Ann Smarty Interview - Editor of Search Engine Journal

15 Questions with Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty - Founder of MyBlogGuest.com

I was fortunate enough to land an interview with the Director of media and the Editor in Chief for Search Engine Journal, Ann Smarty. I contacted Ann shortly after joining her website MyBlogGuest. MyBlogGuest is a forum based website, that is quickly evolving, and currently has its main focus on facilitating the guest posts between bloggers. The site is quickly gaining success, and has even had a mention on SEOmoz.org, but the site still remains over shadowed by the successes of its creator.

Ann Smarty in the hot seat -

1. Who is Ann Smarty?

Ann: I am an SEO consultant working for BlueGlass as Director of media and Editor-in-Chief for Search Engine Journal. I also run my SEO blog at SEOsmarty.com - which I sadly don't always have enough time for.

2. Smarty is an awesome last name, you know that right?

Yeah, you don't think it's my real name, right? :) Actually I come from Ukraine and have a scary Ukrainian name. When starting a blog, I found a domain seosmarty.com (it is not easy to find an available domain in the SEO world) and decided to borrow my second name from it. That was a good and clever match and it stuck!

[I didn't think so, but did some investigating by surfing around the net... I didn't find any evidence to the contrary, so I went with it. I'll admit to a little egg on my face for this one!]

3. Tell me about MyBlogGuest.com.

MyBlogGuest is the community of guest bloggers. It unites bloggers who are interested in connecting to other bloggers, journalists and other content creators in any niche and publish their high-quality articles on their blogs.

The concept is quite straightforward:

• The author writes an article and shows it to the blogger;
• The blogger decides if the article fits his blog and if yes, publishes it on the site.
• (Optionally) The blogger and the author may arrange that the author promotes (i.e. shares) his post once it is published (and thus drives more traffic to the blogger's site).

4. What is the inspiration for creating MyBlogGuest.com? (Was there a lack of options out there, lack of structure for existing resources?)

I've been doing a lot of guest posting for myself and my clients and I noticed a lot of blog owners were very much interested in guest contributions. However there was no effective way to connect to them. So I thought a place where a blog owner could come to meet talented guest bloggers should be a great idea and a win-win for both the sides.

5. MyBlogGuest.com been endorsed by SearchEngineLand.com and SEOmoz.org, what next... world domination?

Hopefully :) Actually I am getting ready to create and launch a few international mirrors: in Russia and probably in French. I am currently in the talks with people who could help me run the local versions. I am getting many requests about the non-English copies.

6. I had read in the MyBlogGuest.com "About" section that you mentioned a Mark Jackson and a Gerald Weber as helping with coding and SEO. Tell me about those guys.

Mark (http://www.mjdigital.co.uk/blog/about/) is a great coder. He helped me for free to create the user authority script (which is still in early alpha by the way, as it needs some tweaks and experiments). Gerald (http://sem-group.net/) is one of my best friends. He helps me a great deal about spreading the word about My Blog Guest. He is a talented SEO and power social media user. I'd also like to mention our designer who created the latest MBG design: http://amitmojumder.com/ I love the way that guy is doing his job!

7. I see that you're an SEO Consultant as well (AnnSmarty.com). There, you have a refund policy... particularly the line "SEO is definitely a long process and I never guarantee top rankings within any limited period of time." What is the greatest misperception clients have or unrealistic expectations clients have when hiring an SEO consultant?

There's plenty of fud around SEO: the question I hate the most is "When am I going to be in top 3 for my most important keyword". Now, if an SEO consultant tells you the exact period of time and the exact position, run away! There's no way to predict. The only thing an SEO can and should guarantee is that the site will be "SEO-friendly" (easily accessed and crawled by search bots) and that it will have valid and legit back links.

I also love this post by one of your guest contributors that list other SEO misconceptions: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-link-building-questions-that-make-me-die-a-little-inside/23762/

8. You have been described as a social media user, can you elaborate on that?

I have some solid presence at Twitter and Facebook. I used to be an active stumbler (not much time for that now) and I have never had time for Digg. I also have quite powerful profile at LinkedIn. That's pretty much it. I had never meant to be a power user, but social media presence has always been an integral part of what I've been doing. I also don't think a SEO profile should be measure in numbers. How powerful you are is determined by how attentively your followers are listening to you.

9. I saw that you use Skype as well, what are your thoughts on their tentative IPO?

LOL actually I have no thoughts about that :) I've been too busy to go in-depth in the news. I am using Skype almost exclusively as an instant messenger. I don't depend much on it.

10. Do you have any projects or sites outside of MyBlogGuest.com that you'd like to mention?

One of my most recent free projects is http://tweetedranks.com/ that sends your Google keyword position via Twitter DM or Google Talk. It's a fun way to track your Google keyword positions. I have built it for fun and as an experiment.

11. What is your offline life like?

I am one crazy mom of my two-year-old daughter. I spend time with her whenever I am not working. I plan to sit at home with until she grows up, as I don't want to miss a single second of her growing up!

12. What blog or blogs (if any) do you read regularly? Why?

I read SEJ [Search Engine Journal] and Search Engine Land regularly. I am trying to keep up with SEOmoz but I hardly have time for that.

13. There's a so called "browser war," which is your favorite? Any reason for that one?

FireFox. I do have Google Chrome installed and I give it a chance from time to time but, I don't see myself switching. I spend half of my life browsing and I am too used to FireFox to be able to switch. I can't imagine making Chrome as convenient and safe. Though I am well aware of its advantages, higher speed (and productivity) being one of the strongest benefits of switching but I don't plan to so far.

14. Google instant... end of the world or opportunity?

No-no. Google has had plenty of innovations that should have led to the end of the world but actually never did. To me nothing has changed. I still need to make sure that the site structure is easy to crawl and the content is useful enough to win links back. As soon as you do your job well, you are safe :)

15. What is your biggest on line success to date?

Well, I can't single out just one. I have had several wins, but I still think my biggest win is ahead. CNN mention and job at SEJ are two of the most notable ones. But anyway, I am a kind of the person that is seldom satisfied with the result and thinks he could have done better. That is why I never stop LOL

Ann, I want to thank you for taking the time to do an interview on Biz-Tone.blogspot.com. I love the new site, and will continue to use it. I encourage my readers to do the same. Finally, I'd like to congratulate you on all of your success, and wish more success in the future!