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Jim Westergren Interview
It’s been awhile since I have done an interview and this is what I am all about so let me introduce you to Jim Westergren. You might know Jim from a few marketing forums; I took notice of Jim and his high placement in the SERPS for the SEO v7ndotcom elursrebmem competition. I also recently asked Jim a few questions about optimizing Wordpress and he kindly answered every one I could throw at him. Here is my interview with Jim Westergren.
I find you to be extremely amusing, you are a writer who is doing his time marketing websites/blogs to make enough money to continue doing what you enjoy. Does this accurately describe you?
I would say so yes. I started writing my first novel when I was 18 as a side project in my work but when I started my web design/SEO company in the summer of 2005, 6 years later, there was no longer time for that. But yes, my main interest actually lies in writing and philosophy and I intend to finish my works some time in the future. My first novel just misses the last chapter and revisions and then I have two other novels I want to write.
When I found this page on your blog I just had to talk to you, do you realize that you are having success while others are not? Is it simply that you live in Sweden and Google hasn’t clamped down on your area yet or are you aligned with correct stable data?
Hehe, I see you dug up that old essay of mine. Well, it’s true that Google is now starting to better fight spam in non-english language countries but that has nothing to do with the success of mine. And since that report of mine the success has just continued drastically. I was featured in Wall Street Journal, started up a big Swedish SEO forum that exploded with traffic right from the beginning and now the latest that I was the first to find some data concerning RK which got attention from forum posters and a number of bloggers, including randfish.
Reason for the success, hmm. I think the thousands of hours spent on reading/observing/testing and what I learned on forums, especially digitalpoint. The branding of my name and communications I did on forums also helped. Earlier I used to work around 90 hours a week for years so when I moved back to Sweden it was no problem to continue in the same fashion but in the SEO field.
Recently I made a post on my blog about an accurate pagerank tool, a few days later I found that you were already on it and came up with some pretty interesting ideas; tell us what you have learned about RK values so far.
RK is a number taken from Google’s SERP XML that is listed for each URL. The “stable data” so far is that RK is a static number between 1-10, the same for any given query, updated regularly and increased when new backlinks are added. Additionally I found evidence that the definition: “Provides a general rating of the relevance of the search result” is wrong and that the RK values differs from the BigDaddy DCs and the non-BigDaddy DCs. It does look very much as the internal Google PR but I would not confirm this at this stage. More testing and observations will be done as soon I get some time for it.
I notice that you are into scientology, what is it about L. Ron Hubbard that appeals to you? I got a copy of his original book but haven’t looked at it yet, why should I dig it out and read it?
You’re touching a very controversial subject here, Scientology. Since I was a kid I figured a lot about the deep philosophical questions of man. My father, who is a Scientologist, introduced me to this subject and gave me a book to read: A New Slant on Life. I read it and got totally fascinated by the materials. I continued to read about 10 more books and a few months later (when I was 17) I dropped out of college to work in an advanced international organization of Scientology located in Denmark full time. I worked there for 5 years, but it was not what I expected and so I resigned and moved back to Sweden. The philosophical aspect which was what I was interested in was unfortunately totally lacking and sadly it seems like every religion has their fanatics and so do Scientology. The good news is that I got all my life-long philosophical questions answered on my own studies that I conducted after work hours before I left.
L. Ron Hubbard made many discoveries and did a huge amount of research on the human mind, life and the spiritual entity called man. My advice to you is that yes, I recommend you read his books but maintain your own thinking and evaluate the materials before you accept anything as true. Truth is what is true for you, nobody else. If you loose your own evolution of data you have become a robot that is not thinking yourself and others can control you with their thinking. I have met such people and I find it scary that I almost became one myself. So before you jump on Scientology’s crusade for total freedom, be sure that it is true for you.
I see you mention that you might be moving to India to manage a group of 8 search engine marketers, is that part of you master plan for financial freedom? Tell us about seo-fusion.
Well, the financial freedom I have already achieved, earning more money than my parents doing my hobby. And the partners that are working for me I manage via e-mail and instant messenger. Actually I have more partners than what is on that list; I have 2 doing on-page optimization (one Swedish and one English), 5 link builders, 2 programmers, 1 directory submitter, 1 doing CSS/Graphics and 1 work coordinator. Me myself I answer and write e-mails all day long to clients and partners, overview quality of work and write recommendations/rejections to my partners. I also place links on the network of 27 PR 4-6 web sites I own, read SEO news and post on forums to stay up to date and learn more all the time.
The plan to move to India is not certain anymore. Earlier the main reason for it was the money, as I get 80% of my income in USD and Sweden has horrible taxes but today it is no longer a problem. But physically I am alone, and if I stay in Sweden I will startup a bigger company together with other people and deliver SEO to the Swedish market. I started getting some big clients from Sweden and the market is huge with the major Swedish SEO firms being banned by Google or using questionable methods, so to move to India might not be the best solution. On the other hand I might also close down all services, move to India and just make a living on selling links/sites, live cheap and spend all my days writing my books. The future will tell, you can follow me on my blog, hehe.
SEO-Fusion.com was a site I bought to be able to easier deliver SEO to english speaking clients. It was like taking the jump from a SEO to a SEO Pro. Already the day after I had bought the site I got a phone call from California - the first client … I had to get people helping me and it was then I started getting more partners and testing them on my own sites and sending them knowledge tests.
What is spam and how far will you go to build your empire? Do ethics come into play at some point or should we carry on like robots to secure our futures in the engines. If buying, selling or exchanging links gets me to where I want to go is this the path I should choose?
As it looks right now I can go as far as I want but the question is how far I actually want to go. As of now I am getting 5-10 new service enquires per week and I cannot manage it all, it’s starts to get out of control. As I also want to write and blog more in the future I should have a look at this on how I will go about it.
Real SEO is not spam. I never involve in black hat and frankly the methods of link building I recommend is link baiting and building an excellent resource that will not help but get links. Bought links and those obtained through link exchange are many times being devalued, the SEs are getting smarter and more sophisticated.
As for the future of search I can only imagine. Today Googles latest BigDaddy datacenter has 25 billion web pages in its index. In 5 years it is probably over 50 billion. I think as for the future we are looking more at advanced AI based on user activity. In this way the engines knows what results the general user and especially the searcher conducting the search are looking for and displays those but that will take some years to fully develop.
Say I make a product and want to be found in today’s search engines for that phrase. What are some steps I can take to get to that goal? Is it as simple as doing a website with articles focused on composting and pointing a few good backlinks at it or are things a little different today?
My biggest advice when starting a new site is to target first a non-competitive term and start to get traffic on that. Also have more than 500 words on the home page and start getting incoming links – gradually and on-theme if possible. In this way you will get at least some traffic from the SEs which will gradually increase. Then build and improve the site more and more and once you are released from the sandbox, built some trust and age you can target the competitive term.
I notice that you also love robots and science fiction, tell us about what you’re writing? Can you sign your book for me when it is published, do you have a website or blog ready for this? How about writing a book that is not on paper?
:D I am thrilled over your interest. Yes, I love Robots and Sci-Fi with a touch of philosophy. Unfortunately my first novel is in Swedish, but hopefully it will be translated. As for the stuff I am writing imagine the mind-blowing imagination of Isaac Asimov with his robots and universe, add the sense of wonder of Arthur C. Clark and add to that a huge mystery and an underlying philosophy. The genre is very similar to Matrix, if you like that movie you will like my writings. That is at least the way I want to write. Hmm, book not on paper, damm interesting! Could be a blog …
I put up a page about the novel from the old site to the new that is now a blog, it is now here.
I will keep a few questions I have for you to myself for now, I would like you to stop in from time to time and let us know what you are up to, sound like a plan?
It sure does!
Thanks Jim.
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