Back in the days there was a handful of webmaster forums out there. We had
Webmaster World, Search Engine Forums and then there was ihelpyou Forums ran by Doug Heil.
Doug has always been one of the more controversial SEO personalities with
his zero tolerance policy towards spam. Doug has made friends and he has
definitely made enemies, but regardless of whether or not you agree with
him, you always know where you stand and where he stands.
In light of recent developments and arguments regarding the presence of
Blackhat SEOs teaching spam at the latest SMX Convention, I have enjoyed being able to
interview Doug one on one without any of his friends or enemies present.
Doug Heil will be who he is today, and I hope that this interview will allow
some of you to understand better where he is coming from. His company name
is ihelpyou, Inc., and you better believe that
wherever there is an open discussion about Blackhat SEO, he will be there as
well.
Mike: To begin with, I want to point out that your forum was one of the first
major 3 webmaster forums out there.
Doug: Yes; I believe webmasterworld, searchengineforums, and ihelpyou were the main three.
Mike: How did you have ever get into the SEO industry and how (if) you have changed your strategy
ranking new clients since you first got started?
Doug: I started online with a free hosting account. I can’t remember the subdomain
name. I quickly moved to my own domain and put up an ugly site that listed
different resources for many categories.. a directory of sorts. I had found
those internet marketers early on and signed up for a few affiliate type
programs.
Soon after; I was told by a certain individual that my site could do real
well if it got good positions on search engines like Altavista and Excite,
etc. He had told me about a great trick for achieving that. Altavista banned
my site because of it for about one year. During that time I tried to read
as much as I could about search engines. I was obsessive about it. I found
the JimWorld forums at that time as well which taught me lots of things. I
was on a mission of sorts to learn all I could learn.
Mike: Many say that content is no longer king and that all you really need is good
links, a title tag and an h1 tag if the links are good. Do you experiment a
lot to stay on top of algorithm changes or do you more or less stick to
doing what you have been doing since the time that you’ve started?
Doug: My strategy has not really changed at all over the years.. The very basic
premise of this stuff in my mind really amounts to this:
Would an average joe searcher doing a search want to find this potential
client’s site on the first page of results? If that answer is no; I don’t
help this site unless it’s re-built. Not only do I use my own instincts
about this, but I send the url to a neighbor and ask them if they would buy
whatever the site is offering if they happened to find the site.
There are over 200 parts of any algo of a search engine. I’ve always
believed that a site can do well if it achieves a good majority of the sum
of those parts. I don’t chase the latest algo, nor do I do this “testing”
thing so many talk about. I’ve never read about any test that could work.
There are just too many variables involved with testing. For example;
“Links”.
1. The page title tag that a link is on.
2. The surrounding text of that link.
3. The anchor text of that link.
4. The page title the link points to.
5. The page content of the page the link is on.
6. The page content of the page the link points to.
7. The “internal” pagerank of the linked to page and the page the link is
on. … not toolbar pagerank.
8. The authority status and trust of the website the link is on.
9. The authority status and trust of the website the link points to.
10. The hub status of the website the link is on.
11. The hub status of the website the link points to.
12. The amount of outgoing links a page has.
13. The amount of incoming links a page has.
14. Same as the two above but substitute the word “page” for the word
“website”.
15. The length of time for the links.. linked to page and linking page.
16. The type of networks and other type websites that is associated with the
website who is linking to you.
In my opinion, that is only a partial list of all the variables, and it’s
only about links. Each part of just links is one part of a total algo of a
search engine. You can see how the number of parts can be well over 200. You also
have to consider that each is weighted and tweaked constantly. So you have
to see that trying to do some kind of testing or research, etc on all of
this stuff is just not feasible or cost effective in my mind. My approach is
much simpler and has worked for years.
This is not to say that other firms who do things differently are inherently
wrong, but is to say that the way I do things works for me.
Mike: So far, our main focus on SEO has been Google. From what I see, that might
be changing. Right now social media seems to play a bigger role than ever
and it could be that it will take over a lot of the search market and people
will start relying on it for information. Also, Microhoo needs to be watched
and in case you haven’t seen SearchMe yet
http://searchfeature.com/blog/first-look-at-searchme-beta/
if this will catch on, visual impact of a homepage is going to determine how
many of the searchers turn into visitors.
1) Do you agree with what I’ve stated above and 2) how will YOU change the
way that you market your clients if it should?
Doug: In my opinion social media will never “take over” search. It might be a part
of the total search market, but if you are asking me if Google, Yahoo. MSN,
or whoever buys who, or any new algo type search engine that come onto the
scene, my answer would be they don’t have anything to worry about. A real
searcher who is looking to buy a product or service can quickly go to a
social media type site right now and see that so-called friends can get
together to vote up their own stuff. I don’t see this as being something the
average joe really cares about or sees as something great. I also do not see
advertisers jumping up and down to gain visitors from stumbleupon or
twitter.
If it does happen that these types of sites get big, then with something
like searchme, it helps my business as we will have plenty to do building
some good sites with visual appeal.
Anyway; I’m an old man now, so by the time anything like this starts
to take over, I’ll be long gone. I’m old compared to many in the industry. (50) 
Mike: What bothers me is that so many of the so called SEO celebrities only
give out a little bit of info for free (publicly) and more or less market
themselves rather than put energy into offering something of value.
Doug: Actually Mike; I find that you really have to dig to find any
information at all of value, and even info that is correct these days. I
find myself disagreeing with many of these so called celebrities on many
issues. I don’t think it’s a matter of not giving up enough information, but
that SEO is really not about tips or tricks or giving up anything. I feel
it’s about each and every individual site and market. No one size shoe fits
all. You cannot list a top ten checklist of some kind that is worth anything
much to a site owner who is reading it. Some things on that list may
pertain, and some may not pertain. This is why people get confused. I do
agree with you that these celebrities want to market themselves. I guess
that’s why they are called marketers. I agreed to this interview. Does this
make me one of them? Well, maybe so, but I don’t think my reasons for
agreeing to this are exactly the same as other’s for being these
celebrities.
Mike: Even though I feel at times like you are not exploring every aspect of
SEO which you could (mainly because you consider so many SEO tactics black
when most don’t), your forum has always stood out for the willingness to
help those who want to learn.
Doug: I disagree with what you think I think about blackhat tactics. What
the major search engines consider blackhat, I do as well. I will say that my
common sense can see into the future about things that seem to be working
now but eventually are cracked down on; IE: Paid links. My forums started
warning people about this, oh, about 3 years ago. Don’t get me wrong; buying
a link because you want to get relevant visitors to your site is way
different than buying that link because of some search engine.
Yes Mike; My goal when I opened up the forums was to help people. New site
owners. Old site owners. New SEO’s and designers. Old ones too. I wanted a
place where opinions were not sugarcoated and that were only those a member
wants to hear. They may have major site problems and really don’t need
someone telling them to exchange links or get links or buy links, and
suddenly all those real site problems would not be a factor anymore.
Sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s my job to only try to help a site.
Mike: Think about the people who are considered the Top 20 voices of SEO and
tell me how many of them do you believe are doing a good service to the SEO
community.
Doug: What you may consider as the top 20, I may not. That being said, I
know of a few I actually read all the time. They write good stuff and for
the most part is stuff I agree with. I also know a few who seem to only care
about how many links they can generate, and how many people pat them on the
back. Usually the stuff they write is mostly not good in my opinion. Of
course then, there are those out there who could do good for the industry,
but choose to kind of sit on the fence and not really take a stand on
issues. I actually feel these people are doing the most harm to the
industry. These are also the people who need assurance or guidance from se’s
like Google on things.
I know of one person who never wrote one word about the fake content fiasco.
He didn’t take a stand one way or the other on it. What he did do was ask
Matt Cutts about the issue and what was Google’s take on it. In my mind,
wasn’t it conceivable to the masses what Google’s take was going to be? Why
would anyone need to ask Google about this in the first place? It was a
no-brainer kind of thing. I think things are done in this industry strictly
for the sensationalism of it. What usually happens if it involves asking
Google or something that Google needs to clarify, is you then have more
articles being written about what Google said or didn’t say, and other
articles being written criticizing those who criticize Google. It’s a never
ending circle of SEO’s trying to one up on each other. For what good? I
don’t know the answer to that. The fact of the matter is, the Google
guidelines two or more years ago were just as clear to me as they are today,
and after several revisions by Google to make them even more clear. It’s all
about common sense. I feel the blackhats simply need things to talk about,
so they are constantly finding words in the guidelines to make a point.
Guess what? I know just recently Google added new documentation, etc to the
guidelines. It’s been on Matt Cutt’s blog and discussed throughout. As of
right now; I haven’t read any of it. It could be just because I’ve been busy
with a couple new clients and also because I’ve been busy with family
matters and such, but the main reason is because I don’t feel I would be
more knowledgeable than I am right now if I spent a couple hours reading all
the new stuff. I just don’t feel the need to do so. I’m also not sure how
helpful it is to site owners and SEO’s for Google to be more specific, etc
about their guidelines. In the end; it’s about Google doing what’s in their
best interest and the site’s best interest. Even if a tactic isn’t
specifically spelled out as being a bad thing to Google, it could actually
be bad according to that site’s intent.
Seth Goden wrote a super article about a major issue in our industry that is
constantly debated and discussed over and over. It’s almost like two
different ideologies with people falling on both sides of the isle. We also
have those who sit on the fence on many issues related to search engine
spam. Seth put things into perspective real well and wrote things that I’ve
thought about and agree with. If you think about what he wrote, it makes
perfect sense. Read his take; I’ll call it The System.
I have another example of this: Major League Baseball is going through the
steroid drug thing. Many drugs are now easily detected by Baseball so the
players had to quit taking them in the last few years. There is one drug out
there which is extremely hard to detect. I can’t think of the name right
off. Baseball is working on detecting it, but is not there yet. There are
two groups of people playing baseball. One group believes that hard work,
good working attitude, and a dedication to the game is what one should do in
order to do well for the long term. They just love playing the game of
baseball and do their best within the guidelines “of the system”. Another
group on the other hand are those baseball players who took the steroids
that are now detectable. They stopped taking them, but some discovered the
one type of drug that currently is not detectable as of yet. Some in this
group are now taking that drug. These players are constantly trying to find
an advantage in order to be one up on their competition. They constantly try
to find that one loophole to slither through. They see the “system” as
something to try to beat, instead of working within the system.
Does any of that sound familiar? It sure does.
I enjoyed this Mike. I’ve respected you personally over the past few years,
although I am disappointed that you seem to be siding with blackhats more
and more on issues. I’m more disappointed that people who are in a position
to shape the industry for the next few years are people who really don’t
take a stand on things. I don’t believe that is helpful for the industry
going forward, nor does it help the Professional image I’m sure the industry
wants to be known for.
Thanks again Mike.
Ask questions or make comments here or on the Search Feature Forums.
Randy Brown is apparently a glutton for punishment, because he has agreed to be the next victim (err, I mean interviewee) of the SearchFeature Blog. Randy is the founder and owner of GrownupGeek.com (GuG) which netted just under $80,000 in 2007. Randy also has a blog, Learn Success with Randy Brown, where he blogs about what he has learned about how to (and how not to) run a successful website. 
