Industry Interview: Aaron Wall from SEOBook

Posted by Gareth Crew on 15th May 09

If you haven’t heard of Aaron Wall you’ve not been in the internet game long enough. Author of SEObook.com Aaron’s comments and advice on SEO has been seen on publications from niche web sites such as Slashdot and TechCrunch through to the Wall Street Journal and The Times. He’s also a very nice guy who used to live in a submarine and ate a lot of bacon once.

Chris Garrett caught up with him for our blog.

- You worked on submarines before becoming the SEO guru that we know and love, so how did you get into SEO? Did you try adwords or organic first?

Aaron traded this lifestyle for SEO guruing!

Well I didn’t do much PPC stuff before I got into SEO stuff. I actually was interested in trying to figure out how search engines worked because I wanted to rank a whinge website. And I wasn’t driven by wanting to make lots of money until the sleazy company named Traffic Power sued me. I felt so long as I was at least breaking even and learning then I would end up ahead eventually. But when they almost deep 6ed me with a bogus lawsuit. I decided it made sense to build up a war chest in case anyone else ever tried something like that again. By trying to screw me over they made me stronger, and their CEO is in jail. It is quite gratifying, really.

- What specific events inspired you to become a recognized expert in SEO?

You always need a good mentor

I think a passion for learning + good mentors + good market entry timing all played a big role for me. The Florida Update in 2003 (the year I started) was a big opportunity for publicity, and then being one of the first half-dozen or so SEO bloggers also made growth much easier. All the tools we give away also help get our brand well known and out there. I also think that my lacking of self esteem (particularly when I was new) made me want to seek validation, which sorta is what popularity does. But the truth is it is better to have a dozen great friends than thousands of fake friends. I don’t think I appreciated that enough until I met my wife.

- Who are the role models/mentors you learned most from?

Role Models! Get 'em while they're hot

My mom taught me to work hard
My wife taught me more than I can write here
An old school SEO named NFFC who was my mentor about SEO stuff
Tim Berners-Lee gave us the www
Seth Godin has a sharp mind for marketing
Danny Sullivan helps put search in context
David Naylor & Greg Boser also helped a lot, particularly at conferences.

- What are the biggest mistakes you have made?

Learn from your mistakes; even at a betting lot

Not valuing my time enough. It is cool to do nice things to people for free. But eventually if you get popular you create an imbalance of attention, at which point you need to decide how much your time is worth to you. Most the people who want to be spoonfed personalized help for free are too lazy to succeed, even if you give them all the information they need. They won’t apply it because they think you are holding something back. Plus I have found that generally people do not respect your opinion and listen to you as much as they should unless they pay for the privileged.

- What are your most memorable success stories?

Really? Success in helping others?

Well I tend to think my wife finding me and buying my ebook has to be #1. But then that probably sounds weird as a success story (unless, of course, I was selling some cheesy attraction strategy dating ebook to alpha male douche bags).

I have helped make many people multi-millionaires…and I usually think of success in those terms rather than boasting about myself directly. Plus I tend to be more interested in learning than money (though I think governments stealing our money and giving it to bankers who committed trillions of dollars worth of fraud is absolutely appalling).

- What do novice SEOs miss when it comes to Authority?

Build it up whilst you're young

A lot of people look at the web and just think of it as a bunch of sites and links. But if you think about it as a social network, and think about the people running those sites, it is far easier to build links and authority.

Links and rankings are not driven by fairness. They are driven by relationships, marketing, and profits.

- How can Joe Noob increase their Authority?

Respect ma au-thoritaaa!

Interact with others that are authoritative. This can be as simple as leaving an insightful comment on their blog, writing something about them, or asking them if they would be up for an interview.

Another big thing is to go to the extremes with pricing. Have a high price-point so people know you value your time, but also provide a lot of great content/tools/software/value for free to help build awareness.

- Do you have a go-to technique for getting more links?

Not these sort of links

Directories are an easy starting point. Beyond that I think being socially active, creating great content, marketing offline at industry events, and just developing lots of paths/trails that lead to you allows you to slowly build an audience and authority (and links).

- What do you advise for anyone hoping to get links from the strongest authorities?

A link from the BBC........please?

Try to appeal to their interests, or blatantly disagree with them using logic and facts. A surprisingly large number of people will be nice to you if you are first nice to them. If you can get them to feel the need to reciprocate something nice then they are going to be far more likely to want to help you, and they will be much more willing to accept a guest article by you, be up for doing an interview, and/or link to you.

- How do you feel about the DiggBar debate?

More controversial to web fanboys than Greedo shooting first

You can’t be a market maker without being a market manipulator. Networks are always trying to expand any way they can. Most the people I know who used to work on Digg stuff have eventually quit because the ROI has diminished over the years.

- Do you think being an SEO rockstar made you a better romantic catch?

Rockstar Fanboys are rocking

No. If anything being an SEO makes me less of a catch for a couple reasons
1.) I work too much
2.) I have got pretty chubby

- Did you really eat an entire submarine’s stock of bacon?

Mmmmmmmm ... *bacon*

The cooks were generally lazy pieces of trash. So long as 1 food item was still available they wouldn’t cook any more. So they had 2 day old bacon out on the line. So I decided I we should eat all the bacon until those pieces of trash did their jobs. But I couldn’t have ate all of it by myself, I split it with a friend named John Martin. He ate a bit more than I did.