Transcript: #StandardsGoals for 2024: What’s new for BISAC - Tech Forum 2024
ExpOn 2011 - Rand Fishkin - The Power of Inbound Marketing
1. The Power of Inbound Marketing
How changes in human behavior and the web landscape have led to a
revolution in customer acquisition (and how marketers can take advantage!)
Download at http://bit.ly/mozsaopaulo
Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz | July 2011
23. Search
Currently, there are more
than 3 billion searches/day
on Google
Data via Google’s occasional public statements and some inference (for 2006 + 2009)
31. An Unhealthy Focus on the Controllable,
Spend-Driven Channels
Newspapers Contextual Ads
Banner Ads Paid Outdoor
Search
Television Video Ads
Magazines Radio
32. An Unhealthy Focus on the Controllable,
Spend-Driven Channels
Newspapers Contextual Ads
Interruption-
Banner Ads Paid Outdoor
Television
Based Video Ads
Search
Messaging
Magazines Radio
33. Inbound Marketing is Under-Invested
Unpaid drives
85%+ of traffic
(but garners only
~$5 billion of
investment in 2011)
Paid drives
<15% of web
traffic
(but wins a whopping
$31+ Billion of
investment in 2011)
Percent of Web Traffic from Various Sources to the Average Website
Web Traffic is driven almost entirely by organic/inbound/earned media, yet nearly all of the investment
in driving traffic to websites is through paid channels… This is an unsustainable dichotomy.
35. 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.
36. All the traffic we receive that isn’t the result of paid
acquisition or advertising (in SEOmoz’s case – 95%+)
comes from Inbound Marketing!
38. Inbound Marketing Outbound Marketing
Organic Search Rankings Paid Search Ads
Social Networks (Facebook, Twitter) Display Advertising
Inclusion in Universal Search Results Contextual Ad Networks (AdSense)
Blogs + News Sites Buying Email Lists
Links from Partners + Friends Site Sponsorships
Opt-In Email Newsletters Video Ads
Forums + Discussion Sites Demographic Targeting
Viral Content Facebook Ads
Q+A Answers w/ a Link Affiliate Marketing
User Profiles + Comments
Viral Content
For more on Inbound Marketing, check out Brian + Dharmesh’s awesome book:
http://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Found-Google-Social/dp/0470499311
39. You Must Become a Hub for Great
Answers on Q+A
Content in Your Niche Referenced
sites reference by industry
its resources Site that offers: blogs
• Unique Research
Forum discussions Mentioned in
• Informed Opinions
link to its pages news
• News/Trend Analysis publications
• Multimedia Content
Links are Tweeted People email
• Authentic Expert Contributors
links to each
• Quality Discussion/Interaction other
Liked/Shared
on Facebook Cited at conferences
+ events
Sometimes, a single piece of content or just a few, can yield these results but, more
http:/googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html
often, it takes dozens to hundreds of attempts to become a resource hub.
43. Discover What People Want
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.
44. Grow Your Social Network to Reach Searchers
Geraldine’s blog is
awesome, but it would
never rank on page #1
for this query without
the power of the social
connection.
Check out http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/merging-of-search-social-wappow for more on how
search engines and social media are mixing together.
46. 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.
For some great Facebook-focused marketing tactics, check out http://www.seomoz.org/blog/4-
facebook-marketing-tactics-you-might-not-know-about
47. Twitter
It’s not just about the
follower count. Your
tweets have to count for
something and drive
actions/awareness.
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.
48. LinkedIn
LinkedIn’s “Groups”
are a powerful way
to grow your
network and spread
a message.
Like Facebook, LinkedIn now has
a wall that drives “likes” and
comments (as well as traffic).
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).
49. 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.)
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/
50. StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon reaches more than 15
million active monthly users, and drives
massive amounts of outbound traffic.
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.
51. Participating in the Blogosphere
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.
53. Blog Readership is Up, But to Fewer Blogs
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
54. Great Blogs Rock.
Mediocre Blogs are Useless.
Research for this statement via PEW Internet & Captain Obvious
55. Evergreen Content
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.
56. Infographics
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).
58. User Profiles
Progress Bar
Highly customizable
profile details
Custom Photo
Links to other web
profiles
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.
59. User-Generated Content
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!
60. An Incentive to Share
These “spoonback” were key
to Urbanspoon’s growth (now
ahead of Citysearch in traffic!)
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.
61. Gamification
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.
63. Blog Content Feeds
On average, this many
people actually read a
post via feed
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.
64. Anything with Regular Updates
Etsy makes it possible to
subscribe to a feed of
anyone’s shop on the site!
I was actually tempted to subscribe. http://www.etsy.com/shop/ThisYearsGirl has some awesome
stuff!
65. Don’t Forget Email Subscriptions!
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!
67. Live Events
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)
71. YouTube
Don’t be a honey
badger. Care about
YouTube’s potential!
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/
72. The “Long Tail” of Video Sites
Long tail of video
sites get 50% of all
online video
traffic/views!
http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/08/long-tail-video-half-viewing-minutes/
73. Self-Hosted Video Content
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
75. Google Local / Maps / Places
Fox Sports Grill? I’m
sorry Google, but that
is not barbecue.
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.
76. Easiest Way to Win Google Maps
This blog post explains how: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/one-dead-simple-tactic-for-better-rankings-in-
google-local
78. Guest Blogging + Writing
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.
79. Direct Connections to Journalists
HARO (http://www.helpareporter.com/) is a popular service that lets you get contacted when
relevant reporters/journalists need sources.
80. Comment Marketing
This post has a list of recommendations for blog commenting as a marketing tactic:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/recommendations-blog-commenting-marketing-strategy
90. Step #1: Discover
Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.
Step #2:Test
Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.
Step #3: Measure
Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact
Step #4: Repeat
Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.
91. Q+A
Download at http://bit.ly/mozsaopaulo
You can now try SEOmoz PRO Free!
Rand on the Web http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial
• Twitter: @randfish
• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog
• Email: rand@seomoz.org