Profile Information

I love tech and am a true hacker at heart.

Full Name Nick Andren
Display Name NickAndren
Job Title Webmaster
Company SEO Warp
Location Twin Cities, MN
Favorite Thing About SEO SEO helps the world wide web to grow and evolve.
Favorite Topics Content Marketing, On-page SEO, SEO Analytics, SEO Reporting, Design

Blog Comments & Posts

Why Freebies are Link Building Gold
Blog Post: June 29, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    You can do drawings for mailing lists, too, rather than having people repost links (which can be a good idea if your goal is to build up your mailing list). Have people subscribe by a certain date. After the deadline, whoever is on the list will be eligible for a prize of some kind. After the deadline, people may unsubscribe, but some will forget about it or won't mind and will stick around to get your e-mail. If you hold these contests regularly, people will stick around longer to increase their chances of winning.

SEO Interview Questions - Whiteboard Friday
Blog Post: June 30, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    I can just see that successful interview now:

    Interviewer: "Here's our competitor's site. How would you optimize it for success?"

    Interviewee: "Destroy it."

    Interviewer: "Excellent. Welcome aboard!"


  • Nick Andren

    Yeah, SEO is a very particular sort of responsibility. Because you have to combine web technologies and development with marketing and presentation dealing with different fields, it can't always be straightforward. I think your approach was probably the best way to test out a potential employee because you can see how that candidate would handle a particular site rather than asking about more general questions. It's the difference between knowing the specs of a new car and giving it a test run.

  • Nick Andren

    This reminds me of one time where I was trying to get some work with a local restaurant site owner who was looking for some SEO help. They had shown me their site and asked me how I would optimize it. Freighteningly, most of the pages were little more than one gigantic picture each! No text or anything outside of the picture, but it looks like the site's designer drew out the layouts on Photoshop and just saved it as an image.

    I pointed out that having pages like these was detrimental because visitors would have to wait for a whole image file to be downloaded before they could see the contents of the page, none of which they could highlight or do anything with. That's also not to mention that search engines wouldn't read the page or know what it's about. So I transcribed one of the pages from the image to an accurate CSS/HTML version to illustrate the differences in size, download time, and usability.

    Unfortunately, they weren't interested, ultimately deciding that they didn't need SEO work; their site was perfect already, and today, remains unchanged. And I didn't even get to mention that the site used external JavaScript to put simple anchor links on the pages or that their page with tiled embedded YouTube videos was probably not the best idea either. D'oh.

How Google's Panda Update Changed SEO Best Practices Forever - Whiteboard Friday
Blog Post: June 23, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    I really hope the new Panda update is able to determine relevancy of content from different times, too. I know it's really hard to categorize a website, especially for a machine, but I really hate looking up things having to do with programming and code and finding nothing but posts from 2006 using methods that are now depreciated or irrelevant to today's practices and features.

     Either way, I'm looking forward to seeing how this new algorithm works out for all of us.

An Analogy Filled Explanation Of SEO For Kids
Blog Post: June 17, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    "I have discovered, that many people my age, simply don't understand (or care) what SEO is or does."

     That's because SEO combines computers and marketing, two subjects that put a lot of people to sleep pretty quickly. It's unfortunate that this happens because the perspective of a white hat SEO can be very interesting; you can find and implement ways of creating useful and interesting content for other people and get that content onto their screens (or get products into their hands if you're optimizing for sales).

     And then there's the popular opinion (at least on sites like Slashdot) that SEO is a bunch of garbage and that the people behind it are nothing more than snake oil salesmen. This often stems from the popularization of black hat techniques, but it undermines the fundamental goal of good SEO which is helping people to find whatever it is that they're looking for online. Creating quality content and helping others to find it is what makes this wonderful world wide web grow larger and stronger.

    But anyways, this is a good article. I like the perspective and the humor. Write some more!

SEO Salesman vs SEO Geek: SEO Selling Success Observations
Blog Post: June 15, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    Sounds to me like you were nervous being in a suit because it was uncomfortable and felt out of place to you and it was your uneasiness that was projected into your potential clients. When you are more comfortable with how you're presenting yourself and your information, you'll tend to come off as being more confident and knowledgable which your customers will detect easily.

    This post also reminds me of the book "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau; in one section of that collection of musings, Thoreau notices that people respond differently to someone based on how they are dressed. For this reason, he warns people against having to work for someone who dictates your wardrobe because they are, in effect, putting you on some different level than with everyone else on the social scale. It makes sense in this case because when people see the suit, they may also associate it with needless expense and may feel that someone who can afford such clothing will either cost too much for their services or exist to swindle them out of their money.

    Someone who is confident in themselves and dresses similarly to the client will show that they are on more equal social levels and may be trusted more easily because the client can relate to you more.

5 Warning Signs of a Bad SEO Client
Blog Post: June 15, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    6th warning sign: the client throws a fit over you spending time on silly things like content and not creating an elaborate two-page meta keywords tag.

    But really, this is an excellent article that applies to every professional, not specifically SEOs. From an employer's perspective, what it boils down to is that an understanding of what you are trying to do and a respect for the people who will help you to accomplish those goals is vital for your project to move forward. When an authoratative ego starts taking control just because you're the boss, it will have a negative impact on your work and the others involved in it.

Head Smacking Tip #20: Don't Ask Sites for Links. Find People and Connect.
Blog Post: May 31, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    Connecting with people doesn't have to be so cut-and-dry, either; if you're putting content out there on the web, chances are that you can already think of other people who have similar content to you. If what they're doing is something that you enjoy, you could try chatting with them about your mutual interests and some useful information or help may come up without you even asking.

     For example, I'm a musician and wanted to get my work heard by more people online. On a musician's forum, I noticed that there was a small streaming radio station starting up who was asking for submissions. I submitted my work and got a couple of plays, but I also contacted the DJ because he played some of the music that I like, too. After some talking, he revealed that he, too, made music, but was short on samples, so I built him a sample pack from my collection and sent them over. He was grateful and gave me a couple of links and additional air time on his station, and I didn't even ask for them.

    Basically, if you have a genuine interest in something, you'll naturally want to see that thing grow, so you'll be likely to help it if you can. And sometimes, that thing will benefit you in return without you necessarily expecting it. If the interest isn't so genuine, it tends to be harder to make this happen.

Actionable Link Building Strategies
Blog Post: May 29, 2011
  • Nick Andren

    I would ask for a link in the first e-mail, assuming that I did have a relevant and interesting page to link to. Like you said, nobody likes to read a 20-line e-mail, but a lot of people also don't care to smalltalk through e-mail back and forth either. You want to get to the point and show the webmaster that there is a problem on his site while offering him a solution.

    If you just leave the idea of linking to your pages as a suggestion, it could be enough to persuade the site's owner to update his links; pointing out that there are alternate pages that he could point his links to instead sounds completely reasonable and easy to do. There's a benefit for him there because his visitors won't hit any dead links.

    However, if you request that he update his links to your site, that can sound a bit selfish and the focus can then move away from his problem to your gain.

    What I'm trying to say is that, depending on the person you're contacting, requesting the link could backfire depending on the wording, especially since text online can be ambiguous and wrongfully interpreted by the other person. Just remember that when you're contacting the webmaster, even though you're the one trying to get the links, he's the one with the problem and you're there to offer him the solution.