Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | June 2011

Download at http://bit.ly/mozinbound

The Unfair Advantage of Inbound MarketingHow marketers can use sweat equity instead of $$ to earn outsized returns on

their online traffic efforts.

makes SOFTWARE!!We don’t offer any consulting.

Where Does

Web Traffic Come From?

Every Marketer Sees This:

But That’s Not Reality

Referring + Other = 50% of our traffic? But this chart is basically saying Twitter, Facebook, blogs, feed readers and every non-search site that sends traffic is exactly the same.

All the traffic we receive that isn’t the result of paid acquisition or advertising (in SEOmoz’s case – 95%+)

comes from Inbound Marketing!

For more on Inbound Marketing, check out Brian + Dharmesh’s awesome book: http://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Found-Google-Social/dp/0470499311

Inbound Marketing Outbound Marketing

Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter)

Blogs + News Sites

Links from Partners + Friends

Forums + Discussion Sites

Q+A Answers w/ a Link

User Profiles + Comments

Opt-In Email Newsletters

Organic Search Rankings

Inclusion in Universal Search Results

Viral Content

Viral Content

Display Advertising

Buying Email Lists

Site Sponsorships

Demographic Targeting

Affiliate Marketing

Video Ads

Paid Search Ads

Contextual Ad Networks (AdSense)

Facebook Ads

You Must Become a Hub for Great

Content in Your Niche

http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.htmlSometimes, a single piece of content or just a few, can yield these results but, more often, it takes dozens to hundreds of attempts to become a resource hub.

Site that offers:• Unique Research• Informed Opinions• News/Trend Analysis• Multimedia Content• Authentic Expert Contributors• Quality Discussion/Interaction

Referenced by industry

blogs

Mentioned in news

publications

Cited at conferences + events

Liked/Shared on Facebook

Links are Tweeted

Answers on Q+A sites reference its resources

Forum discussions link to its pages

People email links to each

other

Inbound Marketing Channels

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Data via Google’s occasional public statements and some inference (for 2006 + 2009)

# of Searches/Day in Google

Currently, there are more than 3 billion searches/day

on Google

You can see what Google sees by using the “cached snapshot” functionality from their search results, or by using the Mozbar (http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar) and browsing as Googlebot.

Robust, Accessible, HTML Text is Key

Users see a wealth of potential content Google sees a small number

of words that don’t tell much of a content story.

“Good” Content vs. “GREAT” Content

Satisfies the searcher’s basic information requirements

Written by a human and not duplicated elsewhere

Long enough to fulfill basic needs of engines for depth/uniqueness

Grammatically correct; free of spelling/punctuation errors

Surprises and delights the searcher by being remarkable

Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers

May leverage video, audio, graphics & photos to convey a unique, shareable experience

Produced by extraordinary writers/designers/producers

Visit https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and start experimenting. You’ll learn amazing things. http://www.seomoz.org/article/keyword-research-guide is a good guide.

Keyword Research

Make sure to use “exact” match!

This post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/great-content-for-seo-simpler-than-you-ever-imagined goes into detail about how to leverage this tactic to build great resources people will love.

How to Know What People Want:

Post is here – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links and check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/4 - for tons of ways to earn awesome links.

Pages/Sites Need Links to Rank, But Not All

Links Are Created Equal

Bing + Google have said publicly they use Twitter + Facebook for rankings: http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389 and Moz’s correlation data suggests they’re telling the truth: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

Social Signals Influence Rankings

Check out http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/merging-of-search-social-wappow for more on how search engines and social media are mixing together.

Social Data’s Directly in the SERPs, Too!

Geraldine’s blog is awesome, but it would never rank on page #1 for this query without

the power of the social connection.

Social Media

For some great Facebook-focused marketing tactics, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about

Facebook More fans = more people potentially exposed to

your content.

But… You also need to create posts that will

show up in “top news” on your fans’ walls. That’s

more challenging.

I highly recommend http://www.slideshare.net/danzarrella/the-science-of-re-tweets which helps show the correlation between activities on Twitter and your ability to have the message spread.

TwitterIt’s not just about the follower count. Your

tweets have to count for something and drive actions/awareness.

Good advice on LinkedIn profiles here - http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/optimize-your-linkedin-profile-for-best-results-howto (also, don’t miss the comments which discuss how the links work).

LinkedIn

Like Facebook, LinkedIn now has a wall that drives “likes” and

comments (as well as traffic).

LinkedIn’s “Groups” are a powerful way

to grow your network and spread

a message.

The travel subreddit has nearly 19K registered subscribers - http://www.reddit.com/r/travel - and thousands more browsing. Full list of subreddits, sorted by # of subs here: http://metareddit.com/

Reddit

Reddit’s grown to be in the top 100 most visited sites on the web, and even smaller subreddits can send remarkable traffic (and result in

tweets/FB shares/etc.)

Two great activities on http://www.stumbleupon.com for beginners: #1) Discover content that people share in your niche. #2) Find great stuff to share/tweet that will earn you more followers.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon reaches more than 15 million active monthly users, and drives massive amounts of outbound traffic.

Using http://www.google.com/reader, you can see how many GG Reader users subscribe + average # of posts/week. Those with fewer than 50 subscribers and 1 post/week often are too tiny to be worthwhile.

Participating in the Blogosphere

http://tumblr.com + http://hunch.com + http://del.icio.us + http://etsy.com + http://wikipedia.org + http://www.newsvine.com + http://care2.com and 100s of other social sites can potentially provide value for sites/marketers who participate; there’s no shortage of opportunities to explore.

The “Long Tail” of Social

Content Marketing

Data via http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Social-Media-and-Young-Adults.aspx and http://www.slideshare.net/DianeRayfield/social-medias-shocking-statistics. See also Hubspot’s awesome slide deck: http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/how-to-be-the-awesomest-marketer-ever

Blog Readership is Up, But to Fewer Blogs

Research for this statement via PEW Internet & Captain Obvious

Great Blogs Rock.

Mediocre Blogs are Useless.

Every two years, we put out http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors but leave the URL the same, so it continues to accrue great link/social/sharing signals.

Evergreen Content

Research like http://startupgenome.cc/ gets tweeted, shared and cited, meaning you earn links, traffic + all sorts of good inbound marketing metrics.

Research + White Papers

Stats for launch day of Startup Genome project’s

research

After producing what is, admittedly, an awesome graphic - http://www.paralegal.net/judge-judy/ - Paralegal.net rose to page one in Google (and got bjillions of drive-by visits, too).

Infographics

The Nissan Leaf http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/index site uses HTML5 to its full capability, and it’s pretty as heck, too.

Multimedia + Interactive

Fostering Community

These (http://www.seomoz.org/users/profile/) emulate the success of places like LinkedIn, Quora, Stackoverflow and others. They’ve increased participation and traffic to the profiles dramatically.

User Profiles

Progress Bar

Highly customizable profile details

Custom Photo

Links to other web profiles

When users contribute content (as with http://artistmarketplace.moleskine.com/en) they’re invested in the promotion and success of their work, and thus, your site!

User-Generated Content

Because Yelp + Citysearch had taken the “badges” angle for local businesses, http://urbanspoon.com incented foodie bloggers to link to the site by featuring those bloggers’ posts + content on the site.

An Incentive to Share

These “spoonback” were key to Urbanspoon’s growth (now ahead of Citysearch in traffic!)

The genius game-like badges, points and progress at http://stackoverflow.com has helped make it one of the most successful sites in the Q+A world.

Gamification

Email

I use email to subscribe to http://www.avc.com/ and am 1 of 100K+ who read Fred’s posts on a daily basis. That’s a powerful inbound channel!

Content Subscriptions

The Moz Top 10 http://www.seomoz.org/moztop10 attracts lots of readers, who then consume and share content. One big key to success – don’t just promote your own material.

Newsletters

Deal sites like http://groupon.com have had huge success. Private models like http://gilt.com and http://appsumo.com run interesting variants that also work well.

Promotions

BTW: Write down that email address; it’s a good one to have.

RSS + XML Feeds

Feeds aren’t just useful for subscribers. They “ping” search engines, enable easy syndication and can be used by lots of content aggregators that send traffic, too.

Blog Content Feeds

On average, this many people actually read a

post via feed

I was actually tempted to subscribe. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ThisYearsGirl has some awesome stuff!

Anything with Regular Updates

Etsy makes it possible to subscribe to a feed of

anyone’s shop on the site!

Presentations

I did a brief, 4-minute presentation at the Seattle 2.0 Awards - http://www.geekwire.com/2011/seomoz-ceo-rand-fishkin-googles-panda-update that promoted our hiring + growth (focused on that audience’s values rather than trying to sell to them)

Live Events

Our webinars http://www.seomoz.org/webinars attract 500-1,000 attendees and earn lots of tweets, blog posts and links. Hubspot’s get 10K+ attendees http://www.hubspot.com/marketing-webinars/

Webinars

I put many of my presentation on http://slideshare.net where they earn thousands of additional views.

Online Presentations

Video

YouTube actually ranks as the second largest “search property” in the US, behind only Google: http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/05/25/youtube-hits-3-billion-views-per-day-2-days-worth-of-video-uploaded-every-minute/

YouTube

Don’t be a honey badger. Care about

YouTube’s potential!

The “Long Tail” of Video Sites

http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/08/long-tail-video-half-viewing-minutes/

Long tail of video sites get 50% of all

online video traffic/views!

At SEOmoz, we use http://www.wistia.com who submits our video XML sitemaps to Google for us - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472

Self-Hosted Video Content

Local + Mobile

To register, go to http://www.google.com/placesforbusiness. Also check out http://www.davidmihm.com/local-search-ranking-factors.shtml for great local ranking tips.

Google Local / Maps / Places

Fox Sports Grill? I’m sorry Google, but that

is not barbecue.

Yelp’s results quality is much higher than Google’s and their interface is better, too. Impressive stats as well -http://officialblog.yelp.com/2011/02/via-yelp-mobile-yelpers-call-a-local-business-every-other-second.html

Yelp

http://foursquare.com has pretty awesome stats for local businesses participating with them.

FourSquare

http://www.tatango.com/ makes it possible for locally-focused sites to have cellphone “text lists” the same way web companies have email lists. It’s powerful stuff for local businesses.

Mobile Subscriptions + Tatango

Q+A, Forums + Discussion Sites

Granted, not all the questions (or answers) on http://answers.yahoo.com are of exceptional quality, but due to very high traffic, participation can yield solid results.

Yahoo! Answers

The StackOverflow Q+A platform is one of the most engaging, attracts high quality folks and offers lots of connection/marketin opportunity. See list of sites here - http://stackexchange.com/sites

StackExchange

Quora

If you haven’t yet started contributing on http://www.quora.com, the Google social integration is a great excuse

Quora’s audience tends to be startup-y, techy and

very well-connected.

The platform at http://namesake.com is quite impressive and some of the contributors equally so. Whether it achieves critical mass remains to be seen.

NameSake

Truer works were never typed.

Whoa! Cool.

The “Long Tail” of Discussion Sites

Public Relations, Guest Authoring

and Comment Marketing

Guest blogging (or contributing content to any type of publisher) is a great way to build your brand and earn links. Tools like http://myblogguest.com/ can help make the process easier.

Guest Blogging + Writing

HARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/) is a popular service that lets you get contacted when relevant reporters/journalists need sources.

Direct Connections to Journalists

If you’re seeking a PR firm, http://prfirms.org/ can help, but it pays to get references. PR is a field where a few firms have the right connections and the rest can’t help nearly as much.

Classic Public Relations

This post has a list of recommendations for blog commenting as a marketing tactic: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy

Comment Marketing

Inbound Marketing is

Inbound Marketing is

All Connected

Original Audience: 250

Total Reach: 10,000

Buh.. Zam.

Some Favorite Tools

Check out some interesting and useful ways to customize Google Analytics via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seomoz-google-analytics-setup-whiteboard-friday

Google Analytics

Via https://analytics.postrank.com/ - PostRank will measure the social sharing activity on any URL in a feed, so you can see what content works (and doesn’t) on the social web

PostRank

Survey Monkey is inexpensive, scalable and accurate. It’s less beautiful than other platforms, but far more flexible – http://www.surveymonkey.com

Survey Monkey

I know I’m biased, but it’s really useful for tracking and improving SEO stuff http://pro.seomoz.org

SEOmoz PRO

http://www.mailchimp.com is perfect for most small-medium businesses, but once you get over 100K susbcribers, it doesn’t work quite as well. Great analytics, deliverability + reporting, though!

MailChimp

http://trunk.ly keeps track of all the links I share on Facebook/Twitter/my Blog/etc. without any effort on my part. It then builds a searchable index so I never forget/lose a link.

Trunk.ly

Place Facebook’s Insights widget on your website + see demographic data about your site’s visitors, just like you can w/ your Facebook fans. http://www.facebook.com/insights. Learn more about Insights here - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about

Facebook Insights

You can find developer info for how to add FB comments here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/comments/

Facebook Comments

Comments left here appear on Facebook + replies to those are posted here!

Whoa! Cool.

Disqus Comments

Problem w/ video is it’s hard to measure engagement w/ traditional analytics that show only pageviews. http://www.wistia.com fixes that in an elegant way.

Wistia Video Analytics

If you use shortened URLs on Facebook + Twitter, http://bit.ly can help track and segment out the portion of the traffic that’s direct vs. referral (but hidden due to desktop/mobile apps)

Bit.ly PRO for Short URL Tracking

A terrific tool to research high-value targets on Twitter: http://followerwonk.com/

FollowerWonk

These folks have tons of followers; we should connect with them!

See who links to who on the web, and how important those links are via http://www.opensiteexplorer.org

Open Site Explorer

Using http://getlisted.org, I can see which local data sources may not have my business included (or may have inaccurate information). Fixing/including can help w/ local rankings + traffic.

GetListed

Via http://feedburner.com – though it hasn’t been updated in a long time, it’s still the best free software for monitoring feed activity and growth.

Feedburner

Using http://www.google.com/alerts, I can set up daily email notifications of word mentions. http://www.seomoz.org/labs offers several options to track fresh web notifications as well.

Google Alerts / Blogscape

http://www.summify.com sends me a daily digest of the most tweeted/shared things from the people I follow. Oftentimes, it’s really useful stuff that I’m glad not to miss.

Summify

Firefox 4 compatible, the Mozbar - http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar - combines nearly every feature I’ve ever wanted in a toolbar into one (and it has a pretty aesthetic, which I appreciate)

MozBar for Firefox

http://www.wistia.com not only has great analytics on videos, but also automatically creates video XML sitemaps so Google can show our rich snippets for video directly in the SERPs.

Wistia

http://knowem.com checks the availability of a username across dozens of social sites automatically and provides direct links to register them.

KnowEm

Using http://unbounce.com/ allows us to create hosted versions of landing pages to test without needing to bug our dev/engineering team.

Unbounce’s Landing Page Platform

The Inbound Marketing Process

Step #1: Discover

Step #2:Test

Step #3: Measure

Step #4: Repeat

Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.

Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.

Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact

Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

Q+A

Rand on the Web

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: rand@seomoz.org

You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial

Download at http://bit.ly/mozinbound