Every so often in the SEO world, a new rockstar emerges onto the scene - engaging audiences at conferences, running a great blog and getting linked to on every other post in the feedreaders. This year, two of those guys are part of one company - Neil Patel & Cameron Olthuis of ACS.
In all honesty, I've been blown away by their rapid rise to stardom. Their blog, ProNet Advertising, is on Digg at least once a week. Their clients already include some of the best known brands and names in the tech world and, perhaps most shocking of all, Neil still goes to school full time!
Check out an interview I conducted with them after meeting up at Pubcon.
I've known Neil for several years now, but yea, this past few months I've been running across his writing everywhere I go, and learning a lot from him. Rockstar - yea! Well deserved! I'll have to check out more from Cameron - thanks for the info.
Several Years? He's only 21!
I don't doubt it though. I'm sure your boys will get an early start and be way ahead of the game by that age as well.
Have been in the industry for at least 4 or 5 years. Started during my third year of high school.
Agreed! ProNet has been all over my own 'trustnet'. When the same blog starts appearing in your favorite Digg users' stories AND link-dropped by your favorite feeds, you can't help but check 'em out.
Funnily enough, the best part of Rand's interview were the blogs selected by Neil & Cameron. Realizing that I had subscribed to half of those blogs had an 'Amazon recommendation effect' as I spent the rest of the afternoon happily reading through the hitherto unknown blogs.
hehe I remember when I first met Neil, I think. Was it at SES Chicago 2 years ago? This guy seemed like he was about 18 (he was! :p) and was very knowledgeable. Obviously he has only gotten smarter. But most importantly, he is an excellent networker and a genuine person to hang out with. Cameron impressed me also since the first time I met him this summer when we spoke on the Viral panel along with Rand and Jennifer. I look forward to a repeat of a fun panel this time around.
Who knows, we may start seeing some "Patel-lettes" and "Oltheus-lettes" pretty soon.
Good topic Rand…as usual you are the best love-spreader in our industry.
ack! I just noticed we spelled your name wrong. I don't know what it is about "olthuis" that begs it to be spelled "olthius."
It's fixed now
-Matt Chief Director of Spelling and Capitalization SEOmoz LLC
Pronet is a very cool blog that I read a lot. They definitely work very hard. About their rockstar status though, hm… I wonder how much money they make?
My that's a handsome interview photo. I wonder who took that????? :)
I am definitely a Neil and Cameron fan.
Ooo... Should have given credit where it was due there, Lee - sorry 'bout that :)
Just giving you little grief Rand :) Excellent interview with Neil and Cameron BTW!
Neil and Cameron are becoming "seo household names" for very good reason - two very friendly, helpful guys that definitely know their stuff. Congrats guys on all the recent publicity.
I got completely lost on a tangent with the 'purple cow'. I searched for far too long to find the original purple cow without luck. Anyone out there who also knows that the purple cow was a 1960's Neiman Marcus invention - a stuffed purple cow with white ears and snoot, proper cow bell hanging from its neck, that sings 'Deep in the Heart of Texas'? No kidding!
And Neiman Marcus understood and promoted the concept of the purple cow in exactly the same way that Seth uses the term. They noted, 'A cow is a cow, especially in Texas. But a purple cow. Now that's something truly different. Only from Neiman Marcus."
This item was a staple at Neiman Marcus for many years. I still have a purple cow, but I couldn't find any mention of these wonderful creatures in my search.
Just listened to Neil and Cameron on Shoemoney's show earlier today... they're everywhere! And they deserve to be... :)
Wow! These guys seem to know their stuff and have some great products that are sure to gain widespread use. Thanks for this interview and for exposing me to this great new company.
Great Show today Neil!
Niall Kennedy speculates that people with nothing better to do, build up authoritative Digg profiles and then rent or sell them like a fully loaded World of War Craft Character.
Do you have any opinions on that? I'm sure it's a tempting idea for some people.
Some have tried to sell their Digg account, but unlike War Craft characters there is some major complexities with that. If Digg finds out they will remove it and depending who you buy it from your IP will probably be different. The main thing is if you buy a Digg account try and stay away from the top 100 accounts because Digg watches them closely.
Good 'ol world of warcraft gold farmers... I'd be surprised if there weren't already some enterprising marketing managers paying Diggers on a per digg or per page impression basis.
If you have a reasonably sized network of news sites, the return from hiring dozens of Diggers to solely digg (or at least give preference) to your sites could well be worth the cost.
For example, when Steve Irwin died, Australian news sites were hit by phenomenal levels of overseas traffic, but some news sites enjoyed substantially higher levels of traffic (we're talking in the hundreds of thousands here) due to precedence given to their stories by aggregators like Digg, Google News and Yahoo News.
If companies try to optimize their articles for Google/Yahoo News pickup, why not Digg?
ACS & the ProNet blog are beautifully-designed sites in my opinion & it seems like I didn't give Neil enough credit at SES. I think he was perhaps pigeon-holed into a topic that didn't allow him to show off what he really knew (Wikipedia). I've just read about 10 of Neil & Cameron's posts at their blog & they really do seem to deserve a place among the SEO glitterati. It now has a place on my favorites list. Thanks for bringing them to my attention again.
Clearly from your interview and from their blog articles, Neil & Cameron seem to be experts at Digg & how to use it to their clients' advantage. I notice that the clients Cameron listed in the interview were all tech, and despite all of the hype around "how to get Dugg" at San Jose and around the web, it still seems to me that 90% of the Dugg/Del.icio.us blogs & stories are tech- or politically-related. I have a couple of followup questions for anyone who reads this blog & perhaps I should post on the ProNet blog as well:
1) Is my assessment of the 90% tech/political correct? 2) Does anyone think that Digg/Del.icio.us are ever going to have a broader reach to more areas of interest? Clearly blogging is getting to be a more widespread, lower-tech phenomenon, but are these newer, less techy bloggers going to use these sites in more than a nominal fashion? 3) If so, when? 4) If not, is this a niche that a social-networking site for non-techies might fill, or is it a question of the idea behind these sites rather than a specific site or sites?
Thanks and sorry for the long response.
David,
Thanks for the kind words. Cameron and I will be at SES Chicago and I will be speaking on Wikipedia again. Although it is not always my favorite topic to talk about, it is a fun panel to be on and hopefully someone learns something valuable from it.
Also, here are some answers for your questions...
1. I am not sure if it is exactly 90%, but the majority of the stuff on Digg is related to tech or politics.
2,3,4. I think they will have a broader reach, it will just take time. I am not sure when, but just like blogging it will probably happen sooner or later. As time goes on we will also start seeing more niche social networks launch and take a chunk out of the bigger players' market share.
Neil, thanks for the direct response. I am intrigued that you think that niche networks are going to take some of the bigger players' share, because it seems like the opposite has happened with search. At any rate, I will be sure to catch you at a future SES (or whatever SearchEngineLand starts), though I can't make it to Chicago.
I'd love to com and here you guys speak, but sadly it's a heck of a long way from here to there (I'm in the UK...)
Anyway, just a quicky to say I've added your blog to the list of ones I read daily.. And that's a hard list to get on to, so kudos.
Pete, Thanks for the compliment. I'm actually going to be speaking in the UK on February 23rd. It will be during the post conference masterclass for this conference. Would love to see you there.
Interesting points (and the designs of ProNet and ACS? I second that emotion - as Smokey Robinson might have said.)
Personally, I don't see Digg / Del.icio.us ever really getting out of the tech/politics trap. The design, history, methodology and structure is just too geared towards those kinds of story. I do think there's a market out there for more specialist networks... a Digg-style network for pets, one for health issues, one for cross-dressers and so on (did someone say "Yahoo Groups?")
It's all well and good for tech companies to use Digg to their advantage but if you're working with a small client in a specialist, non-tech niche (we're not all big-hitters) then even a brilliant marketing idea isn't going to get any traction on there.
All that "top 100" crap is the kind of thing that makes mum and dad dip a toe in the water and run out again shivering. I dare say that any search engine worth their salt will be looking at ways to filter out the serial mutual backslapping and gaming that goes on through blogs and social networks. It's fun while it's still happening, but I think the gravity of more formal, traditional media will start to pull attention away from this stuff. And rightly so.
The 18th rule of business? Everything consolidates in the hands of a few players.
Carp, I actually see quite a few non-techie articles on the digg homepage everyday. You just need to be a little more creative when writing the content.
Keep in mind there are also thousands of social sites these days, just about every little niche/topic has one. So if the digg crowd isn't your target audience don't give up.