Exclusive Interview With Aaron Wall

I remember the first time when I first learn about SEO it actually came from Aaron Wall’s website at www.SeoBook.com. He is a master in SEO and if you want to learn more about SEO you should learn from Aaron Wall Because I have benefited lots from his teaching I decided to drop him an email for an interview. And I was quite lucky enough to get him to do a interview with me via email. I thought it would be great to share with you some questions I asked him.

Here’s The Interview With Aaron Wall

1. Can you give a brief introduction about yourself and how you got started into
the SEO business?

My first website was a rant website and I had no money when I got on the web. From there organic search seemed an obvious step. I made another domain writing down notes for myself as I was learning and a person came across the site and wanted to hire me. I tried refusing but he was reluctant to my refusal. A month later he made thousands of dollars profit from my $100 SEO service and so my career began.

2. There are many so called SEO experts out there, but what makes you different from the rest?

I have worked with some of the largest household brands online and small mom and pop type websites. Few SEOs have that opportunity to gain the insights you get from that range of experience. If SeoBook.com as a site died tomorrow and I did not sell SEO consulting I would still make a good living…ie: I use my own advice as well as giving it out. I also rank on the first page of Google’s search results for “seo.” Rather than always trying to be right and give a black and white yes or no answer I realize many questions require deeper context. Understanding why things are how they are also helps you figure out where they may go as the structure of the web changes.

3. Everyone online is now fighting to get high rankings in Google is that really important?

Most businesses can enhance their exposure and profits through search. It is not for everyone, but maybe only 98% of the market needs it.

4. If I am a newbie to SEO, do you have any advice how can I get started to SEO my web pages to be friendly with search engines?

I created two guides to really help begginers. One is blog specific and the other is more general. Since you run a blog I would suggest reading The Blogger’s Guide to SEO ( http://www.seobook.com/bloggers ), though the Work.com guide to learning SEO ( http://www.work.com/learning-search-engine-optimization-1053/ ) should be helpful too.

5. What are the top search engine would you recommend for people to SEO on and how can we go about to start doing SEO for our web pages?

In most places Google is the market leader. They are the engine with the most traffic worth focusing on the most in most markets. In some foreign markets other search players lead the market. This global search report ( http://www.multilingual-search.com/global-search-report-2007-released-free-pdf/15/10/2007 ) should help you identify other important engines in those markets.

6. It is truth that search engines loves blog more then normal websites?

The answer here is yes, and for a wide array of reasons.

- Blogs allow you to regularly publish bite sized targeted content.
- People can subscribe to your feed and be notified anytime you post new stuff.
- Over time that builds a large base of subscribers.
- Whenever you have new content that means hundreds or thousands of people who like your field see it right away. If they like it and link at it then your rankings go up further.
- Blogging is generally quite conversational in nature. Publishing a blog makes it easier for others to learn to trust you and want to link to you.

7. What are the important factors to consider when doing SEO? It is all about just collected good quality backlinks to get good rankings?

Currently backlinks are the leading key. But you also need to get the right kinds of links. If I am buying 10,000 links at $20 a month each that is $200,000 in recurring ad spend. If I am getting 100,000 free links that do not require recurring payment that is a big advantage worth a lot of money (assuming my on site sales process and site structure are designed to convert link equity and rankings into money). Plus when people mention your site in a positive light it builds believers and transfers trust to your site. Something that is hard to get by just renting links. And that is why content has to be part of your link strategy.

8. Where do you get your knowledge and experiences in SEO?

My wife (http://www.heygio.com) and I publish a lot of websites, worked for a diverse set of clients, and have some great friends who monitor the search space as well as we do.

9. Do you use any software to do your SEO? Can you recommend a few to us and explain why you use them?

We offer a lot of free SEO tools ( http://tools.seobook.com/ ) on our website that I use on a daily basis. My favorite tool is SEO for Firefox. Beyond that, I also like many of the competitive research tools like Compete.com Search Analytics, SEO Digger, and Microsoft’s Ad Intelligence plug in. And every SEO should be using an analytics product of some sort.

10. I would not say I am an SEO expert myself but from my experience is SEO all about ensuring the title tags, meta tags and url tags and backlinks are catered to the keywords you want to target?

Absolutely correct. And then beyond just ranking for keywords you also want to create content that people want to talk about and share…and that could be because they love you, they hate you, you made them laugh, or you offer a great useful utility.

11. Is there any sure way to find out what we do with our website for SEO is the right way or wrong way?

The easiest way is to set a baseline and start tracking. Use analytics tools to track general traffic trends and use our rank checker ( http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/ ) to track your rankings for important keywords. Keep in mind that even if your rankings fluctuate a lot and rankings sometime drop that is fine so long as your general traffic trend is increasing.

12. Lastly, we know you wrote a really powerful book called the SEObook, I got a copy myself and I feel it’s a great book and you maybe share with us what inspired you to start writing that book?

I saw that search was getting harder…but I loved the field. At that point in time I also realized that selling consulting was a rough business model (for both clients and consultants). I figured the ebook could help a lot of people. Around 13,000 people bought it and thousands more got it through other means. So it ended up working out a bit better than I expected. But since I am only one person, as search keeps growing more complex I had to change my business model to focus on deeper customer relationships. That is why we launched our SEO training program ( http://training.seobook.com/ ).

Summary

Overall you can see from this interview what Aaron shared has really lots of fine details into SEO. If you like this post do remember to subscribe to this blog, also if you any further comment do input your comments below.