SEO Marketing

This is the original, untouched interview (german translation: SEO Interview – Andrew Johnson):

We are pleased to to interview Andrew Johnson today, author of the popular Web Publishing Blog. He is a professional website developer and experienced in design, programming, SEO, marketing, and community management.

1) What is your definition of SEO?

Designing, engineering, and promoting a website in a manner which most effectively results in higher organic listings in a targeted search engine (usually the big three: Google, MSN, Yahoo.)

2) How long have you been doing SEO?

I started expirementing with SEO in early 2004.

3) How much time did it take for you to break into the SEO market?

I didn’t start getting real results until the beginning of 2005. By then I was making several hundred dollars a month from organic SE
traffic.

4) Which SEO forums do you read frequently?

Now of days mostly SEOBlackhat.com (paid forums), WebsitePublisher.net, and WickedFire.com (I’m an admin.) Each has
their own niche focus which I enjoy.

5) What has been or is your biggest SEO success?

Hard to say. There isn’t one big SEO success I can point to. Rather, I am very happy I have been able to earn a passive living from free, organic SE traffic. This has allowed me to spend my time learning, writing, and working on new projects rather than joining the “rat race” like many of my friends. (“rat race” is a term which means people working very hard but only have end up with enough money to pay next month’s bills.)

6) What has been your most difficult SEO job until now?

Again, I can’t point to one specific thing. My approach has been this: 1) Optimize for something with a high search to low results ratio and/or 2) Put up a lot of content and see what ranks. I’m not the kind of person who tries to SEO for “mortgage” or “poker” (but some day I may.)

7) How much time do you spend in old and new websites?

I have noticed, for me, there is no correlation between time spent on a website and money made from it. One of my sites which I spent hundreds of hours on made total this year what another project of mine makes in about a week.

Because of this I try hard to spend most of my time on building and launching new websites. Ideally I like to spend 10% of my time on old websites, 10% on new websites, and 80% of my time exploring and researching new markets.

Many people use AdSense only on their websites. Do you think that is the way to go (especially in the beginning) or would you prefer Affiliate Programs over AdSense right from the beginning?

The choice between Adsense and affiliate programs must be made on a case-by-case basis.

The first problem is Adsense covers virtually all niches. You can make money whether your site is about Japanese bonsai trees, riding lawnmowers, or honey roasted peanuts.

Affiliate programs often have heavy coverage of specific niches –mortgage, gambling, adult, credit cards, dating, ringtones etc.
Putting a ringtone affiliate link on a page about Japanese bonsai trees will make you about .00001% of what Adsense ads in their place would make.

If your SE traffic and page content matching an affiliate program test out the affiliate links. Sometimes you can make many times more money from this. There are a few reasons why. First, Google takes an estimated 40-60% of the money advertisers pay for Adsense before you get paid. Second, if you can send an affiliate company many leads or conversions they will pay you extra. Super affiliate marketers can recieve 2 times or more higher of a payout than everyone else.

No one can tell you “affiliate marketing is better” or “adsense is better.” You need to do split testing to see what works best. Yes its hard work, but thats what you have to do to maximize your income.

9) What’s your default homepage in which browser?

I have created an html page with image links to the pages I visit daily — blogs, forums, adsense, adwords, my own websites etc.
This is on my own hard drive and saves me a lot of clicking and typing time.

10) Which advice would you give to people who just started out?

Here is my special rule: good content & high quality links (DMOZ, wikipeida, authority sites in your niche) will take time to see good
results, but those results will be long-lasting. Poor content & lots of low quality links (blog comment spam, digitalpoint co-op link network) may give you short term results but those sites won’t last.

Balance good sites with the bad and re-invest the short-term profits with your high-quality long term sites.
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Thanks Andrew!