GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 22 - October 2012

Facebook pages. I see SEO and social networking as ways to constantly get a lot of visitors – in the case of social networking, returning visitors – as opposed to paid advertising where you pay for each click and you’re not sure if the customer is motivated or not. It’s money thrown down the drain unless you know why you’re doing it. How does Bing fit into your SEO strategy? It does not. I had plans to focus on Bing as the competition is softer there, but I quickly realized why that is the case. Bing isn’t a good search engine, and isn’t clever enough to index dynamic sites. Google made some strategic mistakes recently, such as wanting to influence your search results by your friends’ interests, which is obvious nonsense, so Bing had a chance to come out on top, but they missed the opportunity. Yahoo might be an option for SEO, though. You posted recently that “people tend to panic about SEO whenever possible” and that they should spend more time working to make their sites better rather than asking, “What code can I change to trick Google?” Please elaborate on your views for our readers. Everyone’s already heard that you should design your site for humans, not for Google bots, and this is even more true in our industry. We’re asking our visitors to take their wallets out and make a deposit, but they’ll do that only if they trust you. First-time depositors are very cautious as they’re not sure what will happen next – Will someone steal their money or not? – and in this industry we’re rewarded financially for bringing in new members, not existing members who make another deposit. So, we’re targeting people who probably haven’t done it before, and therefore it’s muchmore important to develop a trustworthy brand profile than it is to rank high on Google with a banner farm. SEO is important, but it must not be the focus of your business. If you rank high with a poor product, it only means a lot of people will know you suck. If someone were visiting you in Zagreb, what’s the one place you’d definitely take them to see? Frommy perspective, there’s nothing to see here, though actually there’s “nothing to see” in, say, Venice either. People enjoy the architecture of the old part of Zagreb and the overall atmosphere. So I’d take my guest for a stroll downtown. We’d visit several landmarks, and then we’d head for Upper Town to get a panoramic view of Zagreb. What’s your favorite vacation spot? One camp in Istria, it’s a piece of heaven. My stepfather and I went there last summer as we had some business to do in the region regarding the U19 football tournament, and ended up having a free five-day vacation. You seldom get a chance to create something as strong as a childhood memory at an adult age, and this was it. If you could have one “superpower,” what would it be? I’d like to master CSS. There must be a superpower for that, as it’s not humanly possible. You play electric guitar. Any plans to upgrade from that $50 Stratocaster knockoff you picked up at a shopping mall? I hear people complain about their guitars, and then they buy new ones only to try to find that perfect one (remember Wayne’s World ?), and by that time they’re already in the highest price range. It’s very hard to find the perfect guitar, and I’ve found one for $50. This one’s a gem. People who are fortunate enough to have one refuse to sell it for any price, as it doesn’t have any of the usual problems guitars often develop, and it’s very versatile. It can even produce a heavy Gibson-like sound, which is usually next to impossible on Strats. What’s your all-time favorite movie? It must be one of the movies I enjoyed when I was a kid, as that’s a time when nothing is routine and everything is new, so all the experiences have a stronger taste. The Karate Kid was my favorite movie back then, and now it has an added value as a childhood memory, so whenever it’s on TV it will catch my attention. If you were casting a movie with yourself in the leading role, who would play your romantic interest? In any parallel universe, my romantic interest would always be my wife. We’d meet each other somehow. I’d find her. If you could invite any five people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be? Richard Matthew Stallman, the creator of GNU. He’s the real deal. A modern freedom fighter. The remaining spots would go to Iron Maiden band members, and since there are six of them I’d leave Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson out as a practical joke. What are three things that nobody knows about you? Let’s focus on the one that’s most interesting. An episode of Malcolm in the Middle , where Hal (Bryan Cranston) finds a CB radio and starts “spreading the truth,” inspired me to do the same, but with a blog. It got me hired as the editor-in-chief of a newspaper. I fought corruption and eventually met Ivo Josipovic, the president of Croatia. In the city where I worked I found and brought back to Zagreb the two loves of my life, my wife, Snježana, and our dog, Zara. 49 GPWA Affiliate Interview Series