Table of contents for Interviews With Serious SEOs

  1. Interview with Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz
  2. Top SEO Expert Aaron Wall Speaks Out About SEO’s Bleeding Edge

Aaron Wall of SEOBookThere are a number of ‘hot topics’ that regularly perplex even the most knowledgeable SEOs. Either that, or discussion rages so hot that the restof us don’t know what to believe. Whenever possible I love to get bleeding-edge insights from someone at the top of his game. Aaron Wall is just such an SEO expert, and boy did he give me some straight answers to questions I put to him.

This is the second in my series of interviews with SEO scions, and it is considerably overdue. Anyway, better late than never, and I think you’ll agree it was definitely well worth waiting for. Aaron exceeded my expectations in true industry-leading style. Notice how stars in any field are always jaw-droppingly generous with their knowledge?

So, on with the good stuff!

Marketmou: OK, let’s start with the question that everyone always wants to know: How did you get into SEO and to what do you attribute your astounding success in this new industry at such an early age?

My first website was a rant website. I had no money and wanted exposure. From there organic search was a natural path to take. :)

As I am nearing 30, I don’t really feel so young anymore…after all 30 is the hill, until I am there…and then maybe the hill moves to 40. As far as why I did well I think it comes down to having a lot of great friends, working long and hard, learning a lot, and helping lots of people. No one thing makes or breaks you, but if you work hard and give for an extended period of time it eventually comes back to you many times over.

Marketmou: Aaron, you’re probably the most highly respected SEO of all time, and you’ve accomplished so much, so you have to be the best person to ask: Where do you see the SEO industry headed? It has refined and consolidated since the early days of the Web, do you think we’re going to see many more changes?

I think the best SEOs are generally not selling too much consulting these days (we don’t do much and we probably still do a bit too much). The field of SEO is largely becoming a game of brand building and relationship building. If you have to do all that marketing work it is not much more effort to create products and a company around it. In other words, I think many of the best SEOs are becoming publishers who lead their respective marketplaces. Many are in high paying areas like finance, while others are in many areas of high personal interest like photography.

Marketmou: Do you see any benefits in the introduction of industry standards and certification? And if so, what form do you think they should take? There are a few places online where you can get SEO certification and some of them are even ISO-backed, but are they any good?

Well…if you share REALLY effective highly profitable tips on your blog a Google engineer *may* burn your website in retribution. Given that sort of market activity and the constant evolution of search, any industry-wide certification would probably be promoting watered down techniques.

Many of the attempts at achieving industry standards in many industries represent attempted power grabs by greedy self promotional charlatans. When I read a 3 part series about how you *can’t* learn SEO from a book by a guy associated with SEMPO that only confirmed my earlier perceptions of that organization.

Marketmou: OK, here comes the big one: What’s your stance on paid links? Some of the big SEOs are going against the tide and still dealing in paid links, while others are leaving it well alone. What do you advise anyone wanting to get some good links fast?

Google clearly barters for links and so do many other people. Many of the best links come as a proxy of conversation or market participation. Those links tend to be of lower risk and higher ROI than most paid links because if someone recommends you that drives direct value as well as any search related value.

Having said all that, if you put in all the effort you feel like putting in, and are a few spots short of the top, sometimes buying a couple nice links is all it takes to put your site at the top. If you can afford the risk and think the ROI is there then go for it.

Marketmou: What about reciprocal links? Do you still think it’s worth pursuing reciprocal links, or is it safer to look for incoming one-way links?

If you do nothing but reciprocal then that is no good. A few select reciprocals makes sense. Also if you are doing natural cross promotion and in community linking that is good. No man is an island after all, and if you don’t promote others it is a lot harder to get others to help promote you. Ideally the best links represent relationships…person X trusts person Y.

Marketmou: Do you think that too much emphasis is placed on link-building when really people should be thinking about building a website that’s as SEO-compliant as they can get it and providing content that other webmasters will want to link to? Or do you think that links can make up for shortcomings in other areas of SEO?

I have seen PageRank 2 blogs with 500 blog posts. Clearly those people need to work on link building. I have seen PageRank 5 and PageRank 6 sites that had little content on them. Clearly those people need to work on content development. The balance can be off in either direction.

But if you think that you will win just by content quality it is simply untrue. You have to build a brand and/or social relationships in your marketplace such that people appreciate what you have to say. Perceived content quality (based on your status and relationships) is often far more important than actual content quality.

One of my favorite quotes on this front comes from Abraham Lincoln, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail.”

Marketmou: What’s your advice to someone starting a website from scratch? What’s the most important aspect of SEO to attend to for a new website?

I would say to spend a good bit of time doing market research before launching your site. Start using a good domain name if you can afford one…and honestly most people can because if they are limited on cash but passionate usually there is more than enough creativity to come up with a good name.

If you plan on selling consulting or advertising or some other model based largely on intellectual property and spreading ideas I like the idea of putting a blog on your homepage off the start, and blogging every day. Cultivate relationships and share real value with your site visitors. If enough people like your sites then eventually the search engines will too.

Marketmou: Google has refined its algorithms and continues to do so. Can you go out on a limb for us and predict any big changes coming soon? Or do you think that—in the near future at least—changes will be far less significant than say the Florida Update, or Big Daddy?

It is hard to say when big changes will occur. I think there has been an obvious shift toward branded websites over the past couple years. And I think the leaked Google review documents do a lot to show which direction Google desires to shift their results in and what they are looking for.

Google has a lot of usage data, and links are quite gamed because so many people know they have value. Eventually Google may move to integrate more usage data in their relevancy algorithms and lower their weighting on links a bit. As the web continues to age I would suspect that Google would stop counting domain age as a sign of quality as much as they have or they will create a stale web, where the only pages that rank are mainstream media stories, large corporate authority sites, blog posts on authoritative blogs, and dirt old websites.

Marketmou: What have been your most valuable sources for the amazing body of knowledge you’ve accumulated, and which now constitutes your SEO Book Training Program?

Our SEO Training Program was not built from any one source, but out of working on hundreds of websites, reading hundreds of books, and thousands of customer interactions.

Our site’s About page lists many of the inspirations, including Tim Berners-Lee, Seth Godin, Danny Sullivan, and NFFC.

Marketmou: For anyone wanting to get into SEO but who can’t afford your course yet, what books would you recommend they read? And what else can they do to make sure they learn the right stuff?

For books I suggest every web publisher read

- Don’t Make Me Think - Steve Krug on usability

- The Purple Cow - Seth Godin on how to be remarkable

- The Cluetrain Manifesto - numerous authors on how markets are conversations

- The Tipping Point - Malcolm Gladwell on how ideas spread

Some other key articles worth reading to understand the fundamental structure and competitive nature of the web are the article about cumulative advantage by Duncan Watts and The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin.

The other tip I would have is to not spend a lot of money on automated SEO tools or packages that lock you into recurring fees with the provider. Buy a domain and host your site, but other than that do not get locked into someone else’s system unless you feel you can afford it and it adds value to you. Many of the best content management programs (like Wordpress and Drupal) are free and open source. Many of the best SEO tools are free.

Marketmou: Finally: Do you think that Black Hat SEO has a place in the industry? Or do you think it’s just unethical to try and fool the search engines? Would you agree with the concept that Black Hat operators are just making it all more difficult for everyone in the long run because they’re triggering more updates to the algorithms?

I still think some of the search engineers have a bit of a maniacal power trip doing their job…many of them are no better than the worst “spammers.” And as a company, they often fail to follow their own guidelines. At one point in time Google had their ads syndicated on Warez sites.

And they (and other search engines) fund a lot of copyright violations via their ad programs. If you read the 2007 Google remote quality rater documents they state that lyrics sites can not even be rated as spam - that shows Google’s blatant disrespect for copyright more fully than anything else I have read to date.

Their rule sets keep shifting. Nofollow was supposed to prevent blog comment spamming, and then suddenly at some point in time you are viewed as a spammer if you do not use it on any paid links. They changed how they viewed the web to fit their own business needs. Just look at how many scammy monthly search engine submission ads they still promote via AdWords. They know those ads rip people off and they do not care because they are getting the money.

The rules and guidelines keep changing. Ultimately if you want to create a real sustainable business your value add should be far beyond the lower threshold of whatever the engines aim to clean up. And if usage data becomes more important, then you really need to build a brand and solid relationships to compete.

Marketmou: I tried to ask questions that will make this interview as useful as possible to readers. Did I miss out anything important?

I think you did a good job. :) cheers

Thank you Aaron, I’m thrilled to have so much great information to pass on.

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