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The Unfair Advantage of Inbound Marketing
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Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | June 2011 Download at http:// bit.ly/mozinbound The Unfair Advantage of Inbound Marketing How marketers can use sweat equity instead of $$ to earn outsized returns on their online traffic efforts.
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Transcript of The Unfair Advantage of Inbound Marketing
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | June 2011
Download at http://bit.ly/mozinbound
The Unfair Advantage of Inbound MarketingHow marketers can use sweat equity instead of $$ to earn outsized returns on
their online traffic efforts.
makes SOFTWARE!!We don’t offer any consulting.
Where DoesWeb Traffic Come From?
Every Marketer Sees This:
But That’s Not Reality
Referring + Other = 50% of our traffic? But this chart is basically saying Twitter, Facebook, blogs, feed readers and every non-search site that sends traffic is exactly the same.
All the traffic we receive that isn’t the result of paid acquisition or advertising (in SEOmoz’s case – 95%+)
comes from Inbound Marketing!
For more on Inbound Marketing, check out Brian + Dharmesh’s awesome book: http://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Found-Google-Social/dp/0470499311
Inbound Marketing Outbound Marketing
Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter)
Blogs + News Sites
Links from Partners + Friends
Forums + Discussion Sites
Q+A Answers w/ a Link
User Profiles + Comments
Opt-In Email Newsletters
Organic Search Rankings
Inclusion in Universal Search Results
Viral Content
Viral Content
Display Advertising
Buying Email Lists
Site Sponsorships
Demographic Targeting
Affiliate Marketing
Video Ads
Paid Search Ads
Contextual Ad Networks (AdSense)
Facebook Ads
You Must Become a Hub for GreatContent in Your Niche
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlSometimes, a single piece of content or just a few, can yield these results but, more often, it takes dozens to hundreds of attempts to become a resource hub.
Site that offers:• Unique Research• Informed Opinions• News/Trend Analysis• Multimedia Content• Authentic Expert Contributors• Quality Discussion/Interaction
Referenced by industry
blogs
Mentioned in news
publications
Cited at conferences + events
Liked/Shared on Facebook
Links are Tweeted
Answers on Q+A sites reference its resources
Forum discussions link to its pages
People email links to each
other
Inbound Marketing Channels
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Data via Google’s occasional public statements and some inference (for 2006 + 2009)
# of Searches/Day in Google
Currently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day
on Google
You can see what Google sees by using the “cached snapshot” functionality from their search results, or by using the Mozbar (http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar) and browsing as Googlebot.
Robust, Accessible, HTML Text is Key
Users see a wealth of potential content Google sees a small number
of words that don’t tell much of a content story.
“Good” Content vs. “GREAT” ContentSatisfies the searcher’s basic
information requirements
Written by a human and not duplicated elsewhere
Long enough to fulfill basic needs of engines for depth/uniqueness
Grammatically correct; free of spelling/punctuation errors
Surprises and delights the searcher by being remarkable
Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers
May leverage video, audio, graphics & photos to convey a unique, shareable experience
Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers
Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and start experimenting. You’ll learn amazing things. http://www.seomoz.org/article/keyword-research-guide is a good guide.
Keyword Research
Make sure to use “exact” match!
This post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/great-content-for-seo-simpler-than-you-ever-imagined goes into detail about how to leverage this tactic to build great resources people will love.
How to Know What People Want:
Post is here – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links and check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4 - for tons of ways to earn awesome links.
Pages/Sites Need Links to Rank, But Not All Links Are Created Equal
Bing + Google have said publicly they use Twitter + Facebook for rankings: http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389 and Moz’s correlation data suggests they’re telling the truth: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings
Social Signals Influence Rankings
Check out http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/merging-of-search-social-wappow for more on how search engines and social media are mixing together.
Social Data’s Directly in the SERPs, Too!
Geraldine’s blog is awesome, but it would never rank on page #1 for this query without
the power of the social connection.
Social Media
For some great Facebook-focused marketing tactics, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about
Facebook More fans = more people potentially exposed to
your content.
But… You also need to create posts that will
show up in “top news” on your fans’ walls. That’s
more challenging.
I highly recommend http://www.slideshare.net/danzarrella/the-science-of-re-tweets which helps show the correlation between activities on Twitter and your ability to have the message spread.
TwitterIt’s not just about the follower count. Your
tweets have to count for something and drive actions/awareness.
Good advice on LinkedIn profiles here - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/optimize-your-linkedin-profile-for-best-results-howto (also, don’t miss the comments which discuss how the links work).
Like Facebook, LinkedIn now has a wall that drives “likes” and
comments (as well as traffic).
LinkedIn’s “Groups” are a powerful way
to grow your network and spread
a message.
The travel subreddit has nearly 19K registered subscribers - http://www.reddit.com/r/travel - and thousands more browsing. Full list of subreddits, sorted by # of subs here: http://metareddit.com/
Reddit’s grown to be in the top 100 most visited sites on the web, and even smaller subreddits can send remarkable traffic (and result in
tweets/FB shares/etc.)
Two great activities on http://www.stumbleupon.com for beginners: #1) Discover content that people share in your niche. #2) Find great stuff to share/tweet that will earn you more followers.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon reaches more than 15 million active monthly users, and drives massive amounts of outbound traffic.
Using http://www.google.com/reader, you can see how many GG Reader users subscribe + average # of posts/week. Those with fewer than 50 subscribers and 1 post/week often are too tiny to be worthwhile.
Participating in the Blogosphere
http://tumblr.com + http://hunch.com + http://del.icio.us + http://etsy.com + http://wikipedia.org + http://www.newsvine.com + http://care2.com and 100s of other social sites can potentially provide value for sites/marketers who participate; there’s no shortage of opportunities to explore.
The “Long Tail” of Social
Content Marketing
Data via http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx and http://www.slideshare.net/DianeRayfield/social-medias-shocking-statistics. See also Hubspot’s awesome slide deck: http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/how-to-be-the-awesomest-marketer-ever
Blog Readership is Up, But to Fewer Blogs
Research for this statement via PEW Internet & Captain Obvious
Great Blogs Rock.
Mediocre Blogs are Useless.
Every two years, we put out http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors but leave the URL the same, so it continues to accrue great link/social/sharing signals.
Evergreen Content
Research like http://startupgenome.cc/ gets tweeted, shared and cited, meaning you earn links, traffic + all sorts of good inbound marketing metrics.
Research + White Papers
Stats for launch day of Startup Genome project’s
research
After producing what is, admittedly, an awesome graphic - http://www.paralegal.net/judge-judy/ - Paralegal.net rose to page one in Google (and got bjillions of drive-by visits, too).
Infographics
The Nissan Leaf http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index site uses HTML5 to its full capability, and it’s pretty as heck, too.
Multimedia + Interactive
Fostering Community
These (http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/) emulate the success of places like LinkedIn, Quora, Stackoverflow and others. They’ve increased participation and traffic to the profiles dramatically.
User Profiles
Progress Bar
Highly customizable profile details
Custom Photo
Links to other web profiles
When users contribute content (as with http://artistmarketplace.moleskine.com/en) they’re invested in the promotion and success of their work, and thus, your site!
User-Generated Content
Because Yelp + Citysearch had taken the “badges” angle for local businesses, http://urbanspoon.com incented foodie bloggers to link to the site by featuring those bloggers’ posts + content on the site.
An Incentive to Share
These “spoonback” were key to Urbanspoon’s growth (now ahead of Citysearch in traffic!)
The genius game-like badges, points and progress at http://stackoverflow.com has helped make it one of the most successful sites in the Q+A world.
Gamification
I use email to subscribe to http://www.avc.com/ and am 1 of 100K+ who read Fred’s posts on a daily basis. That’s a powerful inbound channel!
Content Subscriptions
The Moz Top 10 http://www.seomoz.org/moztop10 attracts lots of readers, who then consume and share content. One big key to success – don’t just promote your own material.
Newsletters
Deal sites like http://groupon.com have had huge success. Private models like http://gilt.com and http://appsumo.com run interesting variants that also work well.
Promotions
BTW: Write down that email address; it’s a good one to have.
RSS + XML Feeds
Feeds aren’t just useful for subscribers. They “ping” search engines, enable easy syndication and can be used by lots of content aggregators that send traffic, too.
Blog Content Feeds
On average, this many people actually read a
post via feed
I was actually tempted to subscribe. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ThisYearsGirl has some awesome stuff!
Anything with Regular Updates
Etsy makes it possible to subscribe to a feed of
anyone’s shop on the site!
Presentations
I did a brief, 4-minute presentation at the Seattle 2.0 Awards - http://www.geekwire.com/2011/seomoz-ceo-rand-fishkin-googles-panda-update that promoted our hiring + growth (focused on that audience’s values rather than trying to sell to them)
Live Events
Our webinars http://www.seomoz.org/webinars attract 500-1,000 attendees and earn lots of tweets, blog posts and links. Hubspot’s get 10K+ attendees http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars/
Webinars
I put many of my presentation on http://slideshare.net where they earn thousands of additional views.
Online Presentations
Video
YouTube actually ranks as the second largest “search property” in the US, behind only Google: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/05/25/youtube-hits-3-billion-views-per-day-2-days-worth-of-video-uploaded-every-minute/
YouTube
Don’t be a honey badger. Care about
YouTube’s potential!
The “Long Tail” of Video Sites
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/08/long-tail-video-half-viewing-minutes/
Long tail of video sites get 50% of all
online video traffic/views!
At SEOmoz, we use http://www.wistia.com who submits our video XML sitemaps to Google for us - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472
Self-Hosted Video Content
Local + Mobile
To register, go to http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness. Also check out http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml for great local ranking tips.
Google Local / Maps / Places
Fox Sports Grill? I’m sorry Google, but that
is not barbecue.
Yelp’s results quality is much higher than Google’s and their interface is better, too. Impressive stats as well -http://officialblog.yelp.com/2011/02/via-yelp-mobile-yelpers-call-a-local-business-every-other-second.html
Yelp
http://foursquare.com has pretty awesome stats for local businesses participating with them.
FourSquare
http://www.tatango.com/ makes it possible for locally-focused sites to have cellphone “text lists” the same way web companies have email lists. It’s powerful stuff for local businesses.
Mobile Subscriptions + Tatango
Q+A, Forums + Discussion Sites
Granted, not all the questions (or answers) on http://answers.yahoo.com are of exceptional quality, but due to very high traffic, participation can yield solid results.
Yahoo! Answers
The StackOverflow Q+A platform is one of the most engaging, attracts high quality folks and offers lots of connection/marketin opportunity. See list of sites here - http://stackexchange.com/sites
StackExchange
Quora
If you haven’t yet started contributing on http://www.quora.com, the Google social integration is a great excuse
Quora’s audience tends to be startup-y, techy and
very well-connected.
The platform at http://namesake.com is quite impressive and some of the contributors equally so. Whether it achieves critical mass remains to be seen.
NameSake
Truer works were never typed.
Whoa! Cool.
The “Long Tail” of Discussion Sites
Public Relations, Guest Authoring and Comment Marketing
Guest blogging (or contributing content to any type of publisher) is a great way to build your brand and earn links. Tools like http://myblogguest.com/ can help make the process easier.
Guest Blogging + Writing
HARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/) is a popular service that lets you get contacted when relevant reporters/journalists need sources.
Direct Connections to Journalists
If you’re seeking a PR firm, http://prfirms.org/ can help, but it pays to get references. PR is a field where a few firms have the right connections and the rest can’t help nearly as much.
Classic Public Relations
This post has a list of recommendations for blog commenting as a marketing tactic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy
Comment Marketing
Inbound Marketing is
Inbound Marketing isAll Connected
Original Audience: 250
Total Reach: 10,000
Buh.. Zam.
Some Favorite Tools
Check out some interesting and useful ways to customize Google Analytics via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seomoz-google-analytics-setup-whiteboard-friday
Google Analytics
Via https://analytics.postrank.com/ - PostRank will measure the social sharing activity on any URL in a feed, so you can see what content works (and doesn’t) on the social web
PostRank
Survey Monkey is inexpensive, scalable and accurate. It’s less beautiful than other platforms, but far more flexible – http://www.surveymonkey.com
Survey Monkey
I know I’m biased, but it’s really useful for tracking and improving SEO stuff http://pro.seomoz.org
SEOmoz PRO
http://www.mailchimp.com is perfect for most small-medium businesses, but once you get over 100K susbcribers, it doesn’t work quite as well. Great analytics, deliverability + reporting, though!
MailChimp
http://trunk.ly keeps track of all the links I share on Facebook/Twitter/my Blog/etc. without any effort on my part. It then builds a searchable index so I never forget/lose a link.
Trunk.ly
Place Facebook’s Insights widget on your website + see demographic data about your site’s visitors, just like you can w/ your Facebook fans. http://www.facebook.com/insights. Learn more about Insights here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about
Facebook Insights
You can find developer info for how to add FB comments here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/
Facebook Comments
Comments left here appear on Facebook + replies to those are posted here!
Whoa! Cool.
Disqus Comments
Problem w/ video is it’s hard to measure engagement w/ traditional analytics that show only pageviews. http://www.wistia.com fixes that in an elegant way.
Wistia Video Analytics
If you use shortened URLs on Facebook + Twitter, http://bit.ly can help track and segment out the portion of the traffic that’s direct vs. referral (but hidden due to desktop/mobile apps)
Bit.ly PRO for Short URL Tracking
A terrific tool to research high-value targets on Twitter: http://followerwonk.com/
FollowerWonk
These folks have tons of followers; we should connect with them!
See who links to who on the web, and how important those links are via http://www.opensiteexplorer.org
Open Site Explorer
Using http://getlisted.org, I can see which local data sources may not have my business included (or may have inaccurate information). Fixing/including can help w/ local rankings + traffic.
GetListed
Via http://feedburner.com – though it hasn’t been updated in a long time, it’s still the best free software for monitoring feed activity and growth.
Feedburner
Using http://www.google.com/alerts, I can set up daily email notifications of word mentions. http://www.seomoz.org/labs offers several options to track fresh web notifications as well.
Google Alerts / Blogscape
http://www.summify.com sends me a daily digest of the most tweeted/shared things from the people I follow. Oftentimes, it’s really useful stuff that I’m glad not to miss.
Summify
Firefox 4 compatible, the Mozbar - http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar - combines nearly every feature I’ve ever wanted in a toolbar into one (and it has a pretty aesthetic, which I appreciate)
MozBar for Firefox
http://www.wistia.com not only has great analytics on videos, but also automatically creates video XML sitemaps so Google can show our rich snippets for video directly in the SERPs.
Wistia
http://knowem.com checks the availability of a username across dozens of social sites automatically and provides direct links to register them.
KnowEm
Using http://unbounce.com/ allows us to create hosted versions of landing pages to test without needing to bug our dev/engineering team.
Unbounce’s Landing Page Platform
The Inbound Marketing Process
Step #1: Discover
Step #2:Test
Step #3: Measure
Step #4: Repeat
Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.
Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.
Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact
Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.
Q+A
Rand on the Web
• Twitter: @randfish
• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
• Email: [email protected]
You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial
Download at http://bit.ly/mozinbound
