Part II:

Part III:

Transcript

Brett Tabke: We are back here with Greg Boser a.k.a. Web Guerrilla appreciate you taking time to be with us today Greg.

Greg Boser: Pleasure to be here.

Brett Tabke: So we'll talk a little bit, Greg is one of the most well known SEO's in the business today, long time speaker on search engine strategies, conference tour, moderate webmasterworld for 3-4 years.

Greg Boser: Good old days.

Brett Tabke: Oh boy. Surprising how we reminisce about 3-4 years ago. (Laughter)

Greg Boser: It's amazing you are still doing it, it's a lot of work, very impressive that you stuck it out run that site like that all those people, I run a private firm with five people in it and I hate them all, they drive me nuts.

Brett Tabke:(Laughter) few thousand a day. So what's going on these days with Web Guerrilla? I hear we have a scoop here about the name.

Greg Boser: We've been real busy, we've been off the radar a little bit, I kind of did a three and 1/2 month unplug thing, no blogs -- just evident if you went to my site, I haven't blogged since April. But we've been doing a lot of work, platform development on Wordpress stuff, customized solutions for companies and we're getting a lot more in to that area as far helping clients managing content, bundled with SEO and everything too but so we are going to retire the name as far as doing business ads, well Guerrilla LLC is still our master company that will own all our copyrights but some time mid September we will be re-launching as Three Dog Media.

Brett Tabke: Excellent, excellent.

Greg Boser: Trying to get, you know, people can't spell guerrilla, its two r's two l's, the monkey, not the terrorist, but when you say that -- I can't tell you how many people -- I walk in a conference, why didn't you email me back? Well the reason is, I don’t own web guerrilla with one r, some domain poacher does and he won't sell it to me and so the email doesn't even bounce it just disappears in a black hole. When I made the name I didn't -- I actually have a copy of Jay Levinson's book on my desk and went "Wow", big fan of his you know, and I just spelled it and registered the name based on how it is spelled in the book, two R's and two L's and didn't realized that the one R misspelling is almost, I mean as acceptable pretty much even New York Times, so web guerilla with one has a page rank 4 and they are all articles where people are referencing me or talking about me and they mispelt -- So we're going to just roll out a new thing we are getting to do a lot of new kind of stuff, I am pretty excited about it.

Brett Tabke: Cool. It actually brings up a good point that you've done a lot with the name, being confusing and having brand confusion over it, you don't necessarily have a big time site at all, a leading site...

Greg Boser: No, isn't that great? I am lazy that way.

Brett Tabke: You know, we always hear this crap about good SEO's should have top ranking under search engine promotion.

Greg Boser: I disagree, you know, its two points back in the day, I just felt that showing up on that radar screen was a dumb thing to do and that other thing for me is I found that clients that came through that avenue and this was different back when we started, right? Late 90’s kind of thing. I wanted to get away from the educational sales pitch as soon as I could in my career because that was the hardest thing, you know, all new young dudes coming out, they don't get it. They got SEMPO training and they make them sale, you know, it's like we didn't do that, we need to go out before you can even talk about money you had to convince them, explain what was search marketing and why they would benefit, nobody knew, nobody had a clue. There was no Google -- it wasn't what it is today, it was a lot of work. I wanted to get pass that as quick as possible and I just found that, you know, all of our work comes primarily through the referral network and people -- and I always joke, I get my work from people I had a beer with, I mean really -- for me that's how it works, people that call Danny and he refers people and that's -- I just built that network so I don't have to have a site, you know, it works for me it works great because if somebody calls me they're very educated on search they have either seen me speak or they're coming from somebody that I known and respect and so the level of client that we deal with as far as an educational stand-point is a lot higher and for me that works really well, if I have to explain to him what PPC. If I can't use the acronyms of our industry like SERP right, which you invented if I can't use words like that and talk like that and have them understand what I am saying then I -- it's not a match.

Brett Tabke: You've done great with that though...

Greg Boser: There's different ways to skin a cat, you know, and the other one is a lot of -- and here's the whole thing is lot of the guys are out there putting all the time in and, you know, when I started it was iSearch, even before you launched your forum and everything and that's -- there was 20 of us hanging out there, you know, it only came out once a week, so nobody knew really how much time you spent writing posts that made you sound like you are brilliant and you had a lot of client but you know, you didn't cause nobody did and its just funny for me to watch, you know I read these blog posts I'm like, "wow, do you guys ever work?"

Brett Tabke: (Laughter)

Greg Boser: I am not the greatest typist so I'm a little slower than everybody else but I am just wondering like, when do you guys actually do what you are talking about because I don't see it in the regular work days, so there is a lot of chest pounding going on.

Brett Tabke: Oh, a lot of over kill.

Greg Boser: That is the age we live in. That's all right.

Brett Tabke: What do you think are some of the bigger industry trends, what has been kind of the buzz this year? Seems like kind of big changes going on, under tow going on here.

Greg Boser: Yeah, you know, its hard to say, for me personally the biggest change for me is I accepted the Google domination. I was very bitter about that for a long time, you know, I won't do it, I won't do it but really they make cool stuff and, you know, I just switched to Google desktop and things like that, because the Microsoft one just sucks, I found it really sucks when I am at work. And unfortunately for the industry everybody is getting like that Gmail, Google Analytics it's not the best analytic thing but it is easy, it's right there, its part of your account. So that is kind of uh, in the big picture it's kind of a sad thing because I don't see them losing market share anytime soon, its just going to grow, grow, grow and grow. From an industry standpoint that is not healthy to have one company control it all, but that's where we are going to. I think you are going to see alot of people this year bail out on the blogging thing, back down a little bit because its a lot of work and when you set the bar that high and post like some of these guys its like really. Then that gets to be the expected norm and you know what for me personally, you run out of stuff to say with of any meaning about our industry. I love it to dead, I couldn't ask for a better job or career but the big picture of when we launch our new site and web guerrilla goes away, I'm going to start a personal blog gregboser.com -- type on that in when you go to Google, they don't protect their DNS for it, that is what you should put up there.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter).

Greg Boser: But when we launch that, you know, it going to -- I am definitely going to blog about search on it, but I'm going to blog about whatever, you know, just more of a...

Brett Tabke: Personal.

Greg Boser: Matt Cutt's kind of blog.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter) you're going to use Matt's template like it seems to be norm these days if you start a blog.

Greg Boser: I actually got something custom done kind of -- Yeah that templates got to go.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter).

Greg Boser: Pretty sure he can afford to pay somebody.

Brett Tabke: You would think he knows a few developers, so what do you make all this new stuff coming up these days, social media and Digg, reddit, facebook. Are you playing in this area at all?

Greg Boser: I try not to, it's so noisy -- You know, its -- I just don't see -- there's obviously certain kind of clients and certain kind of times where it makes sense but I get annoyed with all the IM's, hey can you Digg this for me, right? I mean it's really kind of crazy.

Brett Tabke: And thanks for Digging that story.

Greg Boser: Yeah, you know, well that was an exceptional article.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter)

Greg Boser: We got a big kick out of that.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter)

Greg Boser: So its -- a lot of times in this business things come and everything is a craze and a rush and it's the next big thing, but a lot of times it never pans out as far as long term effect so the downside -- I think you will see a Digg filter, right? Because a thing like Google the issue really is how you deal with the Digg effect and the whole concept is getting away with contextual relevance, right? So now it's like if you get a lot of links from an authoritative site that isn't anything about what you do, that somebody thought your video was funny or whatever, that link is going to boost you in the search rankings and, you know, I think there are steering away from the idea that what's on the content of the page that links to you should match or be relevant to what you are about, that kind of ask thing and I think the whole Digg effect the way it works sque's that and I think that's problematic. I think you're going to see them just like awhy nything else has been abused to death, I think you will see some filtering and toning down of that spike in over the year and people have to start being held accountable for money that they are spending on social marketing and, you know, to show a client true benefit and a lot of things that I see, is it helps you get ranked for obscure terms and it doesn't -- you still need target anchor text, you still need fundamental search marketing principles and architectural kind of stuff to actually convert those visitors, you know. It's not about page views really.

Brett Tabke: Yeah, not unless you are doing just pure page view advertising...

Greg Boser: In the old days when you had a great banner network you were just forcing eyeballs to load the page you get paid by the CPM basis, good old days. Keyword stuffed info seek and, you know, getting page rank for one term when pages were really about something else we are kind of almost going back to that...

Brett Tabke: We are a little bit especially in this video stuff, you know, we're finding out left and right, CPM rules the day and what is a view, I mean is it that first 15 seconds of the video that you put a banner in front of somebody or is it -- do they need to watch the whole thing...

Greg Boser: Well I think that is the whole thing because there is no page, if it's not broken in to chunks like a webpage it's a whole new -- and you are going to see, I think more and more that, frankly because it is easier, for me. I love podcasting, I have not done it in a while but with the new 3dog company we will probably do some of that, that's what I think.

Brett Tabke: Do you still do the Rockstar Show on Webmaster radio?

Greg Boser: We've been on hiatus for a few months because Todd and I have been -- our travel schedules have been very conflicted so when I am in town, he's gone and I'm not sure at what point we're going to come back but I would imagine that maybe Pubcon.

Brett Tabke: You're coming down to Pubcon?

Greg Boser: I am definitely coming, I guess, are you kidding me? (Laughter)

Brett Tabke: (Laughter).

Greg Boser: You know in Seattle at SMX I had a little conversation with Incisive I said look, I'm certainly willing to still do your shows and everything but there is no way in hell I'm going to go to Chicago instead of Vegas, sorry. Good move Brett, made my day, I love Chicago any other time of the year but that conference was -- I didn't go last year because I was sick but so brutally cold, you know, it just a miserable physical experience to go, so...

Brett Tabke: But in all fairness we didn't do that on purpose, just a scheduling conflict in Vegas... (Laughter)

Greg Boser: Yeah, yeah right. It worked out great though because Vegas is close...

Brett Tabke: No Blogworld Expo took our slot in Vegas for several years running and we couldn't match their offer and that was only the open date from October till December.

Greg Boser: See damn bloggers screw up everything.

Brett Tabke: Well, I'll tell you what (laughter).

Greg Boser: So I definitely -- definitely be in Vegas.

Brett Tabke: Excellent, what's your biggest pet peeve about SEO? Whether it be the engines or whether it be the SEO industry, mine was that we were quick to absorb the label as spammers.

Greg Boser: Yeah, my pet pive is the whole black hat thing I mean, its the most irritating -- every time I see Mike Grahan, I want punch him to the nose, for that term, because its been so divisive for the industry and it's silly, people make a lot of money on it, I get branded as -- it cracks me up -- I get labeled as the black hat spammer guy and so many of my clients, I mean the majority of my client base is corporate America, you know, above word, top of the line stuff. I have definitely spent my time doing my R&D work like everybody else, you know, in our day -- you know, I feel like an old grandpa, right? Talking about the industry but we all did that kind of stuff and pushing the envelope and hey check this out this worked and I think I'm a better SEO for it. I think my clients benefit from it because a lot of what you learned, pushing the envelope-- and I also think we've contributed to making a better search engine.

Brett Tabke: They had to clean up their act, they had to fix the problem.

Greg Boser: You know what, it would still be like Alta Vista 1999 if we didn't do that, if we didn't exploit those holes, the engineers would sit around on their butts and go "wow we are great" so I think that we contributed a lot to help Google what Google has got. And I don't have any problem with saying that, they're winning the war in the big picture, the exploits that were glaring obvious and stupid aren't there anymore, they've done a great job, they are my favorite engine and I use them all the time and I...

Brett Tabke: Do you still love them as a user and hate them as a webmaster though?

Greg Boser: Yeah, I got caught in that all the time, it's like "God, I just can't believe I just told somebody to use Google analytics". I am morally opposed to giving your conversion data to the people you buy your ads from, it's just wrong and stupid. But and I hate how Google Analytics is so skewed towards their pay per click and they don't show you about visits, it's not really a full pledge -- unless they hid it somewhere and I can't find it but, you know, we use like index tools and other things like that that are actually better but they cost money, I'm afraid so. Free thing always sucks you back in, you know, but as I get older I'm getting over that, I'm not as bitter anymore but...

Brett Tabke: Well it's the world that we got to live in, you know, it's either learn to live with it or die. Because Yahoo and Microsoft are not...

Greg Boser: They just can't get together and do the deal, right? I mean that's holy deal needs to be done and a two player market is better than a one and a half player market because that's kind of what you have.

Brett Tabke: Right now, yeah, yeah.

Greg Boser: In a collective way I think they would be better if Yahoo could not get polluted with stupid ideas, poor decisions -- tends to leak out at Microsoft that I'm not bitter against them at all. But -- they had an opportunity to do a great thing and I think they just sort of dropped the ball. And I granted, starting from scratch is a difficult thing but some of their issues were so fundamental that I would, you know, hey I can send you the code to fix that, right? It's not that difficult, following redirect, you know, things like that -- I just think they -- the mistake they did made were at a level that was beneath what they should have been and I don't think they wille ever recoupe or catch up.

Brett Tabke: All right...

Greg Boser: Well they got the money and the two of them together could put up a fight.

Brett Tabke: What about Ask?

Greg Boser: I always told everybody that from an algorithmic standpoint they are my favorite -- concept, I don't think it scales, I don't think they approve on the scale, their data base is too small and from what I talked to, you know, because these are other engineers working for other people but that's always what they say, is like great do it with20 billion, you know, wouldn't necessarily work but I love the concept because they're holding true to the idea that community vote, peer or real peers someone in your industry counts more than a random page rank thing, it's a great model and I wish that somebody would -- and it's -- it's harder in theory to spam that, it takes a lot more work.

Brett Tabke: Especially because they don't update nearly often enough.

Greg Boser: Right, right and -- you know in the fact you know when Paul Gardi was running the place. He used to ask me, so how do you spam Teoma and I said I dontt know, give me some traffic and I will tell you.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter).

Greg Boser: That's kind of where they are at, but I would like to see -- they are sneaking up I think.

Brett Tabke: They've done some good things this last year.

Greg Boser: The campaign about the algorithm that killed -- what was it, it looked like a Yahoo or a Google ad...

Brett Tabke: It's not about the algo...

Greg Boser: The big billboard saying the -- it was terrible, bad idea. But they're kind of two steps forward, three steps back company sometimes I think. But it just amazes me that between the three of them that nobody can figure it out to even put up any kind of a fight.

Brett Tabke: And Google essentially put their algo on the web for everybody to, you know, you still got that basic algo and you got all of these tiny little tweaks on top, a lot of little filters, lot of little filters...

Greg Boser: Yeah, it's always obvious, you know, when Google turn off their filters they are not really any better than anybody else and now that was the biggest thing with the MSN thing is that over time, Google just had the opportunity to patch a lot of stuff and so they had four or five years of...

Brett Tabke: Find the problem.

Greg Boser: Patches in place and they also had the luxury of not having billions of users the day they turned the switch on so they were able to ramp up gradually at a time, Yahoo didn't had that luxury. Its like, hey you flip the switch and you instantly have millions and millions of people using your stuff and that's a much tougher challenge. So in a lot of ways Google had it easy, you know, and that situation will never happen again, I don't think we'll ever see a couple college kids, you know, that's how all the early engine were built and those days are gone.

Brett Tabke: Yup, yup, yup.

Greg Boser: It's all really corporate mergers and acquisitions and I don't really think there will ever be another Google, which is kind of sad.

Brett Tabke: In a way but...

Greg Boser: Well, let's move on. Yeah, it's time, that is where we are at on the web, and so somebody make the damn deal and get it done.

Brett Tabke: But on the other hand we got so much new stuff out there, podcasting, video, all the social stuff, all the feed stuff, optimization of eCommerce it's a whole different way.

Greg Boser: And yet the average user, like my mother -- I always use my mother, she's like my famous example on everything, probably has no clue about what a RSS feed is, or how to use a feed reader or that gets back in the whole, SEO becoming social media marketing that I just don't get, you know, its fundamental when it comes down to it, people like my mom who sits down and type stuff in and -- well I do think it's kind of going in that direction until, places like Digg start becoming more channel specific and more -- which they are trying to do, everybody is got a -- what's the software plug, you know, the little...

Brett Tabke: RSS reader.

Greg Boser: Open source Digg, you can make your own -- so you're going to see a lot of new vertical Diggs coming out, but till it gets really community driven to where my mom likes to cook and she's into recipes and she logs on to a recipe related Digg, and uses it. That's when it will be a powerful thing, I think.

Brett Tabke: But on the other hand you got to filter through all these blogs somehow, there's just so much noise out there trying to find out what's good and what's not.

Greg Boser: Well, the greatest -- before I went on my self imposed blogging hiatus the greatest post is a video podcast that Michael Gray did telling all the bloggers to shut up.

Brett Tabke: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Greg Boser: I mean that was -- that mad my year and that's kind of how I feel about it is like I could probably count the people who's opinion I really want to hear on one hand and everybody else is commenting on their commentary there's very little unique editorial content and it's really just regurgitating, something that what you post on your forum or was on Danny's site, you know, I mean there's a couple of main places to monitor and the rest really should shut up.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter) and that's why you haven't posted in six months.

Greg Boser: I don't still have any good thing to contribute to the conversation.

Brett Tabke: I know how you are I haven't posted on my blog in a long time.

Greg Boser: That's like weird because that's one of the things where Sherry and I had an agree on, she said it one time I don't blog because I just don't think I have important enough things to say on a regular basis, and I said, wow that's kind of true.

Brett Tabke: It's profound.

Greg Boser: It's profound and so that's why my blogs going to expand to be more about, you know, there's more to my life than just husband - dad, you know, all that stuff, family stuff and I actually found that the blogs that I do read, the greatest thing I've read last month is about Danny Building a damn tree house, right? They're my friends and I like just reading about their personal lives and stuff away from business so -- and you will probably see more blogs like that.

Brett Tabke: Cool.

Greg Boser: And what your blog, you know, we got to talk, it needs some work. Do you use Wordpress?

Brett Tabke: No, no.

Greg Boser: I can hook you up.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter) Wordpress isn't that one of the quality downhill things, you see Wordpress on a site, people hit the back button.

Greg Boser: Well it's funny we don't put Wordpress on the sites we build.

Brett Tabke: (Laughter). Well great, we are definitely out of time here, I appreciate you taking time.

Greg Boser: Absolutely