Podcasts Archives - OMCP

Dennis Yu,  CTO, Blitz Metrics “There’s been a gap between having a diploma and actually being able to do a job. Employers just want to know, of the many things that they have to get done, that they can rely … Continue reading →

Rand Fishkin

Wizard of Moz

“I think it would be really really powerful and it would be wonderful to see people coming out of those certification programs doing a wonderful job in the industry and then having that certification program be able to be recognized by agencies who hire consultants, by businesses that hire in house SEOs, by marketing teams that want their marketers to get trained.”

 

 

Welcome to ‘Take Ten’, OMCP’s podcast where we spend 10 minutes, more or less, talking to online marketing thought leaders, educators, and career professionals about training and certification with hosts Jane Flint and David Temple.

OMCP: I’m here with Rand Fishkin, the Wizard of Moz. Rand, why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?

Rand Fishkin: I certainly will, David. It’s a pleasure to be here with you, what a great friendship we’ve had over the years. My name is Rand I founded a company called Moz in Seattle. I founded that company with my mom, actually my co-founder Jillian and I ran it as the CEO from 2007 to 2014. When I stepped down, I promoted our long time CO Sarah to the role. So, these days my title is Wizard of Moz and really what that means is I do a lot of education, a lot of evangelism speaking, a lot of content creation and promotion. I get to do plenty of hands on as CO and testing and experiments, which I love. I’m still the chairman of the board at Moz. I’m trying to see this company through to a great outcome and continue to try and help marketers succeed and be better as CO’s.

OMCP: Well it sounds like a great role, I mean you certainly earned it, it didn’t just happen. When you first got in the industry, I remember that the yellow shoes were your trademark. Now it seems to be your mustache, tell me about those yellow shoes. Was that a conscious decision or did it just happen? And then talk about your mustache.

Rand Fishkin: It was semi-conscious with the yellow shoes so basically I had been in a lot of online forums for years before I ever went to my first SEO marketing event, which was Search Engine Strategies in 2000… I think it was either 2004 or 2005. It was in New York and it was super cold out, it was March. My grandfather and I went together, Si, who you know, Si Fishkin. He and I went together to that show, we stayed in a hotel a few blocks away so we were walking through the icy cold in my yellow shoes. And I wore them because I wanted people from the online world to be able to recognize me in person, and so I told people through the forums and blogs that I was participating on “Hey, I’ll be the guy in the yellow shoes. Say hi if you see me.” And it worked. Barry Shwartz from Search Engine Round Table came up to me in the first five minutes of me getting there and said “You must be Rand Fishkin.” So those yellow shoes became a trademark ever since.

OMCP: And the mustache?

Rand Fishkin: Yeah, the mustache. The mustache is a little different. I had a deal when I was CEO that I was not going to shave my mustache until Moz returned to profitability. I then stepped down as CEO and about three months after making that agreement in 2014. It’s been about eighteen months now, Sarah, to her credit, I think is a great CEO but she’s chosen, she actually doesn’t want to run the company to being profitable. She’s more focused on trying to grow. So that meant my mustache got real long. At board meetings I’ll occasionally be like, “Hey, Sarah when do I get to shave this thing?” We’ll see.

OMCP: That’s a great story. Rand, how did you start educating yourself about online marketing back in the day?

Rand Fishkin: Yeah, when I first started in web marketing my first discipline was we...

Rand Fishkin Wizard of Moz “I think it would be really really powerful and it would be wonderful to see people coming out of those certification programs doing a wonderful job in the industry and then having that certification program be … Continue reading →

Bill Hunt

Global Strategy Consultant, Back Azimuth Consulting

“I think that you’re going to provide a valuable service to people because you don’t sell these things. You, yourself, are not necessarily doing the training as if you were an agency. An agency doing a training is always going to be skewed to their approach and their biases.”

 

 

 

Welcome to ‘Take Ten’, OMCP’s podcast where we spend 10 minutes, more or less, talking to online marketing thought leaders, educators, and career professionals about training and certification with hosts Jane Flint and David Temple.

OMCP: I’m here at Pubcon with the CEO of Back Azimuth, Bill Hunt on the convention floor here. Bill, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about yourself?

Bill Hunt: Sure. As you said, I’m Bill Hunt. I run a company called Back Azimuth Consulting. Our primary focus is really three tracks. One, we built some tools to mine keyword data, to really help you understand the voice of the consumer. Second, I work with large companies to build centers of excellence and how to scale their global search programs. Third, is an offshoot of that, is really helping companies understand how to effectively leverage search, and more and more broader digital marketing across multiple markets.

OMCP: Wow, that sounds interesting, Bill. You were probably the first person to really understand online market in a global scale. What was the impetus for that?

Bill Hunt: Well, it was two things. I think the first time I realized that people needed to market differently was when I was actually living in Japan. And an engineer from Ford was helping out Mazda and said, “I can’t believe these Japanese people have to have a car with a steering wheel on the left hand side and this and this and this. My response to them at the time, as a somewhat drunk Marine was simply, “Why wouldn’t they, it’s their country?”

From that day on, I had this interest of, how do we market to different markets? It culminated when I had my own company in Los Angeles selling earthquake kits and disaster preparedness, and Japan was the first market. We actually used the web. I moved from an online retailer, if you will, to a digital marketing consultant because after the Kobe earthquake, we had sold quite a bit of product. And all these big companies, Western Digital, HP, etc. were coming to us and saying, “How do we use this thing called the Internet?” to target primarily Japan.

Then after Japan, they wanted Spanish speaking markets. So more and more, I’ve started trying to figure out how we could actually use the Internet. My business school thesis was actually using the Internet to reach overseas markets. This was in 1994, 1995 before we had any mainstream search engines, before we even had browsers in many cases. So, that’s where it came from, and it just kept growing and growing and growing. Finding that it’s a big world out there, and you’re basically one query away from targeting someone internationally. So the better you prepare yourself for that, the more successful you can be.

OMCP: One way I learned about search engine marketing was when I was studying ideas. When I was learning about search engine marketing I didn’t just read your book (Search Engine Marketing Inc), I studied it. In fact, I remember the Goldilocks reference that you don’t want your keywords to be too hot and too cold, even all these years later. How did you start educating yourself about search engine marketing and online marketing in those early days?

Bill Hunt Global Strategy Consultant, Back Azimuth Consulting “I think that you’re going to provide a valuable service to people because you don’t sell these things. You, yourself, are not necessarily doing the training as if you were an agency. An … Continue reading →

Jacqueline Urick Enterprise eCommerce SEO Manager, Sears Holdings Corporation Member, Customer Advisory Board, DeepCrawl “So in those cases, I think certification could help somebody make that leap or may take that next step to a bigger, more responsibility type of job.”       Welcome to ‘Take Ten’, OMCP’s podcast where we spend 10 minutes, more […]

Jacqueline Urick Enterprise eCommerce SEO Manager, Sears Holdings Corporation Member, Customer Advisory Board, DeepCrawl “So in those cases, I think certification could help somebody make that leap or may take that next step to a bigger, more responsibility type of job.” … Continue reading →

Anne F. Kennedy President, Outlines Venture Group “So, I think that competency-based certifications are a very good thing. Because that means that somebody who hires someone with the certification will know that there’s a competency level that’s been reached.”   OMCP: Hi, I’m here with Anne Kennedy, President of Outlines Venture Group. Anne, could you […]