As part of our ongoing P1P Interview series, we decided to give our readers a peek behind the curtain into the inner-workings of our small link building firm. Web developer, research team lead and multi-talented link builder at Page One Power, Kyle Smith has a background in geekery and all things internet. Smith is the pilot of his own web company, and his latest P1P brain-child is a metric for site relevancy and article relevancy guidelines made him a natural fit for our first in-house interviewee Guinea pig.
Kyle Smith, Page One Power. Photo By Jon Ball Photography.
Kyle Smith Page One Power
With the search engine optimization (SEO) industry collectively rushing to adjust to the latest changes, as well as to attempt to predict the effect of an onslaught of changes coming down the pipe to Google’s algorithms, the prospect of investing company dollars in SEO or online link strategy can be daunting.
However, there are members of the industry who are creating new strategies and approaches to link building. In that regard, Page One Power’s Kyle Smith, leader of one of the research and writing teams at the company, has just implemented his own strategy for link building. Computer and web development may be his passion, but he still finds the time for some camping and fishing. Keen to get himself “out there” and recognized in the industry, Smith’s ambitions aren’t limited by much.
He’s presently beta-testing a metric to find the relevancy of a given website and writer’s guidelines to decide the relevancy of a topic and its relation to a given website. More on that shortly. A family man, he takes his wife out for weekly dinner dates, attends church and has a generally calm way.
His sister, Daisha Korth, explained that Kyle is “an amazing family man who truly loves his wife.”
Dances With Dogs
She told us that Smith isn’t perfect, but he has a family life that is enviable. “Being his sister and sort of peeking in from the outside you see how much they love and care about each other,” Korth said. “He treats them all with kindness and respect. He even treats his dog like a child…he even dances with her and he will put her little paws up on his chest. He’s just a great guy and it’s touching to me to see him with his family. ”
As for Kyle, he’s one of those unassuming quiet types. A self-described “data guy” (He has one degree in computer information systems, and a second bachelors in the works in website development.) who lives for creating databases and thrives on compiling data for analysis, he also runs his own website company on the side.
But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t toe the line for the company. He routinely literates the company mantra of being a “relevancy first firm” and to that end he says it’s what sets the company apart from its competitors.
“It’s just my thought process,” he said. “and my analytic thinking. [When] combined with a team of creative thinkers, we get the best results.”
It doesn’t hurt that Smith said he loves his job and has yet to have a day that he dreads going to work. “I thoroughly enjoy everyday.” With his leadership of the research/writing team making up just a portion of his responsibilities, Smith said it’s a challenge to get as much accomplished as he wants in a day.
Leadership
“I lead a highly talented team of researchers and writers through many areas of the internet to acquire the most relevant and highest authority links available for our clients’ industries,” Smith said.
Clients often make the mistake of thinking that quantity is just as or more important than quality, so the relevancy strategy is part of what sets the company apart from its competition. My team has the most diverse set of strategies that we deploy among our clients and they do a fantastic job of managing them all separately without dropping the ball on any of them, which gives us a terrific client retention rate, he said.
Which brings us back to the relevancy beta test he’s implemented. Smith’s need to compile and analyse date drove him to develop a relevancy test for websites. For instance, if a client specialized in pet food, the research team will seek out authoritative sites on pet food to write on that will then link back to clients’ websites. The test is a three-prong scoring metric that determines a websites given expertise, authority, topical relevance and its business viability. The guideline gives the researchers a way to score websites according to their relevance to a given client. Likewise, the writer’s team has a guideline that determines the relevance of an article to a given client… i.e., is it on-topic, does it meet specific thresholds for relevance, how well does it fit into the clients’ industry.
Relevancy First
While Smith has developed a means of ensuring relevance for client needs, he’s also (and perhaps unknowingly) developed a bottom-up strategy for writing and publishing.
While traditional media publishers have focused on going out and developing news stories based on events, link building firms and others in the online industry write, develop and create stories that cater to the needs of a client and its industry. The writers write articles based on titles that are agonized over in “title meetings” that would never have existed in a traditional form of print media. It’s not public relations, and it’s isn’t purely commercial writing, either. Well, not exactly. There is an end in mind, and it does seek to ultimately benefit a client, but the end user of a given “relevancy-written article” does benefit.
There’s value in the content the writers create, and editorially, the relevancy-scaffolding of creating articles for authoritative and expert sites sits reasonably well with writers who, ultimately, want to their words to get read, and write well enough to do so. It’s cloaked commercial article production, but the caveat is that it’s still of value and has a purpose. Black bloggers these are not.
“My favorite part is interacting with my team in a laid back environment,” Smith said.
For more information on Smith and his new relevancy link building strategy, you can reach him at ksmith.pageonpower@gmail [dot]com.
I was interviewed at work. Check it out!
http://pageonepower.com/2012/08/p1p-interview-series-meet-kyle-smith/