It was a balmy 85 degrees (30 C) on this late Friday afternoon as I arrived in the Dominican Republic's bustling capitol city of Santo Domingo to meet with and interview search marketing entrepreneur, blogger, and industry visionary, Mr. Hamlet Batista.  With almost 10 million citizens, D.R. ranks number 82 in population among the 193 nations of the world. In quick fashion, Hamlet has established himself as a search industry "A-lister," due to the technical depth and visionary insight he has offered with article contributions and challenging, thought-provoking commentary on his personal blog as well as SEOmoz and other search industry community websites. While many readers recognize Hamlet as a frequent contributor and commenter on SEOmoz, what you may not know is that Hamlet is also the President & CEO of NEMedia, the developers of recently released SEO Automation Software, RankSense.

I originally contacted Hamlet requesting an interview to discuss his views on the current state of SEO Automation as well as where he felt the industry was headed.  I ended up with more than I bargained for. Hamlet not only agreed to the interview, but also invited me to visit and tour his corporate offices in Santo Domingo and to spend the weekend as a personal guest at his sprawling, luxurious golf resort villa nestled in the tropical, Caribbean seaside resort of Casa de Campo.

The following is a partial transcript from our extensive interview; providing some brief insight into this soft spoken and humble, yet intensely focused and immensely successful businessman. 

Enjoy!

Hamlet, first let me thank you for your generous offer to visit with you this weekend to learn more about your views on the search industry and particularly where you feel SEO automation is headed.

Thank you for visiting, Sean.  I know you pushed a lot of things aside to make it happen and it's been great to have you here.

Hamlet, it wasn't until after we first spoke that I learned you were based in the Dominican Republic.  As anyone who follows major league baseball knows, the Dominican Republic has a rich history of producing top quality professional baseball players such as Pedro Martinez, Vladimir Guerrero, Sammy Sosa, and the legendary Juan Marichal - just to name a few.  But search industry executives?  This is quite a surprise.

Yes. It does raise some eyebrows when we tell people we produce something other than great ball players. Dominican businesses are just starting to branch out into e-commerce, and with SEO/SEM our company is at least several years ahead of the local market.  It is particularly funny when I have to explain our SEO software business to banks here.

But the Internet is an international market, and my entrepreneurial dream has always been about developing amazing software. I soon realized that my technical background was not enough to create a successful product.  I needed to fund the development and I needed to learn to market it.  I was fortunate enough to stumble upon affiliate marketing in my early years.  It taught me so much about online marketing, while at the same time helping me to accumulate enough funds to create my software company.  As you know, RankSense was developed during the course of more than three years.

As an affiliate, it didn't take long to realize that search engines were the best source of traffic and conversions.  After several months doing PPC profitably, I decided to learn and experiment with organic search and SEO.  The huge difference in returns between SEO and PPC made it essential to focus more time and effort on SEO and link building.  I can say that I would not be anywhere near where I am today if I had stuck to PPC.

While doing SEO, it also became common practice for me to develop custom scripts and automate many of the repetitive tasks.  Of course, I did hire smart people, too, as there are things like effective link building that require human interaction.  I am immensely proud and very fortunate I was able to assemble the development team that works on RankSense.

So, if I understand correctly, your early successes in search were based primarily around pay per click (ppc) as an affiliate marketer.  Is that correct?

That is correct. I have to thank Ken Envoy for his affiliate master course.  I don't agree with some of the things I read (for instance, working on second-tier or third-tier PPC engines, as my tests proved their traffic is not very useful), but generally speaking I am glad that his book set me off in the right direction. As most things in business and life, you don't know for sure if something will work or not until you test it yourself.  PPC teaches you a great deal and I suggest that every SEO should spend some time learning it. The biggest benefit is that it teaches you to focus on making money, not just on driving traffic to a website. You learn which traffic, ad copy, and landing pages convert versus that which is just taking up bandwidth. You also learn exactly which keywords are the most important.

When I started, I went after some of the most competitive keywords.  I managed to get several of my sites ranking for Viagra, payday loans, mortgage, life insurance, and affiliate programs.  Unfortunately, while advertisers pay between $5 to 15 dollars or more for those keywords, they are only profitable for the merchant that is directly selling the service or product; not so much for the affiliate.  That is one of the reasons I expanded my business by creating my own network and recruiting affiliates.

Another thing I learned while competing for such competitive, high traffic keywords is that automation is key to scale and being successful.  While my competitors were doing everything by hand or hiring countless staff to do the work, I spent time automating and improving the processes.  This was the premise of my original goal of developing software, and it made perfect sense for me to write a more useful and easy-to-use SEO product.


After some extensive discussion on Hamlet's experiences and successes in PPC and Affiliate marketing, our conversation focused squarely on the hot and somewhat controverisal topic of SEO Automation.

Hamlet, yesterday I had the opportunity to meet with and talk to your development team in Santo Domingo and to gain some visibility into the current release and roadmap of your RankSense SEO Automation software.  While I must admit I was impressed with what I saw, there seems to be both vocal advocates and equally vocal opponents of SEO Automation software.  Bottom line - Do you really think SEO can be automated?

I think the problem is about semantics. When people mention SEO automation, many people think about a magical tool that automatically pushes any URL to the top of the rankings.  Most people would love to see such a tool (including me), but unless you are talking about black-hat SEO tactics, that is definitely a topic for science fiction. SEO cannot be completely automated at this time.

That being said, what is wrong with trying to automate as much as possible? I am really surprised when I hear pessimists speak negatively about SEO automation. I am positive that not a single one of them can do their jobs without using at least one SEO tool.  Think about keyword research, for example.

Automation is what man has been doing for the past few centuries.  Progress has to do a lot with efficiency, and that is what SEO automation should be like, too.

So, if I understand you correctly, what you're saying is that SEO can never really be fully automated; however, it is critical for SEOs, in order to remain competitive and to scale, to automate as many best-in-class SEO tasks as possible.  Is that a fair statement?

Certainly. In order to remain competitive and service the increasing demand for SEO services you need to automate repetitive tasks.  It also lowers the learning curve so that you can get new employees up to speed fast.

That’s a great point about the learning curve, especially when it comes to an SEO scaling their business.  What are those trends that you feel will drive a broad based adoption of SEO Automation software?

I think the first one is the pressure to compete. If your competitor is doing it and you aren’t, you are going to be at a disadvantage.  Another is the need to do more with less time and resources.  SEO software like RankSense can be used as a training tool so that you learn while doing it, but experts can also use it in order to accomplish more in less time.  It is a product that serves a broad range of needs.

Is RankSense a product for SEOs, Bloggers, Small or Large businesses?  What segment/s does RankSense primarily target?

At this stage, we are primarily targeting small business owners, but the software is designed with integrated support for copywriters and most blogging platforms too.  We also think it is very useful for SEM agencies and SEOs because they can do so much with it.  We started working on an enterprise edition of the software with a client-server approach, multi-user support, and more powerful reporting. That edition will be targeted primarily at ad agencies and larger accounts.

Without discussing specific companies, it seems that some SEO software companies have achieved some limited success.  Where do you think they are falling short?

We've looked at the SEMPO reports, and it is very interesting that SEO/SEM software companies command such a small piece of the pie. My bet is that they are not bringing enough value to the table or are too complex to use. Simply put, if the results are there, people will buy it.  On the other hand, if people have to spend two weeks in training to use a piece of software, the adoption rate decreases significantly.  Everybody wants a tool that they can use instantly and that delivers results.  We always kept those two things in mind while developing RankSense.

As we both know, there are dozens of "SEO tools" on the market, whether they are web based or stand alone products.  What makes RankSense unique?  Does RankSense have any patented technology?

The biggest difference with RankSense is that it is more about making you a productive SEO than performing a specific SEO task.  We focus on results, not only the process.  I like to think about it like any productivity software—MS Office, Adobe’s Creative Suite, etc.  These products give writers and artists the tools they need to create impressive things.  RankSense does exactly that for SEO.  It is not so much a single tool as it is a productivity platform to research, play with ideas, and implement SEO on your site.  The results can be truly impressive.

On the usability end, RankSense has several innovations and patent pending processes that reduce or eliminate many of the technical aspects of SEO and, at the same time, offer a lot of convenience and simplicity as the software can make most decisions for you.  It treats SEO as a single process from start to finish where all the tools cooperate and work together to help you optimize your pages. So RankSense will be particularly attractive to non-technical people that want to learn or perform SEO on their sites.

Of course, for experts it can behave like a more traditional toolbox with all the SEO-related tools at your fingertips. Maybe I designed that part a little for myself. ;-)  I would say this is a higher level integrated SEO suite as opposed to the task specific tools on the market at the moment.

When did the RankSense product officially launch?

RankSense is already available for trial and purchase, but we have not officially launched the product yet. The plan is to do that at SMX West at the end of this month. We will have a booth (224) and we also plan to do a theater presentation on “The Future of SEO Automation.”

I understand RankSense has been more than three years in the making.  Clearly, you have a significant investment in the software.  As you introduce RankSense to the market, do you intend to continue funding the growth of the company internally?

Well, that was my original goal.  However, development took far more time and money than I was expecting.  I have made a lot of personal sacrifices to make this happen; my wife thinks I am crazy, of course! :- ) Moving forward, I will likely start looking for serious investors once the product has proven itself in the market and we have more realistic projections.”

Final question. Is there a way for SEOmoz readers and others in the SEO community test RankSense and see the product in action?

Sure.  We are currently developing a new site and new video for the launch, but they can go to www.ranksense.com right now and download a full featured free trial.  We also have an affiliate and partner program running for those that might be interested in earning commissions on sales of the RankSense software.

I'm sure many of the Mozzers will be interested in giving it a try and providing some feedback on their experience.  Hamlet, once again I want to thank you and wish you continued success with RankSense!

It’s been my pleasure.  Many thanks to you, Sean.

Sean Maguire is Managing Partner & Principal Consultant of 360SELL, Inc., a sales and marketing consulting firm headquartered in Austin, Texas. Full disclosure – 360Sell has provided consulting services to NEMedia.