Barry Adams

Barry Adams is for me one of the guys I like to read up on when it comes to Google News related advice and practices, the man is very approachable and a fountain of knowledge. He writes across many sites including Search News Central, State of Search and his own Great Websites Blog. He very kindly agreed to answer SEO Questions.

How did you find yourself as an SEO, where did it all begin?

I suppose I can trace it back to the late 1990′s when I built a website for a role-playing game I was quite fanatical about at the time. (Yes I am a huge geek.) I wanted that site to show up in search engines when people searched for that RPG, so I started to investigate how that could be accomplished. The rest, they say, is history.

Google News seems to be your passion, where would you point those new to SEO to focus on this particular tactic?

Google News is one of those verticals you barely pay any attention to until you’re immersed in it. Working as the Belfast Telegraph’s SEO has really opened my eyes to the power and potential of Google News, especially with regards to universal search. If anyone wants to explore Google News I recommend working for a news site – or if that’s not feasible, do a lot of work with press releases and see how they manage to break in to the universal SERPs. Also it’s a good idea to try and cultivate relationships with journalists and online editors. Those types of connections can come in very handily indeed.

You recently moved to Pierce Communications towards the end of last year, from an in-house SEO perspective how do you find devs receive you when you deploy strategies or recommendations?

I’m used to adversarial relationships with web developers. I hugely admire developers for what they can do and the constraints they have to work with, but usually my recommendations weren’t well-received.

Here at Pierce Communications the exact opposite is the case: our web developers are not only brilliant coders, they’re also keenly aware of the necessities of SEO and usability practices. That makes working with them immensely rewarding, and it also enables valuable exchanges of ideas and knowledge. Some of the things these guys come up with actually help my SEO efforts in ways I might not have been able to do as a stand-alone optimiser.

Like quite a few SEO`s you started out as a webmaster and picked up HTML and learned how to manipulate it. HTML5 is slowly being adopted across web properties and assets but the main question is how much does an SEO today need to know code?

SEO is a hybrid discipline of technical know-how and marketing expertise. I believe a truly all-round SEO needs to understand HTML as it enables them to audit websites on a level that a-technical SEOs might not be able to. A SEO that doesn’t know code can still get the job done, but probably not as well as someone who has the technical expertise.

Processes in SEO are client dependent whichever way you approach them, how much do you find you are changing yours with the forever evolving search engines?

Not all that much to be honest. Yes search engines change nearly daily and SEOs play catch-up all the time, but at its core SEO is still about keywords and links. The exact ways in which we implement keywords on a site and how we obtain links have changed, but keywords and links are still what makes SEO work.

So my own processes haven’t really changed much, it’s still about finding the right keywords and implementing them on a site in the right places, and obtaining good links. The only thing that has really changed in the way I approach SEO is more a result of my growth as a professional rather than due to changes in the search engines: I pay much more attention now to a site’s information architecture and how this relates to a page’s relevance for a given (set of) keywords.

The SEO community is a tight one, we congregate across SM, forums, blogs, IM. What is the first site that comes to your mind when you look for SEO advice?

That depends on the type of advice I’m in need of. For quick & dirty tips I always shoot off a question on Twitter first and usually get great responses from the wider SEO community. I’ve found that especially UK SEOs are very willing to help each other out, and I feel truly privileged to be a part of that community. From London to Glasgow, from Manchester to Belfast, SEOs across the UK readily lend a helping hand to one another.

For serious, in-depth SEO advice I approach the members of the SEO Training Dojo. It’s an international community of SEOs whose combined knowledge and experience are pretty much unmatched. If the Dojo can’t solve it for you, it’s unsolvable.

You are a passionate SEO blogger, how have you found writing and sharing your experiences has helped you?

I’ve found that it’s very much a case of give and you shall receive. The more I share, the more I get back. My blogging has enabled me to make (small) forays into the conference speaking circuit and has helped me get in touch with other professionals who in turn share their experiences. And I’m pretty sure that the profile I’ve built through my blogging have played a big part in helping me land my current job – which is pretty much a dream job working for a superb company. So I’m exceptionally grateful to people like Bas van den Beld, David Harry and Peter Young who’ve given me these chances.

What has been your biggest mistake in SEO, how did you turn that to your advantage?

Oh I’ve made many mistakes, my predictions tend to go 50/50 in terms of accuracy. For example I didn’t foresee the impact social media would end up having on SEO – and to be honest I’m still sceptical even now – but the key is to have a flexible mind. When proven wrong I try to accept it, find out why, and learn the appropriate lesson. Then I move on to my next blunder. I loathe dogma, and I truly believe that doubt and uncertainty are to be embraced. Everything is up for debate, nothing is etched in stone. But you always need to have facts to back up your statements. You could say I’m an advocate for evidence-based SEO.

Time for a bit of third party pimping, name me one SEO I should just shut up and listen to?

That’s an easy one: David Harry, the Sifu of the SEO Dojo, all-around great guy, and probably the smartest SEO I know. And definitely the sexiest.

2011 for SEO is the year of … ?

… keeping calm and carrying on.

Thanks Barry for agreeing to be part of the 10 SEO Questions series, greatly appreciated.