Michael Kane

I rarely even read online web related interviews with the different SEO and Web developer/designer personalities out there, mainly because I could care less about any of them. But when someone really close to me does something that impresses me, I show respect, and here’s how. I landed an interview with Johnny of JustaGuyandaGirl.com a great friend, practically related to me, he’s like that guy in the mirror. On top of being able to relate to him, I think he’s a great SEO/Designer/Developer.  So, let’s get started with the first part of this really fun interview. Hope you like it.

Michael Kane: What’s good man?

Johnny: It’s all good MK, how are you?

Michael Kane: Fine bro doing great. So tell me, what have you been up to lately?

Johnny: Taking it easy, doing what I have always been doing like working on my many projects and starting a few new ones here and there. My latest is www.justaguyandagirl.com which I setup with Blondie, a good friend of mine. I have some plans for the site but I’m waiting for it to reach a fork in the road before I expand it into a money spinning project, as of right now, it’s all in good fun, a place me and Blondie get to share our ideas and not get hassled too much about doing so.

Michael Kane: Great, i’ll get to justaguyandagirl.com in a bit, but tell me what you mean by ‘fork in the road’ ?

Johnny: Well the blog for now is just a place me and Blondie can vent, be random, and have fun. Later on I want to expand it into a podcast oriented blog and then go live with live streaming (online radio’ish like) which might end up with us not only having live streaming audio when we’re on but possibly live streaming video too, a sort of reality blog that’s live and kept updated pretty much 24/7. Like I said, that’s in the future, right now we’re focusing on taking it one step at a time and hopefully building a big enough readership count to think about bigger and better things. Turning the blog into a Super Affiliate blog is also another idea I’ll spin Blondie’s way soon, it’s just what comes to mind really, it’s not too planned out at all.

Michael Kane: So for the record, Johnny is your Alias right? You are however a super affiliate correct? I believe a year or so ago you were mentioned as one of the top Super Affiliates online today but a lot of controversy was sparked around that, am I warm?

Johnny: Yes, ‘Johnny’ is a nickname i’m going by for now, I’m not trying to be mysterious but I want justaguyandagirl.com to succeed for what it is, not who’s blogging on it, Blondie really is my other half when it comes to blogging, scary how I can say that about a women, as you know all women have issues and are psycho and she puts up with me, and we get along almost too well, so I believe we’re the ultimate blogging team here, and the blog will succeed because of that, not because of my personal readership online.

Yes, early in 2007 I was contacted via email for an award I wont name, but I was working under the radar (much like you do most times) they had very little to go on as far as contacting me personally, I refused to give them an appointment as I did not want to become another public SA icon, I just wanted to keep at what I was doing and simply left alone. They did not appreciate that and canceled the award even though I offered to have someone appear as a representative, that did not go down too well with them and I was scratched off the affiliate  list for that year. However, I am planning on making a public appearance later this year at more than one convention, I wont say more on that.

Michael Kane: Reading your blog posts I can’t help but think there’s more to some of the things you’ve posted, not to mention posting about naked monkeys and using similar crazy titles for posts like I do. Are you slipping hidden messages directed at certain people or something? I mean your latest post about SEO personalities obviously attacked Doug Heil, a very well known SEO and then you went on complimenting shadyseo only to bash a blackhat? Not to mention bitching about WP even though you use WP yourself?! What gives Johnny?

Johnny: It’s not about me attacking anyone personally, I’m just giving my own opinion and posting assumptions, all of which are mine alone. Doug to me was not targeted in that post he was just used as an example mainly because he straps the word ETHICS to his back and runs around telling people how to run their businesses, sure he’s highly respected in the SEO industry and I give him credit for what he’s accomplished, but he’s not a competitor, nor is he someone I need to worry about in my own industry, however when I think of a ‘white hat seo’ I think of him.

Shady SEO to me is just someone doing what needs to be done to rank without being an out right Google hater and believing that the most popular search engine in the world hasn’t a clue when it comes to ranking sites. Black hats, well, I’m no Doug Heil but one thing I agree with him on, is that to me most black hats, or at least those calling themselves black hats are simply immature and are for the most part involved in online criminal activities. Hurting competitors and attacking their ad campaigns or faking adsense clicks and stuffing affiliate cookies is stealing which every 5 year old knows is wrong.

I actually voted for G.W.Bush, but I was one of those protesting a while back when my youngest cousin was sent to Iraq, he was killed in a road side bombing 2 weeks before he was to come back home. Anyway that’s besides the point, Wordpress I use, but it does not mean I have to accept it’s flaws, and I stated that in my recent post on justaguyandagirl.com

Michael Kane: Hey Johnny, tell me something I don’t know about SEO, wait that is tricky i’m sure, tell my readers something they may not know about ranking? A tip, trick? Anything they have not read about a million times online before.

Johnny: Spam is all bad, but there’s something known as Smart Spam (SS), I think you originally came up with the term and technique, it gets the average webmaster around 200-1000 targeted unique users in traffic a day, which is a nice boost in targeted traffic for 60% of sites out there today.

Simply visit a warez forum such as forumw.org, register and browse it for topics related to your niche with a product that’s up for download, something users are going crazy over (find a few for best effect) take the rapidshare links, download the products then re upload them on a page on your site, or simply upload them to rapidshare and add the link on a dedicated page on your site . Consider using a proxy so you don’t get in trouble for re distributing software or whatever the product is, then go onto a more popular forum, such as warez-bb.org for example. Post the new to your page with the download link on it.

Usually you get around 200-400 visits if it’s rush hour on big forums in the first hour of publishing a new post, if you develop a good reputation multiply that by a thousand at least. People fail when they think of spam as a method to simply help their rankings in the search engines. Props to you for coming up with similar techniques a few years back Mike.

Michael Kane: A lot of techniques we used to rank and generate traffic 4 years ago are still as effective today, just not as widely used. It’s like a current, it swept a lot of the creative effective ideas we once used to come up with, I remember the irc message spam bot that used to slam irc channels worldwide with over 50,000 messages an hour or day, can’t remember that part. Now that was hardcore.

Anyway, I want to split this interview into two parts, have this as an intro and the next 10 questions all SEO/Marketing/Blogging/Traffic Generating related, up for round two?

Johnny: I think I am, let’s have them!

Part 2 of this interview will follow soon.

(parts of this interview have been edited but in no way effect/alter the integrity of the answers or questions.  Mainly re formated and spell checked to better go with the blog format and my blogging style)

Tags: Humor, johnny, justaguyandagirl.com, seo, super affiliate