Young SEO Blogger Interview: John O’ Nolan

It’s time for an interview with young blogger who has started a highly successful blog in a highly competitive niche…search engine optimization and internet marketing. John shares with us his blogging journey with us along with some highly useful tips on his favourite topic SEO.

SEO blogging tips by young entrepreneur

1) Tell us something about yourself…like 3 things maybe which you have never shared with regular readers of your blog?

Well most people probably don’t know that I dropped out of every school I ever attended, but now I make a very decent salary each month as a web designer for an international extreme sports company, as well as doubling my income each month with freelance design and blogging! Other than that, I used to keep and breed over 50 Pythons for colour and pattern mutations, and I have 2 dogs!

2) You are such a young blogger. What motivated you to start a blog at such a young age? What skills you feel are very essential for being a successful blogger?

Well I guess I can only really put it down to family, my Dad is a total tech-nerd – He was taking a degree in Paleontology before discovering a strange love for computers which took punch cards and turning it into a life-long career (the computers that is, not so much the punch cards ). As a result when I came a long computers were a pretty central part of family life, I had a desktop PC in my room back in about 1995 when I was 8! When I reached my teens I learned HTML at school, and a couple of years later I started doing full time web design which is what really led me into the world of blogging.

As for essential skills, passion is definitely the biggest one! I’m a big follower of Gary Veynerchuck, and as he would say “If you don’t LOVE what you’re doing, if you can’t eat it, sleep it, and breathe it, every single day – then don’t bother”. Aside from passion I think you need to have a good understanding of the web, social media, and what sort of writing works on the internet.

3) What was the stage where you felt you crossed the learner stage and begin to feel like a seasoned blogger?

I’m not sure I have yet! Blogging is such an interesting medium I really feel like I still learn new things every day, just when you think you’ve “got it” you discover something completely new that changes the whole game. But in terms of starting to feel like my blog was successful, I guess that came late last year when I started getting 500+ visits a day, every day, even when I wasn’t posting – which is nothing compared to some of the big guys out there, but it’s still a pretty good feeling to know that people are reading what you write.

4) DO you feel the internet marketing space is getting real crowded with lot of bloggers…how do you make yourself stand up in the crowd?

Ugh, I couldn’t have said it better myself. The problem with my niche in particular (SEO and Internet Marketing) is that everyone has an opinion and there are no hard and fast answers. There’s a lot of inside baseball, all the ‘big boys’ talk to each other and try to shut out the little fish in the pond. It gets tiring sometimes!

As for how I make myself stand out, to be honest I just try to give real honest advice to help people. I have 10 feeds every day that tell me “Google is releasing a mobile phone”, “Microsoft is buying Yahoo!” – who cares? Most of these ‘Internet marketing blogs’ really just cover ’search engine company news’. So rather than doing the same thing, I try to actually give people straight advice about building links, using social media, rewriting url’s, writing titles and a meta content, etc.

5) What tools can be used to select a profitable niche to blog about?

A crystal ball? I don’t know, that’s a really tough one, but with relation to my point earlier it doesn’t matter how profitable a niche is if you aren’t interested in it. If you find something which you love writing about, then you can MAKE it profitable. The ProBlogger book gives some great advice about this.

6) It’s very difficult to get a lot of power user friends in sites like Digg or Stumbleupon. How can a newbie break the ice and make friends with the power users?

Great question, and one which I struggle with now and again – Digg is almost hopeless to get into unless you’ve been there for 5 years since ‘the  beginning’. Stumbleupon involves so little user interaction that it’s really difficult to even find anyone to speak to. I’ve found Twitter to be really great for getting traffic, as well as Reddit, and Designfloat. None of those are ‘big’ social media sites, but all of them have really helped me. I’m hoping to set up a network at some point this year to help people take advantage of social media.

7) Do you think directory submission is a relevant aspect of SEO today?

Absolutely not. Even DMoz doesn’t give as much benefit as it used to, anything else is just a waste of time.

8) What advice would you like to give your bloggers and webmasters who are just starting out on a new career in blogging or internet marketing and developing their first website?? What should be the areas they should focus the most?

Focus on content, it doesn’t matter how much link building or anything else you do if you haven’t got great content. You can drive 10,000 people to your site, but if the content is bad they’ll all leave and never come back. Have polls on your site, ask visitors what they want to hear more about, respond to your comments and give your readers what they want!

9) Apart from SEO and social bookmarking sites, what techniques can new bloggers use to drive massive traffic to their sites?

Community building, go out there and comment on every blog post you read, join a couple of forums and become an active poster. Be vocal, be friendly and make connections with people. The more people who you meet and you get on with, the more readers and traffic you’ll build up.

10) What resources….blogs, eBooks etc. would you suggest for new internet marketers which can really shave off their learning curve?

Glad you asked! The ones that really changed the way I think about everything have been Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow”, Chip and Dan Heath’s “Made To Stick”, and “Neuromarketing” by Patrick Renvoise & Christophe Morin.

Other than those I’d really recommend “How To Be A Rockstar WordPress Designer” by Rockable Press for blog development, great book for both beginners and advanced developers alike.

11) Any special advice for new-web-business.com and its readers?

Life is too short to do things you don’t enjoy, LOVE what you do and believe in yourself. If you stop loving what you’re doing for even one moment then go and do something else! I know it’s easier said than done for financial reasons, but that doesn’t matter – you can work a full time job and start doing what you love in every bit of spare time that you have, then once you’re doing well enough you can quit your full time job.

Persevere!!

Thanks John for such a great interview. Your interview will go a long way in helping new young bloggers to headstart their online blogging journey.