Monte live with a triple play of guests!

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another week of Domain Masters, live from Monte's Bedroom. I'm still confined to my bed due to my back injury, so I'm doing the show live from bed again. I got a great show line up, though. Tonight I'm interviewing Pierre Zarokian, who is the founder and president of Submit Express. We're going to have him on first. Submit Express is one of the most successful SEO submission companies and Moniker's going to be doing some business with them and Pierre owns a lot of domain names and his company's been very successful with that. And then we're going to have Ramon Rashford and Michael Marshall from GIE, both of which are part of an organization that is part venture capital, part web development company. They specialize in turning around small businesses that appear to be going south and turn them around and get them to go north and be very successful and profitable, and they have a very successful domain acquisition strategy, where one of the biggest priorities for them is to go out and get some domain names and build the online branding strategy, including SEO, for domain names. So hang on for a couple commercials, we'll pay some bills and be back on with Pierre.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, welcome back to Domain Masters. I'm Monte Cahn, your host. My first guest is Pierre Zarokian of Submit Express. He's got a computer science background and web development background. Pierre launched Submit Express in 1998 and has quickly become one of the most popular search engine submission sites on the Web. Today Submit Express specializes in natural SEO services. Submit Express' website offers free SEO tools, search engine, news and SEO forums. Pierre, welcome to the show.

Pierre: Hi, Monte, how are you?

Monte: I'm doing great. Little laid out horizontal but hopefully in a couple weeks I'll be up on my feet. [laughs]

Pierre: Yeah, I heard about your back. Sorry to hear that.

Monte: Yeah. Yeah. I'm pushing myself a little bit too much, so somebody's trying to tell me something, so I got a six week recovery period for my back to get better and I'll be right back at it.

Pierre: Wow.

Monte: No pun intended. So, obviously, you and I have bumped into each other now for the last year and a half on various trade shows and I'm glad that we're finally having you not only on our show but probably going to be doing business with you guys. You guys have been extremely successful on the Web and we'd like to learn a little more about your business, and thought it would be a good idea to give the listening audience a little bit more about your background, how you got started on the Internet and particularly when you started investing in domain names.

Pierre: Okay. Well, we started a company in '98 and quickly became one of the most popular search engine submission sites, and you know, naturally, move into optimization services from there and we are still one of the most popular sites, ranked at #1 for search engine optimization, search engine marketing and related keywords in Google. So I'm sure a lot of people have heard of us before.

Monte: Great. And when did you get started, when did you personally get started in the Internet business. Was this your first gig?

Pierre: I started around '94, going to school for computer science major and just registering some domains as early as '94.

Monte: Yeah? And, how many domain names do you guys currently have or do you own personally or combined?

Pierre: Currently, we own over a thousand domains and we got into it regarding creating content and creating sites that we could use to put our clients on as for advertising and creating links for our clients and you know, any . . . I'm sure most SEO companies out there do that kind of stuff out there, and if they say they don't, they probably do. But any SEO company that's not using their own network of sites for links, they're missing out big time.

Monte: So with all those sites or with all those domain names, does owning multiple domain names create any kind of issues or problems that you could see?

Pierre: Uhm, the problem would be if you used [inaudible] content on them, so if somebody's using domain names for the same site and using them as doorway [inaudible] for their site, that's something they should be careful of doing, because that's against Google and most search engine policies, so we don't do any of that stuff. But what you . . . have to be careful of how you do it. You got to have unique content on each website; don't put any redirects and you know, have some information type sites that people can really use. And don't look at it as a way of increasing your links for your other sites but actually creating content on these websites that are useful information. And then maybe try some links to your other sites, which then would be okay.

Monte: Now, a lot of people look at creating content in different ways. What are some of the techniques that you guys do or that you can help others that listening, what's the easiest way to create content? I mean, do you have to physically get on and start writing unique content or can you, can you get help from tools or from other help . . . other companies on the Web?

Pierre: Right. Well, I mean, developing unique content is not easy. You don't want to be going to some other sites and copy their content; that does no good. Google has duplicate content filters, so basically what that means is whoever came up with the content first and has the most [inaudible] links, they're probably going to get that benefit. They're going to end up ranking well for that page and your duplicated content is going to get filtered out. So there are a lot of people out there still doing that kind of stuff; but that does no good. They have software, like scraper-type websites that you've probably seen out there that steal content from various sites and combine them together to basically fool the search engine into thinking they're content. But that kind of stuff gets caught nowadays; it doesn't work. What you want to do is actually write unique content, hire some content writers. We have a couple of content writers in house on our staff that we use for our content. And there are a lot of other companies out there that specialize in content writing. You can outsource for it, too. Probably outsource overseas for cheaper, so that's what I would recommend.

Monte: Okay, great. Now, tell us a little bit about expired domain names and the value that they play in the SEO world, from your perspective. How do they increase link popularity and what kind of . . . what kind of expired name market playing should one do if you want to get ranked up in the search engine?

Pierre: Uhm, expired domain names used to work very well if they had links, especially if they're links are page ranked, but about a year and a half or so ago, Google started zeroing the page rank of expired domains, so they don't have as much value anymore, especially in Google. They still will help you in Yahoo! but in Google is not working as effective as it used to, especially with the .com, .net and .org, the main domains. Those are the ones Google is mainly checking. If you find any domains with foreign TLDs that are expired and have ranks, those are probably not going to get caught by Google. So I would recommend if you could find any way of finding such domains, those are probably the best ones to get. But currently, most of the software out there that looks for such expired domains are not tracking any foreign TLDs, as far as I know.

Monte: Now, now obviously, Google's not the only engine out there. We have a couple other engines – now, how . . . is Yahoo! and MSN also looking for the same types of expired name alarms, then [inaudible] how do they [inaudible]

Pierre: I have not heard anything with Yahoo! and MSN looking at this, but I may be wrong on that.

Monte: And what about MSN?

Pierre: Yeah, I have not heard about anything about MSN looking at this stuff either, so they still work much better in Yahoo! and MSN and you know, my recommendation is if a domain out there has hundreds of links and it might worth just getting it for the traffic; that would be an additional traffic source for you, if it's a related domain to your industry. Just get it for the traffic and hopefully it will give you some additional links for Yahoo! and MSN.

Monte: Okay. And then, how do you go about . . . you know, a lot of people use different tools and stuff, but how do you go about checking an expired domain name to make sure that it does have existing links or even page rank? What are some of the tools that you can use that maybe some people don't know about? But since you're an SEO company, perhaps you use some more sophisticated stuff or you can give some people some insight on the best tools to use to check . . .

Pierre: There are a lot of tools out there now that will automatically check the page rank and number of links involved. There are various tools out but even using tools its not 100% accurate; you still got to do some more manual leg work and that's the best way of finding the best domains. You know, I mean, I used to do . . . I used to register a lot of expired domains, staying up late night and just four hours a night just going through lists of domain names that I was interested in based on a keyword. Running them through tools to find their page rank and their back links but I would think maybe, maybe I would take 10 top domains that I would come up and then manually check their back links to see . . .

Monte: How do you manually check them?

Pierre: Ah, in Google you just type the link command, which is “link, HYPERLINK "http://www.domainname.com" www.domainname.com” and Yahoo! and MSN have similar commands. In Google, you have one problem. When you check the back links, they don't necessarily bring every single link; they're showing you only the most popular links. Usually, they're from page 3 or above pages. Yahoo! is probably the best place to check the back links and again, you use the link command in Yahoo! to check it. What you want to check for is . . .

Monte: What is the web command, do you know? [inaudible]

Pierre: . . . go through some of these websites. Make sure the links that are coming in are actually there on the websites, ‘cause nowadays we have a problem with domain hijacking [inaudible] tool redirects, which still page, rank and back links. So you want to make sure the links are actually on the pages. And also check the site and maybe look up then who is [inaudible] the sites they are linking, make sure they're not all owned by one person, because what might happen is, say you have 50 links to it and all those 50 links – or a majority of them – are owned by one person and the guy maybe just missed renewing one of his domain names. But once he realizes that he missed the renewal, he's going to remove the link from 50 sites all at the same time and then that domain is not going to have any value anymore. So that's why some manual work is necessary when you're looking for expired domains.

Monte: Okay. And what is the link command that you check in Yahoo!, just so the people know [inaudible] . . .

Pierre: The link,http,\\www.domainname.com; so you just got to put the http part in Yahoo!; in Google you don't put that.

Monte: Okay. Okay, good. That'll help people out. Now, what are . . . are you still heavy into buying domain names that are expired on the [inaudible] . . .?

Pierre: Not as much as I used to be because Google is zeroing the page ranks nowadays. And I do have a recommendation of some places that you can buy expired domains and also lists of expired domains. The four biggest websites for these right now would be Pool.com, Name[inaudible].com, SnapNames and GoDaddy. And Pool and Name[inaudible] usually release a bunch of expired domain names on a daily basis. So if you go through those expired domain lists and if you buy some software tools out there to check the back links, those are probably the best way to grab those domains. And Pool and Name[inaudible], SnapNames, they were known as backorder services and basically what it does is as soon as the domain name's released, they try to register these domains for you through various registrars and you know, if you wait for a domain to get released and try to manually register it, you probably have no luck competing with these companies. So these are probably the best places to go and get the best domains. And, usually, more than one person is bidding on these domain names; its going to go in an auction. So you can expect to pay a good premium for good domain names.

Monte: Now, uhm, let me ask you another question. Can you check back links in MSN?

Pierre: Ah, yes. You can do it in MSN. I think MSN is also “link,www.domainname.com.”

Monte: Okay. Make sure you post those three different ways into the chat room, if you can, ‘cause people are asking.

Pierre: Sure.

Monte: Now, what about buying domain names that are not expired but like, on the open market – do you do that frequently?

Pierre: That's a better idea because now you're buying existing domains that may have links and page ranks and they also may have content on them. So, there's various places you can do it. Ebay's a good place and several of the domain name websites have forums. DNJournal.com is a good place and you know, you can look for existing sites, [inaudible] existing sites with the page rank three sells for well over $300 or page rank five for over $500. So that's a good idea too. And when you're buying sites like that, you want to also consider the factor how long a time its going to take you to create similar content for the website, you know? Just creating the website from scratch might cost you 500 bucks, so you know, paying 500 bucks for a page rank five domain, that's not a bad deal.

Monte: Right, ‘cause you're going to have to write the content to keep that page rank dump if you're going to change the content at all, right?

Pierre: Right.

Monte: Right, right. Okay, so, now when you go from buying a domain name that has existing content and has an existing page rank and good back links, and you are going to make the change onto your own, you're going to change DNS and you're going to put them up on your own service, what is the backlog and what actually happens between Google and the search engines – what kind of delay is there and what . . . how long does it take them to re- . . . you know, re-map your site with the bots to make sure you're still a valuable site with good content.

Pierre: Actually, Google and one of their filings about their trademark/patent stuff, they have some information about how they're going to be looking at domain registrar changes and new ownership, consider that into the factor. I don't know how much of that is actually being used these days, but that might be something that you should be concerned about. If the site ownership is changing and the site content is also changing, Google may be looking at that and not giving you as much value on that, so you may want to . . . I mean a good suggestion would be to keep the site content the same as much as possible and slowly, over time, change the content if you have to.

Monte: Right. So you don't shock the system, I guess, so they don't see a dramatic change off the bat.

Pierre: Right. Exactly.

Monte: And another thing I've heard about that we've talked about over previous shows with Google is that Google is also looking at the length of time in which one registers a domain name. So one year registrations don't count as much as multi-year registrations; actually, I've heard over three years now is something that Google is looking at [inaudible] long haul . . .

Pierre: Yeah. Those are stuff that in [inaudible] but nobody knows for certain if they're actually being used or not.

Monte: Right. Nobody knows for sure. What we're hearing is that if they see that a domain name's registered for more than one year, that they see that you're in it for the long haul, that you're going to be around for awhile and therefore you're worth crawling and having, you know, some kind of value to the system.

Pierre: Right, exactly. But, I would guess it would be a very small factor into the rankings because, you know, our own websites, a lot of our websites we only register once a year and you know, we own a lot of websites that rank well and . . .

Monte: Right.

Pierre: If it's a factor, it's going to be a very small factor.

Monte: Right, yeah. It's one of their hundred and what? Hundred and ten different factors [laughs].

Pierre: Exactly.

Monte: . . . that there are. Uhm, so how do you decide, I mean, how do you do your ROI when you're going to buy an expired domain name or a new domain name on the web. I mean, you talked about, you know, measuring the back links and seeing if its in demas and Yahoo! and has a page rank and all that stuff – but what kind of calculations do you guys do in order to make sure that it's a good investment? What do you use as your baseline?

Pierre: Uhm, the main thing is if its got a page rank; anything more than a page rank two is good but we also have to consider the back links. If it's a page rank five and its only got one or two back links, then, you know, its very possible these back links could be lost, you know, a few month's down the road, so those are all factors. But its got a page rank five and you got a hundred back links then that's a good domain to get.

Monte: Right.

Pierre: So you have to not only look at the page rank but also look at the back links. If it doesn't have a page rank because maybe Google Art wrote the page rank, then you want to look at the back links and decide if you want to take a chance on the investment because its going to help as far as traffic and maybe MSN and Yahoo! might be a help.

Monte: Right, right, right. Now, what are some of . . . what's the highest price you've ever paid for a domain, both in the backorder system and maybe on the open market?

Pierre: Ah, probably around $800.

Monte: Oh, okay; so not a whole lot, then.

Pierre: No. And that was because the domain was relevant to a sites that we were interested in, the category that we were interested in.

Monte: And, what's the best deal? I guess, one domain name that you've registered from scratch I guess would be your best deal, right?

Pierre: Ah, yeah. The best deal would be the minimum prices that Pool and NameWringers[?] starts at $30 and Pool is $60, so the best deals would be those that run $30 to $60, that, you know . . . sometimes, actually, I have registered domains that the previous owners have come back and said, Oh, I want the site back and I turn around and sell them anywhere from $300 to about $1,000.

Monte: Right, right.

Pierre: So, you know, sometimes you make your money back on these, also. And especially sometimes, you know, I don't necessarily check the trademarks, if there are trademarks when I register them. But once in awhile someone will come and say that's our trademark that you registered and you know, its going to take them . . . if they want to file a I-10 UDRP against you to get the domain back, its going to cost them at least $1,500, so I'll turn around and give them a price less than that, say maybe $500, say, hey, you can have the domain now for $500, do you want it or not? Most of the time they'll agree to buy it from you.

Monte: Right, right. It's a good strategy with those types of names. So, let's talk a little about Submit Express and how one would engage with your services and basically, how you guys work. So, if somebody wants to engage with Submit Express, walk us through some of the services you provide and how someone can help get their website in all the search engines by using your service?

Pierre: Well, our main service is natural search engine optimization and what we do with that, the main thing is site optimization, content optimization, content writing and say they have a graphics based website and you know, search engines can't read graphics, so they're going to have to do some content writing in order to get that site up. So we help them with the content, we have content writers in house that will do content from scratch and the second thing we do is link popularity. And with the links, we'll do link exchange service, we'll do directory submissions and text link advertising, also, is a big thing that a lot of companies are offering nowadays. And with the text link advertising, basically, you're purchasing links from related sites that already have page rank. And, you have to be careful with some of the strategies but you know, as long as you're a relevant site, then you have nothing to worry about.

Monte: Okay. So, how do you charge for your service?

Pierre: Well, we have a set up fee and we have a monthly fee. It's usually based on . . . based on many factors such as if their site is dynamic or static; if, you know, its primarily graphics-based or not; depending on how much content writing they need; depending on how competitive keywords are. At the minimum, I would say our fees will start at about $2,500 set up and $760 a month. But again, that depends on how competitive they are and various other factors.

Monte: Okay. And, how many clients do you guys have?

Pierre: Ah, we currently have over 400 clients.

Monte: What? 400 clients?

Pierre: Yeah, 400 SEO clients. But we do have submission services on our site, just regular submission services that, you know, I'm not considering those into the count. We get [inaudible] orders a day on those.

Monte: And, obviously, you've had a lot of success with the clients. Do you give any kinds of guarantees in terms of what you can . . . in terms of what you can get them ranked in and . . .

Pierre: Yeah. We are actually one of the only companies, one of the few companies that provide guarantees. And the way our guarantees work is we'll usually guarantee a percentage of their keywords to be top 10 in the major search engines. So its not, you know, guaranteeing every single keyword is going to be Top 10; and its also not applicable to competitive keywords but normally we work with at least 30 keywords for each website and we're going to guarantee that a percentage of them will get in the Top 10 or we'll provide some kind of a refund if they don't. And I've heard various companies out there saying, you know, if a company's providing a guarantee, that's not good and you've got to be careful, they don't know what they're doing, ‘cause nobody can guarantee results. Even Google says that on their website – if people are providing a guarantee, be careful. But, you know, I just say that's BS because if they're not providing a guarantee, that's the people you got to watch out for, you know. Why are they not providing a guarantee? If they really know what they're doing, then they know what they can guarantee and we've been in business for what – over 7 years now – and we know what we can guarantee and what we can't. So, obviously, a guarantee is not going to work for everybody, you know, casino sites and adult sites, we don't even do, you know. If it's any other industry, we can probably provide some kind of a guarantee.

Monte: That's great. It's nice to know. So, to get in touch with you and your service, what's the best way – just come to the website or you want somebody to send, you know, a specific email somewhere?

Pierre: Ah, just go through our websites, call up the numbers or email and I'm the president here. If you need to contact me directly, if you like, ask for me. And if anybody does contact us for our services, mention that they heard me on the radio; they'll get a 10% discount.

Monte: Oh, great. So a 10% discount to anybody that's listening, if you contact SubmitExpress.com and email Pierre or any of his staff.

Pierre: Yeah, and my email is just HYPERLINK "mailto:Pierre@submitexpress.com" Pierre@submitexpress.com. I'll put that in the chat room also, right now.

Monte: Okay, great. Any last tips or tricks that we haven't talked about that can really help out the listening audience and help them be better on the Web, better SEO, stable on the Web or just plain better business in general?

Pierre: Uhm, pick the domain names, again, just if people own several domains that have similar content, that's what they have to be careful, you know. Duplicate content stuff were not so big a few years back. Something new and you know, people have to be careful. You know, a lot of people coming to us for signing up our services, that's one of the biggest problems we're seeing these days; duplicate content is a problem. And they may not realize it but somebody may have stolen their content and, you know, just because somebody else stole their content, then maybe add more links and higher page rank, their sites start suffering because of that. And one of the ways to check for duplicate content, there's a good site out there that's called CopyScapes.com and its C-O-P-Y-S-C-A-P-E.com (I'll post that in the chat room also). If you put your domain name in there and it'll bring up other websites that have similar contents to yours. Another way is to simply take a sentence from your website, put is in quotation marks and type it in Google. That will give you any other website that have that exact sentence on their website. We actually found that a lot of people had copied our own website; you know, we've been around since, what, '97, '98, and a lot of people had copied our information but we actually didn't end up suffering because we were first and we had a high page rank on our website but that's something to watch out for.

Monte: Great. Well, Pierre, its been a pleasure talking to you and a pleasure having you on my show, and again, I want to remind everybody, if you want a great company to . . . if you'd like a great company to engage with for your SEO needs, go to SubmitExpress.com, contact Pierre, you get a 10% discount – just mention Domain Masters or the Web Master Radio broadcast and he'll take care of you.

Pierre, thanks a lot for being on the show tonight.

Pierre: Okay, looking forward to seeing you again and take care of that back problem.

Monte: And we look . . . oh, yeah, thank you . . . we look forward to working with you too.

Pierre: Alright.

Monte: Okay, take care. Alright, folks. We'll be on with Ramon and Michael from GEI and get a good idea of this multi-faceted company that helps businesses turn around and be successful and their domain name strategy. Stay tuned. We'll be on in a couple minutes.

[Commercials]

Monte: Hello, welcome back to Domain Masters. Again, I want to thank my first guest, Pierre, at Submit Express for being my first guest and having a great interview and again, everybody can get a 10% discount for mentioning Domain Masters and Web Master Radio when you email him.

My next guests are Ramon Rashford and Michael Marshall. They are both directors and executives for GEI, which is George Enterprise International. This company is a venture firm which is very strong into technology. They own a portfolio of 1,700 names and they really gear strategy around securing the proper domain name and then applying SEO to those domain names due to the competitive nature and the competitive environment and industry that we're in. Raymond and Michael, are you on?

Raymond/Michael: Yeah, we're here.

Monte: Hey, great. Well, thank you very much for taking the time to be on Domain Masters today.

Raymond/Michael: Thank you for inviting us.

Monte: So why don't you guys give me a little bit of background – Raymond, why don't you start; give me a little bit of background about yourself, how you got into the business a little bit and then we'll ask Michael the same and then we'll talk a little bit about your business and your domain strategy.

Raymond: Sure. A little bit of background. I got a Bachelor's of Science from Seneca State and in electrical engineering I got a MBA [inaudible] in marketing and finance. Been in the whole finance end in public in investment side of banking for quite a few years and you know, a couple years ago decided to kind of look over the venture side of things because they seemed to have a lot more fun about it. And that's how I got into GEI and I when I got into GEI, the main thing is it's a venture firm but a strong technology base. Everything we do here is based on technology, whether or not it has, you know, different specifi . . . industry, that's where we start from. And from there is where I learned the whole thing about SEO and you know, domain names and you know, really turning it into, if you want to call it, you know, [inaudible] verible cash that not only can you grow your life, your business with, but also you can use also, you know, to help other people also to help you grow. It's a pretty unique strategy that we use.

Monte: That's great. And Michael, how ‘bout you?

Michael: Uhm, my background is . . .is differently in the IT industry. I've been in the industry for about 17 years, mostly as a software developer and more recently in the last several years also in the search marketing. I've been doing everything from web design set up, e-commerce set up, desk top development, Internet development and more recently also involved in artificial intelligence.

Monte: Now, when you say artificial intelligence, what does that mean?

Michael: Ah, that means, like, neural networks, natural language processing, quantitative analysis, the whole nine yards.

Monte: Okay, great. And you're also a contributing author to SEO Today, correct?

Michael: Yes. Yes.

Monte: Great, great. Well, your company intrigues me a bit because you're one of the few venture groups that actually are dedicated, I guess, to turning around small businesses and making them successful and then really building a strategy around acquiring the right domain name and then building out the right SEO platform for that domain name, is that correct?

Ramon: That's correct. It's kind of funny how we op in to go down this strategy. Kurin Axim, our CEO of the company, is, started when they go on vacation back quite a few years ago, back in the early ‘90s and right around when this whole Web thing started and they couldn't afford it so they decided they can afford it to kind of sit down and see what opportunities were out there and the Web was just starting to build and they looked at what major companies were out there and what people were looking for and what they thought, you know, what they could build domain name-wise, specific, way back in the late '90s and, you know, build a very successful company off of that and we've used that strategy ever since then. It's been working real well for us.

Monte: Now, you've acquired some 1,700 domain names. Now, obviously, you don't have 1,700 companies you're working with so give us a little bit about the domain strategy and why there are so many domain names.

Ramon: Sure. One of the things that we found (and I wrote an article early about people that own hundreds of thousands of domains and you know, they bring in a couple million and I think they'd probably be surprise because, you know, that's a good strategy but I think, you know, you don't have to think that wide. We only relatively own somewhere between 1,700 and 2,000 [inaudible]; we've been able to build a multi-million dollar revenue companies off of domain. And the real strategy at the end of the day is, you know, its keeping it real world. You think about what are people looking for and you know, what name, you know, can you attach to that. You also think about, you know, the great thing about capitalism is not really trying to re-invent it, things that work, but also copying it. So you think about things, you know, people, what are people looking for. Give you an idea, Mike created a tool which originally was called Free Manager but now its called Opti(?) Anchor and with that tool, not only, you know, you can take a look at what people are searching for, looking for, what customers want or what their needs are but you can also look and see how really scientific is it. You know, how specific it is. Are people really looking for this; are people really going on the ‘net and looking for this. And if I want to get into the space, how easy or hard it is to get into. And just purely using those strategies and a little bit of luck and of course science, we've been able to build some really successful, you know, companies and get some really great revenues purely from domain names.

Monte: Now, now, this Opti-Ranker System, is this something that's readily available to the public?

Ramon: Yes, it is.

Monte: How would you go access it – is that Optiranker.com? Or . . .?

Ramon: That is correct. If you go to HYPERLINK "http://www.optiranker.com" www.optiranker.com, you'll be able to take a look and go ahead – we have a demo on there, so you can also take it for a free ride. It used to be called Fee Master and what happened is we fell in love with the product about two years ago and it worked so well for us and was successful that we decided to buy it and bring it out to the general public and say, hey, look, take the guess work out of optimizing and really, you want to know what people are looking for, here it is.

Monte: Right, right. And, now, this tells you what, specifically? I know you covered a couple things here; does it give you behavioral intelligence around what people are really looking for when they type in a specific word? Or, give me a little bit more detail about how OptiRanker works.

Ramon: Well, I'll let Mike who invented this [laughs] to tell you a little bit more about that.

Mike: [laughs]. Ah, basically, what it does is it helps you to write quality content that will convince the search engines that your page really is about the key phrase that you're targeting. So if you look at a key phrase as your focal point for your optimization, OptiRanker is going to give you supporting terms to add to your content. It's also going to help you if you're looking for link partners to score them based on how relevant they are to any particular key phrase. Because its not just important to have a quantity of back links but you need quality of back links. Another way of putting it is its not just link popularity but its link reputation that is important.

Monte: Right, right. See, it's not a matter of how many links you have but that the links that you have are relevant to your link . . .

Mike: Right.

Monte: . . . so that you're not just linking all over the universe.

Mike: Right. And instead of having to guess whether or not something is relevant or go on a hunch, you can approach it scientifically and actually get a measured score for which pages of content or which respective link partners are more or less relevant . . .

Monte: I see.

Mike: . . . of what you're targeting.

Monte: Sounds very cool.

Ramon: Yeah, it is.

Monte: So, you, on your domain strategy then, with the 1,700 names that you guys have acquired, have you bought those names in the after market, registered them from scratch, a combination of that? Give me a little bit of information about how you've acquired your domain portfolio, what its currently being used for. Are you monetizing it? Are you building out every single domain? Is it a protective strategy to, you know, take a name brand and then cover it with misspellings and other types of mistypes and that kind of stuff?

Ramon: Yeah. Are main strategy is, about everything we've had we've registered it from scratch. I think, you know, your previous segment hit the nail on the head when he said, you know, if you're really going to sit there and wait around and get a name that's already been registered and you know, it's a shot in the dark. Because, I mean, with this whole global world market, you're probably competing against God knows how many amount of people. So we typically go for the strategy where we register it from scratch. What we tend to do is, you know, we kind of put an idea together and we think about what we'd think people, when we're looking at a company or domain name, we think about what people are looking for and then we look at all the big boys in the industry and we kind of go through and see what they've registered and what they've missed. And believe it or not, usually, they're so busy with really trying to think it so much real world that they miss a lot of what we call low hanging fruits and that's where we come in. We look a lot of at the low hanging fruits and what's out there and then we run it through our software and really see, now, what's the spaces like now and people are really searching for and how busy it is, you know, what's the real, kind of, general traffic and from there we've been able to put together, you know, quite a bit, portfolio, and bring in some revenue for us.

Monte: Okay, great. Now, now, one of things you guys specialize in also is, you guys are also a venture firm, and so you're investing in companies and basically it looks like you're investing in companies that maybe have a lot of potential but are on the downturn, like heading the wrong way, where you think you can infuse some capital and use you're technology and your knowledge and your experience to turn those companies around, that is correct?

Ramon: That is correct, yes.

Monte: So, give us some insight about what the typical mistakes that people make in their businesses that cause a good idea to head south and also, tell us what kind of things that you guys do to help them turn around that business and help it go north.

Ramon: Sure. One of the first things, usually, people when they get into a business is most people think too, too large for their customers; they kind of cut the customers out of it and kind of focus a lot more on, when you look at profitability and growing and one of the key things I've learned is you never want to sacrifice growth over profitability; you know, becoming big is not the key thing. Eventually, what you bring out at the end of the day is the most important thing. And, you know, its always a thing, where, you know, an important lesson in those businesses I walk into is keep it simple and keep it real world. You know, think about it. If you're a customer, what are you looking for? If you ever think about really sitting out there and you know, for example, you know, if you think about buying Wal-Mart, why would you buy Wal-Mart? You know, why would you invest in a Wal-Mart? What sense does it make? And try to think of it from that point of view. Why would you walk through the door to buy their product? If you wouldn't walk in to buy their product, then why would you even open that business or invest in that business? You know, you find a lot, you get a lot of answers that you already know. People just tend to fly off into different things and we kind of just rein them in and bring them back down to earth and that's usually where we start turning around a company.

Monte: So, uhm, so, how do you evaluate which companies . . . I mean, are people presenting, coming to you and presenting their businesses? Are you seeking out companies that you think have good ideas and then you're presenting back to them how you think you could turn it around and then kind of take over the reins?

Ramon: Sure. Ah, we do both. We both do go out and seek actively good ideas and companies out there but we also have a lot of companies that come to us and present us with their ideas and so on and so forth.

Monte: And, how many companies do you have in your portfolio right now?

Ramon: Right now we have . . . I believe we have 10 portfolio companies right now. We have more than that but some we just . . . we don't publicly say who they are.

Monte: Okay. And what is the smallest investment that you make in a company and what's the largest?

Ramon: Ah, smallest investment we've made into a company, ah, probably, off hand, around $100,000; uhm, the largest investment is we're actually involved right now, one that's in the billions, I should say but we haven't exactly invested that much but that's how much it projected out to be.

Monte: You mean, your investment, your organization's investment over time?

Ramon: Yes, over time.

Monte: Oh, wow. That sounds . . .

Ramon: It's tremendous.

Monte: And you can not mention who that is? Or you . . .?

Ramon: No, I can't.

Monte: Oh, okay. [laughs]

Ramon: [laughs]

Monte: So, so [inaudible]

Ramon: [inaudible] we do reference a little bit to it. [laughs]

Monte: Right, right. So you guys cater towards some of the small mom and pop or smaller companies. I had Ari Baime and Doug on from Paige Mill Partners and Millbank Roy and they're more of a million dollars higher and up to engage with the company. So you guys will look at smaller opportunities and try to help companies that need that spurt or need that experience that you guys have to get off the ground.

Ramon: Yeah, we definitely do. One of the great things about the whole, you know, Internet market is its really brought globalization down to a very small level and you know, that's actually allowed the small mom and pops to relatively compete with you know the big mom and pops. You know, you relatively find that the key to success between a small company and a large company is what they don't know and first thing we do is try to educate the small mom and pop in what they don't know and you know, that's the difference.

Monte: Right, right. And when you come in and take care of a company, I guess you're looking at helping them at all, on all fronts, not only from the investment side but with Michael's experience and knowledge, you're getting well into SEO and you know, optimization and design and engineering and e-commerce and all kinds of other stuff as well, right?

Ramon: That's correct. I mean we get in for the whole nine yards, from top to bottom, from [inaudible] and totally from optimization and you know, at the end of the day it comes down to brand recognition. You know, you could build the most successful company to yourself and to everybody who's involved but if people don't know you're out, if people aren't looking for you , if people aren't recognizing your brand, its not going to make a difference. So that's where the whole domain name kind of comes in play. So its actually the first thing you think of before you even go out there and try to market your company.

Monte: Right. So give me like the top, you know, four or five things that people need to do to be the most successful they can be, knowing what you know today and the companies that you've invested in, if you're a small start up and even a company that's been around for a couple years but just hasn't gotten the recognition or the popularity that it really needs to go. I mean, give us some key things that are really important that maybe people don't know about or maybe some people do know about but us a couple secrets that you guys come in and do right away that really help boost the business up.

Ramon: Sure. The first thing you learn, what I've learned in, when you take a look at the business in terms of marketing is you do whatever is free first and believe it or not but not only the cheapest way is also I'd probably have to give more voice to than anything else is I've worked with a company where I've taken zero dollars, budget wise, probably like the last six month and create a quite a voice. It sounds pretty crazy but I've done. So I've always told people you do what's free first. You know, you take a look at your business and you want to grow your business. The second thing after that is keep it simple. Whenever you're faced with problems; whenever you're faced with growth, you know, plan some but keep it simple. Don't make it too overcomplicated and the other key thing also is I'll also say for businesses out there, never think that, you know, you have to sacrifice growth over revenue; it's actually the other way around. You can always get revenues. Growth you can totally control. You don't have to grow to make revenues. And that's probably the biggest misconception most businesses do. One of the things that really hurt my ears when I walk into a business, and a lot this usually tends to, you know, like restaurants or even a lot of online sale companies, they think if they could just get another thousand clients to purchase, you know, that'll be fine. But I'll say, well, okay, we'll get another thousand clients and then what's your cost to go with it. And they add it all up and they're like, yeah, that doesn't make sense. And I say, well, why would you want to grow another thousand clients just be further in debt. What's that for. Change that frame of thinking. Put profit as your first line of business, you know, figuring if you want to make 10% profit this year, fine; make 10% profit and then use the rest of your 90% to run your business and that's how it should be done.

Monte: Wow, that's a good point. Now, Michael, with your SEO experience, I mean, you've not only been a contributing author to SEO Today, but you've also participated in building your business with Google for Dummies, a Brad Hill publication and you obviously are well sought after in workshops and speaking engagements. What are the key things from an SEO standpoint that people may not know about that you should focus on.

Michael: Ahm, okay, I can answer that question but I can't give you the secret sauce, of course [laughs].

Monte: Well, you need to give us some secret sauce, ‘cause we're all about helping people who are listening be better on the Web and what we've tried to do is help the whole industry grow at the same time, so . . .

Michael: Right.

Monte: . . . if we make the industry stronger, its good for all of us because that means we're all going to have more business to be able to do business with each other, so give us some of the secret sauce because its really important that people do know, you know, what's going to make them successful that other people don't really know about.

Michael: Right.

Monte: Give me . . . give a little bit of sugar.

Michael: A little bit . . . okay. Well, you probably know from my bio probably from the GEI site that one of the portfolio companies of GEI is Fortune Interactive . . .

Monte: Yeah.

Michael: . . . and I'm the VP of Technology there. And, we've got a lot of experience between the management team with that company and we have discovered some common thread as we came together, of things that a lot of people overlook. Some of them are very simple, for example, the first thing, pretty much what everybody should know is that the most important first step in search marketing is choosing the right key phrases. Now, every . . . most people know that's important; a lot of people don't know precisely how to go about it and you have to think that through carefully. If you don't, then everything else you do is going to be for naught. So you need to compile together as many key words, research tools and methods as you possibly can so that you can have confidence that what you're doing at this foundational level is exactly what you should be doing. It will save you a lot of sleepless nights later, looking back wondering if you started off on the right foot.

Monte: And what are some of those, those keyword phrase tools that people should be using?

Michael: I would say probably the two most important would probably be Word Tracker and Key Word Discovery.

Monte: Okay. So Word Tracker and Keyword Discovery; okay, good.

Michael: Right. And you really need to spend your time with those tools there. A lot of people get into them and they use for like a few minutes but you really need to dig deep into both those tools.

Monte: And they'll shine some . . . allow you to see some things that you may not have seen before?

Michael: Yes, exactly.

Monte: Okay.

Michael: And then, once you've targeted your key phrases there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind. There's a . . . one thing I'll mention is with respect to off page factors, with back links, its important to remember that on page factors are important; off page factors are also important. But with on page factors, link popularity and link reputation are the two things you want to target. It is often (and I've seen this alot), it's often overlooked. A lot of people think that if they just get more and more and more links, they'll be fine. But I've seen pages where, their off page . . . as far as their off page factors, they may have as few as three or four hundred back links and they are outranking pages with over 100,000 back links. They may have a page rank of 4 and they're outranking pages with page ranks of 7 and 8.

Monte: Because . . . because their back links are more relevant?

Michael: Yes. It has to do with the relevancy of their back links and the relevancy of their content. Now, the difficult thing is its becoming more and more difficult to figure out what . . . what's going on as far as how search engines are measuring relevancy. Now it used to be as simple as, you know, get your key phrase, figure out the optimal keyword density and your fine. But those days are long gone. Another thing that is going to make things very difficult, you might hear some search marketers talking about this and that is the impact of personalization. One important aspect of searches in marketing is pretty much reverse engineering. Right? You do a search, you look at the search results, you try to reverse engineer the top ranked pages and see, okay, what are they doing? Right? That makes this #7 as opposed to #15, that kind of thing. Well as the adoption rate of personalization picks up, that's going to be snatched from under you, because you are no longer going to trust what you see in the rankings. ‘Cause when you do a search, the ranking order that you see may be only about 20% of what everyone else sees. 80% of the other people looking at that same search see a totally different ranking order and you can't know which percentage you're in, whether you're in the 20% or the 80%. Now when I tell that to people, I've told that to people in seminars, they typically get scared [laughs] and they figure out, well what do we do, what do we do? Well, the answer is both simple and complicated. The simple answer is you have to go back to the basics and by basics, I don't mean, SEO basics; I mean marketing basics. And that is you have to . . . its kind of like flying an airplane and you're in a storm so you can't look out the window anymore, you have to fly by instruments only. And what you have to do is go back to the basics in figuring out what makes sense marketing-wise. Who are you targeting and what do they want? How do you write content to grab their attention? And the complicated part of it is figuring out how to grab their attention. That's one of the things that we focus on at Fortune Interactive with regards to the technology that we have called SimLogic. But the adoption rate is picking up. We talk with people all the time and they're saying they're noticing lots of changes, lots of differences in what they see in a search result. And it's not a reason for people in the industry to panic. It's going to actually reward those who put hard into developing high quality content. Because no matter who's searching for what you have and what their preferences are, if you've got high quality content, you're going to be put in front of them. If there's one principle about search engines that you must always keep in mind – instead of algorithm chasing and trying to figure out what little tweaks that Google or Yahoo! or MSN do this month or next month or that kind of thing, you need to go back to the basics; and that is a search engine has one of their primary roles as delivering fresh and relevant content to their users. They will always have to do that. And as long as you wrap your marketing approach and your strategy around that, you can't go wrong.

Monte: Great. Now, tell some of the secret sauce now, Michael.

Michael: The secret sauce. Uhm, the secret sauce that I would tell you about would be actually, in our technology, SimLogic. And I'll tell you what it does, without giving you everything [laughs].

Monte: Okay. Well, give me as much as you can.

Michael: Okay. One of the things that's important is trying figure out how a search engine determines relevancy, right? And one of the things you have to do is understand how the search engines are measuring that. Now, each search engine has their own little way of doing it but it all boils down to natural language processing. When you figure out what content is relevant to a key phrase and what content isn't relevant to a key phrase, it has mostly to do with the supporting terms; the context that's built around the key phrase. Then there's also that same dimension for off page factors. What is the structure and nature of the content of your link partners. And you want those to meld together. You need to think of your link partners really as an extension of your web page.

Monte: So, you not only check out their links but really check out who they are and make sure they're a good sound foundation company . . .

Michael: Yes.

Monte: . . . and basically know them?

Michael: Yes. Basically know them. It won't due just to go out and start buying links, right? In fact, that will probably hurt you in the long run. You need to find legitimate link partners. This is the way that I put it – if that page wouldn't be a good company to partner with to bring you business, then they probably wouldn't be a good web page to link to you. If they would be an off, you know, thinking in real world brick and mortar type mindset, if it would be a good business to partner up with to bring you business and you could bring them business, then you should be linking to each other.

Monte: I see.

Michael: And if you think in those terms, then you'll be on the right footing. And the secret to getting over the impact of personalization, one of the parts to the secret sauce is figuring out for a particular search engine what the important metrics are to their measuring and what you have to do (and it's a lot of work), you have to compare every page against each other on all of those metrics, so you can get the right combination.

Monte: Yeah, and that can be complicated because Yahoo! obviously looks at different things . . .

Michael: Yep.

Monte: . . . than Google and they look at different things from MSN . . .

Michael: Yes.

Monte: . . . and get that secret sauce right, its complicated.

Michael: Right.

Monte: So, how does one manage that when they're all a little bit different but they have some of the core foundation stuff the same?

Michael: Well, its . . . how do you manage it?

Monte: Well, I mean, if you're trying to . . . I mean, obviously you don't want to try to satisfy Google, because they're the biggest or the best or whatever; I mean, Yahoo!'s almost just as important. But they measure different things than Google does . . .

Michael: Right.

Monte: . . . how do you get a page just right so your up in both of them at the same time?

Michael: Uhm, what you have to do is, uhm, do a blending of it. Well, there are a number of things. There are two approaches. One, is to decide, okay, what I want to do is try to target all three. So, you figure out for each one what's going to to be the optimal combination of features to please them and then you try to figure out what is the intersection between those three or four, and try to give kind of a generic approach that will please the most and not offend any, as far as the combination of your metric. The other thing to do – and this actually makes more business sense – is to find out about the demographics of the particular search engines, what types of people are more likely to use Google or Yahoo! or MSN, figure out how that lines up with your business strategy and what you're selling. You can also look at your web log, look at the access and figure out from the search engine traffic that you have, where does most of your traffic come from. If you find out that 70% of your traffic comes from Yahoo!, that's who you need to be targeting.

Monte: I see, yeah.

Michael: Right? So . . .

Monte: That's a simple-stupid approach, but yeah . . .

Michael: Yeah [laughs]. Exactly.

Monte: A lot of people don't even figure out where their traffic is coming from, so . . .

Michael: Right. And there are some people who go out there and they'll figure, well, we'll design three pages for each or they start sticking these, you know, doorway pages out there to draw in traffic and that's a lot to maintain as far as a search marketing strategy; it's a lot of overhead and typically it gets you into trouble later on.

Monte: Right.

Michael: You end up running the risk of having duplicate content and all kinds of things like that. You got to figure out if you know that linking is important and you've got three pages, one for each search engine or four, one for each search engine you're targeting, you know, you've got to double the back links, or triple, or quadruple the number of back links you've got pointing in.

Monte: Right, right, right. Now, how complicated does the coming of the new Ask.com search engine play into this? Are they the same or similar or have their own set of rules and regulations and how are . . . are you guys planning for that? Do you think they're going to be a force to be reckoned with or do you think . . .

Michael: They are . . . I think they're going to have their own set of algorithms, just like anyone else would. They've got to do that otherwise they kind of become a commodity. They become a duplicate of someone else . . .

Monte: Right.

Michael: . . . and people figure, why go there, I go here instead. So they're going to have that. Our technology that we use at Fortune Interactive, it doesn't really matter what search engine you want to target. It doesn't matter at all. It can handle any search engine and figure out how you can rise above your competition, regardless of what search engine that you're focusing on.

Monte: Oh, I see. So, Fortune Interactive is in the business of addressing this particular opportunity, I guess . . .

Michael: Yes.

Monte: . . . and having something that's search engine optimized across the whole, entire, you know, Internet platform.

Ramon: Right. And, Monte, off the record, also, [inaudible] different can give you kind of the same kind of particular results. A lot of time people give us the question of what's the difference between [inaudible] interactive and I would say for people out there who want to learn more and got the time and gonna develop more of this [inaudible] keep it kind of in-house, that's where you look at the OptiMaker company and product they have; it's a tremendous amount of resources and results they give to you. It's the same thing; it crawls all the search engine. Whereas at Fortune Interactive, they use more comprehensive studies but a lot of it their technology, what they aim, and how they process work in-house, you know, obviously, so, you know Fortune Interactive is geared more towards the self-sustaining, you know, Fortune 1000 companies out there who don't [inaudible], whereas OptiMaker is more for the company that's small or medium sized kind of business owner who do have the time or want to get into this space and learn a little more about how to compete with the big boys.

Michael: Right. And Fortune Interactive is really a full-service Internet marketing agency; everything from search engine marketing to page search, online reputation management, blogging, we provide a whole litany of services.

Monte: Okay, great. Well, that's some great tools and I like the unique approach and it sounds like you're covering, you covering the most important aspects of what everybody struggles with everyday.

Michael: Yep.

Ramon: You know, one thing I do want to say to your listeners is I read an article earlier about a pretty successful guy in the whole domain space and I think he brings in about $20 mil in revenues, I think he owns about 100,000 domains and I thought, oh, that's pretty impressive. But one thing, you know, a little, a secret but I'll tell people you can see that the market goes a lot into, you look at domain name, its more about than just a name but also what is your product and service and how can I describe and what are people looking for. As Mike said early, you can use Word Tracking and then you can use OptiMaker and see if your results are really true. With everybody out there who thinks that this space is pretty crowded and can't get in there, I will tell you that right now we have a company that we get about $20 mil in revenues, purely off just really going through domain name and applying an SEO strategy to it and just leaving it and not doing a hell of a lot to it. It's still out there; you just got to put a little bit of work into it.

Monte: That's great, that's great. Well, its been a real pleasure having you both on the show and I think a lot of people picked up a lot of helpful tips and [inaudible]. Now what's the best way to contact you guys and get engaged in case one of the listeners has an idea that they've already got off the ground and they want some investment or they want to engage with your organization – what's the best way to contact you guys?

Ramon: Sure. You can . . . if people want to look more about GEI end of the venture funded companies, they can go to GeorgeEI.com; so it's G-E-O-R-G-E-E-I.com or you can also visit OptiRanker.com or FortuneInteractive.com but probably GeorgeEI is probably the best; people can get in there and look around.

Monte: So that's GeorgeEI.com?

Ramon: That's correct. GeorgeEI.com. And they have support emails and so and so forth and if you send an email to support or our contact, you know, [inaudible] for example, and say you listened to Web Master Radio or your interested in getting a spot, we've actually just launched a new site, new features and everything else where we're giving people a whole day free so they can go ahead and take a spin and see what the software can do for them and all they have to do is use contact support and we'll send you that discount code; you can get a whole day free.

Monte: Great, great. Well, thank you guys, Michael and Ramon, for being on the show and I understand we're going to be doing some business together from Moniker and we're real excited about it and you guys are the type of people that we want to do business with, so hopefully, that helps both of our back links, huh? [laughs]

Michael: [laughs] [inaudible] back links . . .

Monte: Okay. Well, thanks for being on the show and we'll be in touch very soon.

Ramon: Great, thank you.

Michael: Alright.

Monte: Okay, great. Well, that wraps up . . . sorry I ran a little bit late, folks, but that wraps up another great Domain Masters. Next week, of course, we'll be live again. We're going to start covering some of the upcoming trade show and conferences that are just around the corner and start to interview some of the folks that are running those trade shows. We have the eComXpo and I had John Grosshandler on last week to talk about that virtual trade show, which is great. We have Web Master World coming up, Domain Name Roundtable, TRAFFIC West in Las Vegas, AdTech, all kinds of stuff going on. So we're going to have all kinds of live coverage and interviews and great guests and great people that can help us all learn something about being successful with our domain names and our websites and SEO strategies so definitely be online over the next several weeks and whether I'm still out with this back injury, I will promise to do live show, if I'm in bed or in my office or out on the road, so we'll be happy to serve that need for you.

With that, I'm going end up the show. I want everybody to have a great week and we'll see you next week, live on Domain Masters, same time, same place. Be the master of your domain. Take care.

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