Eric Bloomfield, Vice President of Client
Service & Technology, SendTraffic
Eric Bloomfield has been with SendTraffic for more than three years. During that time, Bloomfield
has managed all the technological capabilities surrounding SendTraffic’s SEO and SEM offerings.SendTraffic was founded in 1999. It’s an online marketing firm specializing in Search Engine Marketing
and Optimization, Lead Generation, and Targeted Vertical Marketing. In addition to SEM and SEO
offerings, SendTraffic also provides Paid Inclusion and Feed Management, Website Analytics, and
Phone Sales Analytics.Jerri: What do you see as the current state of SEO?Bloomfield:It’s always changing. And it requires that you just stay on the top of your game all the
time. With the ever-changing algorithms that Google and Yahoo! use, they can change it on a dime.
You have to stay on top of it. We hear stories all the time about Google changing their algorithm and
then companies lose 80 percent of their business. We try to stay current. You have to stay ahead of
the changes and that’s accomplished through best practices.Jerri: How valuable is vertical SEO?Bloomfield:I think vertical search is just the way everything needs to go. One of the most effective
SEO strategies that you can employ is knowing your vertical and knowing where it’s going. For
example, we deal with insurance so I know everything there is to know about insurance. I research
the trends and pay attention to the news. But if I knew nothing about these things, then there are
SEO strategies that I would do differently. Knowing your vertical very well and knowing what works
in the vertical makes it possible for you to do better with your SEO efforts.It really all starts with the keywords and knowing what keywords work for your industry. Then try
to beef up the content and make sure you’re included in the right directories in the industry. Then
those keywords will pull more weight in a vertical search engine than with other general search
engines. Your site is going to get weighed more heavily than if you’re in general.If you’re just doing general linking and not doing things within your vertical, then you’re not doing
as well as you could be doing. We also stay on top of it, so we have content that’s right for that verti-
cal. And we often make sure that we’re pushing the content out to them. But we need to generate it.
There are other companies that have the content and just need for us to tell them what to do with it.Jerri: How is vertical SEO or search marketing different from general SEO?Bloomfield:I actually haven’t dealt with anything that’s not vertical SEO. Everyone has to target
according to their market. Even in dealing with Yahoo! you’re targeting one of the different verti-
cals within Yahoo!. If you’re targeting general SEO, you’re going to spend a lot of money and
you’re not going to get much. Almost everything you do is highly targeted and vertical.289
Industry Interviews75002bapp02_6.qxd 11/7/07 9:22 AM Page 289