Barry is a professional marketer in Canada that specializes in online marketing and sales. He is one of the most knowledgeable and helpful people in the industry.

Name: Barry Welford
Aliases: bwelford
Single or Married: Married
Kids: by now four adults
Home Site: Strategic Marketing Montreal
Blogs: BPWrap - A Different View on Internet Marketing
  The Other Bloke’s Blog - Business and Marketing from Montreal, Quebec, Canada
  Staygolinks - View on the Mobile World From A Desktop Perspective
Memberships: cre8asiteforums
Contact info: smm@videotron.ca
  T: (514) 223-2201

How did you get into SEO?

SEO is only part of what I do. Most of my working career has been in marketing and sales. Marketing is a dialogue process with prospects and customers. The Internet is the most effective space in which to manage this dialogue process. So as the Internet developed, I naturally began to put more and more emphasis on Internet Marketing. SEO is a natural and important function within Internet Marketing.

What other areas do you specialize in? How do they complement your SEO efforts?

The total objective of my services is to help clients’ companies grow their sales. In the ideal project, this would start with business strategy and continue right through to making sales.

Barry’s StayGoLinks covers the mobile internet.

Any favorite projects you’d like to share?

StayGoLinks is a new blog I’ve started about the Mobile Internet world. This topic became an interest as I worked on setting up the Cross-browser Device Assessment Panel in the Cre8asite Forums. It’s a new domain and the first post was made July 13th. It already appears in Google searches and seems to have escaped from the sand-box. It has over 5,000 inlinks according to Yahoo! so I’m very pleased at its reception.

What part of SEO drives you nuts?

So many people believe the fiction put out by the less reputable SEO consultants. They believe you can slap together a website as Step 1. Then as Step 2 you do SEO to get high rankings. It’s tough to tell such a person that they’ve wasted their money and effort on their website and they should go back to the drawing board.

What’s your favorite part of SEO?

I’ll mention two aspects:

1. Working with clients right from the website planning stage so that the strategy, architecture and content can all work together for strong Internet Marketing and good search engine visibility.
2. Working with clients who have decent websites already indexed by the search engines. By just applying improved practices, you can make significant increases in traffic and sales.

   I have a current client like this where traffic has more than tripled in the first 3 months of the contract.

Where do you see SEO going over the next 5 years?

Thankfully search engines are getting better and offering more relevant searches in a personalized way. This rightly moves the focus away from search engine rankings and puts it where it should be on traffic and conversions to sales.

Any favorite tips or advice?

Titles, <h1> headings and inlink text are the most powerful elements in SEO so work on them.

Blogs are also very powerful. Provided you or your company has something interesting to tell your prospects and customers, then start a blog ASAP.

You are a very active blogger. What role has blogging played with your SEO efforts? What tips do have to share with people who are getting a blog going? What should they look for to improve their results?

I think it’s important to bring something different to the table. So try to stand back a bit and see how news items relate to other topics. If you can get onto news items early then you may be able to comment on other people’s posts either in your own blog or in their comments and have some visibility for your point of view. I think checking news feeds through something like Bloglines is particularly useful for this.

One important aspect is to try to make sure that your blog posts have clear Titles that intrigue and give a clear indication of what is in the post. It’s sometimes useful to check your proposed title in a Google Blogsearch or in a regular search. If there’s too much competition for the Title then look for something else.

How has SEO benefited you the most?

I wouldn’t just single out SEO but the Internet is changing the way society functions. That gives enormous potential for all Internet-related matters including Internet Marketing. So you can make money and have fun while working on really stimulating challenges.

What role has family played in your career? Were the kids out of the house when you went solo or did you have to balance things?

The kids were all grown-up by the time I went solo so it wasn’t a big factor. I’ve always been a very early riser so that gives me two hours before the rest of the day starts for the family. If it works for you it’s a great way to get things done.

What industries do you work in?

I used to be more focused on High Tech manufacturing and service companies. Over the last year, I’ve broadened into e-commerce companies as well.

Do you take jobs or just work privately?

2/3 working for clients, 1/3 working privately.

Strategic Marketing Montreal offers one of the best marketing blogs around. While based in Canada, the concepts are universal.

What do you look for when accepting new projects?

I think you should always be stimulated by new projects. You don’t necessarily turn away projects but you may want to set the bar so high that they refuse what you offer. When do you do this? Well, we all know a small proportion of clients can be problem cases. If they have unrealistic expectations of what they can get for what they’re willing to pay, or if you just feel the chemistry is not right, then don’t accept the project. Life is too short.

What is your SEO Philosophy?

Two Golden Rules:

1. Make websites that perform well for their human visitors in terms of usability, credibility and conversions to sales.
2. Do this in a way that makes the websites highly search-engine visible.