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Rand Fishkin - New Romantic SEO
Rand Fishkin attended the University of Washington, Seattle from 1997 to 2001. Throughout college, he worked with his mother Gillian, who owned a print marketing firm and Rand was contracted to do web work. He left just a few credits short of graduation to work at the firm full-time. Today, he’s a founding member of SEOmoz, an industry leader in SEO & Internet marketing. Rand’s company didn’t focus on SEO at first. It began by developing Macromedia flash-based sites, and evolved into usability. At one point, the company was working with an SEO firm that just wasn’t delivering on its promises. Rand took on search engine optimization head-on, diving in and learning all he could about the basics. His company began to do their own optimization, and before long they were offering their services to others. They haven’t looked back since. In December of 2005 Rand and SEOmoz were featured in a Newsweek article written by Brad Stone, which highlighted the story of a locally-owned shoe store called Oppedisano’s Bootery. The store received about 100 visitors a week before hiring Rand as a consultant—and today, the store comes out at the top of the list for searches on their products. The owners now make about triple the income from the site than they do from their brick-and-mortar store. The full Newsweek article can be read here. SEOmoz is now considered an industry leader, and has plenty of business—they’re more focused nowadays on serving their existing clientele than on finding new clients. They do offer consultation and speaking services, however, and will also provide recommendations to other SEO firms. Rand is often willing to answer questions about SEO, and interviews frequently with online journals. SEOmoz considers itself not only a search engine marketing company, but also a community resource for anyone looking for information on SEO. In December 05 Rand published The Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization, which outlines the basic practices SEOmoz uses to optimize client sites, and provides a down-to-earth how-to guide for those just getting into the business. The guide is free and can be downloaded from the SEOmoz website, http://www.seomoz.org/beginners.php. In 2007 SEOMoz also launched a continuos information service for those serious about learning SEO. The program includes a subscription to the best articles and software/ tools produced by the SEOmoz team. Rand is based out of Seattle, but he’s a frequent flyer— for a couple of years he spoke at Search Engine Strategies conferences all over the world, however more recently you will find Rand on the panels at SMX - Search Marketing Expo events. At conferences, you can spot him easily—he’ll be wearing his trademark yellow Pumas. In Feb 2007 Rand famously proposed to his long term girlfriend Geraldine via a video proposal that played live during the ad break of her favourite program 'Veronica Mars'. Of course she said yes. Outside of work, you can find him traveling, hiking and enjoying the outdoors in the Pacific Northwest. Useful websites
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