our pricing page than they did if they came from social. So all that stuff about how social media


The Tie That Binds: Why Email Is the Key to Maximizing Marketing ROI [MozCon 2017] — Justine Jordan

is going to kill email, I'm not so sure about that. Then the trend continues when I look at the


credit card sign-up page. Email sees twice as many pages per session than social does. Pretty


cool. And lastly, if we look at conversions, email is once again the number one channel. Not


quite double, but what, like 100 more than even our own blog? So don't stop there. You also


want to recognize that a lot of the positive metrics that email can do for your business aren't


easily trackable or easily measurable. Say for instance you write a really compelling subject


line and you have killer preheader text and it tells the subscriber everything they need to know,


they might waltz right into your store and buy something because you said there was a sale going


on. Maybe they type in the URL of your site after seeing your email in their inbox rather than


actually clicking on it. Or maybe they just do a search instead. So look at those ambient


performance metrics and if you see blips happening in your business that you can't really explain,


look at your email program. It might make a lot of sense. You also want to ask the five Ws the


next time before you start your next campaign. This is going to help you make sure that you're


addressing your subscribers' needs in addition to your business needs. So who, what, when, where,


why. And of course there's the bonus of how. Any journalism people in here should know this like


the back of their hand. So who are you sending to? What do you want them to do? When is it


appropriate to send the message? And don't get caught up on the when that we always think of when


it comes to email. People are obsessed with wanting to know like what day of the week or what


time of day is the best time to send email. And I'll tell you a secret. Every time the email


industry puts out a report that's like Tuesday is the best day to send email, everyone starts


sending email on Tuesday and guess what day of the week is no longer the best day to send email?


Tuesday. So think more about the when in terms of the customer life cycle. Do I trigger


behavioral-based image or email based upon something you did or a lack of something that you


did? So think about life cycle rather than time of day and day of week. Where will the recipient


read it? All those mobile stats, right? We've got to think about that. Why should they care?


That's the kicker, guys. That's the one that's going to tell you whether or not you're meeting your


subscribers' needs or even thinking about them in the first place. And then finally, how are you


going to measure success? Let's go beyond opens and clicks. Lots and lots of different reasons


and answers to those questions. But again, these are going to help you, force you to find the


intersection between your business needs and your subscriber needs. So before you do your next


campaign, sit down with your team or your boss or just you and your lonesome self if that's what


you're up to, which is totally cool. I love solo emailpreneurs. They're my favorite. And you


want to identify and agree on this stuff. So the five Ws, the hierarchy of subscriber needs, are


we meeting them, and then all the subscriber experience stuff. Because I'll tell you what, if


you can't fill that out, if you don't have a plan, if you can't figure out the purpose, then you


shouldn't send the email. And if you can't remember all of that, I actually put together a workbook


on the plane here, no joke, that tells you how to uncheck and recheck those boxes. It's like four


pages of goodness that lead you through that entire thing and can help you plan your next campaign.


And so you can get it at limus.com slash LP slash Mozcom. And that's all I have for you. Thank you.


How to Get Content in Front of Influencers - Whiteboard Friday

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday.


This week we're going to chat about a problem that many of you have mentioned in comments


and tweets, questions and emails to me and to other folks here at Moz when we talk about


content marketing and specifically content amplification.


Like, okay, I've made some great content, but how do I actually get people to share


it?


In particular, how do I get content into the hands of the influencers who might help amplify


And look, this is very frustrating, right?


If you're a small brand, small site, have a small social account, content amplification


often feels like this, right?


You're like, I just made the most amazing thing ever.


Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.


It sucks.


And I get that pain.


I totally get that pain.


We have all been there.


Even people who now have, you know, Moz has the wonderful privilege and opportunity of


having this great content amplification channel.


But when I started out, when I was making the blog in 2004, 2005, nobody was listening,


right?


It was a very frustrating experience.


And it took years before that content amplification life cycle became to the point where I remember


one year, I think it was 2008, and Greg Bozerer, who is legendary in the SEO world, right?


Was on a panel at a search engine conference.


And he's there and he says, well, you know, Rand just cheats.


All he has to do is hit publish.


I was like, oh, yeah, all I have to do now is hit publish.


But it takes a long time to build that.


Those folks who already have a following, a following on their blog, on their social


account, on an email list, on a news site, whatever it is, right, have this outsized


ability to spark virality, to help something that might be incredible that you've made


become seen by a wide audience who will actually appreciate it.


But it can be a frustrating process, right?


So here's Anne Handley's account, Anne Handley, one of the best, most followed folks in the


marketing world, online marketing world, at Marketing Profs, right, is her handle.


And you know, she tweets stuff all the time.


That gets a lot of retweets, a lot of engagement.


And folks are thinking like, how do I reach her?


I have something amazing that I want the marketing world to see.


How could I get Anne to share my content?


Okay, I have a few tactics for you that I hope will work.


First off, this is going to sound tough, but it is tough.


The simple nudge is the thing that I think you should probably be using 80% or more of


your time.


The simple nudge is just like what it sounds like.


Hi, Anne, I'm a big fan.


I'm a longtime follower.


We made this thing we think you're going to love.


Let us know if you have any suggestions.


We're going to be updating it for the next few weeks.


Thanks, Rand.


That could be through email.


It could be a LinkedIn message.


It could even be a Facebook message.


It could be a tweet.


It's a little bit long for a tweet, maybe a long series of DMs, right?


But the thing that is going on here is the content and relevance have to be outstanding.


Outstanding.


It has to be something that is remarkable.


Just as soon as you share it, as soon as you give the title of it, Anne's like, oh, wait,


I have not seen one of those.


I'm super interested in that.


How are you going to find something that you can nudge that influencer with where they


will think that's so remarkable that even though I have never heard the name of this


person before, I'm going to check it out and then I'm going to share it.


That's hard to do.


It is a very, very high bar.


But that's the same high bar that you have for creating what I've been calling 10x content,


the kind of content that people will actually amplify and share.


I talk about this a lot, but I always urge folks to ask the question, who will help amplify


this and why?


And if you have a great answer to that question, the nudge should be all you need 80% of the


time.


Now, I do have two tools that I'm going to recommend.


They are both used for email outreach, specifically finding folks' emails or getting connected


to folks through email.


Voila Norbert is a great tool for finding email that I've talked about on Whiteboard


Friday before.


And Conspire is a wonderful tool that will show you all of the people who you have emailed


who have emailed that person.


So if I hadn't emailed Anne directly, I could look in Conspire and I could see that, oh,


look, Cyrus Shepard has emailed Anne previously.


Great.


I'm going to check out to Cyrus, ask him for an introduction, he'll connect me up.


So some good tools that can be helpful there.


I'm reticent to promote it, but Follower Wonk is also very useful for this discovery process,


figuring out who those influencers are in the first place.


Number two, the inclusion mention.


This tactic can work, and it's a nice subtle way to get folks involved, especially if you're


not too frustrated when it doesn't work out, right?


But for example, let's say Anne had tweeted something around CRM software.


Well, she did send a tweet around CRM software that I copied in there, but maybe she's expressed


some frustration around CRM software.


She's like, I don't know which vendors to choose.


I wish there was a great resource.


And I could say, at Marketing Profs, your tweet about CRM frustration inspired us to


make this.


Cool.


Now I'm sharing with her something that she has directly expressed an interest in, and


I'm including her in there, right, again, through Twitter.


I could reach out through email.


I could do it through LinkedIn.


It could be through a lot of things.


I think any time you have content that's inspired by or particularly inclusive of a person,


brand, or a place, let them know.


There's no harm in letting them know, right?


It could be that this is ignored nine times out of ten, but one time out of ten, you're


going to get that extra amplification, and that's a wonderful thing.


I have found, by the way, that many times when it comes to longer form content responding


to a blog post, responding to a tweet, responding to something that's been shared, it can work


that professional, respectful, well-thought-out pieces that advance the conversation can work


well even if we disagree about things.


So if Anne's expressed something and I go, hmm, I disagree with that.


Let me explain why and the thinking behind it, but I'm going to be very professional,


very respectful.


I'm going to advance the conversation, like bring things forward, include non-obvious


stuff that is helpful, that makes this a better dialogue.


I can write up that piece, and then I can share it with her.


This can be especially effective if you share it with the person before you hit publish.


Again, a good reason for pre-content amplification outreach.


Number three, the review.


Okay, well, the review is a tough one.


I don't love it all the time.


I especially don't love it when it's been done to death, which it has very often, right?


But this is something like, we reviewed the latest guide for marketing profs here, right?


So go check out marketing profs.


We download one of their guides.


We really like it.


We write up a review.


Okay, this works when it's positive and when that positivity is clearly authentic and not


just designed to get amplification.


One of the things that happens, you know, that I see all the time, especially in the


web marketing, but even in the technology world and a lot in the travel world, right,


is folks doing things like this with no intention other than hopefully getting a link or a retweet.


They clearly have not put any authentic thought into it.


It's not a quality piece.


It's just designed to get that link.


It's very transparent to the vast majority of influencers who get targeted with this


stuff all the time, right?


So if it's been done to death, probably don't bother.


Don't bother.


The review system can work for other kinds of things.


And if it's positive and authentic and that's not why you did it, great.


Okay, number four is the network effect.


This is, well, it's frustrating because it's not always as effective.


However, it can still be a small win even when you don't get the big win, right?


So the idea would be I go and I check out maybe, you know, potentially use Follower


Wonk or Little Bird is another one.


It's paid and expensive but very, very good.


These four accounts tend to share things that major influencers later pick up.


Hmm, interesting.


So at such and such and at so and so, right, like these folks tend to be often easier,


much easier to target and to reach out to, much higher response rate, much more likely


to reply to you and engage with you.


And even if those major targets never come through, so even if these folks are target,


you know, they're followed by these seven influencers that we really are going after,


well you know what, even if they share and none of the seven influencers do, that's okay,


it's still a win.


So I hope that with these in your pocket you can go and do a little more successful content


outreach and content amplification.


If you have so much tactics that you'd like to share that have worked well for you, I


would love to hear about them in the comments.


I'm sure everyone else would as well and you'll get lots of thumbs up.


So look forward to that and to seeing you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard


Friday.


Persuasion, Data, & Collaboration: Building Links in 2016 Presented by Kirsty Hulse

Yes, my name is Kirsty, and I acknowledge that's quite an unusual name in the States,


so whilst I've been here, I'm happily accepting Kristy or Kirsten as well.


So, you know, anything's fine.


I'm here today to talk about persuasion, data, and collaboration.


Building links in 2016, I've been working in SEO for about a decade now, and I am proud


and delighted to say that building links is still absolutely one of my favorite things.


The way that we do it has changed significantly, and I acknowledge that there perhaps will


be less and less importance in the future, but certainly creating really good content


and doing good campaigns and building better brands to get other people to like your stuff,


that's incredibly prevalent and always will be.


But, yeah, so building links now is hard.


Like, it's really, really hard, and there tends to be a few kind of common hurdles that


we fall down when we build links, and over my career, these hurdles always tend to be


the same kind of thing, so you have clients that say no to your ideas.


Now, I run an agency, so I'm going to talk about clients, but it might be your boss,


it might be people in your team, but basically people that you need to get on board with


your content campaigns really, really don't like your ideas, so there's that.


That tends to be the first hurdle.


Or we can't get good data.


Getting data is one of the most important things when it comes to earning links, because


when you have data, you have news, when you have news, you have a story, and when you


have stories, you can have links, but actually getting that data is really hard and can be


incredibly expensive, or experts and independent people don't want to collaborate with what


we're doing.


This is also quite hard, because you have so when you're kind of doing content marketing


campaigns, it's really, really useful to have somebody independent who's an authority to


partner with, but that's incredibly hard to get, and often people don't really want to,


particularly if you're working in more like commercialized industries like insurance,


or our emails are just not very good and don't get replies, and the worst of all of these,


which happens more and more and more, is we go through this process, we convince people


that our ideas are great, and we get all this good data, and we get some independent expert


to kind of agree with us and get on board with it, and then our emails get replies,


and we get coverage, and then, oh, we don't get any links.


This happens all the time at the bittersweet moment when you realize you've got some amazing


coverage for your client, but they're just not linked.


Happens all the time.


The interesting thing about these hurdles, though, and these problems is that they are


kind of fundamentally human problems.


And that's kind of good, because now when we try and get links, we're essentially relying


on people, and like this adorable little puppy, people can be trained and predicted, which


means getting over these hurdles is a little bit easier, and that's what I'm going to talk


you through for the next 25 minutes or so.


Okay, great.


So clients that say yes to our ideas, so how do we get that?


How do we get people saying yes to what we want to do?


Well, firstly, I think we probably need to quit the jargon as an industry.


Like we're really guilty of this, and so many studies have suggested that if you use clear,


simple language, you come across as more intelligent.


So I think maybe in this room now we should all make a promise to ourselves that we're


not going to think outside the box, we're not going to generate buzz, we're not going


to get farm awareness.


Let's just use incredibly plain, simple language, avoid acronyms where possible, don't use industry


language if you can avoid it, and just be very clear, we should all be striving for


clarity in everything that we do.


Now you can also pitch something insane.


Bear with me on this one.


So one of my clients is an airline, and we were coming up with like a content idea for


them, and we were like, okay, so it's an airline, it's a British airline, what do British people


like?


British people like tea.


What's interesting about airlines?


Well, they're in the sky, and they're high.


Oh, yeah, high tea.


That was our idea.


So we thought what we would do is we'd take all of these journalists, we'd get them really


stoned and we'd put them on a plane.


Now sadly, this is in London, this isn't in this beautiful, glorious city where this is


okay.


So I spoke to some journalists about this.


I was like, is this insane, or would this be a fun story?


And they were like, yeah, really fun story, I'd get on board.


So great.


So we had some legitimacy to the idea, because people had kind of said that they'd be involved,


and there was thought behind it and there was data behind it.


I absolutely knew there was no way this would get signed off, but I pitched it, and I pitched


it as something that was a really great idea.


And the reason was because the second idea I actually really wanted to do, and that was


a tiny bit risky, but it essentially wasn't getting journalists high.


So comparatively, it was fine.


So next time you have an idea or you have a campaign that you really want people to


get on board with, think of something absolutely mental and then pitch that first.


But you have to do it with data and legitimacy behind it first.


I'm just going to have some water.


Or you won't kind of be able to you'll just look insane yourself.


You don't look insane yourself, you just want to pitch an insane idea.


Okay.


Pitch ideas using questions.


I'm at the risk of sounding like this is some kind of psycho mumbo jumbo, but it isn't.


This is good.


So again, same client, airline.


I had this idea where I wanted to create like this modern etiquette flying guide.


So we've all been on a plane where you're sat in the middle and somebody else has stolen


your armrest or there's a stranger next to you that falls asleep and you need to go to


the toilet but you don't know whether they wake up.


I mean, this might be a largely British problem because we're all incredibly awkward.


But we thought what we'll do, we'll create a little fun guide where we talk about how


you can kind of avoid those typically awkward problems.


Pitch idea largely in that kind of way.


And they said no, they didn't really like the idea.


They thought it was kind of negative.


It didn't celebrate the joy of flying.


So I went away.


I had maybe like I was emotionally attached to this idea because I thought it would really


work and get a few links.


So a few weeks later, I went back and I pitched it again to a similar team, not exactly the


same.


And I changed the way I pitched it.


So I went in there and I was like, hello.


So who here has ever flown?


Who has ever flown alone?


Did you get the middle seat?


Did somebody fall asleep next to you?


What did you do?


Was it awkward?


Did you ask the air hostess?


And one of the women really got on board with it.


And she's like, oh, yeah, like I didn't know what to do.


It was incredibly awkward.


I wish there was some kind of guide.


And I was like, mm-hmm, yeah, me too.


Yeah.


Great idea you've had there, actually.


Very good.


And it worked.


And I've done it a couple of times now.


So please do try this.


Next time you have an idea in your head and you think this would be so cool, I really


want to do it, but I don't know if my boss will like it, go back and create a series


of questions that essentially got you to how you got to that idea.


And you'll probably find people are more receptive to it.


Unless, of course, the first question you ask, they go, no, no.


And then that means it doesn't resonate with them and it's fine and don't waste your time.


But do try that.


And please let me know if you try it and it works.


Because I don't know if this is based on anything scientific, but I've been trying it and it


seems to work.


Okay.


So clients and ideas.


So good, affordable data.


I went to a conference about three years ago and there was a talk and it was be greater


with data.


I kind of wish I was wearing a T-shirt with that on.


And it's true.


So getting links, when you have data, your likelihood for success significantly goes


up.


I mean, I'm saying significantly based on nothing.


But I think it probably goes up loads.


From my experience, it does.


But getting data is really hard.


It can either be, like, mind-blowingly expensive or you can't get people to fill out surveys,


so you end up creating a survey or it's skewed data because it's from people who are already


your customers.


It's really, really hard.


And then I discovered Pollfish.


Is there anyone here that has ever used Pollfish?


I mean, I literally can't see your hands, so this is an entirely redundant exercise


anyway.


But Pollfish.


Okay.


So Pollfish are awesome.


They are so good.


I'm actually annoyed with myself that I'm sharing this.


Because I really like them.


I found them on just a PayDad.


They work.


Apparently.


I found them on a PayDad, and then they're basically a survey service, and you pay a


very small amount for I think it's maybe $60 for 200 participants, and you get your responses


instantly.


They have a database of respondents.


And this has literally revolutionized my life.


And that's the life I lead.


It has literally revolutionized my life.


It's so good because it's affordable.


And the data is statistically significant and not skewed.


And they've got lots of screening things you can filter by different demographics.


It's really good.


If you're ever in the market for creating surveys or generating data for campaigns,


which we should all be doing because it makes them really good, give it a try.


I mentioned to them that I was speaking here about it, and they've given a little 30% off


code for your first one so you can try it.


I really do recommend it.


Great.


And also, give your surveys to people who care.


So this is a bit of a personal bugbear of mine where this slide comes from.


So I, you know, I spend more time on Twitter than with my family.


And I'm sure I'm not the only one in the room who that's true for.


And I have like a little bunch of SEO mates that we hang out on Twitter.


True.


And what I see happening tons is my friends who work in PR or SEO or content will be tweeting


their followers, i.e. the SEO community, to fill in their survey.


Like, hey, guys, I'm doing this campaign.


Can you fill in my survey?


And I just sit there thinking, oh, you're making yourself look like a bit of an ass


there, actually.


Because if you start asking people who aren't really your market to fill out your survey,


you don't really need to do it.


The great thing about working in digital is that there's pockets of weirdos interested


in everything.


And they're really not that hard to find.


So for example, if you're running a survey on plumbing, there will be some subreddits


about plumbing and active people who will actually be more than happy to fill out your


survey.


So next time you have a survey and you need to get people to fill it in, just try and


figure out who those people are that actually really care about what your survey is and


give it to them.


You'll get better responses.


Okay.


So expert opinion and quotes.


This is I'll give you an example of what I mean by this.


So about a couple of years ago, I was given I was asked by one of my clients who were


an insurance brand to get some links to their pet insurance page.


So this is links pointing directly to their commercial page without anything particularly


interesting on it.


And I like a challenge.


She was like, sure, absolutely.


I was largely certain that I wouldn't be able to do it because people don't link to commercial


pages.


Why would you?


But I went through and I read their policies.


So I read all their different policies.


And basically it's probably the same here as it is in the UK.


But essentially the majority of pet insurance policies cover homeopathic veterinary care.


So essentially what I'm saying here, ladies and gentlemen, is puppy massage.


I mean, the links were going to build themselves.


Puppy massage.


My job was done.


I was like, great.


And I was so smug.


I was I created this press release.


And I was like, you know what?


This is amazing.


I didn't think I'd be able to get any links, but I figured out that puppies have massages


if they don't feel very well.


Come on.


It's gold dust.


So I created a press release.


Talked about it.


It happened that there was actually a homeopathic veterinary care day.


So I tagged on to that.


And what happened was nobody gave a shit.


I mean, I can't be the only person that is interested in puppy massage.


I mean, I can't be.


But nobody cared.


And I was thinking, this should work.


Like, this is a really sweet, nice story.


The reason it didn't work was fundamentally because it was an insurance brand.


Insurance brands don't have legitimacy to talk about puppies getting massages.


And actually something that was a nice, sweet story became a bit gross.


It became a bit tainted by the fact that you took something heartwarming and then really


commercialized it.


So I made the mistake of not having any other campaigns up my sleeve at this point.


So I sent a few emails out at about 2 a.m. in absolute blind panic to various kind of


governing bodies and experts and vets asking if they'd get on board with this campaign.


And my panic obviously translated and somebody felt sorry for me.


Because the head of the UK veterinary care something, something, I actually knew in the


press release.


I didn't say it like that.


She responded.


She was like, yeah, sure.


And at that moment when it was insurance company plus this independent body with a quote, the


responses went from 1 to 14, 10, 16.


And suddenly a campaign that was embarrassingly bad that I'm now telling you all about became


a pretty good one.


And we actually got links to a really commercialized page because we had some legitimacy at that


point.


At that point we were allowed to talk about it.


So that was a long winded story to say it's very, very useful and beneficial when you're


trying to get links and you're sending out press releases to not just do it as yourself


but do it as yourself with somebody else.


It really helps.


Okay.


Journalists.


Couple of years ago that slide might have just said that.


Not anymore.


No, no.


What I mean is so journalists tend to be relatively not hugely well paid but what they are is


incredibly smart, excellent writers, very strategic, very creative.


So what we started doing was we essentially have in my agency like a content advisory


board and they are a bunch of journalists that we pay a freelance consultancy basis


for their time to review our press releases, to give us feedback on our ideas and to basically


help us with our pitching.


So we've got a few journalists and I'll go to them and say we're thinking of doing this


for this client, what do you think?


And they'll say oh, maybe that idea could be approved by this.


I think this press would really like it.


Maybe you need to give them a ring.


You need to give this guy a ring at this time because they know everybody.


And I can't even begin to tell you how much that significantly helps.


So if you're going to pay for anything, which we shouldn't be, but if you're paying for


anything, pay some journalists to help.


Pay them to help you get your press release right.


Pay them to help you with your ideas.


Pay them to tell you how to pitch because they know.


They're the ones that know.


And obviously if a journalist has helped you with your content, they're going to be more


likely to cover it or more likely to get somebody they work with to.


It's really great.


I definitely recommend it.


And you don't have to it doesn't cost much to pay a journalist for a couple of hours


to help you out and to help improve the content that you're creating.


It's really, really good.


Amazon new releases, it's an absolute gold mine.


It's a gold mine.


Essentially what Amazon new releases is, is a bunch of people that have just written a


book that's about to be or has recently been published.


So ultimately loads of experts that have something to promote.


And experts that have something to promote are obviously much more likely to partner


with your brand because it's free PR for them.


And I thought, well, you know, this might be quite limited.


There might not be new releases on everything.


So I wanted to test the Internet's pockets of weird.


And it stands.


So I tried to think of the most boring thing I could think of.


And medium density fiberboard, MDF, for any other DIY budgets, DIY budgeters out there.


Yeah, they have loads of stuff on it.


They have, like, people that have just written books on MDF that are about to be published.


So if you have some content and it's around a particular topic, put that topic into Amazon


new releases, find an author, outreach to that author, ask if they want to get involved.


And they will.


It's free PR.


And suddenly you have an expert on board.


And it's not just a brand talking about a thing.


It's a brand plus an expert talking about a thing.


Makes it a lot easier to get links.


Because one of the problems with getting links at the moment is bloggers and the media, they


see it as I mean, they know our game, right?


They know what we're trying to do.


So they see it as kind of hugely commercial or even like a bit spammy, which is ridiculous.


And that's what makes it quite difficult.


But suddenly when you have something else, that helps that problem a little bit.


So do try it.


It's cool.


Not shitty outreach.


Now this is something so basically like I said, I've been in SEO for like ten years.


And I have a few legacy affiliate sites and a couple of blogs.


And what this means is I get quite a lot of outreach emails.


And so it gives me a nice kind of awareness of how the industry does outreach, how it's


changing, how SEO does it comparatively to PR.


So I'm going to share a few of those examples with you now.


I should say, like, some of these emails are from like quite well known SEO agencies.


So if you recognize any of them, I've blanked everything out.


But if you recognize, please don't be offended.


I'm not being mean.


I'm just sharing.


I want everyone to know we're friends here.


This is a safe space.


So email collaboration opportunity.


So this is an email from an SEO agency.


How are you?


I've just been reading your blog and enjoying your review of her.


Thought I'd send a quick email.


Currently working on a campaign I think would be a good fit.


Let me know.


Thanks.


There's a few problems with this.


Get to the point.


We don't really need that.


I've just been reading your blog.


That's a lie.


No, you haven't.


Generally, a first interaction with somebody shouldn't be a lie.


A general rule.


Don't start don't lead with a lie.


If you're still sending out rich emails by going, hey, just been reading your blog, stop,


because everybody knows it.


Even if you have read it and you do really like the review of her, like, I'm not going


to believe you, because everybody knows.


You know it's a tactic.


So avoid doing that.


And this language is incredibly apologetic.


I thought I would, so please just let me know.


It's skirting around the direct question.


The most alarming thing about this particular outreach email is this email is essentially


somebody saying, hey, I've got something really cool.


And that's it.


Like, if you've got something interesting and you think I'm going to find something


interesting, tell me what it is.


Because if you've just got something cool, bye, then I'm probably not going to be that


interested.


So one of the key things is when you're doing outreach and you have any kind of asset or


press or anything, make sure that it's all in the email, put everything in the email.


People tend to start with a more, like, tactile approach and, like, hey, and then maybe chat


and try to build a relationship first.


But I've never seen any success or I personally have never replied to that email, because


when you're a journalist or you're a blogger and you're getting literally thousands of


emails a day, you need that information straightaway.


So please don't make that mistake.


Okay.


Let's all just take a minute to soak in Will Smith.


There we go.


I was rejuvenating.


Best celebrity dad survey.


Better.


Interesting.


The problem I found with this one particularly was the subject line is vague.


I would recommend when doing outreach emails, if you have a story, put that as the headline.


So Will Smith voted as best celebrity dad or whatever it was.


The other problem with this is, A, they didn't include the actual data.


They said if you want the data, let me know.


Well, just give it to me.


Thank you.


Sounded rude.


I didn't mean to.


And also, it's not fundamentally that interesting that Will Smith, Brad Pitt, David Beckham,


that they're the best celebrity dads.


That's really obvious.


And I think anybody probably would have guessed that.


If, however, maybe, like, this guy had been voted best celebrity dad.


I mean, great man.


That would be news, wouldn't it?


So the salient point I'm trying to make here with no political message behind it whatsoever


is, if you run a survey and you get some data back and your data doesn't actually surprise


you or isn't that interesting, leave it.


Because you're wasting your time.


Whenever you're doing something, you have to I mean, this is a sad thing.


You actually have to like what you're doing and you also have to think it's quite interesting


because otherwise that translates.


Okay.


This is better death.


This is from a PR agency.


The difference in emails from PRs to SEOs is stark.


So Disney's Mustafa, most iconic death film.


I had all the data.


It was much more interesting.


The subject was just a little bit more engaging.


Still, I guess it's not hugely it's kind of still obvious that Mustafa when he died, it


was gut wrenching and I can't even talk about it on stage.


But like it's a better email.


It's a better email.


So that's good.


This is another one from an SEO agency.


This is somebody who was offering me an interview with somebody.


Editorial inquiry interview with.


Hope you're well.


Very nice.


Blah, blah, blah.


This article can be found here.


What I found interesting in this was I was wondering if you'd perhaps be interested in


using it.


Perhaps I could do a write up for you.


I appreciate you're really, really busy.


However, it may be of interest to you.


I'm really sorry.


This isn't an enticing email.


However, again, one from a PR.


Free interview with.


Happy Monday.


Great.


And basically this email is like here's the interview.


Here's how you should use it.


I'm great.


Bye.


I used that interview.


I didn't use the one before.


Now, this is something that I see relatively systemic across the difference between the


way PR people outreach and the way SEOs outreach.


And that's because all of our careers for people who have been an SEO and have been


doing it for a long time, we've been kind of the naughty teenager of marketing.


The amount of people that still say to me, oh, but SEO is a bit of a dark art, isn't


it?


I'm going to try and see whoever has heard the phrase SEO is a dark art.


Okay.


Loads of you.


By the way, fact, every time SEO is referred to as a dark art, a house help dies.


That's true.


We've been told that it's a dark art.


We've been told that we're just trying to get links and links.


I literally don't know what just happened.


No idea.


I don't know why everyone's laughing.


I literally don't.


I'm freaking out.


I'm just going to carry on.


Maybe something to do with Dobby.


I don't know.


What is happening?


Is something on the screen?


Oh, okay, great.


That felt mean, guys.


That felt like I was seven years old again.


No.


Thanks, Stacey.


True.


Anyway, true fact.


I'm going to be totally honest.


I have lost my thread a bit now.


House help dies.


Yes.


So as SEOs, we get told that what we're doing is dirty, that links are bad, links are spammy.


Don't talk about building links.


Call it driving lovely reach or something.


Bloggers think that we're horrible.


People think we're trying to break Google guidelines all the time, and we're not.


And it's really sad.


And actually, we don't need to approach people with this kind of awkward sense of I'm sorry,


I'm sorry, I want to link, I'm sorry.


We have cool stuff.


In the talks I've seen, people are doing some really smart, awesome content and creating


some great campaigns, and we absolutely have legitimacy to ring an editor at a massive


newspaper and speak with the confidence in the way that PRs do.


Thank you very much.


I'm not finished.


That was just me having a little rant.


And what we can do is we can copy PRs and we can use really sexy language like embargo


and exclusive.


There's a really good resource here of words and things that you can use so you can kind


of mirror it.


I have got a few more slides, but I'm really tight on time, so I think I am going to leave


it there, actually.


And thank you so much.


You've been an awesome, awesome audience.


Thank you.


Thank you, Kirsty.


No worries.


Excellent presentation.


And thanks to you for glamorizing journalists.


Not that I have any skin in that game.


So we have a couple questions here I'd love to ask you.


Sure.


Just one second.


Do you ever send out press releases for all your content?


No, no, no.


So if I'm creating blog content, I won't be sending out press releases.


But if I've done a specific campaign, i.e.


I'm creating some content that I think will get some links, I'm doing it for that purpose,


then I will.


There's two kinds of content.


You create content to capture demand and you create content to earn links.


So the latter I'll always send a press release.


And this is my question.


What is the number one thing SEOs and PR people should stop doing?


Because I found a lot of overlap.


Yes.


Blankets.


Blankets sending out press releases.


Because there's been some awesome talks on personalizing your emails.


And that's exactly the same for when you're sending out a press release.


And actually, no.


The main thing, I had a slide on this, but I ran out of time, so I didn't talk about


it.


But the absolute main thing that we should all be doing is we should be outreaching over


the phone.


We probably need to send less emails and stop picking up the phone, because that's how traditionally


it's been done.


And everybody's better on the phone than over email.


Absolutely.


So how do we convince the C-suite to use these tactics?


Show them that it makes money.


So you have to, one of the really difficult things about links is you have to quite tightly


connect the dots between A, links increasing rankings, increasing revenue, but also driving


awareness, increasing referral traffic.


So it's the same as anything else.


Start small and test it.


I've got some case studies of some campaigns I did that took like a day that were really,


really good, got some good links, increased some rankings, increased some traffic, and


then once you've shown that something makes money, it becomes very easy to convince the


C-suite.


So apparently somebody out there has a great sense of humor, because somebody asked, what


if your insane idea gets accepted?


Are you then screwed?


I did actually.


Yeah, I was thinking that.


I mean, if your insane idea gets accepted, then you've got an amazing client and you


win and then you get to do an insane idea.


The insane idea has to be something that you could execute against.


What is one thing in your talk that you couldn't share but you think is important?


It's something that you see in your day-to-day work that you feel like has great value to


the people in this room.


Okay.


So one thing that happens quite a lot is we will create some cool stuff and maybe we'll


do like an interactive infographic of something.


We'll create it, we'll send it out, and we will think that being cited as the source


of the creators of that content is enough to get links.


That's not the case.


You can't just be like X brand created this thing.


It doesn't really work, particularly for newspapers and press.


There has to be a real specific reason to link.


So host some stats on site, give something extra that you would earn that link as opposed


to just being cited as the source of the creator of that content.


Does that make sense?


Absolutely.


One of the things I think about all the time is building a rapport.


One of the things you learn very quickly as a journalist is that you need to build a rapport,


that first soft touch.


Do you recommend that be email, social media, friend to friend?


Social is great.


So just be like a creepy Twitter stalker.


It works really well.


You have to...


So journalists generally have interesting stuff to say.


So if you have an outreach team or a PR team, they should be actively engaged on Twitter


and chatting to journalists in like a normal way and allow that to happen quite naturally


and organically over a few months.


Also, there's tons of events.


There's always media and PR events.


So I think you just have to be present.


If you can start doing things face to face, that's even better.


Thank you.


Not at all.


Let's give it up for Karsi.


Thank you very much.


Link Building's Tipping Point Presented by Rand Fishkin

Howdy gang.


Welcome to another edition of White Boar...


Sorry.


Old habits die hard.


I don't know if you all are aware, but eight years ago today, I was in Ashland, Oregon,


with probably a good two or three dozen folks who are in this room today.


And I got married to an amazing woman, Geraldine, who's in the audience with us.


Today is our eighth wedding anniversary.


I'm so sorry MozCon was scheduled today.


I promise, I promise it will never happen again.


This is the last and only MozCon on September 14th, people.


So appreciate that.


We have a ton to get through.


So let's get started.


You can find the slides here so you don't have to take curious notes if you don't want


to or take pictures of the screen.


You will also note that all the URLs are linked to you.


So what I did is I wanted to reexamine link building the way last year I spent a bunch


of time reexamining on page optimization.


And I think the way I wanted to do this is to wash from my mind all the things that I


knew about link building up until this point and instead take a look at companies and brands


and websites of all kinds and sizes.


You're going to see me cover very, very tiny sites that have just launched that are doing


super boring stuff in markets outside the US all the way to big brands that you know


and love.


And just to ask, what did they do right?


And what have we done wrong in the past?


And what is Google going to do about judging links?


So you might remember that last year when they announced, when Google announced RankBrain,


they said it is the third most important, you can argue what that means, important ranking


factor.


And you might also recall Danny Sullivan asking them, what are the first two?


I mean, I think I know, but can you tell me?


No.


No, we cannot tell you.


And then weirdly, Ammon Johns and I and a few other folks were on a phone call with


one of Google's engineers and brought this up.


And he was like, what are you talking about?


Everyone knows the first two are content and links.


Content and links.


Still true.


So in the past, link evaluation algorithms have been in these places we're all familiar


with.


Page rank and source diversity, anchor text and trust distance and domain authority and


all this kind of stuff.


Links location on the page, spam out link analysis, yada, yada, yada.


All these little individual factors around how Google judges a particular link and all


the links that point to a website.


But this is not where they're going.


This is not where they're going.


Google's going from the reasonable surfer model.


Remember what page rank is supposed to do, was supposed to do even in 1998.


It was supposed to predict which links on a page were important and then it was supposed


to assign values to them and it was supposed to assign those based on the probability,


the probability, the chance of someone clicking on those links.


And of course, Google was very naive in 1998 and so all they could do is assign the same


weight to all the links on a page and they assigned the weight of a page based on all


the links that pointed to it.


Okay.


But that is not today.


Today thanks to Chrome and Android and Google Wi-Fi and what's the one where they run the


cables into Kansas City and then they decided they're not going to do that anymore?


Yeah.


Well, bummer.


Google knows everything.


You know, I'm thrilled, right, that like Moz is putting together some, buying some click


stream data and then analyzing that and, you know, we have this sample of searchers.


Google's sample of everything that happens on the web is probably in the 80s or 90s per


sentence.


It's insane.


It's crazy.


And so because of that, they can see, right, Google knows where people go, where people


were, where they go and where they go next.


You don't need a reasonable surfer model anymore.


You don't need to predict.


You know.


And Google's goal is pretty clear.


It's searcher satisfaction because Google knows that if they satisfy searchers well,


those searchers will return again and again.


The number of searches will go up.


The number of searches per searcher will keep going up and that's what we've been seeing,


right?


So this desktop is sort of leveled off in its growth.


Mobile keeps growing.


Searches and searches per searcher keep growing.


So okay, here we are.


Google's core search team, same question every time, right?


When I do a search like this, what is this, pasta equipment, very important search query,


are searchers satisfied with these results?


And the way they know that is basically are they getting the answers that they're seeking?


And Google asks, well, how do we get to that?


It's really behavioral data.


It's behavioral data.


We've seen it time and time again.


We know this.


I'll show you and then I'll prove it to you in a sec.


All right.


So aggregate behavioral data.


Searchers on average click the results that we, Google, rank here.


Do they rank the ones that get the clicks more highly or less highly?


So if you see percentages of clicks like this, which is sort of average click-through rate


curve stuff, right, like more to the top, lower to the bottom, we're all good.


We have satisfied searchers.


We tend to be doing well.


And right, if lots and lots of searchers are clicking on nothing at all, and instead they're


changing up their query or they're choosing a related search down at the bottom, right,


or they're amending their search or they're clicking and they're clicking back, well,


you know, if it's something like that, maybe we, Google, should be showing more results


for the commercial manufacturing equipment, right?


If people are choosing lots of those things, maybe that means that this query has this


different intent behind it.


And if searchers on average are short clicking, right, they're clicking on the results and


they come back and choose something else, well, maybe I should swap those rankings up.


Okay.


You might have some skepticism around this.


We've done a bunch of experiments around this.


We've, you know, run a bunch of stuff.


I thought most convincing of all was Paul Harr speaking earlier this year at SMX talking


about how they interpret live experiments and how they're using user data and usage


data.


You can also find a bunch of this in the back channel article that I mentioned in my opening


talk.


You can additionally find it in the presentation from Jeff Dean on TensorFlow and deep learning.


But here we go.


I apologize.


Bullet points kill kittens.


You should never put them in your presentation unless you're Paul Harr, in which case you


get to do whatever you want.


Ta da.


Algorithm A puts P1 before P2.


User clicks on P1.


That's good.


Algorithm B puts P2 before P1.


No click.


Bad.


It's simple, right?


Super simple.


I mean, it's incredibly complex with massive amounts of engineering resources and mathematics.


But easy concept.


So if you're Google, you take a bunch of sites and pages that satisfy searchers and a bunch


of sites and pages that do not satisfy searchers, and then you look at the people who link to


the good and bad pages, and you build a machine learning model to identify traits that the


good pages have versus the traits that the bad pages have.


And there are links that are going to be highly predictive of each one.


And this can apply to spam as well.


So you could say, this page did a great job of satisfying searchers.


It also did a great job of doing super sketchy stuff that we don't want to reward, even though


it's satisfying searchers.


And so you can apply that same thing.


You take a bunch of editorial high value search quality teams, hand reviewed them, right?


And then links that points to good stuff but are total manipulative crap, and then you


build a model on those.


And this is, that's what Penguin was, right?


And almost certainly will continue to be, right?


Penguin was one of the first machine learning algorithms that we heard about that uses links.


So one of the things Google can do now is they start to build up this authority and


reputation model that is not just based on a domain itself, but an authority model based


on other attributes of content.


And we are seeing this in the search results right now.


We're seeing it at folder levels, where Google, in my opinion, is looking at folders and saying,


this folder we trust, this folder we don't trust, right?


These subfolders and subdomains, I think they're going to start doing it for authors as well.


And I don't think they need author rank anymore, right?


They might just say, like, hey, here's Sam Scott, and we really want to count his links


when he links out from stuff on TechCrunch because he is trustworthy, and here's guest


author, anonymous guest author.


We do not.


We do not want to count that.


We know Google's transforming itself into this machine learning first company.


This is going to be the result.


In my opinion, this will be the result.


I can't tell you exactly how it's going to be executed or when exactly it's going to


roll out, but last year we talked about this in July at MozCon, and in October, I remember


I was in Heathrow Airport about to board a flight to Seattle, and I was like, oh, look


at that.


There you go.


It's a nice confirmation from Google with RankBrain that they're doing exactly what


we said they were going to do.


I think, you know, whether it's when Penguin rolls out or the next link update, we're going


to hear exactly the same thing.


The nice part about this is more than at any time in the past, Google is letting us see


inside their head.


They're basically saying, like, at least here in the U.S., other markets, granted, and markets


outside of English language and Western Europe for sure, they are less good at this, but


at least in these markets, I think they are doing such a good job fighting spam and manipulation


that they are basically like, sure, come at me, bro.


Like I got this.


I can tell you exactly what I'm going to do, and there's nothing that you can do to manipulate


me.


Very few things.


As a result, we know what's going to build great strategies for us in the future.


I'll show you what I'm talking about.


All right.


If I'm a marketer and I'm thinking about my link strategy for the long term, I've got


to have a strategic roadmap with goals, with a particular approach, because you can't get


good at something unless you are concentrating on it, focusing on it, improving it, and then


you have your tactical initiatives, the things you're actually doing each day to move the


needle and you have metrics that you use to measure it.


This is pretty classic.


I don't care what kind of investment you're making, personal, professional, you need one


of these.


Links are the same thing.


So let's try an example.


I found this website ranking on page two for either pasta equipment or commercial pasta


equipment.


Geraldine, you can tell me if my accent is terrible here.


But it's lineapasta.it.


It's a great website.


This is totally my kind of website.


Look at this.


Do you see?


There's a moustachioed mascot.


Clearly a match.


I mean, the site's about pasta.


I'm all about pasta.


And they have solid reviews like this one.


Can you read it?


Everything fine.


Is most Italian review I ever hear?


Prego.


So lineapasta, they do not have a ton of links.


But they're doing okay.


Let's say they've got, right, they're going to take a strategic link approach here.


So you have some link goals.


They want to rank for key terms that are going to bring the right customers to them.


They're not too worried about content marketing and earning a lot of traffic that's not directly


converting.


So they're going to apply a very product-centric link strategy.


They're going to use partnerships because they have a lot of relationships with restaurants


and with vendors and with media and chefs in order to get those links that they want.


And the plan is we're going to do outreach to our current partners first, through our


salespeople, to our restaurant buyers.


We're going to leverage our founders' contacts with the restaurants and the chefs and the


PR through media, and then we are going to measure that through the links that we get


and through a number of other things.


Good.


Way to go.


I like this.


This is a strategy.


It might not be the right strategy.


It might not work every time.


But it is a real strategy.


It's something you can test and iterate on.


We're going to need a couple other things here.


We desperately, in the link world especially, we need buy-in on experimentation.


If you find some amazing link tactics like image galleries, which Ali Brown mentioned


in this link roundup, I'm not usually found in roundups, but some of the link ones are


pretty solid, I think that's great.


Awesome.


You should be able to pursue it.


You should be able to fail.


You should be able to fall on your face and get up and do another one.


You need the right expectations on the time to get to ROI.


Because we've all been through this slog.


If you've done SEO ever, you know that you start working and a few months in, everybody's


tapping that foot, going like, what?


Come on.


I thought this was supposed to bring us a lot of traffic.


Where is it?


And then of course you eventually get there.


And you've got to have this balance.


And I'm going to talk about both of these sides of the equation today.


The balance between long-term investments and short-term hacks.


So long-term investments might be things like, well, we're going to do a content marketing


strategy, or we're going to have a big press strategy.


And short-term hacks might be like, well, we're going to find some listing sites that


accept pasta-related websites and we're going to submit there.


So long-term investments, they have high upfront costs, they're slow to show returns, but they


earn links while you sleep.


They're earning links while you're doing nothing, and virtually nonexistent spam risk because


they are entirely editorially given.


Short-term hacks tend to be you pay in time or dollars as you go with each one.


They can show very fast return on investment, no doubt about it.


I'm not disputing that.


But every time, it's effort in equals links out.


You'll get a little bit better, and maybe you'll develop some, reduce some of that friction,


but in general, they also tend to have more spam risk.


Not all of the tactics that I'm going to talk about will or do, but some can have them,


especially if you're not careful.


I'm not going to let that stop me from talking about it.


I don't think that's appropriate.


We're going to be transparent.


Let's be transparent.


So I looked at these many hundreds of websites, and I built five categories.


Five sort of what I call long-term strategic link plays that work.


And I could not find a site that didn't fit into one of these.


That said, if you have seen a website that is doing sort of what you'd call long-term


strategic link play that fits the model, I'll share the models that I'm using here, and


you think it doesn't fit into any of these five categories, please let me know, because


I would love to follow up on these.


But so far, I have found no website that doesn't fit into one of these, no successful ones


anyway.


First one, first path, the community and user-generated content path.


How does it work?


Well, you start by enabling a platform where a community is essentially earning value by


contributing content or products or ideas or reviews or submissions.


And then you invest in amplification of those contributions.


You let the platform help amplify the people, and you nudge your contributors to essentially


drive links to you.


I'll give you a ton of examples of these.


I'm sure you're familiar with many of them.


This is how Yelp gets links through their badges.


This is how TripAdvisor gets links.


This is how Etsy gets links through products that people put on the community.


This is how Medium gets links through the content people put there.


It's how Dribbble gets links through all the designers pointing their portfolio there.


It's how Memeorandom gets links by aggregating lots of news, political news.


Tech meme is the same for tech.


This is Product Hunt, gets a bunch of app developers and site developers and tech developers


and game developers to do it.


This is Ravelry, which we heard about last night at Ignite, where knitters are putting


up all their patterns and those kinds of things.


It's Forex Factory, right?


Which is, as far as financial websites in the Forex space goes, pretty darn white hat,


and they've done it through creating a community that contributes and then links.


Second path.


Press and media.


This one's pretty simple, too.


It works because you focus on the people or a product or an industry, a particular problem


that's naturally attracting press, blogger, influencer, interest, and then you leverage


sort of the fundamental underlying factors of fame or controversy, of storytelling, et


cetera, and you earn amplification through that.


And you try and associate, in general, you try and associate, if you're doing SEO, anyway,


you associate your narrative, your story, with the keywords that is most important to


your search traffic.


This is Tesla.


I mean, Elon Musk has never had to build a link in his life, right?


This is Warby Parker.


It's Dollar Shave Club.


This is Uber.


GoldieBlox.


Simple.


Great company out of Portland, Oregon.


Glowforge right here in Seattle.


So all of these folks have essentially earned their links not through specific outreach


but really through press and media and being worthy, press and media worthy with a great


narrative behind them.


Third one, embed path.


This one, I would say of the five that I'm going to show that are long-term, has the


most risk.


And I believe, was it earlier this week or last week that Google actually posted again


about the risk of embeds?


Was that this week?


Yeah.


Last week?


OK.


So how does it work?


When it works, well, for white-out sites, you're basically creating a platform, media,


commerce, anything you can imagine, or products.


Could be tools, graphics, forms, that works via installation on third-party websites.


So it's basically people take your stuff and they put it on their site.


And that is how the platform works.


You build the initial audience.


It doesn't have to be big, usually.


It can start really small.


And then you're essentially using that to get a broad adoption.


Those early adopters are helping you build that platform.


And then you're leveraging the embed format to earn the right links to the right places


with the right anchor text, all that kind of stuff.


This is SlideShare.


It's Vimeo.


It's Typeform, or SurveyMonkey, if you like.


This is Rotten Tomatoes, right, with their critic reviews and with their tomato fresh


scores.


This is Walk Score, who does this in the real estate market.


It's TradingView, who has a whole section on charts and widgets.


This is very impressive in a hyper-competitive space.


And they do really well with it, I think, because they nail the embed format.


They really get it right.


They don't try and be too spammy with them, either.


Fourth one, partnership and alliance path.


This one is a little more complex.


And it tends to be, it's very, typically very B2B.


So basically works with, you find an audience for your product, your service, your company,


that forms links alongside a partnership type of relationship.


And then you craft some type of common structure for how those partnerships look.


You nudge through the partnership, through whatever you want, contracts or informally,


suggested style, logo use, citation requirements, et cetera.


And you vary your link destination and anchor text over time.


And you give pages a boost when and where they need them.


A lot of times APIs and data use stuff, it sort of almost takes on the embed concept


in a way.


But this is how folks like return path who judge the quality of email sender addresses


and email sender IP addresses, it's full contact, right?


It's Trulia.


This is Box.


This is SendGrid.


This is Otis Elevators, who in many of the commercial buildings and for many of the commercial


real estate architects who use Otis Elevators link to them because of the partnership that


they have together.


I mean, link building for Otis Elevators is probably tough, but partnership path works


great for them.


And then last but certainly not least, probably one of the ones we are most familiar with,


especially in the Moz world, content marketing.


Right?


So this, when I do get a little frustrated, like I see sometimes folks say, content marketing


is just the new link building.


I think all those sites that I showed and all the strategies that I showed before don't


really fit into what I'd call content marketing replacing link building.


First off, content marketing is its own whole world and content strategy is its own whole


world and content can be used for things that are not just link building and many times


should be.


But content is just one way, just one way that you can build a long-term link strategy.


Works very simply, right?


You publish content that has high chances of earning natural links, you market that


content through channels that you own and control or through influencers and you build


a scalable process for amplification to reach new audiences so you can earn links from new


places.


This is E.A.R.


It's Master of Malt.


It's one of my favorite examples because they don't do this with traditional what I'd call


content content.


It's not written content or visual content.


They do it with a product content.


They essentially take amazing old whiskeys and then they pour very small drams of them


and they seal up the top with wax and they sell them on their website and so you can


buy these things that you would never be able to buy or afford, well, I would never be able


to buy or afford, except through this particular process.


Like their content in the content marketing is tiny drams of whiskey, which I think sounds


like my new favorite form of content.


It's quite amazing.


It's possible we'll return to whiskey in a moment.


It's WordStream.


I mean, Larry Kim, he basically was like, no, no, no, I see your content marketing and


I raise you an order of magnitude.


He's incredible.


Collectors Weekly, if you haven't checked out Collectors Weekly, it's kind of phenomenal.


They're basically a portal to get to their eBay pages, but their articles are so phenomenal.


Their content is so incredible.


I think Geraldine and I had a dinner conversation, I don't remember if it was last week or a


couple weeks ago, all about one particular article they'd written about like tchotchkes


that people buy and put in the walls of restaurants and the whole industry around it.


Incredible.


This is PolitiFact, right, who rates candidates' truthfulness in political statements.


It's Groove HQ, whom I'm sure many of you have seen phenomenal content from them.


It's Polygon.


It's KPCB.


KPCB, also one of my favorite content marketing examples because, well, until recently, they


only released one piece of content every year.


And it was good enough.


That was good enough.


Everybody knew who they were.


If I say the name Mary Meeker at a tech crowd, everybody knows exactly what she does.


They know that she's only producing content once a year.


Well, was only producing content once a year.


They know the name KPCB because of her incredible, incredible content.


I think there's a fair question to be asked here, and that is why isn't number six manual


link acquisition?


Why can't manual link acquisition, you know, go out, get a link, see where your competitors


are getting a link, get another one from there, go to a directory, get another link, why is


that not strategic?


Why doesn't that make the list?


Well, here's how it works.


I find places to get links, right, wherever that could be.


I figure out a way to acquire each potential link, and then I move on to the next potential


link source.


I mean, look, I did that for years.


That was like my first three or four years of SEO, was just this.


Maybe a little bit of keyword research.


But the thing about manual links is they do not scale with decreasing friction.


This is what a true long-term strategy looks like.


A long-term strategy scales up, meaning you can do more of it, while the friction of doing


each incremental piece decreases.


I do those things, and it is the same work that's required on day three as day 300, right?


You're not getting any benefit of scale here.


Maybe you're getting a little bit better at it, but I don't think that counts, right?


That's incremental improvement, not massive, massive reductions in friction.


These five strategies, these five, over time, less work yields more results.


That is what I mean by a strategic framework for link building.


That's why so far these are the only five that I found in the hundreds of sites' link


profiles that I analyzed.


What I see great link builders doing is focusing on a flywheel.


Since I'm most familiar with it, I'm going to use Moz's flywheel as an example, and I


think most of you are very familiar with it, and so you can join me in this exercise, all


right?


We do keyword research, right, and we have some industry intuition about what we think.


It's like me and Trevor and Brittany and Russ and Ronel, right?


We all get together and we're like, okay, we think this thing is good, and we should


have Jean Luca write about that.


We publish his post.


We push it out to email and to our RSS subscribers.


We promote it via social channels.


We earn some links and amplification from that, and then we grow those channels, right?


Each channel, as we amplify to it, each channel grows in size, assuming we've done a good


job, right?


This is the whole idea behind a great content flywheel, and that helps grow our domain authority


and our industry authority and our expertise in the field, right, and that earns us search


and referral traffic, which tends to be much more high intent, and then we can rank for


more and more competitive keywords, and we do this again and again and again.


Now, in 2006, I was lucky.


I was the only blogger on old SEOmoz.org, right?


And I was lucky if any piece of new content I published led to even one new link.


I was thrilled.


It was pretty silly, right, but I would come home like, I got a link today, got a link


today.


Now, 2016, I mean, it's almost embarrassing to say, right, but pretty much every post


we publish gets some links.


Some of them get many, many, many links.


There's almost never a post that doesn't get one link, so, you know, I don't even celebrate


it anymore.


It's not as special.


Moz is kind of this business built on content, right?


Business built on a content flywheel.


Dollar Shave Club, which just sold for a billion dollars, sounds nice.


They're built on a press and media flywheel, almost entirely press and media flywheel.


That was their link strategy, it was their paid strategy.


They did a brilliant job of it.


Dribbble built on a UGC community flywheel strategy.


The thing about flywheels is almost everyone is going to find points of friction, right?


My point of friction was I could not earn those links to the content I was producing.


I couldn't earn amplification to the right places, right?


But if you know where that friction lies, that, that is where I see the best, smartest


link builders applying short-term tactics, applying what many of us in the marketing


world have been calling growth hacks.


That's where you can really move the needle with a short-term tactic.


Hacks are not necessarily evil, they're not necessarily spammy, they don't necessarily


violate anything, right?


They can be super useful when you plug them in with a flywheel that's already working.


These are a few of my favorite hacks, but I'm not just presenting these like you can


go out and use them.


That's great, I want you to.


But I want you to know that there are 10,000 of these.


And you've heard of many of them and you'll find many more, but if you make that the center


of your strategy, you will not build a flywheel.


If you build a flywheel and you find points of friction and you apply these types of tactics


to it, now you have something.


Now you have a competitive advantage.


First one, republishing.


This is powerful, republishing is great.


I take an existing piece of content, I recreate a part or a whole, Ross Simmons talked a bunch


about this, and then I create additional traffic, additional reach, additional rankings from


that.


Medium for me has been a great cheat code.


The built-in network reach, the ability to use the cross-domain rel canonical, the ability


to link to wherever I want to, the fact that I can drive foot, Medium has been great for


this.


I have a ton of republishing tactics in this webinar that I gave earlier this year and


you can check that out for free.


Second one, guest contributions.


I'm not calling it guest posting because guest posting is sort of like directory link building.


There are some directories that maybe are a good idea, but for some reason the word


has been corrupted.


This is my favorite piece of advice that I've ever read or seen about guest publishing.


You should aim for 100 rejections a year.


The author says, I asked her what her secret was and she said something that would change


my professional life as a writer.


Collect rejections.


Set rejection goals.


You want to be great at guest contributions?


You should make a goal not of acceptance, not of publications, but of rejections.


The language you use to find the opportunities matters a lot.


If you're using terms like submit post or guest blog or guest post, chances are the


SCSI SEO world of the early 2000s is going to overrun you.


Usually solid, however, share your story, write for, guest author, I don't know why,


but these tend to turn out much better.


Number three, geography can be a big, big opportunity for great tactical links.


So let's say that I am ace spirits, ace spirits just off main street in Hopkins, Minneapolis,


or Hopkins, Minnesota, or near Minnesota.


Yeah, all right.


Isn't that cool?


Sweet.


That's the best part of wearing a microphone.


Okay.


I'm very white.


Let's just settle that right now.


No one's.


So step one, I am going to do a search for their competitors, other liquor stores, spirit


stores in the Minnesota area, in fact, in their particular area, and then I'm going


to find some popular businesses, two in particular.


Anyone from Minnesota want to help me pronounce CERDIX?


CERDIX?


CERDIX and Zips.


They have the most reviews, so I'm going to use them.


I'm going to use a combined query to find all the places where both of those are mentioned.


Oh my God.


I mean, Google.


This is beautiful.


Look at that.


Links, links, links, links, links.


All mine, all free for the taken.


Actually a couple of those you might have to pay, but all right.


I now have a public service announcement that I would like to make.


It is an important one.


You should be very cautious if you are building slide decks late at night while visiting online


liquor stores, because sometimes this happens.


That is $347.


I'm really sorry, Geraldine.


Sorry.


No, I know.


I'm very irresponsible.


Well, remember I wanted to buy that bottle of Octomor around the corner, but they had


great prices.


The shipping was only like $25.


Plus I did this on Memorial Day, and I got this email like five minutes after I ordered


from the owner of Ace Spirits who said, I used to use your services at Moz, so it's


likely your input guided you back to us.


Pretty cosmic.


I'm going to order so much scotch from this man.


It's just like, oh, man.


That's how you put a smile on this guy's face.


Pretty awesome.


Okay.


Number four.


Small site or content acquisitions.


Some great blog posts have been written about this recently, but you can see here that essentially


if I was Linnea Pasta, I mean, that blog is earning almost no money.


They're probably struggling just to get the posts up.


Making them an offer of a few thousand dollars or a few hundred dollars a month to move their


site over to a subfolder of mine, that would be beautiful, and the links just roll in.


So buying stuff can be very good.


And there's a couple of good blog posts out there about that too.


Number five.


You can be someone else's press.


If you are creating content and you are covering a space, if you write about other people in


your space, especially new people in your space, new startups, new companies, people


who are desperate for press, who are looking for attention, like this, look at it.


I mean, they're linking to, yes, the Boston Globe and Seattle Times and stuff, but they're


also linking to smaller sites out there.


Geek Wire and others, Peach and Retail Works.


There's a bunch of different the window dressing blog.


The Dockside Deli was mentioned in the Ozuki Press.


You get the idea.


If you write about other people, they will link back to you.


Sixth one.


I keep doing experiments on this because I just love it.


FYI, Anchor Text, still super powerful.


You can see here how Anchor Text on my bio leads back to everywhere, jereldine site ranking


for whatever I put in there, mostly because my bio gets picked up by lots of places who


write about me or Moz or any time I speak at an event or any time we are cross published


somewhere, bios are powerful.


If your founders or CEO or anybody in your organization has a bio that gets picked up,


you should use the Anchor Text therein.


Number seven.


Okay.


Directories, I mentioned this.


It's just like guest posting.


This stuff is real sketchy.


This stuff works pretty darn good, returns high quality results for a lot of the industries


that I looked at in my work here.


Eight.


Testimonials.


Not putting testimonials on your site, giving testimonials to other people.


This is like the very, very similar to the write about other people and become their


press links.


If you offer testimonials, very, very often people will pick them up and they will link


back to you.


Great way to go, very editorially given.


You can get links from the home pages of incredibly powerful sites through this.


And sort of a twist on this is case studies.


If you're willing to go above and beyond a testimonial and actually do a case study around


a vendor that you're using, you can frequently get multiple pages pointing to lots of stuff


on your site with these.


Number nine.


It still works great.


The image brand content reclamation.


So if you have monitoring set up for people who are already using your stuff or if you


want to do it manually, I found so there's a bunch of ways that you can do the reverse


Google image search.


The best one is to use the right click and then search Google for this image.


I don't know why, but the other ones don't return as many results, at least for me.


And then you can find people who have used your content, used your content but haven't


linked back.


Which is sweet, right?


Because all you generally have to do is drop them a line and they will do it because they'd


prefer not to have a trademark violation on their hands.


You can see that search Google for this image returned like 200 results for this particular


image that I created a couple years ago versus things like tiny eye or the Google images


search which just didn't have great results for me.


If you want to do this at scale, you can use a monitoring tool.


Mention and what's the other one?


Talk walker.


Those types of folks.


They'll let you do it for words and phrases but not unfortunately for URLs and for links.


So that's frustrating.


Fresh web explorer will, but you decide.


Most of you are probably MoS peril members so that would be great.


Last one.


Orthogonal alignments.


I wasn't sure exactly what to call this.


I think lots of people in the SEO world call it different things.


But you basically take your website and business and then you find all these connections that


are not necessarily directly related to what you do but are orthogonal to what you do.


So it could be things like employee programs or tech that you use or sponsorship, social


causes that you support, founder attributes, whatever it is.


So artistic intersections, right?


Like you have a site that is designed all in CSS and it is very, very pretty and it's


adaptive.


You can submit yourself to hundreds of galleries that will be happy to link to you and by the


way many of them you control the submission title which means you can use your brand name


and anchor text.


They are editorially given links because they approve them.


They are some of the best directory kinds of links you can get out there if you are


doing this type of design.


Social causes.


So if you are MoS and we are part of the GSBA here in Seattle or the 50-50 pledge which


MozCon joined this year, you can see those right in there too.


Here is Seer Interactive with their sponsorship and support for the Phil Olympics.


The start-up grind events that they host there.


All of this stuff can work well.


These ten thousands like them work great.


But my final advice here, you need to ask a few questions.


You have got to ask.


Do my links mimic how people might find a site without search?


I think if the answer is no, you are at high risk from Google evolving their reasonable


surfer model into a we know everywhere everyone on the internet goes all the time model and


we can use machine learning and deep learning around that to figure out which links to count


and not.


If you do this, you are safe.


You are safe for the long term.


You have got to make sure that the links are from your linking sources, not just to you,


but from any source you are interested in are pointing to places that searchers find


valuable.


And we have to ask is that link profile going to pass Google's machine learning smell test


from a spam perspective?


So the way I think about it is this.


Imagine you are all smart SEOs, right?


You go to Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs or Majestic and you are looking at a list of


links, and when you do that, you can pretty easily go that doesn't look right, that doesn't


look right, that doesn't look right, and we are all really good at this.


A machine learning system will be able to do the same thing that a human being can do


today in the future.


If you have got this strategy that aligns with a long term play, your links are going


to be great.


You are going to be safe and you are going to keep ranking because links keep working.


They keep working years and decades after we thought they were going away.


If you haven't aligned them, I think you are in big trouble.


And I urge you not to do that.


We know where Google is going.


We have got the power to set a strategy and to use tactics to reduce those points of friction


in the strategy that we pick.


I hope I see some phenomenal link building from all of you.


Thank you.


So as a content strategist, I am very proud to hear you say content marketing strategy


is its own thing and content strategy is its own thing because it is very commonly conflated


which is a huge problem.


Something I want you to touch on.


By the way, I am still ticked off at Dr. Pete bringing the whole wire thing full circle.


I feel like he put content strategist in a vacant wire reference.


I am sure you wire people get that.


But he really highlights something I have seen Russ talk about, I see Brittany talk


about, and I have seen you and Dr. Pete talk about.


As a content strategist, when I look at keyboard explorer and I see no data or I focus so much


on very, very high competition terms, but that is not my best opportunity.


So one of the things I want you to highlight for us very simply is don't be afraid to go


after something that doesn't seem like it is the best opportunity but it is the best


opportunity for your brand.


Yeah, I think that is absolutely the case.


So content and links work very beautifully together.


And all of these strategies work very beautifully with search.


So a lot of the time what your boss, team, clients, managers are expecting of you is


rank highly for the terms and phrases that send us converting traffic, directly converting


traffic.


I don't want people who are just browsing the site.


And then you on the other side as a content strategist or as a link builder or as an SEO


are trying to convince them, hey, no, we need to approach this from another angle in order


to earn the signals that we need to rank for these terms over here.


And that is a really tough story to sell for folks who don't understand how SEO works and


how Google works.


I think the obligation sits on us, on all of us to explain this connection, to do a


great job of it and to get that buy-in, right, to make people understand, to make our teams


understand how that works.


I don't have awesome tools for you beyond you need to figure out what works for your


audience, right?


Is it competitive?


Is it data driven?


Is it KPIs?


Is it a story, a narrative that is going to help?


But it's our job to convince them.


I agree.


Well, I could stand up here all day and ask you questions.


I'm sure the audience feels the same.


But let's give it up for Rand Piskin.


Oh, my God.


MozCon 2014 - 12 - Mark Traphagen - Google+ Game of Thrones: Claiming Your Brand Kingdom

Every speaker here could probably tell you that you should be on Google Plus, and that's


where they stop.


They don't know what to say next, most of the cases.


They don't know where to go next with that.


In the next 15 minutes, I'm going to give you a strategy to take advantage of Google


Plus, to create an audience there, bring an audience there that builds your brand authority


and increases your visibility in search.


Now, as said, this is a Google, excuse me, this is a Game of Thrones built, the presentation


is built around that.


I just want to assure everybody there will be no spoilers, so if you're not up to date


on the series, you don't have to run from the room or cover your ears.


Let me tell you a little story.


Once there was a coveted kingdom, and the kingdom we're talking about here is Google


Plus.


Again, everybody says you should be on there for the SEO or something, but we don't know


what to do with it.


Now, there was a woman who knew that she should be queen.


She's our brand, and she should be queen there, but the problem is she has no subjects in


that land.


If you don't have anybody there, who are you going to engage with?


How are you going to build any authority in that place?


So she knew that she would need to go to a distant land and gather her own army and bring


it to that land.


And this became her Google Plus treasure list.


These are the reasons very quickly why you want to do this, why you want to bring an


audience there, why you want to have your own personal army to invade that land.


First of all is brand authority.


I believe that more and more Google is using Google Plus brand pages as a hub to understand


brands, to understand the trust and understand the engagement that people have with those


brands, especially for small or medium brands that Google may not know as well or have much


confidence.


As the years go by, that's going to become more and more the case.


The second is the search visibility, and that's something everybody kind of assumes is there,


but it doesn't really work the way most people think it works.


This post of mine at Bitly Plus One Power explains the amazing power of when you get


people engaging with your brand on Google Plus, particularly for personalized search,


which more and more people are using.


When people are logged into Google, how much you can influence their search.


And last, the Google ubiquity, which means that Google Plus is here to stay.


It's now thoroughly integrated through all of Google and especially all of online Google.


And so this is like Google saying like, hey, come on in and play in our playground right


in front of us where we can see what you're doing and see how people engage and react


around you.


That's an incredible opportunity that they don't give us every day.


Little bonus here.


This just came up in the last couple weeks.


As Jen mentioned, Google took away author photos from general search, but Google giveth,


Google taketh away, Google giveth.


And one of the things that they gave us on the same day that those disappeared, I started


noticing that for brands that I follow on Google Plus that I have circled, and if it's


a brand in particular that I engage with regularly, that that brand comes up in my search now


from relevant searches for their Google Plus content showing a brand photo next to it.


That's a first in the U.S. They've been testing that elsewhere, but that's brand new.


And I think this is just a little small indication of where they're going, that more and more


they want to be using, especially in the personalized area.


The brands and people that matter to you get an elevation in that search, come up higher


and get this little photo which is, you know, so coveted and now is so hard to get.


So the strategy I'm going to lay out for you in the next few minutes, and I'm only going


to have time to bullet point it for you.


But we worked this with a medium-sized brand, and these are the results we got.


During the campaign that we ran with this strategy, we raised their followers by about


three times.


Their Google Plus communities went up by almost eight times in membership.


During the time of the campaign, we almost doubled their organic search traffic, and


that traffic remained and continued to grow at a slower rate after that, so it wasn't


just flash in the pan.


We believe a large amount of that is attributable to their increased authority, which meant


and the increased number of followers, which meant that through personalized search, their


Google Plus content was getting pushed out as recommended and elevated content in the


searches of not just those people, but their Google networks, which by the way includes


not just who they follow on Google Plus, but things like their Gmail contacts.


And we also raised their email sign-ups by almost three times.


Now what is that conquest strategy?


How do we get into that land of Google Plus, and far more importantly, how do we begin


to build the engagement that I've proven builds authority on that site and that extends that


authority out into all of Google?


First you've got to establish your home base, and that's your Google Plus brand page.


It's very simple to set up a page, but you want to make sure that it's search optimized,


particularly that you've got your important keywords in that story section, which is kind


of the about section of your page, because Google uses those like keywords when people


search for you, particularly on Google Plus, but probably to some extent also in Google


personalized search as well.


Make sure that page is verified, which if it's a generic brand page means simply that


you have a correct connection, the main URL on the brand page is to your official website.


Link back to that official website from your page, from your home page of your site, and


you should get that little check mark next to the URL, which means Google now knows the


association.


This is the right page for this website.


Now you've got to provision that base.


There has to be something there, and that's two things.


First of all, posting regular content there.


That's like a no-brainer for social media, I hope, but particularly important here, not


just so that when people come to look at your page they see there's some there there, but


also because that content becomes the hub as you get engagement from people, as they


begin to trust your brand there, they Plus One things, they comment on it, they share


those posts.


That's the content that gets elevated and pushed up in personalized search in their


extended networks on Google.


And then engage with others.


Just a little tip, still very little known, is that for the last couple of years Google


Plus brand pages can follow people or other brands without being followed first, unlike


a Facebook page.


Just quickly you want to use that carefully and judiciously.


If you follow too many people too quickly from a brand page, it can get throttled for


you.


You can follow the people that you want to, but you can go out and start to engage with


others and engage in Google Plus communities and get your brand known.


Now the next part of our strategy, and this is getting to the heart of it, is gathering


our generals, gathering the people who are going to be the attractors to bring people


in, because the whole heart of my strategy here is if you can't find your audience on


Google Plus or it's not easy for you, go out and bring the audience in there so that you


can get that engagement, get that authority, get that influence with them.


So we used subject matter experts.


Now these are not the ones we use for the brand that I'm talking about, but I put these


faces up there because they're the kind of people that first of all that Eric Enga and


I have had on our own hangouts for Stone Temple Consulting on air, and they're faces that


are recognizable to everybody in this room.


They're the kind of people that you'd want to engage with, that you'd want to see.


So we set up for the brand a series of subject matter expert hangouts where people could


know that they could come and see a live show, they could actually engage live questions


and answers with that expert.


These are people that this audience wanted to see and wanted to connect with.


So we built relationship with these generals so that they would, next thing is send out


the dragons, and that's what I'm calling our messengers.


So the great thing about a Google Plus hangout is people don't have to be on Google Plus


to enjoy and watch the hangout.


You can promote it anywhere.


So we went out into the brand's email list.


We went out on their social media.


We went out into all of their communities that they already had to all the, you know,


hither and yon, the territories, and spread the word.


Hey, this expert is going to be live on the air, and you can just come and come to YouTube


or you can come to the Google Plus event page.


You can watch this.


You can post your questions and engage with it.


Great little trick, by the way.


There's an app for Google Plus hangouts on air called Comment Tracker that allows you


to bring in live comments, not just from the Google Plus event, but from people watching


on YouTube, people commenting on posts that have shared about it.


From anywhere you can bring those in, you can actually put the questions and comments


right up on the screen.


So now you've got to call your army in.


You've got to get in those troops to bring them in to invade the Google Plus land.


And where we did that is in the hangouts.


Now because I didn't have permission from the brand to use their hangouts in the example


here, I'm using our hangouts.


This is our Digital Marketing Excellence show where each week Eric Enga interviews people


like Lee Odden and Rand Fishkin and people that you know in the industry.


Now in the brand hangouts that we did, we included a strong call to action in each of


these that was an invitation to dedicated communities that were set up for each hangout


that were topically based around the subject of the hangout with the promise that the people


for some period of time would be able to come to that community and engage with this expert


further.


So if you liked what you got or if you didn't get your question answered in the hour-long


show, you know, just join this community and you can actually interact with this expert


and, of course, with other people who love and want to talk about this particular topic.


So now you've done two things.


First of all, you've earned the respect of those people by associating subject matter


experts they already respect and love with your brand.


And they like you because you've made that possible.


You've made a connection for them that they wouldn't have had otherwise.


But now the real secret here is you need to bring them into the land to conquer it.


And the land that you're bringing them into is Google Plus communities, as I mentioned


a moment ago.


So again, we established in this particular strategy a dedicated community topically very


specific to the niche, the audience that the hangout was about and invited people to come


in and join that community.


We've turned them into Google Plus users.


Now, this may be the only thing they ever do on Google Plus is be a part of this community.


But that's okay with us.


We don't care if they use anything else on Google Plus if they're using us.


And here's why.


Because Google knows the brand association.


If you create a community from your brand page, in other words, that community is associated


with your brand page, then that community, the connection is there.


Google even displays it right on the page.


This is our Google Authorship and AuthorRank community.


Now over 26,000 members, daily active people posting questions.


We have some of the best experts about Google Authorship in there answering people's questions.


And that's owned now by our brand.


And so Google sees that connection.


Now, we know that even stronger because up until a couple months ago, Google used to


display the total aggregate Plus Ones for a brand on the brand page.


They replaced that recently with something called view counts because they just thought


that was maybe a more useful metric.


But the Plus Ones are still being aggregated.


They're still being counted.


And I confirmed that with Google's John Mueller.


What we discovered as we began to build these communities and get associated with some of


the top marketing communities on Google Plus was that Google counts all of the membership


of a community as a Plus One for your brand.


So we took our brand page up from a few thousand Plus Ones to over 150,000 Plus Ones in like


a month because we started creating and being a part of these communities and they're associated


with our brand.


More importantly for what we're talking about here is that that counts as engagement around


your brand.


And, again, if you go back to that bit.ly article that I shared earlier on the earlier