Interview with our President Matt Foster in Visibility Magazine, March, 2007:

Please provide us with your biography.

I was born and raised in Austin, Texas. I graduated with a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1994. At that time in my life I had decided to be an attorney. I matriculated at the University of San Diego School of Law and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1998. I am the President of ArteWorks Business Class, www.arteworks.biz.

Tell us about your background and your role in the company.

While I was in law school I first became interested in the Internet. This was in 1995, when I worked a part time job at a now-defunct start up dot com in San Diego. I was amazed with the new search engines and how fast they could deliver results. I remember thinking, “How could they possibly deliver these results in seconds out of the millions of web pages out there?”

I started the company as a sole proprietorship in 1995. It began as mostly a web design firm (hence the name “ArteWorks”), however I was keenly interested in search engine positioning. At the time it was not called search optimization, at least not to my knowledge. I went ahead and finished my law degree, but I had already decided this is what I wanted to do with my life.

The sole proprietorship has been through several iterations over the years, but was finally incorporated in 2003 in the form it is in today. I am the President of the company. I see my main job as a client liaison, performing all sales functions and serving in the capacity of a project manager, coordinating and overseeing the efforts of the development team, copywriters, designers, and the like. All client communication comes through me and I maintain personal relationships with each client. I do not believe in treating people like a number or passing the buck, and my experience has shown me that clients greatly appreciate dealing with one person, who is a decision maker, and is able to get any problems resolved or questions answered quickly.

What are your main services?

We specialize in organic search engine placement for all types of non-offensive sites. Our services include “on page” code optimization, natural link building, search engine copywriting, content distribution and syndication. Pretty much whatever it takes to get our clients where they want to be, ethically.

Tell us more about your firm’s success story?

Over the last two years our firm has been growing leaps and bounds and we are proud of our success. I see our biggest challenge as a company in the years to come to be effective growth management while maintaining our superior level of individual client service. Oftentimes, when companies get big, you hear about customer service going down the tubes. I certainly would not want that to happen with ArteWorks.

According to you, what are the most important questions a client should ask a company before choosing a vendor like you?

I can certainly tell you what to avoid. The first thing you want to avoid is any firm that guarantees a #1 ranking on Google or any major search engine. It is also important to avoid “black hat” techniques, and techniques such as link exchanges and automated, repeated search engine submissions. There is no need to submit a site to search engines anymore. It is a worthless effort. Effective SEO will get your site and your pages found quickly through effective linking and search engine friendly navigation.

That all being said, the first thing you should ask is what exactly does the firm intend to do, and ask that it be explained in plain English. If they are incapable of explaining in plain English what they want to do, avoid them like the plague. Make sure the firm will be creating quality content on a regular basis and building natural, one way, relevant, trusted links to that content. Ask how they will do this.

It is also important to ask for references. Ask if the firm has ever had any sites banned from the search engines, and ask if they report search engine spam when they find it. It is beneficial as well to find out if the firm does the work themselves or if it is contracted out to third party vendors.

Finally, ask about a guarantee. Again, nobody can ethically guarantee a #1 position, however the firm should be willing to make some sort of guarantee as to improvement for a variety of keyphrases across a variety of search engines. If the firm is not willing to make this guarantee, then the firm is obviously not confident in their abilities. And if the firm is not confident in their abilities, why should you be?

What are some of the myths in your field?

Perhaps the most annoying myth is that SEO is a product as opposed to a service. It is very difficult to explain to a client that the “SEO packages” readily available on the web and sold as off the shelf, one size fits all, guaranteed ranking services really do nothing and are a waste of money. As such, I see client education as an integral part of the sales cycle.

Many people believe that they are “entitled” to be at the top of the search engines. This is simply not the case. It takes hard work and effort, especially for highly competitive keyphrases. A one time optimization of “on page” elements without ongoing “off page” work is simply not sufficient in most cases. People believe that they can pay a few hundred dollars, get some page code fixed, and be #1 on Google the next week. It just doesn’t happen that way.

There are plenty of myths, half truths, misinformation, and outright lies in this field. These range from link exchange schemes to keyword meta tag optimization to doorway pages to shadow domains. None of these tactics work, and in fact are likely to get a business in search engine trouble. These types of practices should be avoided at all costs.

It is therefore important to make sure you are dealing with a reputable firm, such as a firm that has been independently evaluated by an organization such as TopSEOs.com.

How do you develop your skills in this continually changing environment?

The most effective way to stay abreast of changing search engine dynamics is to be active in popular search engine forums, and to subscribe to search engine industry publications. Ask your firm what forums they are active in and what industry publications or newsletters they subscribe to.

What do you see as the future of the industry? What will be the challenges; do you anticipate any drastic changes?

I believe the future holds smarter algorithms involving artificial intelligence. Customizable search and browsing is sure to become more fully developed, with search results being based on user demographics and historical browsing activity. This is perhaps the biggest challenge to SEOs today – in fact, even now I have to remind some clients to log out of their Google accounts when performing some searches on Google. The power of social networking and bookmarking cannot be ignored. Finally, I see advanced media content indexing including images, video, and Flash.

Where do you see your firm in the next five years? You personally?

I see us doing the same thing we are doing today – providing professional, ethical, and proven search engine optimization services to our clients. At 38, I still suffer from the delusion that I am young, and I don’t see myself retiring any time soon. I absolutely love what I do.

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