Since Scott had to leave early on Thursday for his extended Labor Day vacation to Idaho, he's entrusted his golden video camera with me to produce this week's Whiteboard Friday. This week Rand sits down with Lucas Ng, who currently lives in Sydney, Australia, and does in house SEO for Fairfax Digital. Rand and Lucas discus the differences between the the SEO market in Australia vs the US, his impressions of the recent SES San Jose conference and his thoughts on the SEO industry in general.
By: Jeff Pollard
Whiteboard Friday - Dingo Ate My Whiteboard
Whiteboard Friday
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
Hi Sophie, hi the rest of you louts. Bloody hell, where did all these Aussies come from :)
If I'm inaudible it is because of my accent + me being nervous! The bright lights turned the studio into an interrogation room - I swear I'll never make fun of Jane's Kiwi whiteboards again.
My two tips were basically web analytics and search-related research.
Recommended resource for web analytics (as Adam pointed out): Avinash Kaushik's blog
And for search engine research: Bill Slawski's SEO by the Sea
Thanks Shor, you did a great job. I was wondering what the book was too though, so thanks again. :)
thanks mate. good to see and hear a fellow aussie being interviewed in the american SEO market :D
Lucas - thank you for the clarification....
Rand - great interview. You dug a little deeper and gave the audience some take aways, which I think is always helpful in a one on one interview like this.
Solid job!
Lucas my friend! Good stuff.
Looks like you are doing really well and kicking some great goals. Love to hear about the time OS.
When can i start to brag about giving you the break???
Catch ya mate
"do you mind answering a few questions?"
"yeh shor"
.... made me chuckle
"Was that 'Yeah Sure' or 'Yes Sir'?"
Great line from Super Troopers!
Rand. Pants next time. Please.
jk
Seattle has been experiencing decidely un-Seattle-like weather. It's been blazing hot all week and everyone's in tshirt/shorts!
I guess I brought Sydney's sunshine with me.
The New York Metropolitan Area has a population of about 22 Million... if you count everybody like Rand suggested.
Not sure how else you would count it. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area
Great interview, guys. If you had given me 30 guesses, I would've never connected Lucas to Shor.
I'm curious: Shor mentions that SEO is just getting off the ground in Australia, but it feels like (just anecdotally) there's a pretty solid cluster of Aussie SEOs. Actually, as I network in the website usability community, I've been surprised at how many up-and-coming usability people there are in Australia and New Zealand.
Anyone have any insights on that? Keep in mind that I'm an American, so the idea that there are people living and working in other countries makes me frightened and confused ;)
Well said.
There are many really talented and knowledgeable SEOs in Australia, but the industry itself is still in it's infancy. Let me clarify...
Visiting San Jose was a humbling experience. At SES, the general level of SEO knowledge was as expected, good but not overwhelming. What I did learn was "applied SEO". Plenty of SEOs have the know-how but are not great at execution. This is especially true in Australia.
For example, globally there are linkbait specialists, link building specialists, analytics specialists, PPC specialists etc. whereas many SEO agencies in Australia are still trying to be one-stop shops. Maintaining quality of service is very difficult under these circumstances, especially when you add clients at a breakneck speed. (This also holds true for in-house teams when more sites/departments request SEO). Unless you can readily draw from a large corpus of experience (and I don't mean your company's one or two SEO rockstars), it's going to be difficult to scale your operations.
Website usability (user experience/UX) could be a different game in AU/NZ. I'm lucky to work with some fantastic UX people.
I felt that way all through graduate school. It's hard to feel like an expert at something when you're constantly surrounded by people who know more than you do. Still, that's the best way to learn, and I have a feeling you're selling your own experience short.
Just to add to Lucas's great reply. Many Australians in SEO and usability hang out and work in the international market. The expertise is there but the market is a) not so advanced and b) so small that to do well you need to expand your horizons.
Great video and some great insights both in the video and in the comments. I agree with Sophie on this – the talent is there in Australia but the local market is somewhat behind the times and convincing a client to implement your brilliant and talented strategies can be more challenging than knowing your stuff to begin with.
G'day to all the SEOmAUSSIE's - thanks for giving an insight into the SEO industry down-under Lucas
Hah! Huge thumbs up for the the coining of "mAUSSIE's" on the moz!
I've ordered it as well. Just one more thing to try to understand!
Great video debut, Lucas -- looking forward to seeing what's next from your SEOm-Oz partnership :)
Hi shor, just some days ago I ordered Avinash's book on web analytics - I'm eager to have it on my bookshelf given the praise at Amazon (30 fivestars from 32 reviewers today). Did you enjoy reading?
Loved it and I think it's essential reading for anyone in search marketing. :)
"Good analytics book", just isn't as compelling as "It's a $10,000 book".
I hope Avinash gives me a commission!
Great to see another Aussie SEO flying the flag at a US event. Hiring SEOs in Oz has been difficult - I had to train all but two people who joined us when I worked in a corporate SEO agency. I get at least one call per fortnight from recruiters looking to hire SEOs.
Selling SEO or PPC services is a lot harder in Australia than in the US, but not as bad as in NZ. I now train SEOs so I also hear similar tales from Aussie SEO companies.
Sadly, the expression "SEM" here now means only the paid offerings from the ad networks, unlike the original wider meaning that included SEO.
In Melbourne we try to hold SEO get-togethers now and then and some have flown from other cities to attend. One coming up next month!
Great interview, and great to put a name and body with an avatar, Shor!
I think your thoughts on analytics are huge, and probably understated at the same time.
As SEOs, we know that things are moving at lightspeed in the industry and are often focused on what's the next big thing, where are things going, in regards to the engines and users... local search, mobile search, web 2.0, SMO/M
...but we often lose sight of the backend growth areas, those things that are paramount to the actual job we do and things that allow us to do that even better... and analytics is probably at the fore-front of that charge.
I was a bit surprised to see so many Aussie SEOs jump in and comment on this post. We generally come in small numbers but play well above our weight :)The Australian SEM market should also start seeing some benefits from the good work that Barry Smyth has been doing in regard to the conference circuit. I see that he recently teamed up with SMX for his Search Summit series.
Barry + SMX working together can only lead to better things for the local scene. From what I overheard in San Jose, some well known speakers are definitely interested in heading over to Sydney in April...
And it's definitely good to see Aussie SEOs out and about online, but I reckon we should be like our sportspeople, kicking butt and taking names rather than following in the footsteps of our Euro/US colleagues!
Very interesting. Great show!
Awesome video, guys! Lucas, it was great to have you around and your presents for us at the end of the week were bloody fantastic! Husband is threatening to steal the scarf, though :(
One gripe though - who thumbs this post down, huh? Jeeze...
Great interview, I am from Ireland but am also working in the Search Marketing Industry in Australia (not with an agency but in-house with a company). Maybe SEO MOZ should conduct a poll to see where their members come from?
Seeing the amount of people on SEOMOZ in Australia maybe we should arrange an seomoz Australia meet up :)
Great video and great to meet you in San Jose, Lucas. I hope you can make it over again for another show -- SES NYC 08 maybe?
Whats the link to the $10,000 book? COuldnt quiet make out what he said, and I am an Aussie!
Web Analytics: An Hour a Day
Note: That URL has an affiliate id in it, but I got the link from Avinash's blog - so I think it should be ok :)
And I still can't type out analytics without the 12 year old in me chuckling a bit at the 4th letter mark.
Hey Rand...
How many people are in New York if you don't count everybody?
The scalable point is sooooooooo true
I wish I could give this post two thumbs-up - one for the video and one for the Transformers.
Great interview, Lucas! You've made me embarrassed about my paltry analytics skills. There's so much more I could be doing with that. Thanks for the heads-up!
These days I'm struggling a lot with the advanced features of Indextools. Does this book go over anything about Indextools in specific? Can anyone recommend any tutorials or resources for that?
A few days ago he did a video on comparing main web-analytics vendors including Indextools - maybe interesting. I've not yet seen it - video is 48 minutes...!
Hi Brett,
Do you have the extensive (offical) IndexTools User Guide?
if not.. throw me an email at [email protected] and I will make sure they forward it to you..
cheers :-)
Dennis R. Mortensen
https://visualrevenue.com/blog
great video guys.
Good to see you again Lucas! Great interview.
Not even a fully-fledged Australian citizen yet, but still feeling a twinge of pride right now :P
And just to echo what Lucas stated in the video... in Oz, the market/mindshare of Yahoo, Live and Ask really are minimal.
True true Burgo. Search in Australia really is Google, Google, Google right now.
I loved this interview! Want more interviews like this Rand. Lucas (shor) great to finally "meet" you. I totally agree with you about the Analytics advice, I wrote a blogpost on SEO Chicks about Analytic SEO (I made that term up...), I think it's crazy anyone doing SEO and not doing Analytics.
Oh and I loved the transformers clip at the end....made me smile =)
I vote that from here on out, every Whiteboard Friday should feature someone with an interesting accent.
If no overseas guests are available, Rand needs to fake a brogue...
Great information--I'll definitely be checking out those blogs.
In addition to a gaggle of whiteboard Fridays, tons of archived blog posts, SEO w/PHP, now add Avanish's book. I've got a lot of reading to catch up on. :P
Still, as far as analytics go, there's definite power there. This was driven home to me early on when I was working at a place that charged a flat per click rate through it's redirects; thus sorting raw server logs into legtitimate looking spreadsheets and graphs was crucial to the bottom line.
The billing setup may be dead and gone now, but the techniques of learning useful user terms, visitor behavior, and target advertisment sites is still just as important as ever.
Thanks for the book recommendation, just placed an order.
what was the blog he recommended for analytics? I couldn't catch what he said.
oh and i'm a smozy as well :)
conversion-matters.co.uk... only joking ;)
It was: https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/
Great interview. Nice to finally "meet" you Lucas!