Interview with Laura Lippay, SEO Program Manager for Yahoo
Lee Odden has recently interviewed Yahoo’s SEO Program Manager, Laura Lippay, to find out exactly what her job is, SEO tips, optimization and usability, and tries to get some insight on some Yahoo secrets. Lippay also discusses some of the blogs she reads and forums she participates in. And yes, this is an awesome quote “Unfortunately, I don’t get any secret sauce from the Yahoo Search people. I have to get them drunk and hope to get secrets out of them just like everyone else.”
If there were 3-5 site optimization tips you were to recommend to web masters, what would they be?
1. Usability comes before SEO – better yet, they should work hand in hand. But don’t compromise your user experience for SEO. Unless you’re spamming, of course.
2. SEO isn’t just about H1 tags and title tags – more importantly, you need traffic. You need to be good enough, you need to be smart enough, and gosh darnit , people need to like you. Well, your site at least. In that respect, your client needs to see you as not just an SEO, but a strategist of sorts, and you absolutely HAVE to be a part of site building from the beginning concept stages.
3. You can listen to what everyone else preaches about what works for SEO or you can find out for yourself. Most SEO “facts” are just things they hear from other SEO’s which they heard from other SEO’s which they read in some article that who knows who wrote it, etc. Where are the cold hard facts? They’re in your data, people! Set up a tight analytics structure and go in and do things to your site and test the results for yourself. You’ll be the smartest (and richest) SEO on the block.
What are some of the most common “myths about SEO tactics” that you’re running into these days?
There always seems to be a lot of stuff going around that just doesn’t have real proof to back it up. I don’t really believe any of it until I can test it for myself. A lot of site owners, not necessarily SEO’s , seem to think that all they need to do for SEO is slap a couple of keywords in a browser title and an H1 tag on their page and they’ll see results. The lack of education of SEO’s and non- SEO’s alike is disheartening sometimes. We still have a lot of work to do on the education front.
And inciting SEO propaganda for linkbait isn’t really helping any. All those poor novice SEO’s are going to believe crazy propaganda headlines because they don’t know any better. If you’re going to write questionable Star Magazine-type stories about SEO, be sure to have proof to back up whatever you’re end point is.
