I love the seach industry with a passion that is second to none (ok - maybe Chris Bennett and I are tied). I am so lucky to be in an industry that has allowed me to meet some of the most amazing people on this earth! My roots in search engine optimization goes all the way back to 1999 when i first starting “dinking” around with title tags for a radio stations website I use to be a co-host on! (ok, so it was only small market radio, but I was still on the radio danget!) Besides my passion for SEO, I love Social Media Marketing & Optimization, Viral Marketing, Blog Promotion, Link Building Strategies & Baiting as well as Reputation & Brand Management.

Besides being a part of the most amazing SEO Firm this world has ever known, I am an avid SEO blogger. I own several successful eCommerce sites selling products, as well as an internet directory. It may start out as as simple home based business, but I can grow into something of a monster! I have also had the pleasure presenting my SEO know-how during seminars at places like BYU-Hawaii during business plan competitions, and more recently the eTourism Summit in San Fransisco.

I have attended most of the big search engine conferences including Search Engine Strategies, PubCon and more recently SMX. I have a degree in computer information systems, and have had a computer attached to me by the hip pretty much since 1997.

Please feel free to post questions, and ask me anything that may be on your mind.

Contact me directly - mat [at] 97thFloor [dot] com

-or-

Connect with me online at:

http://matt-siltala.stumbleupon.com/
http://del.icio.us/eplanit
http://digg.com/users/eplanit/news/dugg
http://www.linkedin.com/in/eplanit
http://www.technorati.com/people/technorati/eplanit
http://twitter.com/Matt_Siltala
http://www.facebook.com/p/Mat_Siltala/513843843
http://www.myspace.com/matsiltala
http://www.squidoo.com/matt-siltala/

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I am the President and Founder of 97th Floor and I have been involved with the Internet since the days of Alta Vistas reign (the good ol days when you could change your meta tags, submit your site through Inktomi and see your rankings improve by dinner). I got into SEO from a Graphic Design background, that is what I was majoring in in school when I started my first online business with some buddies. I came on to help with offline marketing and design and started to notice that when we did certain things to the pages of our site we would see more traffic. I quickly became addicted to SEO and after that business, I started to work as an SEO and overall Web Strategy Consulting for clients. Since then I have seen the rewards of high search engine rankings and really don’t know how to do anything business oriented without thinking about how to leverage it online.I have been privileged enough to work closely with large companies such as Omniture, Henry Schein and The Polynesian Cultural Center. I have spoken at many SEO conferences and seminars including a yearly seminar we put on in Hawaii that has been a lot of fun for us to do. I have personally worked on or advised nearly a thousand sites, which has helped me think outside the box and find a way to leverage anything from drop shipping, to catering, to one of the fastest growing software companies on the planet.

My best advice for someone starting out is to just get the site up and live, and then start small by picking a less competitive keyword to start and test, test, test. That way once you rank for the smaller word you will enjoy small victories and it will carry you until you are dominating your industry. I believe that if a company is not online in 5 years they will not exist, everyone should be thinking about adapting to the Internet. I believe the future of SEO is in branding and doing things differently, which may include adopting a social media campaign or ranking for every spot in Google for your branded terms and employee names or buying smaller sites and ranking them for the same keywords to give you multiple positions for the same term. Also if you are not doing something to build a community online you will be past up by a competitor that is. Whether it is through blogging, user generated content or a profiles and member based site you need to be building a community. Community is the new commodity.

I am originally from Vista California, that is where I grew up and lived until I got married. I have also lived in Newport Beach and Bellevue WA. I currently live in Utah with my beautiful wife and twin boys. If I am not glued to my laptop I am probably riding my atv’s, watching reruns of Arrested Development, wake surfing or trying to get back to California to paddle out with some buddies.

Interviews:
Omniture Webinar - 30 SEO Strategies for Corporate Websites
Webmaster Radio - SMX West Interview
Mashable Conversations - Launch of BLVD Status
Elance - 13 Ways to Make Your Blog Go Viral

Please feel free to contact me at:
chris [at] 97thfloor [dot] com

-or through Social Avenues-
http://www.linkedin.com/in/97thfloor/
Twitter.com/chrisbennett
StumbleUpon
Digg
SeoMoz Marketplace

-Other Projects-
5ones - Action Sports Blog
BLVD Status - Live Stats Analytics Tool

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I have redesigned my entire blogging process, and will be co-authoring the blog at 97th Floor along side Chris Bennett. I will be doing 301’s this friday or saturday to complete the launch. The new feed is here,

http://feeds.feedburner.com/97thfloor

Please update your readers.

Make sure you update it, as we have been holding back on blogging due to the anticipation of the new site. We will be 301?ing a page that made digg that will be interesting to see how google handles that (I don’t have my hopes up). We will also be sharing some secrets for Rep Management that have put a lot of money in our pockets as well as our clients. We will also talk about our adventures of doing the SEO for some of the fastest growing companies on the NASDAQ. We were brought on with some of them in the spring and have found some interesting things when doing seo for companies with so much Rep and over 15 million natural backlinks.

Thanks,

Mat Siltala

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Ok, well I really don’t have the solution for that.  If I did, I suppose I could bottle it and make a ton of money!  As I have been working today on a bunch of clients sites and tasks, I was thinking of something that I do (in regards to time management) that really makes working on multiple projects/tasks much easier on a day to day basis.

Proper time management plan - you can break down (on a whiteboard above your computer monitor) your series of duties on a daily basis.  On Monday I need to accomplish A, B and C for client A, B and C, and so on for each day of the week you plan on working.  You can break this down into days, and even how many hours you are willing to spend on each task.

If you are needing help with time mangement for marketing a site, you can use the same method, just break it down with marketing tasks/day;  How much time will be spend on blogging, finding links, writing content etc. … and whatever the tasks are.  If you get into this habbit you will no longer be overwhelmed, and will accomplish more then you ever thought possible!

But I am serious about the white board.  Go to Office Depot today and buy one.  Stick it up in your office right in front of you.  Lay out your day to day tasks as I have suggested and you will be suprised how much more productive you will be.

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