Dan Anton SEO: Automation collides with personalization
In the past, SEO was agnostic, a cold science analyzing meta data such as titles, descriptions and keywords. The algorithm felt precise, easily “gamed” and indifferent towards webpage rankings, whether multi-national brands, or random webpages shared the spotlight. Today the algorithm has evolved. Artificial Intelligence such as IBM’s Watson can now beat the best Jeopardy players, detect patterns and discern the most logical conclusions based on large data sets and user metrics.
The mission of Google, Bing and other search engines is to provide the most relevant and popular results based on the user’s query; this still relies in large part on user generated data. This is why search engine optimization and online marketing will still remain relevant, yet ever-changing. Dan Anton noticed common problems when dealing with promotions in the search engines, primarily the ability for webmasters to ensure Google not only indexed their webpages, but also found them to be popular and relevant. A simple sitemap will not suffice, as Google’s algorithm is known to favor 3rd party votes, rather than the irritating self-promotion which no one believes. At the very least, it is devalued.
In a sea of billions of webpages, millions of pages could be indexed or de-indexed in an instant. Webmasters needed a way to quickly add their websites to Google’s index, and also add all the website mentions they have online, also known as backlinks. This was the birth of BacklinksIndexer, a software product which would notify the search engines of a webpages existence, not by sheer pinging or notifying, as this is an antiquated technique, but by demonstrating the value of a webpage through systemized promotions; patterns, replication and principles grew the service from a few dozen to a few thousand monthly members, and has remained relevant and the leader in the space, according to ZontSEO for over seven years.
Military Tactics and Computer Science Background
As a retired military veteran (Infantry Army Ranger Major), Dan Anton applied his computer science background and military planning to automate much of the grueling, mindless tasks associated with SEO and indexing web pages, most notably creating content, embedding links, and the syndication of the content. These tasks were traditionally performed by humans, significantly lowering costs, freeing up human labor for more high-end projects such as acquiring new clients, or networking, and achieving a very high success rate in indexation by major search engines with staying power to remain indexed.
Dan and his team would write code and take feedback from customers to adapt and evolve the monthly software, as the search engine algorithms would also change, in a SEO Darwinian game, provide value and remain aligned with the search engines best practices. Thousands of updates, lines of code, user feedback, and hundreds of pots of coffee, the software is still active, but there would be a monumental shift in SEO, which would completely revolutionize the search marketing industry.
They Think I’m Real! Acknowledging the User
“They Think I’m Real” is the narrative by a little girl in “Radical Acceptance,” where a child is unexpectedly paid attention to by a waitress, in spite of her parents. The search engines are sitting on piles of user data, and if something is being tracked, it can be analyzed, revealing meaningful patterns. Other SEO experts such as Rand Fishkin began running live case studies to prove user metrics influenced global search results. While others debated its importance, Dan Anton set out to test and verify these claims. Over the course of years he built a search team of like-minded people, along with work at home moms and those looking to make extra money by searching online. The logic was sound, but scaling was very difficult unless you constantly asked your friends, family and tribe to mass search and view your website. Knowing costs had to be kept low, while maintaining the human aspect of real traffic, the mobile application for Crowd Search was developed, transforming cheap labor and mobile phones into effective, organized, organic search traffic.
Hyper Personalization: Logical Conclusion of SEO & Internet Marketing
The internet is a medium which facilitates and promotes one to many conversations. Whether Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, insert the latest website or app here, the appeal to speak to everyone's interest simultaneously is a false hope, as mass marketing begins to die, in favor of ultra personal experience, as seen by Minority Report. The hype of reaching everyone through the internet is now replaced with more grounded ideas of marketing and customer relations. The search engines have moved towards a more user focused experience, leveraging the crowd to glean insights into what's popular, relevant, and what’s useless web-spam.
As Dan Anton amassed thousands of loyal SEO software members, he was inundated with requests to personally oversee marketing campaigns. Understanding the need for a client agency, speaking direct to consumers, he launched his Atlanta SEO agency. The agency provides online marketing services, cradle to the grave, with a primary focus on personalization, with a 1 on 1 consultation by an expert partner in the agency. ROI topics include: web design, conversions, proper SEO, and scaling with PPC. By combining technical aspects of SEO with humanity (video, media, case studies) the agency has quickly grown to dominate Georgia as a full service digital marketing provider. Whether mass promotions or humanity based marketing, SEO is a critical component to organizing the world's data, as webmasters and search engines align their values and mission statements.