Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book. It is rapidly gaining recognition as the best book to learn SEO from.

As a website publisher, SEO plays a critical role in how much traffic you get and ultimately how much money you make. I decided to ask Aaron a few questions about himself and SEO which he kindly agreed to answer.

Andrew: What first got you interested in SEO?

Aaron: I was really mad at an organization and wanted to rank a really shoddy site for terms it did not deserve to rank for. Could not afford exposure as there was no business model, just a bunch of angst. So SEO it was

Andrew: When did you first think, hey, I can write a book about this?

Aaron: Around the Google Florida Update I started to appreciate the lack of scale in selling SEO services. I went from getting about 3 inqueries a month to about 30 in a day. Decided it was best to try to create passive income streams.

Andrew: Do you care to give us a “rough” estimate of how much money you have made from SEO, excluding sales from SEOBook?

Aaron: To be honest, this was another reason why the ebook was a good call. I wasn’t making tons of money selling services because I tended to underprice them. Generally I considered my SEO no good unless the customer got a #1 rank in Google, and I was charging rates that were stupid low, not originally really appreciating the value of the marketing and implied demand in search.

I worked for my first customer for $100, and the second site was adult and they paid me $300. They both quickly ranked #1 and the adult site owner loved me so much that he gave me a Christmas presant somewhere around $1,000 just because he was making so much money.

I have probably made somewhere into the low to mid 5 figure range from directly selling SEO services, and the same from affiliate marketing, but I have only been on the web for under 3 years still, and have focused most of my efforts on blogging and selling my ebook.

Andrew: On SEOBook.com you make it clear that you’ve got the top ranking for “seo book” in Google. Any other claims to fame you mind sharing?

Aaron: Actually, that term was not that competitive until I created my site. So on the SEO front that is not that impressive IMHO. I branded the hell out of that term and made it a well known term. To me doing that is even harder than just ranking for a somewhat competitive term though…actually helping create a search term market where there is both volume and value. It is hard to change the way people search.

I don’t picture myself as famous (because I am not) but some other things I think are cool that came about due to SEO:

- just getting to talk with people like Danny Sullivan, Jim Boykin, Peter Da Vanzo, David Naylor, Greg Boser, Shak, Dan Thies, Mike Grehan, Lots0, NickW, JasonD, NFFC & and a bunch of other really cool search marketers

- getting in the Wall Street Journal (although it was for getting sued) and then having the journal profile the company that was suing me http://www.startupjournal.com/ecommerce/ecommerce/20050923-kesmodel.html

- getting phone calls or email support questions from companies worth over 100 billion dollars and from marketers of brands that I knew and liked as a kid growing up

- and this one is probably my favorite, I used to collect a ton of baseball cards. A former major league baseball player who I once owned some of his baseball cards sent me a long email with a bunch of questions.

And outside of SEO, I got to talk to one of the guys who does some work with Jim Henson studios and made a few friends out in LA that are really cool.

Andrew: I’ve heard rumors of hand-edited search results in search engines. Do you think this could become a major “roadblock” for SEOs in the future?

Aaron: Not really. Those who automate stuff heavily already face this, and those who are not automating their processes and are thinking longterm should not be hit hard by manual intervention.

Andrew: Do you have any strong feelings or opinions about the “hats” which SEOs choose to wear? Black hat, white hat, grey hat, or a mixture of both?

Aaron: Hehehe. Well I own whitehatseo.com and blackhatseo.com. I think the whole hats thing was made up by a bunch of marketers to say something like “I am good and everyone else is not”. I interviewed one of the original SEOs and asked him about the ethical SEO / white hat crowd and he had this to say http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/articles/lots0.htm:

“I was there when the first ‘ethical’ SEO poked his cowboy hat clad head out from under a rock.

I guess my distaste for the SEO ‘ethics’ crowd began because I knew the people involved before they became ‘ethical’ and I was part of original discussions(if you can call them that) about SEO ‘ethics’.

I watched as a few SEOs who’s business was not doing so well at the time spring to the SEO forefront as they proclaimed they were ‘ethical’ and all the other SEOs (that did not go along) were evil spammers. Once these self-named ‘ethical’ SEOs figured out they could get clients and a following of ditto heads by claiming they were ‘ethical’ they were off and running.

Fortunately, I think the ‘ethical’ SEO fad has about ran it course, it is fading fast as a marketing method.

Clients don’t really care about being ‘ethical’ as defined by a big corporation like google(or some cowboy hat wearing SEO wannabe), clients care much more about conversions and issues directly related to their business.”

Andrew: How do you feel about SEO firms that deliver results by optimizing client’s sites for terms that get no searches?

Aaron: Pure rubbish. Actually I hired one of those before I knew anything about SEO. I knew the guy was selling garbage when he started recommending that I make an exact copy of my home page and save it under another filename and use invisible cross linking between the two locations with the keyword in the link.

I asked him what would prevent me from automating and repeating that cycle and he did not reply to my question.

The practice is common though. Some firms may go so far to run their own fake engines so they can show how great you rank in those engines.

A good example of part of the reason it is worth spending a bit of time or cash surveying the market before diving in and hiring someone. Also note that if a marketing firm calls you out of the blue with a system that seems somewhat automated offering to sell SEO services there should be some alarms going off in your head.

Andrew: Do you have any really great stories of people who got great results after reading SEOBook?

Aaron: Yes. Sometimes I am a bit surprised at some of the stuff people tell me. Many people who read my book end up making far more profit from SEO than I do. I have a category in gmail I call “fun emails” and I save some of the testimonial responses there. Some people do not like posting them all online though.

One swell chap, named Martin Dell, runs a website selling Spanish property

He is on my testimonials list and ranks well for some on topic terms in the major search engines, and that probably led to me selling about 100 additional copies of SEO Book to people who wanted to market Spanish real estate websites.

Andrew: 10 years from now, do you still think you will be involved in SEO?

Aaron: So hard to predict the future. Likely will still be on the web, but SEO at that time will be far different than it’s current mode today. I think for most people eventually it will become easier to manipulate human emotion and human response than it is to manipulate the algorithms.

I have done far better than I would have ever expected thusfar. It is hard to know for certain what I want to learn or where I want to go though, etc.

DNJournal is the leading source of news for the domain name industry. Every week the top domain sales are reported here. Every month there are great articles about some of the top domain investors and developers around the world.

I’m happy to say that the editor, Ron Jackson agreed to do an interview for the blog!

Andrew: What first got you interested in domains?

Ron: The first domain I registered was MusicParadise.com in 1997. I knew nothing about the domain business then (I sure WISH I knew then what I know now!), I just wanted to set up a website for the mail order division of a retail music store (CD’s, records & tapes) I owned at the time. The website worked out very well and allowed us to expand our business while cutting our advertising costs dramatically.

Prior to having the website option we had to buy expensive ads in national magazines to promote our business. However, a few years later, the internet and new technology started taking a BIG bite out of the music business as buyers would download free music files or burn copies of CD’s rather than buy them from their local stores. By the end of 2000, several thousand independent music stores had gone out of business, including mine.

In early 2002 I was reading a computer magazine that had a full page ad for the new .US registry, Neustar. Having seen the power of the internet through our original music site, the ad interested me and I decided to register a couple of .US domains that I thought I might be able to make use of. As a new extension, there were a lot of great names available that were long gone in .com.

In the course of researching available domains and learning more about .US I stumbled upon some domain forums in the web. I starting reading the posts and learned that there was a fascinating domain business out that there that I had never been aware of. The rest, as they say, is history, though I view it more as the BEGINNING of a new history in an entirely new field.

Andrew: What is your background? (previous businesses, education, etc.)

Ron: I had two separate careers before coming into domains. I guess this is strike three for me so I’d better not miss!

Coming out of high school I wanted to be a radio DJ or a sportscaster. I went to a broadcasting school in Columbus, Ohio and after graduating got a job at a small radio station in my home town. I was called the News Director but I did everything, including sports play by play and a DJ shift, so it was great experience even though the money was lousy.

I had only been working for a year when I was drafted by the U.S. Army (this was in the Viet Nam era). Thanks to my radio experience the Army made me a broadcast specialist. When my tour of duty was up I decided to use my GI Bill benefits to go to Ohio State.

After college I went back into broadcasting, moving to Florida where I joined a company that had both radio and television stations. I started on their main radio station but weaseled my way into the TV station and eventually became the Sports Director of that ABC-TV affiliate (in Sarasota, Florida). I later moved to a larger market, doing sports for the CBS station in Tampa.

After 20 years in Radio-TV I decided I wanted to run my own business, so having been a DJ and a longtime music fan, I opened a record store. It did very well and grew into a sizeable business over the next 12 years before the internet intervened and caused me to change course again!

Andrew: Do you consider yourself an investor, a journalist, or both?

Ron: I came into this business strictly aa a domain buyer/seller/investor. However, having been a journalist, I soon recognized that despite this being a business where tens of millions of dollars were changing hands annually, it had no trade magazine. As far as I could tell, I was the only one around who had the professional background to provide one for the industry, so I put DNJournal.com online New Year’s Day 2003.

It took off very quickly so now I am a full-time journalist again. I am still a domainer as well, so I guess I am 50% domainer and 50% journalist - a real mutant!

Andrew: Are you involved in any internet publishing beyond DNJournal?

I do have a number of other sites up. Most are related to the domain business, but I am just now starting to build a network of microsites on some of the 6,000+ domains I have on a wide variety of topics.

I’ve just about finished the first one at HoodiaHere.com. I have to add some more content, but I would like to explore this concept and see if small electronic pamphlets like this will perform better than a PPC page on the same domain.

I also have some ideas for additional major content sites, like DNJournal, but time is always the big issue there. I’ve always liked doing things myself so delegating out the responsibilities involved is something I have avoided even though I recognize that may not be a paticularly smart way to do things!

Andrew: There has been speculation and allegations of domain investors doing transactions solely to drive up the domain market. Do you believe this is true and if so what impact do you think it has on the industry?

No I don’t believe it. No individual transaction or even a handful of transactions is going to change the overall market - it is far too big for that. I’m sure these are the same folks who believe in UFO’s and the tooth fairy!

Andrew: Do you see the price of premium domains peaking anytime soon?

No I don’t. I think the current rebound still has a long way to run. Major mainstream advertisers are just now coming to realize how powerful the internet is. As a result, they are shifting their ad dollars away from traditional media, like radio, TV and print to the internet. That can only drive bid rates on ads up which will further increase the value of good domains.

Andrew: Many people have compared domain names to real estate. Because domains exist on an informational plane rather than the limited physical one like real estate, some people believe that they may not be around 100 or perhaps even 30 years from now. Do you think this uncertainty is realistic?

I don’t expect anything to replace the current Domain Name System in our lifetime. It works too well. No reason to fix what isn’t broken and it perfectly mirrors the way we find locations in the real world (by an address).

My daughter is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The school was founded by Benjamin Franklin and all incoming freshman were required to read his autobiography over the summer. I picked up my daughter’s copy and read it.
Franklin mentioned the street address of his home on Market Street in Philadelphia. This was in the early 1700’s.

When I took her to school earlier this month to get moved in, we went down to the site of Franklin’s home and, 300 years later, it is still there at the same address. I have no reason to believe there is a need to change internet addressing either.

Andrew: If I was to say I have a really great premium domain, and I’m looking for someone to develop it for me, who would you recommend me to?

As I do my own site developing I haven’t used outside sources so I can’t advise on that. One approach might be to look at other sites you think are really great and contact them to see who did their development work - then hire them. I’m sure it will be very expensive, but if you had enough money to buy a great premium domain to begin with, then you can afford it!

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If you are curious about the domain name market and want to learn more, check out DNJournal’s Archives and be ready to do some reading!

There is an interesting thread over at Webmasterworld about building successful a sucessful forum.

Building online communities isn’t easy. Sure, setting up phpBoard with a few clicks in cPanel isn’t very difficult — but just having a forum doesn’t mean anyone will use it.

I’ve seen a lot of forums fail — and other ones become huge sucesses (and make their owners a lot of money in the process.)

I recently had the opportunity to interview the owner and founder of Constant-Content.com, Chris Ross.

Constant Content connects authors and website publishers together in an online marketplace. Having trouble writing all your website’s articles on your own? This is a good place to start looking.

Constant Content has several notable features.. You can purchase different license types to meet your specific needs and budget. You can also request a custom article be written, but you are under no obligation to buy it if you don’t like the author’s summery.

Andrew: When did you first get the idea for Constant Content?

Chris: I was a webmaster putting up many websites trying to make money off Google’s Adsense program. My problem was I couldn’t find any good writers and the writers I did find were stealing others content or the English was very poor. People would be shocked how much content is stolen or rewritten on The internet. This is plagiarism and something Constant Content watches carefully. We reject hundreds of article each month for stolen content or plagiarism.

This is when I came up with the idea, it started pretty basic and has grown to a pretty complicated system. We add new features daily and will continue to do so.

Andrew: How many different people have purchased articles through Constant Content?

Chris: This is hard to say but the site has had over 1000 orders; some orders are single orders, others have 20+ articles within the order. We have over 10,000 articles downloaded, but this includes free article downloads as Well as purchased articles. Keep in mind this is still a very new idea. Constant Content has only been online for a little more then a year. Most of our customers are return customers.

Andrew: How many writers use Constant Content?

Chris: We have over 2500+ writers, but they are not all active. I would say close to 200 are real active and others simply wait for custom requests or come and go.

Andrew: Many websites, whether it is forums or dating sites, seem to suffer from the paradox that you need users to get users. What would you attribute to giving you that initial momentum to grow?

Chris: Well there are two side of Constant Content, the writers and the customers. First you need writers and then you need customers. It was hard in the beginning but I was able to work with a group of dedicated writers who thought the idea was a good one. The thing about writers is they love to write so word of mouth advertising with writers was not very hard. After You have a good reputation with a group of writers the word will spread quickly. Of course the same can go the other way around, if you have a bad Reputation the word will spread even quicker. Never upset a writer

As for the customers this was trickier.. I’m a member of some webmaster communities so I was able to spread the word that way at first. But the majority of customers has come from advertising. I continue to constantly advertise in order to keep my writers happy. As long as they are selling, they are happy.

Andrew: Do you run your own content websites?

Constant Content is a content website, we also purchase articles that are doing well with traffic. An example can be found here.

Notice the entire right side is Adsense ads. We no longer are making content sites because of this, but its not to say we will not start again. Right now I’m putting 100% into Constant Content.

Andrew: On the front page of Constant Content is says:

“Are you the type of person who easily understands HTML and CSS, and
perhaps even PHP and ASP? When it comes to planning and designing
websites, do your designs sing with the right colors and fast loading
images? But does your web site content somehow always seem to hit sour
notes?”

Do you consider yourself more of the technical programmer guy, a
designer, writer, or a mixture of two or all of them?

Chris: As you can tell from this interview I’m not a writer, I’m the farthest thing from it. I’m more technical in nature, but I contract most of my technical work out as well. Call me the jack of all trades, master of none. My strongest skills are in server administration/IT, marketing, and business.

Andrew: Where would you like to see yourself in 10 years?

Chris: That’s a tough question, but retired and traveling would be the ideal answer. But in reality the answer is more like 10 years older doing the same things I do now.

Thanks Chris for letting me interview you & good luck with Constant Content!

Learning about SEO on your own is no easy task. Hiring a good search engine optimizer isn’t cheap. Fortunately there is Aaron Wall’s SEO Book.

I haven’t read it myself — yet — but I’ve only heard good things about it. Brendon Sinclair’s review has added to its credibility.

Brendon is the guy behind Tailored Consulting and Sitepoint’s Web Design Business Kit.

Probably the best example I can provide is that by using knowledge from Aaron’s book I achieved a # 1 position in Google in just days for a client’s web site (on a competitive key word). This site had been worked on extensively previously by 2 search engine “experts” and the site had never broken the top 100.

I was happy to find my first issue of Millionaire Blueprints in my mailbox today. I ran into their website through a posting on someone’s forum a month or two ago. As soon as I saw their site, I told myself — I need to subscribe to this!

Unlike other business magazines, Millionaire Blueprints specifically shows you how other people made millions.

There are a couple articles in this magazine of specific relevence to you guys — website publishers. One is about Chris Faulkner, who started a multi-million dollar hosting company — CI Host. The other is Joseph Tantillo who is selling fraternity and sorority clothing and merchandise online.

After I finish reading this magazine cover-to-cover I’m sure I’ll make at least one more post about it!

If you haven’t heard about the Million Dollar Homepage yet, you are going to now.

Basically a college student in the UK made a website last month and decided to sell advertising space on it for $1 a pixel. As I write this he’s sold $155,300 of pixels. The page looks like a big mess — and its won’t get any cleaner as ad space fills up.

“Creative” webmasters haven’t hesitated on copying the idea. A few of them are even making some money in the process. The Million Penny Homepage so far has sold $2629 worth of ad space. Others aren’t making anything, such as The Zero Dollar Homepage.

So — is a sucker born every minute — or are there real reasons people are buying advertising from this site?

One advertiser is the owner of CrazyMonkeyGames.com. He had a little bit to say about his reasoning (and results) on WebSitePublisher.net’s forums. He doesn’t expect the number of clicks to justify what he spent — at least right away. Instead he hopes they turn into returning visitors.

“I just really love the idea of trying to grab the someone’s attention and get them to click using only a 10×10 or 40×40 space when you’re surrounded by tons of other ads trying to do the same thing.”

Worried about people stealing content from your websites? There is little need to be.

It only takes a little bit of effort to protect your website’s copyright from content thieves.

Here are two very good tools that you can use to locate and identify people copying your site’s content:

http://www.copyscape.com/
http://news.google.com/

With Google news you can subscribe to “news alerts” through either e-mail or an RSS feed. Just put in your website or company name and you will be immediately alerted when it is referenced in a news article (a great tool for public relations too!)

I’ve noticed that some content theives have been using Google News. Unlike Copyscape, Google News only returns results from “news” sites.

Don’t hesitate to register your website’s copyright at the US Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/register/.

Even if you don’t register you still recieve copyright protection of your original work. However, if you do not register you are only entitled to actual damages done by the person who violated your copyright. Register and you may be able to recieve $150,000 or more in claims against the person.

When copyrighted content is discovered most owners simply take the “cease and desist” path. They send a message to the copyright violator and their webhost damanding the removal of the content. Depending on your legal and financial resources this isn’t your only option.

Additionally you can use the Digital Millenium Copyright Act — DMCA for short — to have the violator’s page removed from Google’s index. Read more about it here: http://www.google.com/dmca.html Make sure you do everything correctly; inproper use of the DMCA will backfire on you as recent case law has proven.

There is an excellent article at the SEOMoz Blog on getting links when you can’t buy them. Rand posts 8 different ways you can get someone to link to you along with details on how to do it. The article is specifically about getting links from sources that don’t accept paid links. Its also works for webmasters with tight budgets.

Be prepared, this will take some work!

I posted the “Do You Have An Exit Plan?” article on Sitepoint. It drew some interesting responses; unfortunately it appears to have boiled down into an argument on the morality of an exit plan!

If you want to participate in this discussion on Sitepoint here is the thread: Do you have an exit plan?