SEOmoz: The Good Guys
I’m a money-grubbing SEO. I’ll kill, maim, and burn down your village to get the job done. I’ll run up the score like Steve Spurrier. I’m your classic Type-A American Alpha Male that most of the rest of the world hates. In business, it’s proven to be very profitable. But as I sit here in the last few hours of 2006, I’m absolutely taken aback by something Rand posted on SEOmoz.
It’s their financials. They aren’t particularly impressive (Rand’s yearly take home of $38GR was a good month for many SEO’s). But you can’t help but read his post and feel that SEOmoz is a little bit bigger than an SEO firm. It was kind of the Jerry Maguire Moment of Search.
Rand has built an extended family. You can see it in the way his employees speak about him. You see it in how the rest of us respect him. Over the long haul, that’s probably worth a million bucks.
The concept of an SEO firm is absolutely retarded, in my opinion. You can’t keep good employees because they can be much more profitable on their own. Clients of SEO Firms are usually stuck with some low level newb assigned to their account, because an SEO expert would be working for himself or at least trying to run a shop based on his knowledge. But Rand’s got it working…and growing. I’m impressed.
I’ll probably get burned out in a couple years on slitting throats and generally doing Corporate America’s dirty work. My bet is, that in ten years, SEOmoz…the Little SEO Shop That Could…will be the Leo Burnett or SEO-equivalent of the agency model.
Congrats to the SEOmoz team and to their leadership for staying the course. You’re creating something special.
I think the key in Rand’s financial’s isn’t his personal income - it’s the investment and positioning of SEOmoz at the forefront of search. I see a company better orientated to take marketshare in the industry than smaller outfits, such as my own.