Recently I interviewed Joost de Valk from Yoast and asked few questions to him related to his business life and personal life. I decided to share this interview with all my readers, I hope you will enjoy it. Lets start:
Joost de Valk
Q1. Hi Joost de Valk, welcome to CreativeBloggingIdeas, please tell me something about yourself!
Ans. I’m Joost de Valk, an SEO consultant and web developer living in Wijchen, near Nijmegen, the Netherlands. I live there with my wife Marieke, and our son Tycho and daughter Wende.
Q2. OK, tell me since when blogging has been a part of your life? Was there any motive or inspiration as a backbone of it?
Ans. I started blogging in ’05, to document my experiments with browsers, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. First on joostdevalk.nl (which is now Yoast.com) and later on added and then sold css3.info.
Q3. Beside having Yoast.com what else do you run ?
Ans. Loads of things, but you might have seen Quix, a bookmarklet on steroids.
Q4. Is blogging for you just a passion or a medium for earning too? Does it help you to earn enough cash to quit a 9 to 5 day job?
Ans. I make a nice amount of money blogging, but don’t want to do blogging alone, as that’d bore me to death, so I do consultancy work on the side, especially a lot of site audits, helping other bloggers improve themselves.
Q5. Who are your favorite bloggers, whom you read frequently?
Ans. Copyblogger, John Gruber of DaringFireball and a list Apart, to name a few. I subscribe to about 600 blogs.
Q6. What job/business you would be doing if Internet does not existed at all ?
Ans. Idle speculation 
Q7. You are a SEO expert, do you think that information available on Internet is enough to learn all about SEO ? If yes, then from where a newbie should start.
Ans. There’s enough out there, the problem is finding the good stuff and knowing which stuff to ignore. That takes some time, SEObook.com is probably the single best bet to start, and SEOmoz as a good second.
Now moving to some personal questions
Q8. Say, you are sponsored to travel to 3 world destinations, where you need not to worry about costs for food, hotel or anything. Which destinations would you pick up, and why? Would you like to take someone along with you? If yes, whom?
Ans. I’d like to go to South Africa now, to see the Netherlands win the Football World Cup, with my wife J Other destinations I’d like to see, Macchu Picchu and Ayer’s Rock.
Q9. Are you into watching movies? Which is the latest movie you just watched ?
Ans. Not really that much, don’t watch a lot of television.
Q10. How has blogging helped you other than money?
Ans. It’s helped me make a lot of new friends. And I seriously mean a LOT. It’s also helped me make a name for myself and grow my own business.
Q11. What would be the one thing you’d change about yourself?
Ans. Nothing. I’m me because I’m me, and I like it that way.
Q12. What is your deepest fear?
Ans. To ever have to really answer questions like these 
Q13. Any special notes you would like to add at the end?
Ans. No not really, thanks for the interview!
Thanks for sparing time and sharing such wonderful words with me. Good luck for future and Yoast.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Great Interview Gagan Nice to read answers of Joost de Valk.
Hi Gagan, Its a Great Interview from Joost de Valk, i Enjoyed reading it. Hope i can See More Interviews from Successful Bloggers!!
Great Interview Gagan! I did not know him before. However I like his answers. I also follow copyblogger, and while I do not think to become a SEO consultant, I hope to become a good Affiliate consultant too..hehe
I didn’t know him before……Nice Answers by Joost.
Hope for win..
Well Joost, I am also supporting Netherland….
Nice Interview Gagan ….
Thanks a lot Avi, I am glad you enjoyed the interview !!
Nice interview. Yoast.com is very helpful for the wordpress blogs.
Enjoyed reading the interview
thanks to you.
It was good to read this interview. I really got to know few websites which are totally unfamiliar to me. Thanx a lot… Expecting more innovative activities from you Gagan…
Thanks!! It was good
This interview is great, great questions Gagan. It seems like you put a lot of thought into it.
And good insightful answers by Joost de Valk. Always good to get snapshots of a bloggers life in such interviews.
Very nicely done by Gagan and thanks Joost for answering so well. There is so much to learn from great guys!
Thank you Gagan for sharing with us.
Good Luck!
Thanks Zazo, I was fearing you’ll definitely point out some mistake but you build up my confidence
Nice interview gagan. Now I got the plans to add interviews to my blog as well.
Hi Jeyaganesh, it is a very good idea to take interviews of popular bloggers in your niche, so when are you taking my interview
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