Seriously, who doesn’t know Aaron Wall?
Few people in the SEO industry go about their business unaware of the bounty of knowledge offered up by his portal, seobook.com. And because of his approachability and willingness to mingle with the every-day marketer, Aaron has become a virtual friend to literally thousands of SEOs.
However, I feel like too much time and effort has been spent tapping into his search engine and marketing expertise, and not enough time has been spent finding out about the man behind the marketer. I also enjoy philosophical excursions, so I figure we could spend a little time doing that as well. And maybe, somewhere in between the nostalgia and philosophy, we can talk a little bit about the online space.
Q: You’re an SEO celebrity, so most people know your professional history and general marketing philosophy, but what about regular Aaron? What do you do in your spare time? Give us a glimpse into your non-SEO life.
A: Honestly most of my time is spent playing online. I work far too much and am often sitting in front of a computer. Beyond that I like hanging out with my wife (http://www.heygio.com/), playing sports or video games, and reading books.
Q: As a follow-up to that question, what were you like as a kid growing up? Tell me something that most of us would not know or expect?
A: I grew up in Illinois. We started out in Joliet, and as I got older we moved closer to the corn until 8th grade, when we moved to Forrest…a town of 1,000 people in the corn. I was nearly legally blind and did not know it until half way through high school.
Q: Here’s a sort of philosophical/theoretical question: We all know about your issues with Google the business entity, but do you believe that there will ever be a search engine, new or pre-existing, that overtakes Google?
A: Not unless Google does something really stupid that makes people not want to trust them.
Q: What are your general thoughts on agency SEO? (and keep in mind that I work for one!)
On site SEO (keyword research, site structure, avoiding content duplication, and on page optimization) are generally fairly easy to do. On enterprise level websites optimizing site structure can get a bit complex, but as long as the best SEO employees work on those projects they can far exceed client expectations.
I think the best SEO providers tend to be smaller firms or individuals, though. Not for the on-site optimization strategies, but more for the link building strategies. It is much harder to rank think affiliate sites in competitive markets than to rank large corporate sites. So if I have some thin affiliate sites that I ranked that means that I had to have some level of link building creativity that is beyond what most people have – because it is required to succeed with a thin affiliate site.
I generally think that the best off site SEO processes (i.e.: link building) represent relationship building…and extend from understanding psychology, sociology public relations, and participating in a marketplace. You can scale pieces of that, but some of those require teaching people inside the client’s company how to build links as a function of how they interact in their marketplace and with their customers.
With that in mind, the best SEO services come from SEOs who not only provide services, but also teach the clients.
Q: Tell me more about the CMS platform that you’re using for your site(s) and why you chose it? Do you think that it’s a feasible option for enterprise-level clients?
A: On most of my smaller projects I use flat file HTML, flat file with server side includes, or WordPress. On more complex websites I like Drupal more than WordPress. On SEO Book I used Drupal because it has a number of useful extensions, like the premium subscription, which allows me to offer selective access to our training program (http://training.seobook.com/) while making the rest of the site fully accessible. There are also a number of plug ins for autoresponders and numerous other features I want to add to the site going forward.
Q: How are things going in terms of your paradigm shift over at seobook.com? Is the new model for premium content manifesting itself they way you expected? What have you learned?
A: To ensure that I would be able to keep up the demand I did a soft launch. Sales were still quite high right out of the gate. From a strategic standpoint 3 things I need to do are
- Improve the sales cycle…right now my site does not do a very aggressive or convincing job of sales (at least relative to its potential)
- Ensure I maximize customer interaction to ensure customers get the most possible value out of our training program and forum
- Revamp the seo book…I get so many requests for a book every day that I need to leverage that existing demand that was created from my last 4 years of brand building
I completely agree with Aaron’s statements regarding agency SEO, and I appreciate his candor. Zeta Interactive tries to separate itself from the pack providing the type of creativity and relationship-building that Aaron referred to, and applying it to Fortune 1000 clients.
Moreover, we are completely aligned in terms of educating our clients as we deliver our services.
No related posts.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for this article! It’s nice to learn a little more about Aaron.
I’d like to see Aaron bring back his SEO Book. It’s such a valuable resource.
You’re welcome, Diva!
Glad you enjoyed it. Remember that Aaron is still sharing his knowledge through his premium offerings on the site.