As promised, here is the remainder of my interview with Aaron Wall, and if you’d like to see some videos to learn more about his work at SEOBook, see these SEO Video Tutorials. In looking over my email exchange, I realize that, through nothing but pure happenstance, Yolanda and I asked questions that were of the same thrust. I bring that up only because I thought I had lost her questions in the exchange, and realized later that Aaron simply consolidated the interview.

To that end, Yolanda and readers: I apologize for suggesting that her questions were up next (they are more or less answered here, with the exception of one re: the comparison of traffic streams and the pro’s and con’s of optimizing for Google’s traffic vs. Yahoo! and Bing).

Without further ado, here are the questions I had asked SEOBook CEO and SEO, Aaron Wall.

1. You run a website called, “SEOBook.com,” and with such an obscure name, what is the point of SEOBook? :)

When I first got into SEO I was obscure / unknown. Then when the Google Florida update happened I became pretty well known pretty fast. Then in a month or so a lot of that dried up. So that taught me that consulting can be a bit more feast or famine than I cared for, so I thought maybe there would be a decent business model in selling a how-to SEO guide. The idea of creating an ebook already had the marketing angle available because the common line of thinking was that all print books were out of date. So that is where the idea came from.

And I saw people who had blogs were getting a disproportionate number of inbound links, so I figured I would write a blog to promote the ebook. After about 4 or 5 years of that SEO started to feel like it was getting more complex, so we decided to create a membership website consisting of training modules, a newsletter, SEO tools, and quite literally the best SEO community forums on the web. The community part ended up far better than we anticipated & is where most people find the greatest value in our site.

2. I already subscribe to your mailing list, and have grown to appreciate your take on all things SEO (as do, apparently, a “few others” online…), and being somewhat new to this whole business myself, what are some “must-haves” that you’d insist a newbie to internet marketing should know/have?

Specifically:

A) What would you suggest as a set of tools for discovering keywords? What is your take on “Micro Niche Finder” and similar tools for keyword research (since I use MNF myself)?

I use Wordtracker some and like some of the competitive research tools like SEM Rush, but the main keyword tool I use most of the time is the Google Search-based Keyword Tool. As far as desktop keyword tools go I find that many of them are sorta bloated and lacking in features. A lot of the value-add some of them offer (list generation, de-duplication, etc.) can be done with many of the free online tools. And the sorting options inside the Google Search-based Keyword Tool is just awesome.

Rather than looking for individual keywords to build around I look for thick and deep keyword baskets to build around and try to build up authoritative websites. On a per page basis I also like to use Google search suggest to help me find related keywords to include in the page title and page copy.

Based on your question I bought that Micro Niche Finder. It looks like a front end for the Google AdWords keyword tool, which also has domain lookup options baked into it. Not sure if you know this, but there is a tool called domainsbyvolume which does the same & is free. It seems MNF has a few more nice features built into it (like detecting OCI and such) and if you operate in the longtail it shouldn’t be hard to make $100 back off this tool, but my fear with using such a tool would be if the data was being aggregated by the software creator.

If you look at their upsell after selling the software they sell “The Niche Informant” which is marketed as a subscription service where you can “Get 20 Virtually Done-For-You Profitable Niche Markets Delivered to Your Email Inbox Every Single Month.” My question is does some of that research data come from people using the tool? Just this past month I noticed iAcquire was aggregating data from customers of Link Diagnosis.

http://www.seobook.com/are-you-working-against-yourself

One of the reasons I love the Google Search-based keyword tool is that I figure they will be too big to compete against me, and another reason I love their tool is that I figure they should have some of the cleanest data available since they own most of the search market. And part of the reason I love SEM Rush is that I don’t see them as being the type to compete against me either.

On our site (in the member’s area) we have a domain finder tool as well…but it doesn’t look for domain names available at registration price, rather we sift through the BuyDomains inventory data. We want to add more after-market data sources as well soon. We don’t go out of our way to use our customer’s data against them like I fear many info-marketers do, but the domains that we find from BuyDomains tend to be more of the $2,000 to $10,000 range rather than the $8 reg. fee ones. But I like to try to build sites that I think can make at least $5,000 a month or more…smaller than that and it is hard to move the needle when compared against the returns we could get by pushing harder on our better sites.

[Editor's note: I was particularly *disturbed* by Aaron's thought on the possible use of my research by the Micro Niche Finder staff, and actually went ahead and asked them point blank if they used our research to re-sell as the Niche Informant data. This is the response I was given:

Sharon to theaveragegenius@gmail.com
1:16pm

[Re:]Niche Informant – The research for the Niche Informant is done by someone on staff who used Micro Niche Finder. In addition, he prepares articles (3 for each keyword) to accompany those keywords.
See here for detail – http://micronichesfinder.com/sales01.php

So, for me – that settles the issue. Still using MNF, until I can actually compete against Wall himself (I’m not quite at the “Oh, I’ll buy a $2k domain name today…” level! =) ]

B) What material or ebook would you suggest as a “Bible” of sorts for keyword discovery?

I would hate to refer to anything I have done as biblical, but just shy of 2 years ago I partnered up with Wordtracker to make a $39 ebook focused on sharing 50 great keyword tips and ideas.

http://www.wordtracker.com/ebooks/kick-ass/

They also shared this tip for free as a sample:

http://www.wordtracker.com/academy/last-minute-keywords

I am not sure if I am allowed to share the exact sales numbers, but it is their #1 selling title of their series, and thousands of people bought it and liked it.

C) Are there certain people that you’d consider a must-read (such as the RSS feed from SEOBook’s toolbar)?

That default RSS feeds list built in on the SEO toolbar lists many of the top sites in the SEO and internet marketing space which have blogs. Almost any SEO site I read is listed in there (though I forgot to list Debra’s Link Spiel http://www.linkspiel.com and will add it soon). Of the sites I read which are outside that space almost all of them are tied to various flavors of investing or economics. I don’t actively invest outside of the web right now, but I want to have years of reading and learning such that when I get into it I am not a total idiot. :D

D) Is there any method or tool you would suggest as a must-have for obtaining backlinks?

Due to the size of our company (small) and my workload (huge) I don’t spend as much time on in-depth link analysis as many people do. Given that, my reliance on tools and such is not as high as many others. Sometimes I might look at link data from Advanced Link Manager, Open Site Explorer, and Majestic SEO…but to some degree I also feel that SEO is moving somewhat away from analysis and toward publicity. So if you got a great link from a great site with bad anchor text it doesn’t mean I would want to ignore that link. But just by analyzing the fact that you have it does not mean I will be able to replicate it, so one has to figure out how they will do push marketing to build links.

I have a list of directories I submit to like BOTW, the Yahoo! Directory, Business.com, JoeAnt & Gimpsy. But beyond directories our approach to SEO is unique on a per website basis. We might do all kinds of different linkbaits to fit the markets that the sites are in. And then there is stuff like guest posting, driving targeted traffic at link-worthy content, and just basic interaction within the marketplace.

3. As the market becomes more saturated, and the “long-tail” keywords are being snatched up for “exact match” domains, do you know if the Google love for exact match domains is disappearing or falling prey to the law of diminishing returns? That is: has Google targeted the micro-niche world of exact match domain names such that other strategies for increasing SERPs will need to be given greater weight?

The tricky part is that the reason there is an exact match bonus is Google doesn’t want to screw up by not showing a brand on a branded search. Some brands are only important locally and might not have any or many inbound links. Might Google determine a difference between branded keywords and commercially viable non-branded keywords & then dial down exact match bonus on low linked to exact match domain websites? Absolutely, but my theory is that the domain name has lasting value in terms of memorability, influence on link anchor text, and other forms of marketing. An exact match domain will typically generally get a higher clickthrough rate than another domain name would, which increases AdWords quality scores and lowers click prices.

4. Aside from SEOBook, what is your personal favorite way to make money online? Do you, for instance, bother with creating websites for affiliate products or the like? (This is a “show my your ignorance, James” sort of question, feel free to tell me so!)

SEOBook is not my favorite money of making money online. It is a boatload of work for limited pay. It is revenue through blood, sweat, and tears. Probably about the exact opposite of what most people think when they say “make money online.”

AdSense is a far easier and more scalable way of making money online – at least for now. :D

5. Do you have a list of “Don’t EVER do this!” lessons you’ve learned that you don’t want others to repeat? (Feel free to answer any way you choose – my original thought was, “What are internet marketing no-no’s” but you could also throw in some off the wall stuff…like: Don’t EVER microwave your socks, thinking they’ll dry faster…especially if they’re not clean.”)

Don’t ever give away your analytics data to a competitor for free, unless you are doing it in a way that will generate more than enough publicity to offset for any potential losses.

6. Since you’re online for an income, do you think your kids (when/if you have any) will ever be brick-and-mortar types, or are you going to lead your family down the completely pixellated and electronic route?

The web did not exist when I was born. And I failed pretty badly when I did what others wanted me to do. And I succeeded absurdly well when I chose to do whatever I wanted. It would be arrogant for me to presume that our child would be any different than me in that regard, or that I would know what they should be doing. 7 years ago I had no idea I would make a career out of being online, and yet I have. :D

7. What do you do to relax?

Listen to music, play video games, watch South Park, or work out.

8. How’d you meet your lovely bride, Gio? Is she as much of an SEO super-cat as you are, or does she think your business ventures online are akin to Lambda Lambda Lambda initiation rites?

My wife bought my ebook. She was a former customer…and there is a line on our website about “we love our customers” … I put that up there partly as a joke to tease my wife a bit. And whenever she says I don’t push hard enough on sales or something like that I reminder that she purchased from me. :D

She is a fellow SEOer and PPCer … lots of wives have no idea what their husbands do or why, but my wife couldn’t be much more involved than she is.

9. What’s it like being freshly married? Do you and Gio like Filipino cuisine, such as Balut and “Chocolate Meat”? (Dude, I’m 1/2 Flip, man — I dig all that!) Do you both build websites together?

We are not really freshly married IMHO…we have been married for about 3 years now.

[Editor's note: this question was precipitated by a recent email that led me to the misunderstanding. What's really weird is that I didn't just delete the faux pas...]

And right now my wife and I are not much different than we were before we got married…maybe we work a bit more and play slightly less, but stuff is roughly the same as we both have similar senses of humor & work in the same areas. And yes we build many websites together. We recently launched PPCBlog.com as a membership site focused on Google AdWords and paid traffic sources, with a partner named Geordie. :D

10. As I’ve said, I’m still fairly new to all of this, and I’m a fan of WordPress, both as a blogging platform and a CMS for a static site — what are your thoughts on WordPress for someone who wants to build possibly hundreds of websites when all is said and done? Do you have a suggestion on what may be a better way to go about building many websites, from both an SEO as well as content management perspective?

I think most people who want to post hundreds of websites are eventually going to run into roadblocks and get driven off the web (either relevancy algorithms change, or their server gets hacked, or something else). Some people can operate well at that scale, but most people would be better off focusing on fewer projects and scaling them up before building out too many. I have roughly 1,000 domain names, but I don’t think we have even 100 live websites yet…and that is after 7 years. Most of our revenues come from a handful of websites, sorta like power laws.

In terms of WordPress…I think it is pretty solid from an SEO perspective and as a CMS. The 3 main SEO oriented plugins I have used sometimes would be SEO Title Tag, Different Posts Per Page, and WASABI related entries.

11. Leave us with some tips to succeed online, since we’re all a bit in the same bag: what would you say are the keys to succeed online?

Build on great domain names. Focus intensely and push push push when you are entering a new market. Anytime you find a marketing technique that is profitable keep pushing on it harder until it no longer produces profits.

——-[Dude. That was Aaron Wall. On MY blog. Wow.]

My thanks to Aaron Wall, who was much less sarcastic than I’d imagined him to be. A consummate businessman, not-freshly-married but still married (whoopsie!), and hands-down cool cat.

I do wonder what you’ve thought about the interview. I have a ton of things to say, but before I tip my hat wonder your thoughts? Did anything Aaron said change your business plans, confirm or deny your theories to SEO (especially in relation to Mayday and current algorithmic changes or otherwise inexplicable effects in your traffic), or make you do a double-take?

I will say this: I had a number of such moments in reading his thoughts on several issues…more on that after you’ve had your turn. Thanks for reading.

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