps…  although the book is not 100% perfect, I believe that is the most complete book out there for anyone that is really looking to understand what the HECK is ASO and how App store Optimization works.

The book is right now available in Amazon and it costs a small fortune of $0.99 – I couldn’t give it FREE in Amazon, but you can also read it (in case you don’t want to download it) directly by checking my ASO Blog -  ASOPorfessional.com

Enjoy!

Update: You can now download it via iTunes FREE

When something happens in this FREAKING INSANE SEO world, the first site I go (and many of my peers) is SERoundTable  – the reason is this: Barry Schwartz provides news before they happen. This guy is for sure one of those Awesome SEO personalities and I love the fact how his blog/news site is straight tot he point. No fluff, just straight tot the point. So that’s why I’m super pumped of posting this quick-email Interview I had with the man himself Barry Schwartz

Barry, your site is now an icon about what’s going on in the SEO community and in many cases you have anticipated Google changes much earlier than anyone else. What’s the secret?

An “icon,” wow – that is nice. Truth is, it started as a notebook where I keep track of interesting public discussions in forum settings. It started to help as many don’t have time to read forums, so people come to the Search Engine Roundtable to get their forum fix. The beauty of the forum is that I have armies of people, whether they like it or not, doing the research for me. I don’t notice Google changes, they do. I just notice them noticing it and bring it to the public.

How challenging is it to know what is real SEO news and what are just rumors?

The real challenge is not, is there an update or not, it is what is this update about. Is it a Panda, Penguin or something else. Often I will spot updates and I will have no clue if it is a specific Panda refresh, or a bug. I’ll cover something as an update, Google will either confirm, deny it or not respond at all. Sometimes they will tell me it was a bug with a classifier and sometimes things will just go back to normal the next day without them telling me a thing.

The hardest part is knowing what it was and why it happened.
It seems you try to be objective, but sometimes, it’s difficult to be objective, especially when you work, live and breath SEO. How difficult is it not to RANT as opposed to blogging about daily SEO events?

Honestly, it is easy. I cover SEO and search so often that sometimes I lose any emotional attachment to it. People who know me, know I don’t express a lot of emotion, see this videos http://www.rustybrick.com/red-bull-office.html – it might explain a lot. So I often don’t feel a desire to RANT or get all wired up about my “feelings” about a penalty, update or some criticism left by a reader. Of course, not writing from emotion has a negative side to readership as well.

Many of your posts seem to get a lot of very agitated responses… does it affect you, amuse you.. ? what keeps you centered on the job ahead?

It amuses me. Really, I am dumb to it all. In fact, sometime I plant things just to get them going. I need to have some fun, don’t I?

Google’s latest changes: Fair or Evil? If you were Googles CEO (yes, you can smile) what would you do differently?

I’d let the people I hire, who are experts in search, do what they think is best. I think those experts at Google think the searcher is happier today than they were a year or two ago. I suspect the studies the CEO sees backs that up. Of course, there are always cases where there are faults.

The SEO industry after 2012, will never be the same. How do you see 2013… what can you see in Barry’s magic crystal ball?

Hmmm… 2013. I really wonder when social will become a more dominate ranking factor in Google. Yea, we have personalized search – but outside of that. I wonder when links will be less valuable, if ever, to social. I doubt it will be in 2013.

Industry-wise, I think many SEOs are giving up. It is hard. It keeps getting harder. I am always excited to see who the next SEO rock star blogger will be and if they will last more than 2 years. I won’t make any predictions on that but maybe it will be you?

Not only do you blog about SEO news, updates and changes, but you also work in SEO… what do you think is the most common mistake SEO professionals (and companies) still make?

I don’t work in SEO. I offer advice and write and speak about it. But to stay unbiased, I don’t offer typical SEO services.

I’d say the most typical mistakes are the same ones as the early days. Basic on page optimization issues can make a world of difference for large content sites.

What does Barry do when he’s are not chasing SEO news?

I run a web and mobile development company named RustyBrick. I have some start ups. And, most importantly, I have an awesome family. I am a very lucky guy.

Yes, A Facebook search engine….. finally… something that will sooner or later make Mr Google think. Say hello (not yet) but very soon to Facebook SEO… and before you start laughing think about it a bit more carefully.

Facebook will launch it’s own search engine. That is a FACT. In fact is in the plans as Mark Zuckerberg already announced it. The important thing for us, (the SEARCH people) is to try to understand how this will change the world, and in the industry we live in.

Well my friends, I believe this will rock the world.
And yes…. I think this will really really hurt Google.

Let’s find out why.

Google greed is killing peoples trust :

Yes, people, business owners, users, are experiencing less patience with Google than before. The fact is that we all know that Google wants one thing: More revenue.
For Google the idea of “being fair” or “don’t be evil” is simply a commercial slogan… and the greed of this Giant is making the industry beg for someone else to step up and try to compete with this Billion Dollar Monster (Trillion dollar may be?) and guess what? Google is loosing market fast… just look at the latest stats with Bing now stealing 30% of the market. Not bad for that little revamp OLD MSN search engine.

Facebook integration is growing out of control.

Have you NOT use Facebook connect for anyonline service in the last week?

Let see, in WordPress blog comments, in online shopping, in TripAdvisor, in Quora…. Facebook is growing stronger even if it’s share prices keep dropping…. and the reason is…. it can’t stop… there are simply to many systems in place to let Facebook fall apart.

Facebook is not Lycos, or Altavista… Facebook has more users than Google was webmaster accounts and all those users are generating more content than any webmaster could ever generates . Content that needs to be indexed. Content that can be found, content that can be used to generate more traffic, more engagement, more revenue.

 Facebook search could bring SEARCH PPC

Yes, Search pay-per-click talking about saving Facebook revenue… follow the same system that made Google rich. Put a search engine and then voila, pay-per-click will become a reality…. and advertisers will rush to start using it….

why?

Why not!

PPC with Google is working less every day and the costs for small players is increasing every month. Google is making almost impossible for the small business owner to depend on PPC traffic so any type of new SERP or AdWords alternative will be highly welcomed.

Google Plus is a failure

Let’s just look at the average time on site per month in May 2012.

• Twitter: 114 minutes
• Pinterest 97.8 minutes
• Facebook 450 minutes
• Google plus 3.3 minutes

Ouch…

Or let’s look at users shall we?

Let’s see Facebook growth in the last years

1 million — End of 2004.

5.5 million — End of 2005.

12 million — End of 2006.

20 million — April 2007.

50 million — October 2007.

100 million — August 2008.

150 million — January 2009.

175 million — February 2009.

200 million — April 2009.

250 million — July 2009.

300 million — September 2009.

350 million — End of 2009.

400 million — February 2010.

500 million — July 2010.

608 million — End of 2010.

750 million — July 2011.

800 million — September 2011.

845 million — End of 2011.

901 million — March 2012.

955 million — June 2012.

So  just by launching a Search Engine, Facebook will guarantee that at least, let say 1/2 a billion people will be using it.  Mmm not bad, right?

So…..

Although Facebook SEARCH ENGINE will not happen just now, it will happen… and once it happens the King of SEARCH will be thinking carefully if his kingdom is safe or not.

This is one of those dudes that I really think: Man, I wish I have come up with some of this ideas. Mr Dan Norris, not only a great guy, but one of the top web design + SEO + marketers out here in Australia. I started spying Dan work a few years ago and well…. I quickly realized this is one of the Awesome people in this industry.

So here is my interview about Dan’s latest work, Web Control Room, a very cool, simple and powerful app that can empower business owners to understand what EXACTLY is really going/happening with their websites and marketing strategies.

OK, Dan… so let’s get to business, from Web designer authority to owner, CEO and creative genius behind Web Control Room…. why did you switch from web design to software development?

I ran my web design business for 6 years and in the early days I learnt a lot, by the end I was just going through the motions. I’ve always wanted to be entrepreneurial and create something. I guess by the end I felt like I wasn’t really doing that. I started working on Web Control Room as a side project but I found I couldn’t focus on either business as much as I wanted to, so I decided to sell the web design company and focus on WCR full time.

Tell us about WCR and how did you came up with the idea?

Web Control Room is for tech savvy business owners who use the web for the majority of their services (i.e. client communications with MailChimp, accounting with Xero, web stats with Analytics etc) but don’t want to log into each one every day to see how things are going. It enables them to see charts representing the most important data from all of these types of sources all on the 1 page (or via their mobiles).

In the early days of my web design business I used to write manual reports in Word each month for my clients. These reports would include information such as where they were ranking in Google, whether their website visitors were going up or down etc. After a while I realised it was silly doing so much manual work so I built a system to do it for me. As some point I figured that other web design agencies would want the same thing (branded client reports for web stats). But as the cloud started taking off it became clear that this wasn’t just a service for web stats. With accounting systems, storage, CRM and other services all heading to the cloud, I could see there being an opportunity to provide this service direct to any business.

As far as I know you are not a coder or developer, how challenging was to make the idea a reality…

That’s correct. In the early days I learnt code but I’m never any good with routine tasks so before long I was employing developers. The very first version of the app (which wasn’t called Web Control Room) was built by a developer I found on Elance. Over the years it was updated by internal developers until we scrapped it and started again from scratch with Web Control Room. It’s obviously not the most efficient way to build something but sometimes it’s the only way.

Let’s talk about the app, what exactly does WCR do?

Well if you think about an accounting system like Xero for example. Xero is an awesome tool but getting actionable reports out of it can be a time consuming process. For example I counted 15 clicks to get a list of who your top customers are for a given period (it involves exporting to Excel etc). Then do the same thing for calculating your customer value or your conversions in Analytics or your rankings for your keywords and you are all of a sudden spending a lot of time trawling through stats. Add the complexities of getting this info on your mobile and it’s worse – complicated charts, different systems, wasted time.

With Web Control Room we can show you a list of your top 10 customers in seconds among a range of other charts from other services. You can just log in each day / week / month and skim the charts to see the info. We colour code things so you can skim the reports for red areas that need attention and you can break charts up into different rooms if you have different websites or divisions in your business.

What about security?

The cool thing with modern cloud services is most of them have adopted security protocols that enable us to ‘talk’ to that service without the user entering any usernames or passwords. Just like when you log into a service using your Facebook account for example where it says ‘Allow access’, we do the same thing so we just require a 1 off permission and from there we can talk to the service. In most cases we don’t even store the information in our database – we just get it live when you access our app. The whole app also runs on an SSL so anything you do enter into the app is encrypted. This is more for peace of mind, our users rarely have to enter anything sensitive into the app.

Can you give me some specific examples of how WCR can help web owners to simplify their lives?

For sure, Dan Andrews from the Lifestyle Business Podcast has a $2mil plus products business and a range of online businesses. He logs in every day to get an overall view of how his sites are performing. He calls it a ‘morning newspaper for his business’. Melissa Shanhun runs a growing online digital scrapbooking business. She logs in every day to check which content is having an impact (email newsletter open rates) and her website traffic stats. She loves it because it enables her to keep her finger on the pulse of her business and spend more time on content marketing.

So far, what has been the feedback from your BETA users?

It’s been great, we have around 150-200 active users before I closed access a few weeks ago. People are saying some great things like ‘Thanks for helping solve a problem most of us face every day’. We’ve also got some great ideas from users as we prepare for launch in a few weeks.

Where do you see WCR heading and what are the plans for the application?

Well we will launch it to the public in a few weeks which will include a free starter plan and a paid business plan. From there we will focus on developing the agency version that will allow companies like web design agencies and SEO companies to send branded reports to their clients in a format that their clients can understand – no more complex charts that only geeks (no offence) can understand. We’ll obviously continue to add more services to the core app as well and keep our normal users happy.

After that I’ve got a few ideas where I might take it but being a startup I’ll be looking closely at how the main app is received before I decide too much more. The main things will be looking for innovative ways to present information that people can’t get by logging into individual systems and looking for more creative ways to get them the information.

How do you think your experience as a web designer and marketer helped you to develop WCR?

It’s important to create a beautiful product and anything less than that would be laughed out of the startup scene so having the design background helps with this. It’s also very difficult to get noticed and generate traffic to a brand new site so my content marketing experience an general traffic generation / SEO skills have come in handy. In a few months my site is already at 50% of the traffic of my old blog which took me years to develop and I believe it will become much bigger in a short period of time.

What is the biggest lesson you learn so far by creating WCR?

I think my biggest lessons are yet to come. The beta stage has been pretty painless but once we launch a paid plan I’ll know for sure how it’s going to be received and I’ll learn a lot from that. One of the main things I’m doing differently with this business is trying to focus on actionable metrics and getting the best data possible. So instead of relying solely on how I’m ranking in Google for big keywords I’m looking at all of my different traffic strategies and focusing on the ones that convert the highest. SEO is still part of the strategy but it’s only 1 part. Instead of relying on Analytics for website visitors, I’m using Kiss Metrics to track ‘people’ so I know exactly who is using the app and how they are using it. This is going to make my experience in building this business a hell of a lot more efficient I think.

For any one out there looking to contact you and learn about WCR , what is the best way to contact you?

I’m pretty easy to contact, visit http://webcontrolroom.com/about where you’ll find my email, Twitter, Facebook, Linked in, Skype and mobile number. If they go there in the next few weeks they can enter their email to be notified first when we launch in a few weeks.

Anything else?

Thanks for interviewing me and well done on the work you are doing. As you know I am very passionate about content marketing and you are doing a great job at providing fresh and unique content to your audience. Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

My pleasure mate!

If you are a star trek fan, this guy, Mr Dan Petrovic ladies and gents is the Captain Jean-Luke Picard in Australian SEO

This is part of my new series Awesome SEO People and I decided to start with a BANG! So I contacted Dan trying to learn from one of Australia’s top SEO companies.

You know there are a lot of “SEO companies” right… but these folks are the real deal. Although I love SEO, Dan eats, sleeps, breaths SEO. And trust me, at Dejan they know every time the Algorithm even sneezes.

So no more intros… let’s get started:

Who is Dan Petrovic?

Let me tell who I was going to be and how my plans changed. I think that would be a story worth telling.

Growing up in a socialist country meant I had no concept of how the rest of the world’s economy functioned. Also I was a kid. Career in business had never occurred to me – I was going to be a scientist.  From very young age I had affinity towards both science and arts. My main interests were biology, archaeology, synthesizer music and painting. Thanks to my dad I got hooked on science fiction and futurism as well.

When I was eleven, civil war was brewing up – right in my hometown. This changed my plans a bit. I lived in Serbia as a refugee for one year and then returned to a completely destroyed town. Life after the war was a matter of staying out of trouble and staying alive. This however, was where I discovered the link between work and survival.

I started my first ‘enterprise’ in 1992 when I was 12. Metal was abundant in the ruined town, particularly copper and brass. All you had to do was find the sniper gun nest or a mine-free cannon field. Metal trading eventually lost its momentum so I resorted to more creative approaches including smuggling empty disposable bazookas and similar war memorabilia over the Croatian border and selling them as souvenirs in Serbia.

And then, suddenly and out of the blue – our refugee visa was granted.

In May 1998 I came to Australia, bought a computer and connected to the internet.

Give us a brief recap of the history of Dejan SEO as a company.

In 2001 I started a company called Communication 1 to 1 Pty Ltd with a bunch of other students from Griffith University. I decided that business was not for me and got a full-time job in an agency. During that time I had a couple of hobby websites which ended up ranking really well in Google. This success had really driven my passion for SEO even further.  I also made a lot of money.

I quit my job and dedicated to my own projects. Work was overwhelming and money plentiful so I employed one of my best friends in Croatia. That year we literally tripled in assets.

Soon after that, a rather large company asked me to do their SEO. I hired my cousin and a good friend, this time in Serbia. I united the two enemy sides from the civil war in Yugoslavia. Nice!

One thing led to another and I had no choice but to open an office in Australia. This is when Dejan SEO started as a brand. This ‘manoeuvre’ brought on excessive amounts of sacrifice, pain, stress and stupid financial risks. I was poor again, but we kept going.

Now there are nearly 50 of us in six offices in Australia and Europe.

We seem to be on the right track.

Running such a big company can’t be easy, what are the challenges of being the Director of an SEO company.

The problem is similar to what was believed to be the case with large dinosaurs which had to have two brains, one serving as a signal repeater, enabling quick reflexes and movement. Although this is a myth as far as biology goes, it is true with many corporations. They are slow moving beasts not in synchronised control over all its limbs.

What you instruct your people is not always what they do. As you grow in size, quality control becomes more of a challenge. We’re not too big still so I align my vision with execution through constant and consistent training, coaching and mentoring.

When you are an SEO company like you guys, everyone is watching you… not only they are reading your blog, following you in twitter, but also looking at your work / link building.

Yes, we are not only “looked at” but also consistently copied in everything we do. Take for example the home page CTA element we pioneered. Many of our rivals now use this technique on their own websites, even internationally. This is frustrating, but also kind of flattering.

What upsets me though is when others not only copy our link ideas but also ruin the linking page with their spam. For example, one company scanned my backlinks and spammed a genuine discussion I had about my favourite scientist – Nikola Tesla. I call this linkstalking.

Copycats are good in a sense; they push us further and drive innovation. Our best strategies are the ones that our competitors will be too lazy to replicate. And we’ve got some fresh ammunition in our arsenal.

We’re well-aware that Google is looking at us closely too and have been busy cleaning up all the funny links we created in the early days when there was nothing to lose. We expect to complete our internal quality audit and clean-up in the next few months. I’m pretty excited about that. It will be a liberating experience.

We really are working hard to lead by example, but these things take time.

 How important is for you to have a quality control over all the SEO that is done with your clients sites?

It’s a top priority. In fact, I get upset, emotional and yell when I see spam being generated by a member of our team. It makes me look like a fool – talking one thing and doing the other.

What is one of the most common SEO mistakes companies do?

Bending to every demand client makes. We want more links; we want cheaper links and such. We decided to say a big fat “NO” to those people we know are pushing it too far outside Google’s guidelines with their demands.

There are plenty of SEO companies to choose from – it doesn’t have to be us that penalises them.

SEO in Australia… where are we heading? How do you see the future?

We have only one option. Clean up our act and educate our clients on best practices. Once SEOs in Australia stop scheming and focus on best practices we can all be proud to call ourselves SEO professionals. I’m very keen to restore the reputation of our industry and have made my move by being transparent with Google about what we do at Dejan SEO and problems we’re running into along the way.

Dan, you know I consider you part of the “chosen ones” that have direct line to the SEO Gods , where do you see Google heading… do you agree with the conspiracy theories that any algorithm points to more PPC revenue? or are all these changes in fact trying to bring more “quality” in their results?

Thanks, however, I have very little “direct line” with anybody. Most of the conclusions I draw are either from my own experiments or the work and writing of others already available online to everyone else, including works published by Google.

Algorithm being driven to favour AdWords revenue is a not what Google is trying to do. I really don’t feel it’s worth discussing at all.

Everything Google does is geared towards answering our questions. Yes, sometimes this means that a dictionary website or a price comparison engine will be made redundant. When I type “What’s my IP” in Google they tell me my IP address. Thanks, that’s all I wanted to see. No need for AdSense loaded pages which put you through hoops until you actually get to see your IP address.

This can sometimes be interpreted in a wrong way.

Awesome SEO: Skills? Team? Resources? Money? Or just originality ?

• Awesome people write awesome content.
• Awesome content attracts awesome links.
• Awesome links cause awesome rankings.
• Awesome SEOs know this.

Plus a splash of creativity and technical ingenuity.

When you are not watching SEO videos, SEO seminars, or analysing data you are…… ?

When I’m not working I listen to my sci-fi audio books, compose music, draw or simply learn stuff. I am like a sponge and like to absorb knowledge. My wife wishes I spend more time with her then online.

Where can people contact you and how can we follow up what Dejan SEO is doing…?

Google+ actually! Catch me in a hangout or check out our page or my personal profile.

I use Twitter and Facebook to merely broadcast stuff but 100% of my engagement strategy is devoted to Google’s social network. It’s a gamble I’m happy to make.

If Google+ is not your thing then I suggest you subscribe to our blog.

Some cool Photos

Dejan SEO first office

Dejan SEO Super sexy Europe Team

Dejan SEO Not-so Super Sexy Team

Screw page rank, screw backlinks, yes… seriously Screw Even Google… let’s go back to what matters…. let’s talk about people.

You see, Mark Zuckerberg just announced Facebook will launch a new Search Engine eventually…. so guess what? It will all change one day. Mobile is just getting stronger and one day the SEO-as-we-know-it will be gone and you sell see a different term, a different concept. PageRank may die, backlinks may loose value, but PEOPLE (oh yes, remember the fact we are humans?), PEOPLE will remain.

And awesome people is what makes this stuff work. Awesomeness is what makes the internet work.

For the last weeks, I have been looking and all those guys (my peers, competitors, nemesis   trying to rank for keywords like SEO, SEO packages, SEO consultant, SEO expert , SEO professional… and suddenly I realized one very important thing:

WE ALL HAVE HUGE EGOS

We love to talk about US and NOT about what REALLY matters.

We all try to showcase how freaking amazing we are, and in reality we are just the same…. and we seem to forget about the important things that matter:

PEOPLE.

The Awesomeness factor.

That’s why I will be re-aiming this site to be something different. Not just a site where I try to “encourage me” to hire me – screw that.

Instead a site, where you can learn something – where you can take something of value and go out there and make your business, your life, your site better.

So stay tunes, wait for some-awesome people coming this way. Time to let the Internet Ninja move to the next level .