Loren Baker Celebrates 10 Years of Search Engine Journal

Key Takeaways

hello I'm Mar nans with search engan joural and in this video I'm going to be interviewing Lauren Lauren set up a search engine Journal many years ago and really is kind of a 10th anniversary update I wanted to interview him about how it got started what's really be behind it and how it's changed over the years Lauren welcome to the show thanks Mary it's a pleasure to be here thank you so tell me how did search engine Journal get started well um it goes back uh to about 20022 2003 um I had been in the SEO industry for years and um at the time uh there weren't really any blogs covering the industry there were a handful of sites uh like search engine watch and others which were were pretty much considered easings at the time or um I don't know journalistic Publications and tutorials about search right but um for the most part A lot of the conversation was going on within email newsletters within forums uh within other locations um so I was a pretty active participant in a lot of those uh you know a lot of those uh uh communication channels at the time uh responding to questions sharing thoughts sharing research things like that but um in uh 2003 um the news came came out that uh Google had bought blogger.com and and really blogging was something that was just very unheard of um beforehand I mean you really had to know how to code your own CMS or buy something on the Enterprise thing and just like self-publishing was incredibly expensive and time consuming um when Google announced that they had bought blogger.com it uh really changed the landscape and I saw that you know uh basically own content and self-publishing was the future and I also saw the opportunity of there not necessarily being any blog leaders within the search space so I decided to start my own blog I wanted to own my own content as opposed to contributing to email newsletters and things like that and then also bring in the audiences and uh connections that I had within those channels um to be the audience of the onsite so um first I started looking for for a domain right um search engine blog.com was taken that was my first choice um and then uh I uh there was an argument going on at the time about whether or not uh blogs were going to be called uh web blogs right because blog is short for web log right and um or journals like live Journal web journaling um so after doing some you know more queries and searches for available domains uh I ended up finding that search engine Journal was available and uh you know it it took me less than a second to snatch that up because you know first of all it did kind of support the whole blog um aspect of the site uh secondly instant credibility in association with Publications like the Wall Street Journal right yes and then uh third um you know educational journals medical journals um you know anything like that it it I really saw that helping as marketing perspective in the future so I set up scj on a Blogspot domain search engine journal. blogspot.com because that was pretty much one of the only ways to do so at the time and then I just started blogging I started uh summarizing um a lot of the news that I was reading on CET and other places and also it was a you know at that time right 2003 that was um you know in many ways the dawn of the new world of SEO Google had just gotten popular in 2001 uh Yahoo uh started you know having Google serving Google results in in it search queries and there was a lot of consolidation in the space too uh things like Google and Yahoo snatching up search advertising companies ask.com had become a um major player so there was quite a bit of news to write about and it was still all new so I was basically getting up every day um earlier than most and pumping out five or six blog posts a day and at the time it was all experimentation I didn't really have any readers you know maybe 50 or 100 per day but um that really gave me the chance to play around see what gained the most traction see what gained the most interest and uh then it just grew from there in a late 2003 early 2004 we ended up um beta testing uh word and moving um moving from a blog spot over to uh well actually it was called B2 at the time and then once B2 um evolved into WordPress we were one of the first uh marketing Publications to be on WordPress so um that's pretty much how things got started and from there uh by 2005 it became a um by 2004 2005 it became almost a full-time job for me when did you start to get significant uh traffic and significant you um about two months after I launched the site I actually had an Advertiser contact me asking for um an ad space for $35 a month on the sidebar and uh I you know was like yeah that that sounds great that bought me dinner basically once a month and um from there uh I started looking into New Opportunities and avenues getting involved with ClickBank and affiliate programs and things like that uh those always brought in a little bit of income but nothing really significant um it wasn't until I started incorporating um I actually used to have a uh about five different banners on the sidebar right and uh there was a base price for advertising but if you wanted to be at the top you had to pay more right almost like an auction system um but you know that really helped from a monetization perspective uh but as as the popularity of the site grew uh 2004 2005 um and really uh probably hit my personal Peak at 2006 2007 um the advertising opportunities flooded in and one thing to also remember is that you know Google buying blogger was a u basically a precursor to Google launching AdSense so you know being you know right there and an established site and publication right when AdSense launched really helped a lot too especially uh especially with the members of the search industry clicking on their own ads and things like that I'm sure helped a bit at the time so what was if you look uh look back at that uh what was the thing that you're most proud of and the thing that really kind of hid it home for you most and also what's one thing that you regret H good question um um so uh the thing that really hit it home for me the most is that I wasn't really a conference goer right um when I launched search engine Journal I uh I wasn't living in the US um I was living in Brazil at the time um so you know I was really everything I I I absorbed and communicated was what from what I found online um later I was living in Japan same thing um I would go to a couple conferences in Tokyo or whatever but um and met with Google Japan a couple times when they first launched there but uh you know it's um I was very disconnected from everything that was going on pretty much in the states it wasn't until 2006 um I uh was invited to uh be on Yahoo search advisory Council mhm uh with Michael Arrington and uh some others uh at the time and um went out to Santa Clara and the Bay Area so to speak and and really saw that uh what I was writing about um was the major industry that it is and he got a chance to meet with the people who had read uh my coverage of their companies and and you know their PR folks that wanted to get me more integrated into everything and it really uh it really hit home because beforehand I was just staying up late at night or up early in the morning um in my living room uh crunching through my thoughts on SEO in the industry and I was also doing some Consulting and Contracting work of course um so I was writing about my findings and things like that but I really wasn't that integrated into you know what was going on um what was going on at the company level and and once that first of all when I was invited to be on that council with some of the people that were on it I was just I was flabbergasted right was uh but secondly um when I first started attending uh conferences uh you know it sounds cheesy but having people walk up to me um and you know letting me know how much they enjoyed reading the blog and things like that it was uh then it really hit me that I had started something pretty large it's not until you meet the readers that you realize you have readers Al let you see the numbers exactly exactly and you know there's always comments and there's always numbers but when two things you know two a couple things happen uh one when someone comes up and says well what I read really changed my career or changed um you know the uh success enhanced the success of our company within search or you know we had read so much uh stuff out there that wasn't necessarily applicable and what we read from you and those takeaways and uh action items at at the bottom of your of your post really helped uh us connect with what was happening on the search front and how to apply it in the day-to-day um that was that that of course uh was really rewarding um to not only meet the people who were reading the blog but hear stories about how what I had put together um again in my living room somewhere blogging away and writing away was actually making a difference not only for me with the site right from a traffic perspective and everything else but for the readers to turn to as a resource yeah um that was fantastic and then so moving forward um at what point did you start to um take a step back and also what what else has this propelled you into what are you doing now so um uh where it really propelled was um 20072 2008 I uh what I learned from publishing had helped extremely with how I was applying um the content marketing techniques from the publishing world into the work that I was doing for my client base right uh my clients seeing remarkable success and this was at a time when uh the world of linking was all about buying paid links and exact ma match anchor text right right um but I would come in and uh lecture uh my clients or prospective clients on things like relevance and and engagement um sharability uh social interaction um and and not even going after all kinds of uh you know exact match links and sitewide links and what saw from that uh for the clients that really uh you know were were comfortable a lot of them were a lot of them were like well why should we do that when we can just go rent a bunch of links and um for the ones that actually listened um and uh brought me on um we we saw some great success and and help them compete in markets that were highly highly uh competitive um now if someone walked into your office today and said that you do all of that You' be like great that makes sense at the time it was kind of unheard of I wanted the brands I worked with to basically become Publishers in their own right to get natural traction natural links natural coverage and also relevance um uh as I uh as I marketed that more uh I launched a consultancy arm off of search engine Journal um branded as being search engine Journal but basically the spin was uh the everything that I did on the blog and have learned from the blog and have learned from years of participating in search I I would apply to client strategies and help them with execution um that ended up um becoming uh pretty lucrative to the point where um I started concentrating more on uh the consultancy and the services uh than I was in the blog I was still blogging but that's around the same time I started doing things like bringing in guest bloggers um looking for associate editors to help with the site as well so I could focus on what I saw as being kind of the uh the next uh wave so to speak uh from the services and consultancy side um at the same time I tried a lot of things over the years like we had a mobile search blog.com and local local search journal and some other um experiments um actually the mobile search blog was probably a little bit ahead of its time um so I was always trying to expand uh the uh the content of the site but at the same time you know um uh I got started in in uh consultancy and agency work I mean my background even before SEO was interactive media buying um you know interactive ad campaigns uh usability things like that so um I've always been very interested in working on the client side and uh started you know started building that out um off of sej um and then later uh and then later what happened was uh that consultancy um ended up growing and uh uh took on Partners uh through a series of mergers over the years to add services and things like that on the consultancy side and if people want to connect with you what kind of people do you want to connect with now um you know I enjoy connecting with just about anyone really um I uh I still get a lot of emails um and this is actually escalated over the past year a lot of emails from smbs right uh small businesses mediumsized businesses um people that uh are just really asking for help um and it's it's very interesting to read um you know and and sometimes you know those folks may not have the Consulting revenue or whatever but usually when I read that it's it's people reaching out that have basically been um I don't know LED down the WR path so to speak through penguin and Panda updates and it's a I really like connecting with them because um you know I guess in a way when I was a publisher starting out I would I would write to the ad rants of the world and marketing Vox and and some of the other um some of the other uh marketing oriented bloggers uh that had just started and really asked them for help um help and insight and and things like that so it's uh it's great to see that um some of the uh snbs and mom and pops out there um are you know writing directly and and and asking for tips and help and and that also really helps things from an editorial perspective too right so if uh if so if if if I get people contacting me on LinkedIn or or Twitter or even email asking for specific questions that's something that I can then send over to uh John rampton the uh current editor of scj and be like look is these are really some of the questions that we can answer with our content let's do this um so that's always really useful um and then of course I also still help with the uh on the advertising uh aspect and and and the growth of uh you know some of the promotions that we're doing and the conference sponsorships and things like that so it's always great to talk to advertisers and sponsors if people want to reach out and connect with you how do they contact you yeah that's a good question um my uh well first of all you know it's uh my name Lauren uh L Ren Baker um is pretty much my username for almost any um any uh social network I'm on SO twitter.com Lauren Baker facebook.com Lauren Baker LinkedIn user ID is Lauren Baker um so that's the best way um or just email me at Lauren alphab brand media Lauren thank you very much thank you very much for the update thank you Murray it's always good to connect you too if you're watching this video if you're a fan of search engine Journal if you've been a longtime reader we would love to know please let us know your thoughts and comments below I know Lauren will try and answer as many as possible and if we get some things that some things we really feel we need to cover we'll try and do a second interview I'm Mar nans with search engine Journal I'll see you next time