10 SEO Questions with Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com
Written by Pablo Palatnik on November 25, 2008
As the PalatnikFactor.com launches its first interview for the Interview Series, the first guest is non other than Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com. For those of you who don’t know who Aaron Wall is, he is probably one if not the most popular SEO out there. Aaron has been mentioned in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Time Magazine, MSNBC and much more. Read more about Aaron Wall.
Q:Aaron, thanks for taking the time to do this interview with me. I think, as many people do, SEO is still growing in terms of people getting into it, as well as the demand for it. What do you think is the state of the industry as it is now and going into 2009?
A:I think the industry is going well, but many of the people who really know what they are doing are moving away from the client services area and toward the build your own profitable sites model. SEOs are becoming more holistic internet marketers…which bodes well for their long-term value as the web keeps evolving.
Q:Please give us the Aaron Wall point view on PageRank, what it means, and how significant it is to SEO (if at all)?
A:PageRank helps Google determine the relative authority of different pages and how deep to crawl through a website (more PageRank means you can get more pages indexed). It is only one element of the relevancy algorithms, but plays a much bigger role in determing things like
• Crawl depth
• Crawl rate
• Number of pages they are willing to index
• What index those pages go in
It also has a higher order effect on how some algorithms or filters are applied against your site. For example, a high PageRank old site can have a lot of duplicate content with little to no risk…but if a smaller newer site does the same they can end up getting whacked.
Q:Given tighter budgets and giving more thought on paid directories like paying yahoo $299 for a link, what paid directories are worth putting your money into?
A:Three great ones are the Yahoo! Directory, Business.com, and BOTW. There are a few smaller ones that are decent as well, but the more often one lists them the more likely they are to get nuked by the Google spam team. Don’t forget to look for industry specific and local directories and organizations.
Q:The whole issue of the sandbox with Google, is this a legitimate concern?
A:It takes time to build up enough quality signals to rank for competitive keywords. If you need traffic right away it might be cheaper and faster to buy an established site and build it out rather than starting from scratch. If you have a strong brand and/or strong public relations you can build quality signals fairly quickly and be able to rank a new site much quicker than others would be able to do.
Q:What are your most successful link building strategies? (I’m sure the readers will appreciate this but only list what you’d like =) ) Or to rephrase, which link building strategies do you find most effective?
A:Things involving social interaction and ego stroking do well on the ROI front. Giving away software and tools is another great strategy.
Q:What are you favorite SEO tools?
A:There are a lot of great competitive research tools that just came out. SEM Rush and The Google Search-Based Keyword Tool are nice. So is Compete.com.
Analytics tools are also nice for digging into your site to see how it interacts with search and where you should be spending more effort to rank. Xenu Link Sleuth is also nice for looking at your site structure.
My favorite SEO tool is still SEO for Firefox. Our keyword tool is nice because it helps you dig into more data available from other keyword tools. It might be a bit overwhelming for newbies, but it is nice to be able to access many keyword research tools in one spot.
We list a bunch of other SEO tools on our site. Some people only promote their own tools, but we promote whatever we think is useful. A lot of it comes down to personal preference…there are so many tools that there are many different ways to do the job.
Q:What are your top 5 SEO blogs?
• Search Engine Land – they cover more news than anybody else.
• Johnon – honesty and bluntness and off the grid thinking you just don’t see on most SEO blogs.
• Wolf-howl – Michael Gray’s blog is similar to Johnon to some degree, but with more frequent posts.
• SugarRae – lots of great publishing insights from the perspective of a publisher and an affiliate.
• Matt Cutts – the official voice of Google in the battle against SEOs ?
There are lots of other great blogs out there that I read daily, like the new We Build Pages blog, SEOMoz, Dave Naylor’s blog, SEO Black Hat, Stuntdubl, Tropical SEO,
Shoemoney, Bob Massa’s blog, Search Engine Journal, and Brian Provost’s Scoreboard Media blog.
Q:As an authority in the SEO industry, how do you keep up with the industry, get the insights, etc?
A:Instant messaging with friends is also a nice way to get a second or third opinion. Our private community forums are great for filtering out the noise but offering a variety of opinions from successful people who have different backgrounds and perspectives.
A lot of it I learn through creating new websites, seeing how they rank, and monitoring the search results over time to pick up trends. Conferences and reading patents and search research helps me pick up some of the macro-trends as well.
Q:How do your SEO efforts differ when it comes to optimizing for Yahoo vs. Google?
A:If I have a low authority new site it will take a while for it to do well in Google. Typically it will take even longer to rank in Yahoo!. If there is a keyword I feel I must rank for in Yahoo! when I have a new site I might be more inclined to do 1 of 4 things
• Buy an old site
• Publish content on an old well trusted site
• Use Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Use the Yahoo! Search Submit program
Q:How does this latest Google promote feature factor into your SEO strategies (with Google)?
A:It is still new…am uncertain how much they will use it, but if they do then creating the type of content that people would want to bookmark and share is important. Branding would increase in value.
Also the type of people looking for an additional voice beyond what they find in Google’s organic results are the type of people who would be likely to be able to cite / link to quality resources…if you like the concept of social media then you have to appreciate that this is another channel to be found through.
Aaron, thank you for your time!
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13 Responses to “10 SEO Questions with Aaron Wall from SEOBook.com”
Great interview, Pablo. Really useful information and Aaron gave some good insight. A part 2 anytime soon?
By Jerr on Nov 25, 2008
@ Jerr,
Really appreciate it. I’ll have some really good interviews here in the coming weeks so I’m sure you’ll find them really insightful, keep checking back!
By Pablo Palatnik on Nov 25, 2008
This is a real treat, Pablo. Nicely done interview, and awesome answers given by Aaron. I’m looking forward to reading more of your interviews in the near future.
By Ingrid on Nov 25, 2008
useful tips
You should probably consider Matt cutts for the follow up interview
By Niche on Nov 25, 2008
Or perhaps upload a video. That will generate some traffic to this blog
By Niche on Nov 25, 2008
Thanks for the Business.com mention. Right now we are running the What Works contest to find answers to the greatest business challenges, and businesses who submit great entries will get visibility and be eligible for a $10,000 prize.
Check it out at:
http://whatworks.business.com
By Shara Karasic on Nov 25, 2008
Lots of useful info, thanks.
I’ll checkout the other options like business.com and BOTW
Thanks again Mally
By magazine subscription on Nov 26, 2008