In 2000, I formed Medium
Blue with a business partner. Initially, Medium Blue was a web design and
copywriting firm. At the same time, I was also in an acoustic duo called
Acoustic Con Queso, and I wanted to get our website to the top of search
engines. After achieving great results on AltaVista (which was very hot at the
time), we found that our clients were asking for the same service. We realized
that there were a million web design firms in town but not many firms that were
doing search engine optimization, and we saw great potential in going in that
direction. So we dropped web design altogether and started focusing on SEO. I
bought out my business partner about a year and a half ago, and SEO continues
to be Medium Blue’s primary offering.
Tell us
something more about your products and services?
We do organic search engine
optimization, which, as most people know, is the practice of applying
attributes to websites that make them rank highly in organic searches. We use
completely white hat ethical techniques and we don’t try to trick the
engines. Instead, we piggyback on the studies that Google and other engines perform
on their users, deduced by the current algorithms. The studies determine which
attributes people prefer, and we then apply those attributes to our
clients’ websites, making their sites not only better for search engines
but also for visitors.
We also offer Online PR,
which is comprised of two primary offerings – one is distributing
optimized press releases for our clients to all the major online news portals,
and the other is creating and distributing expert articles across the Internet
to various portal sites relevant to the client’s industry.
Finally we offer online
conversion, which is the art and science of making more people that visit your
website take the action that you desire. We have found that most people are
more willing to pay for SEO than to pay for website conversion, primarily
because SEO doesn’t imply that there’s something wrong with their
website on which they may have spent big dollars. However, the truth is that
raising your website’s conversion rate from 1% to 2% has the same net
effect as doubling your traffic, and it’s almost always easier to
accomplish.
Which
are the products your customers most look for?
Search engine
optimization is still in its infancy. While people in the search business find
this hard to believe, the majority of average people have no idea that the
industry exists. While we offer other products, it’s rare that people
are looking for them as standalone services. Our core product offering continues
to be SEO, and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future.
Are you
planning any special promotions in the upcoming months?
We are planning a
promotion that will give a free month of service to clients who will sign a standard
contract. In addition, we will continue to give aggressive custom guarantees to
clients so that they can rest easy with their investment with us.
What
does Medium Blue do to keep its existing customers and to attract new ones?
First of all, we stay on
top of the technological curve. We consistently monitor the industry for any
changes or updates. We also look across our network of optimized sites to
identify and capitalize on trends and to make certain that we’re applying
best practices at all times.
We are also consistently
offering value-added services at no additional cost to our clients as they
become necessary and available. For example, we now go out and check the code
on each client’s website every day, because we’ve learned that our
work is often overwritten by an internal developer. We find that it is much easier
to address and correct errors as they happen, rather than to wait and learn
about the errors after a loss of rankings. This is only one example- we are
always striving to make our services better and to take as much burden off of
the client as possible in terms of workload.
We do a variety of things
to attract new clients. We obviously optimize our own website and we write and
distribute articles about the industry. In addition, we remain dedicated to our
white hat approach, we maintain our excellent reputation, we promote our
success stories, and we maintain a network of excellent references. This
approach feeds on itself, as evidenced by our #1 ranking from PromotionWorld
for 2006. Winning coveted awards such as this are always good for business.
How do
you feel about being placed at the top position of PromotionWorld's Best SEO
companies for 2006?
I’m tremendously
honored, but I feel that it’s really a team accomplishment. As mentioned
above, the honor has brought us some attention that was much welcomed, and we
felt it was important enough to promote it in all of our marketing materials
and in press releases. Our team has an overall feeling of pride and
accomplishment from the recognition, and morale is at an all-time high.
What did
your company accomplish in 2006 that you think put you at the top of the list?
For one thing, we were
named as one of the top five places to work in Georgia by Georgia Trend magazine. In addition, we added
some high profile clients to our roster in 2006, such as DS Waters, which
produces and distributes Crystal Springs, Belmont Springs, and five other national
brands of bottled water, and Wake
Forest Baptist
University Medical
Center.
In 2006, we also began
including complementary copywriting and implementation to take as much off the
client’s plate as possible and at the same time to make our search engine
optimization campaigns run as smoothly as they possibly can. In addition, we
partnered with the Technology Association of Georgia to maintain and optimize its
article library, which has been a great success. We also created a lot of
individual client success stories which make us very proud.
What are
Medium Blue's best achievements through the years? What are you most proud of?
To be honest, I am most
proud of the fact that we could be recognized as the number one SEO firm in the
world and simultaneously be recognized as one of the best places to work in Georgia.
These two honors show that the culture we’ve created allows every employee
to succeed while also ensuring that every client succeeds. This is primarily
because everyone on our team is committed to the highest level of client satisfaction,
and everyone appreciates the low-stress environment.
How many
people does your team consist of? Tell us something about the atmosphere in
your office?
We currently have ten
people who are highly specialized. Each team member knows his or her place on
the org chart and his or her role and responsibilities on any given day. But
this does not lead to an oppressive or strict atmosphere. In fact it’s
the opposite – it’s a relaxed place to work. We have flex hours, we
allow people to bring their dogs to work with them, we keep a fridge stocked
with snacks, and we have a game room and library for employees to use. Plus we
recently instituted profit sharing, which also helps motivate everyone to do
their best.
What
trends do you see in the Internet marketing industry this year? How will 2007
be different from 2006?
I think that smaller
advertisers who had been using pay per click will continue to get squeezed out
by larger advertisers who treat pay per click as a branding exercise and
aren’t as bound by traditional ROI analysis. In other words, the larger
companies can outspend the smaller ones, and it doesn’t affect their
bottom line because their budgets are so large. So I see a greater number of
smaller companies turning to SEO as average per-click costs continue to rise
and they are seeking a more affordable way to increase their exposure.
I also believe that clients
will demand more accountability from SEO firms. Black hat firms using tricks to
gain rankings will be further marginalized as the engines get more
sophisticated in catching these loopholes.
There also will be a continued
reluctance from agencies to pursue search marketing because average agencies
don’t deal with the type of metrics that search marketing provides; they
make money on a per-spend basis. It’s the accepted norm, but it raises
ethical issues. For example, why would an agency be motivated to hone a pay-per-click
campaign and remove non-performing phrases if it was getting paid based on the level
of spend? There are obvious conflicting interests. So the percentage of spend
model doesn’t make sense to me when it comes to search marketing in
general. Plus, when you deal with the metrics available with SEO, traditional
agencies are afraid clients will start demanding the same type of granular data
that SEO offers from all their campaigns - billboards, paid ads, and other
types of advertising they had not normally had to track very closely.
Are you
personally satisfied with your involvement in Internet marketing?
In general, I’m
satisfied but not complacent; there’s always more that I would like to
do. As many articles as I have out there and as much as I can do to try to stay
in the public eye and write about the industry, I always feel that I could be
doing more than that, but real business issues always arise.
How did
your life change after you founded Medium Blue?
In the beginning, Medium
Blue had some lean years, when I was establishing the infrastructure –
those years demanded quite a bit of diligence. We have never taken on any
loans or debt - this company was started with $500 and has always funded growth
organically. Of course, since then, we’ve grown a great deal and my life
has continued to change as a result.
Medium Blue has changed
me as a person from a hands-on, figure-everything-out-for-myself kind of guy
and forced me to learn how to trust others and manage a team. That was quite a
change for me, to learn to back off and trust the people that I’d hired. And
this change was a good thing for me because one person can’t do
everything – and other people can often do certain things better.
How do
you spend your free time? What are your hobbies?
I have a seven-month-old
daughter who I enjoy spending time with. I also have a band; we’re in the
process of recording another album in the studio. And I write fiction, usually
short fiction. Frankly, I don’t have as much free time as I would like.
How will
you recommend your company to potential clients?
To be honest, I don’t have to do the recommending; I let our clients do it for us. No matter how great I can tell potential clients that Medium Blue is, and no matter how effective a job I know we can do for them, nothing I can say is going to be as compelling as that potential client hearing from someone who has worked with us, has seen the benefits, and is so ecstatic with the results he’s getting that he is willing to tell the world. And luckily for us, we have many such clients.