Searchfest 2009 Interview: Rand Fishkin

Rand will be speaking about “Building A SEM Business” at Searchfest 2009 which will be held March 10th in Portland, Oregon. Get your tickets now.

1) Please give me your background and tell us what you do for a living.

I was born in New Jersey and moved to Seattle when I was very young, where I spent much of my youth in and around my Mom’s marketing & print design business. In 1997, I joined her company to help build her clients’ websites and in 2001, when they requested SEO services, began a 3-year education process into organic search campaigns. In 2004, I started SEOmoz.org as a repository for free information and tools, but by 2005, we had so many requests for business that we switched to operating under SEOmoz and incorporated the business. In December of 2005, we were featured in Newsweek, and the press, community and rollercoaster has been nonstop ever since.

Today, my job is far different than it was just 2 or 3 years ago. Whereas my primary duties were very hands-on SEO, today, I’m really a CEO. It’s my duty to guide SEOmoz through the treacherous startup waters, answer to the investors and owners on our board of directors and build a scalable, robust, valuable product for professional SEOs to use. Some days, I’m in product meetings designing tools and working out kinks, other days, I’ll oversee a spec review for growing our web index or corralating our metrics to better predict search engine rankings or analyze the revenue numbers and help decide which levers to pull and where to focus the businesses people to best help our customers and grow revenue.

Although I often feel like an accidental CEO, I’m incredibly passionate about the work I do. I love SEO – the challenge, the technical side, the marketing aspects and, especially, the community of people. If SEOmoz has succeeded, it has been because of the amazing support, attention, references and heartwarming friendships we’ve built throughout the search industry.

2) I looked at your company roster recently and didn’t realize you have as many employees as you have. What have been some of the challenges in growing your company and successfully managing that many people?

In September of 2007, we had 6 employees, but today, less than 18 months later, it’s up to 19 (and we’re hiring again this month!). I think our biggest challenge has been to build the management team – and it’s still a work in progress. We’ve got fantastic people, but delegation, organization and attention to detail are tough things in any startup, particularly one as organic as SEOmoz. I take a lot of responsibility for the challenge we’ve had – this is my first (and only) company, so I’ve had to learn everything from scratch. While that helps eliminate some of the bulky overhead that can accompany institutionalized thinking, it can also make us a bit rough around the edges.

We’ve been very lucky from an overall management perspective – our people are self starters, motivated by love of their work and excited about the possiblities of the company. Everyone who works here is also a significant shareholder in the company, which I think helps us all reach towards a common goal. Direction and focus have been tough for us to achieve – there’s so many projects and opportunities and exciting different ideas it’s easy to get lost and never accomplish one thing as fully or perfectly as we should. I think it’s something we’re getting better at, but we certainly still have a ways to go.

3) As someone who offers SEO consulting services that are priced higher than the industry norm, have you seen the economic downturn pushing clients to lower cost SEO providers?

We have had a number of client inquiries lately that have said no due to pricing issues, but honestly, I think the number is actually lower than average, which doesn’t correlate well with what I’d expect. Perhaps SEO isn’t something that folks are willing to skimp on, particularly since the ROI is generally so high.

I do know several other firms have been belt-tightening, so we certainly count ourselves lucky. Honestly, though, my belief is that the economic climate benefits organic search marketing and optimization. It’s one of the most cost effective activities a business can pursue, and one of the fastest to generate value and revenue.