seo

Posted by Rob Toledo

With Mother’s Day in many countries having just passed (I learned this week that the UK celebrates Mothering Sunday earlier in the year), I thought it would be fun to have a conversation about SEO with one of the most incredible people on the entire planet: my mom. I asked her about what it is she believes our industry does on a daily basis as well as how she thinks search engines function in general.

The conversation was great; sort of similar to rubber duck debugging, except in this case the rubber duck was my mom, and instead of sitting there silently, she could comment when I started using terms she did not understand (and who can blame her; we’re pretty notorious for inventing words and phrases on whims).

Here are some of my favorite moments from the chat:

What do you think I do at work all day? “Work on your computer, fly toy helicopters, drink lattes… etc.”

Not going to lie, that’s pretty accurate; sorry, Will and Duncan!

What does SEO stand for?  “Search engine online”

Not quite, but at least she didn’t say “SEO optimization.”

Do you know what Bing is? “Bing bong?” *laughter ensues* “No, I had to look it up.”

I can appreciate the humor. I’m assuming she used Google but missed the irony; sorry, Duane.

How do search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo decide who to put at the top of a search result? “Don’t they base it mostly off of which sites are read the most?”

Not too far off, but how do they establish that list to begin with? “Test which ones people click on the most and then move them around a bunch to see what works best, right?”

Before I worked in SEO, this was how I thought it worked too; and in the grand scheme of things, this has some loose truth buried in there; partial credit.

How do search engines make money? “By putting those little ads all over the page.”

Nailed it.

If you were looking for a veterinarian close to you, what would you do? “I’d go to Google.com and type in “best veterinarian in Seattle” and look for people’s reviews. Or maybe ask a neighbor.”

Ah yes, the one thing that always thwarts a #1 ranking in the SERPs: a personalized recommendation from a friend.

If you were looking for advice on how to train a dog to stop barking, what would you search for? “How do I train my dog to stop barking, and then probably look for a website where people ask questions and then others give answers.”

I think she’s talking about Yahoo! Answers, the black hole of infinite internet wisdom…

How far down the page on the search results will you look? “Not too far, I don’t normally find what I want past the first couple listings.”

Besides being at the top of the page, what is the biggest factor on what you click on in the search results? “How many stars it has for reviews or if I recognize a company that I like.”

Ah yes, the trust factor.

If you don’t like the results for those searches, what would you do differently in your second search? “Probably give up. No, just kidding. Probably pick some different words to search for; maybe call someone depending on what I needed.”

Bonus question: If you were running a small flower shop, how would you try and get to the front page of Google for when people searched “fresh flowers”? “I’d name it AAA Best Fresh Flowers or something. I don’t know, probably call you, isn’t that your job?”

Phone book marketing at its finest.

OK that was fun, but why?

While those questions and subsequent answers might seem kind of silly, there is immense value in removing yourself from the SEO echo chamber and having occasional, down-to-earth conversations with someone from the 99% of search engine users who have minimal understanding of “under the hood” mechanics on results pages.

For me, working at an agency makes it pretty easy to get wrapped up in the lingo and terminology that many of us all comprehend without second thought. Phrases like WMT, dynamic urls, 301 redirects, SERPs, canonicalization, etc. are tossed around in casual conversation over morning coffee like we’re talking about the weather. But ask an outsider to translate, and I’m willing to bet we sound like toddlers speaking gibberish.

This is certainly not exclusive to SEO, as any of us who have friends in terminology-heavy industries like software, finance or medical fields can easily get lost listening in during a technical conversation. Or my personal favorite, ask someone in the US Military to spout off as many acronyms as they can remember and your head will be left spinning; it’s impressive.

Point being, it is important to understand that this gap in comprehension exists. When I was a bank teller in college, I would always find myself using terms and phrases that quickly earned perplexed looks from my customers. “It looks like the APR on your HELOC isn’t up-to-date; let’s have a PB take a look.”

I learned pretty quickly that in order to communicate effectively to my customers, it was vitally important that I spoke in a much more common language that they understood completely. Nobody likes to feel dumb; in my case, being a college kid trying to talk about personal finance to a partner at a law firm rarely ends well. “I’ll have my people take a look,” was always one of my favorite responses as the clarity in my error was bright as day.

For those of you who have been doing this whole SEO thing for a while now, think back to when you first started pitching the idea to bosses, your client list or even other marketing folks. I’m sure you can distinctly remember the looks you received during those conversations. One of my favorite responses of all time was, “Don’t most people just search for our brand name if they want to shop on our site?”

So, let’s simplify

One of most brilliant ads of the late 90s was the Apple Switch campaign.

Instead of focusing on RAM, graphics cards, processing speed and hard drive space, Apple took an approach that created a common user, the college student, the non-technical parents, the elderly, and simplified a message specifically for them:

We would all be doing ourselves a huge favor to make sure that our daily conversations with people not directly entrenched in the SEO industry use far less lingo and more conversational language. The VP of Marketing is always going to understand what more revenue means and probably cares far less about the specific details behind URL structure or anchor text distribution. Always start with the big picture then whittle your way down to the finer details only as far as your audience is willing to pay attention.

The takeaway

So how do we combat this echo chamber a bit? Here are some things that have really helped me out over the past year:

1. Take non-SEOs out for coffee

On some recurring frequency, schedule a coffee date with friends who you’re certain have little to no grasp on SEO and get their opinion on how they search. Bonus points for diversifying the demographics along a wide gradient of technical and non-technical folks. Ask them how they search for any number of things (navigational, transactional, and informational).

You will quickly see how differently each person functions when they’re on the hunt for something. They will likely reveal some great tips to keep in mind for your future SEO projects. Keeping your ear to the ground on how the “common folk” search often offers immense value in preparing a strategy.

1. Get active in non-SEO communities

One of my favorites is Hacker News, which has a very strong and relatively negative opinion of SEO. But these are the things that we need to read, because these are actual people’s opinions. I can hear Mike Pantoliano groaning from here, but reading through all the misconceptions a lot of these people have offers insight into what we as an industry need to continually work toward improving.

All the best work in the world amounts to nothing if the perception of the industry as a whole is negative. Folks like John Doherty, Rand Fishkin and Ross Hudgens are doing a great job defending the industry on HN, but there is plenty of work left. Besides, it’s always great to hear an opinion from the other side of the aisle.

1. Follow lots and lots of non-SEOs on Twitter

We’re all guilty of it; take a look through the people you follow on Twitter. I’m betting the majority of those people are somehow related to SEO as well. I can appreciate you want to be up on the latest and greatest news when it comes to search, but try to diversify this list as much as possible. Take your non-search interests and look for the thought leaders in those spaces; the balance is invaluable!

What are your thoughts? I would love to hear how you talk about technical issues to non-technical clients. How do you bridge the gap?

And lastly, a very Happy Mother’s Day to all the hard working moms out there. Without you, we wouldn’t all be here!

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Posted by Bill Sebald

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Creating demand where none currently exists is the expertise of a bullshit artist. Some in sales would take offense to that statement; some would agree. Where I believe this talent fails is with a particular kind of recurring revenue service – consulting and agency work. Inevitably you run out of steam and alibis. If you can’t produce what you promise, you either have to pack up your wagon and flee to another dusty town (which, let’s face it, is how some SEOs and digital marketers practice), or suffer sleepless nights worrying about facing your clients in the morning.

Personally, I don’t like traveling. I also really like my sleep.

This is a post about how I choose better clients. It starts with introspection, and ends with a connection. For each of these tips, I’m thinking specifically of a client I let walk away. If a strong partnership is what you seek, then you have to be able to decline potential clients. The customer is not always right. Sometimes they’re downright dangerous.

Now, I know this isn’t possible in every company. An agency I worked with rarely says no to work. Bad clients pile on and contribute to driving away employees in routine mass departures. When I was worked there relationships got contentious, and frankly, I didn’t see a lot of flawless consulting happening. The phrase we used around the office to convince ourselves this was normal was, “that’s agency life.”

I came to learn that wasn’t agency life.

To remind ourselves of some of the marketing ideologies we learned in college; most retailers employ the marketing department philosophy, whereas search fits the marketing concept. In SEO marketing we want to answer the searches being made more often than any other task, which may not fit nicely into a clients’ ROI demands. Luckily, this is something we can get ahead of with early, open communication with the prospect. Sometimes you’re able to reset expectations, sometimes not (where I kindly refer them to someone more of their mindset). It’s important to ask goal-oriented questions here, and give a real thought to what you’re positioned to achieve. What do they consider success? Does it match your beliefs? Have they had SEO before, and what were their frustrations? Are you better for them? Can you help them help you help them?

If you can truly embrace what you are as a service provider, and nurture deals accordingly, you’re in a very fortunate position. If you can perform SEO under the auspice of what is required for the client, instead of what the client thinks needs to be done, you’re well on your way to a successful partnership.

Clients I Avoid

Sometimes you need to cut the line before you reel in the catch. Once the catch breaks the water line, do you see a snagged horseshoe crab? Cut it. Did you pull in flounder? Invite me over for dinner. I’m a student of psychology and naturally think I size people up pretty well. There are basically three traits (or character flaws) that I am on high-alert for. As soon as I hit one, not only do I feel compelled to be reserved, but I close up – sometimes prematurely. Here are some of the personality types I avoid, and some tips on uncovering their true identities.

(Caveat: First impressions aren’t always accurate. First impressions should not the last chance to make a good impression. It’s very easy to misread people. I do keep that in the back of my head, just to balance me out.)

The Egomaniac

Some prospects may want to impress you. Sometimes they routinely impress themselves. Personally, I find them awfully hard to communicate with. You know the traits – they ask you questions only to cut you off and answer themselves. They are micro-managers. They brag incessantly about their past experiences. They believe they’re the only one that can truly defeat Superman.

They’re the type of person to say, “I didn’t get to where I am by not speaking up.” While on paper that sounds like a good trait, these can also be the people who have trouble accepting someone else’s expertise. They may not see the value of your otherwise salient recommendations. They tend to only respect other egomaniacs

But sometimes this is a front. Sometimes the egomaniac is socially awkward. A good skill in business is recognizing emotions, character flaws, and humanity when it really exists. Sometimes the egomaniac thinks he needs to be a killer. I have seen this disguise many, many times in my career.

I remember a client who managed to take down an entire marketing department with a previous agency. He was a product of a big name business advisor firm (name left out to prevent lawsuits) and drove some of my co-workers into therapy – honestly. There may have been no pleasing him, but the powers that be refused to cut ties. We weren’t able to do what we knew was best; we ultimately became an order taker for someone who wasn’t an expert in our field, but thought he was. This guy may truly be a serial killer at large.

Alternatively, I recall meeting with a prospect that ran an unimpressive ecommerce business. During the initial meeting I found myself listening to an hour long diatribe about him and how he shaped the company into what they are today. Interesting and something worth knowing in detail down the line, but I was there to talk about how I could help with their SEO. After finally asking two questions, in which I maybe got three words out, it was pretty clear this wasn’t going to be a productive meeting. Still, I stayed with the pitch process. Fortunately I made the right move, as this marketing director turned out to be more bark than bite. We’ve had a pretty successful three year run together, once the pretences went away. 

I need a point person I want to spend time with. If the real soul of the point person and company can’t be lured out quickly, it may be a dead deal for me. 

What to Do

Embrace the company culture and team’s personality. Try to be yourself, not who you think they want you to be. Ultimately you want a partner and a friend, not just a client and paycheck. If you don’t have an egomaniac account manager, this relationship could go down in flames. 

Make it personal, but don’t take it personally. I always try finding something in common with the prospects. It’s a sales tactic for sure, and an ice breaker, but I find it useful to quickly peel back the personality layers. I try to see who they really are. I remember a client pitch where I learned the CMO was in a Philly band. Knowing the band, and playing music myself, we were able to connect on a non-business level. I know this is a crazy concept for some agencies that prefer to be more formal, but It really helps you understand the personality and temperament of the people you’re going to be working with.  

Maybe it’s not your call to accept or deny the egomaniac, micro-managing client. In some cases you can still make it work. Communication (and some good habits) can go a long way in getting the client to bond with you, without you throwing away any integrity. We’ve all had a micro-managing boss at one time in our lives. Take some learnings from that experience. There are plenty of great tips online for that problem that can be leveraged with a micromanaging client:

• http://blogs.hbr.org/hmu/2011/09/stop-being-micromanaged.html
• http://www.thedailymuse.com/career/how-to-manage-a-micromanaging-boss
• http://michaelhyatt.com/micromanager.html
• http://nahidc.blogspot.com/2008/07/how-to-deal-with-micromanaging-boss.html

The Dictator

Some clients (think they) know exactly what they want. That can be a good thing. Sometimes though, they don’t want it the way you deliver it. It’s vital to know when you simply can’t deliver. How can you under-promise and over-deliver if you aren’t structured to meet their simplest expectations? Have you ever gotten a hamburger right at McDonald’s when you told them to make it special? No – it’s impossible. The employees have panic attacks behind the grill. It’s not how McDonald’s is built.

I had one prospect reach out to me about six months ago. We had worked together in a small capacity before. He told me precisely what he was looking for – he required someone to manage a department that needed to communicate with the Sydney office at 6 am, and required I hit a certain goal each month. This was a goal I not only didn’t believe was reasonable, but probably impossible (not to mention the only time I’m up at 6 am is when I haven’t fallen asleep yet). 

My services aren’t excessively flexible by design – I simply can’t answer all the demands of most dictators. My services have a specific design with defined specialties. I know my team’s strengths and weaknesses. I know my plan in and out, and would have struck out with his needs. I had to face the facts and let that prospect go, even though it was a nice payday.

What to Do

Try to break the “we’ll take anything” model. That’s how people get hurt – including your employees. A client’s SEO and digital marketing need has become ubiquitous. Maybe they’ll be open to your specialized take on their business?

Never over-promise. Never wear a hat you don’t own. Stay calm. SEOs are in a great position already, with a great inherent value. Sometimes there are other providers who can do a better job than you in a certain area, so why not let them? Build some relationships between other service providers and create “friendly-competition”. When a client says “I want this,” say “we do this.” Keep it professional and offer to help them find someone who fits their model. 

This may create serendipity and good karma. I’ve actually gotten referrals from prospects I’ve turned down. Not often, but it’s the magic of networking, relationships, and good deeds. Never underestimate the power of serendipity:

• http://moz.com/rand/manufacturing-serendipity/
• http://www.openforum.com/articles/8-ways-to-cultivate-serendipity-in-business-and-life/
• http://www.greenlaneseo.com/blog/2012/09/creating-your-own-seo-serendipity/

The Negotiator

It’s great to be on the payer side of negotiation. I find negotiating deals quite fun. But when the tables are turned, and I’m the service provider, I flex very little in price. It’s less because I’m a jerk and more because of my respect for my work and values.

Wharton grads are taught to believe in what they’re worth; anything less and you’re potentially softening the product. When a client tells me his budget is X, and I need it to by upwards around Y, the negotiation needs to stop. This was a huge lesson I learned after years of thinking about cash flow, and not quality of life.

I recently had a prospect that came to me and asked if I was available for consulting. As I always do, I brought up the budget question early on. He said, “I can spend about $300 a month.” Now I know some SEOs can stretch that and get rankings. I’m always impressed by these guys, but at that rate, I would fall on my face (and my sword). I’d fail at providing the only values I know how to create. I’d be scrambling to get good work done, and in the end, it would probably not be worth the aggravation after taxes.

Still, I tried to help him find someone who was better suited, while advising that his monthly fee was more likely to attract amateurs that might cost him more in the end. He was able to come up a little and I was able to refer him to another local SEO who fit his needs much better. Again, investing in serendipity.

I can’t say this enough – Take a bad deal financially and you will pay for it. I’ve never seen a need to pad the price for negotiation in our industry. We’re not selling used cars here.

What to Do

Don’t budge unless you’ve priced yourself out of the market. Also, don’t risk putting yourself in a bad relationship because you settled. It doesn’t tend to work out in marriage, government, or business. 

Clearly display all the items a client could be getting in an engagement with you and encourage the prospect to see the value if they “pay up” instead of going with an amateur. If you have a price you’re proud of, then you should also have results and confidence to stand behind.

Some agencies find it very difficult to talk about money, as it gets slipped in as a line item at the back of a proposal. These proposals are often written after hours of conversations. I propose you bring the money conversation early to qualify your prospects. I go so far as put my rates and packages right on my website and always encourage my prospects to review those pages in an introductory email. I don’t like wasting hours on a deal that was never meant to be. I’ve found this to be a very positive technique to getting deals signed quickly, as some clients prefer the openness and honesty. Not everyone likes haggling, and will happily pay a price when they know it’s fair.

Conclusion

Sometimes a bad client can teach you how to be a better consultant, but I don’t wish a bad client upon anyone. In my 10+ years of consulting, I’d like to think the lessons I learned (some of which I’m sharing here) can really be learned through some tough and common sense. 

Agencies are busy places, but you need to take time (off-sites work nicely) to really figure out what your service model is. Whether it’s from the top down, or just your specific department, having a thought out manifesto on the clients you’re not going to take could be transformational to the success of your consulting business. 

Oh, and if by chance you encounter a hybrid of all these client-types above, the only tip I have is… flee. I’ve yet to find any way to tame this three-headed egotistical, dictating, negotiating creature. That’s schizophrenia on a level I can’t even comprehend.

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Posted by RonGarrett

Keeping up with the rapidly changing pace of SEO best-practices can sometimes be as difficult as juggling flaming batons while reciting the alphabet backwards. As an agency or business owner, you need a checklist to help make sure you’re staying competitive, focusing on the right tactics, and building your business in the right direction. 

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Ron Garett discusses how to position your business for whatever the future of SEO may bring. Leave your thoughts and questions in the comments below!

For your viewing pleasure, here’s an image of the whiteboard used in today’s video:

Video Transcription

“Howdy SEOmoz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Ron Garrett, and I work with Distilled out of their New York office. I’m just down here this week in Seattle, and Rand invited me over to tape an edition of Whiteboard Friday. Either which way, I hope you like it.

Today I’m going to primarily be talking to agencies, business owners, freelancers, and consultants. The topic is positioning your business for the future of SEO. Now we all know that SEO is rapidly changing. The skills that you need to be successful in SEO, whether it’s technical, being good with analytics and big data sets, UX design, content creation, all of these different facets, we need to constantly innovate and make sure that we’re at the top of our game.

What I’ve done today is put together a checklist of things that you, as an agency or a business owner, can go through your business and review to make sure that you’re staying competitive, to make sure that you’re focusing on the things that you should be focusing on, and really trying to figure out where you should be building your business.

Let’s go ahead and start off. Use the resources within your organization. Let’s go ahead and start over here.

First, start talking to your salespeople. They’re oftentimes the first defense to clients. So oftentimes when clients reach out, they’re going to be the first to talk to the clients and get a sense of what they’re looking for, get a sense of how they think about SEO, get a sense of how they’re spending for SEO and how their teams are working, their digital, their content, all those different teams are working together to be able to bring SEO and integrate it. Try to figure out what they doing, how they’re doing it, and how you can take that information and integrate it back into how you sell, how you talk to clients, those types of things.

Also talk to your consultants. They spend a great deal of time working with each of the clients that you have to have a deep understanding of their needs, what their business goals are, what the biggest opportunities are, and where the biggest flaws or weaknesses or challenges are within the organization. Talk to them and try to get a sense of where the common threads are across most of your clients.

Also, once you have a relationship with a client and your interests are aligned, reach out to them. Take them out to lunch and see how they’re doing. Get a sense of what’s going on in their organization, how they talk about SEO internally, how they spend on SEO internally. Is SEO at the table when everybody is discussing content strategy, technical and all these different things?

Also reach out to other companies in your industry. I think one of the things that I love most about the SEO community is the fact that it is just that. It’s such a great community of people. Even if you have a competitor that you may compete against for business, they still may be a great resource for you to go out and chat and see what’s worked well for them and what hasn’t worked well for them and see what the commonalities are there.

Also make sure that you’re following what’s going on in the industry. Making sure that you are either putting on events or attending events is a great way to see what are some common topics that are coming up quite frequently. Take a look at the trends and the commonalities there.

Also take a look at the talent and the people that are coming up within the industry and the things that they’re talking about, the things that they’re passionate about, and the things working for them. That’s a great way to keep a pulse on the industry.

Also take a look at emerging technology. There are some pretty impressive startups and impressive technology companies, like SEOmoz, Conductor, and all these different companies who are creating technology that allows SEO agencies and businesses to scale and be efficient within their organization. Take a look at those emerging technologies and see how you can utilize those as a business to take your business to the next level.

One big thing that we talk a lot about at Distilled is how we can continue to tinker and test ideas. This is really important because sometimes you won’t have enough knowledge. You don’t know what you don’t know. We encourage and recommend all of our consultants to continuously test and continuously tinker with things and figure out some interesting things that are working and not working. Oftentimes there is no way that we can plan for those types of knowledge gaps that we get there.

I also want to discuss really quickly what’s worked well for us here at Distilled is our value are set up as “Discover, Implement and Learn.” That’s really given us a nice framework to be able to make sure that we’re constantly testing things, we’re constantly putting things out there, we’re constantly figuring out what works and what doesn’t work, and we’re integrating that back into the solutions that we’re providing our clients. That’s been quite nice.

Next, you as an organization figure out whether or not you want to specialize or whether or not you want to be a comprehensive business, whether or not you want to provide a specific solution, such as integrating SEO with PR, or whether or not you want to be a full-fledged agency where you’re providing digital solutions from a technology standpoint, to content creation, to outreach, to digital PR. Really figure out what your niche is going to be. Even if you do choose to specialize, don’t think that you can’t take on other types of work. It just helps customers understand what your value proposition is and what they can expect when they come to you. You can always show them other things that you’re capable of providing, but I think having that starting point can be really beneficial.

Here is a checklist that I put together of when you’re looking to assess your business and figure out, “All right, where are my strengths? Where are my weaknesses? Where can I make improvements?” Start to look at if you were to make certain decisions within your business, what are the different risks and rewards that you would get out of making certain decisions and try to forecast a little bit. Try to take a look at some of the data that you’ve accumulated over time and think, “If I were to make this decision for my business today, what are some of the things that I can anticipate?”

Also, it’s important to take a look at your current strategy to see what’s working and what’s not working and continue to improvise upon that. Reevaluate that strategy and figure out what’s working and what’s not working.

Also, I think it’s important to have a good balance between aspirational and pragmatic. Take a look at the things that you as a business can accomplish in the short term, given the resources that you guys have, and how you need to think about achieving some of your long-term goals and being realistic. Figure out ways you can get that kind of minimal viable product out there. Figure out what’s working and what’s not working and continue to innovate on top of that. That can be really beneficial as well.

Also evaluate your company mission, vision, and values. I know a lot of companies are taking a look at the values and making a lot of their decisions based on their values. So making sure that with where your company is at and where your business is at that those things still apply. Those things can be really powerful drivers for why somebody would want to come work for you, why somebody would continue to stay working for you, and the purpose they get out of the job they have. Just make sure that you’re constantly looking at and evaluate that.

I also think it’s important to take a look at the client mix. Take a look at the percentage of clients that are currently on a project basis versus a retain basis. These types of things can influence cash position and cash flow within your organization, and looking for ways to either drive up the amount of retained clients that you have or figuring out just really beneficial projects that you can take on that are either going to drive the knowledge gap forward or drive the cash flow position forward. Just make sure that the types of projects that you are bringing on are helping you achieve your goals.

Take a look at your company and your employees, and take a look at their strengths and weaknesses. I think being pragmatic about that as well can be very beneficial, especially when you start to reach critical mass at your company. You go from 10 employees to 50 employees, 50 employees to 100 employees, and the dynamic of your company starts to shift, and you get a very eclectic group of people that end up coming in that all have different strengths and talents, and they get very passionate about different things. Understanding the dynamics that those play and what works well with one another can be really important for you to understand when making these types of business decisions.

It’s also important to understand as a company your tolerance for risk. You can have all the aspirations in the world, but if your company hesitates to make certain types of decisions and you don’t feel like it’s a decision that you can fully make and commit to, it may be good to reevaluate whether or not that decision is something that you should look to make further down the line or what type of infrastructure or what things you would need to be able to make that decision sooner. Just being realistic about the tolerance levels that you have at your organization.

Take a look at how you currently make money. At different companies we love the places we work, and ultimately we have to be able to figure out ways to be able to make money. Taking a look at where your big drivers for cash are and how those are marking your company money can be really beneficial.

Future aspirations. We all want to have goals. We all want to work toward something that’s going to create purpose for us, that’s going to help us get to where we want to be, and we want to make sure they’re big enough to where it’s not easy for us to attain in the short term, but it’s something that we can all believe in and work towards as a company. I think figuring out what your future aspirations are, both at a company level and at an employee level, can be very, very powerful.

Last, but not least, if you’re looking to make investments in your organization, understanding the types of investments that you can and cannot make now based on your current cash flow position or whether or not you have access to capital and just understanding the dynamics between that can help determine how quickly you can make certain decisions or what types of clients you’re going to have to bring on before you can make those types of decisions.

I know I’ve provided you with a lot of information today, but ultimately I wanted to help give you a framework and a checklist for you, the business owner or the agency, to take a step back and to evaluate your company, to evaluate your employees, to evaluate all the things that make you great, and to evaluate the areas where you need to make improvements and get to where you want to be. I think once you have a deeper understanding of all this, it will help you make business decisions, it will help you communicate those decisions to the employees there, and it can help empower people at your organization to do some pretty incredible things.

So get out there, keep building.”

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Posted by becole

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

As you likely already know, the goal of content marketing is to build up familiarity and trust with your prospective customers. In this case, the content isn’t designed to sell a specific product or service, but rather to sell you, and to interested potential customers.

People buy from people that they know, like, and trust. And if you haven’t heard it yet, let me be the first to tell you that “familiarity” breeds trust.

Content marketing certainly isn’t new, but it’s been getting a lot of new attention online lately (and for good reason). Small business owners across the globe are re-discovering these tried and true marketing practices, and using them to get a big leg up on the competition.

One of the really big advantages small business owners have over the titans of industry is that you can get much more personal with your target audience than they can. You have a face and a voice. You can be human with your audience. And, as it turns out, one of the best ways to do that is by talking to your customers. One of the best ways to get a feel for some of the best-practices around the industry is to follow and watch how others are succeeding. As such, I’ve cherry-picked some of my favorite content marketing tips from experts around the web.

1. Don’t build on rented land

Publish your best content on web properties that you personally own (i.e., your own self-hosted website). Social media has hit the business world like a freight train, and there is great value in spreading your message far and wide via these cheap media channels. The point of all that chatter, though, is to get all those eyeballs back to your own site. Once they’re there, it’s time to convert them, either into customers or, at the very least, into email list subscribers. Social media is for mingling and chatting (and, obviously, marketing). Your own site is where the magic should happen. That’s where you answer your potential clients’ questions in depth. That’s where you create loyalty.

Social media is great. Use it aggressively, but never forget what you’re using it for: to get all those eyeballs back to your own site for conversion.

“Before you create a single piece of content, think about where that content will live and how audiences will get to it. Effective content marketing takes work. You’ll need energy, thought, and time to create good content. This means that nearly all of the content you create needs to live on a domain you control, using a platform you can do as you please with. That means you’re not producing the bulk of your creative content for Facebook, Twitter, or Google+, and you’re not publishing on a “website in 20 minutes” solution that forces you to use someone else’s domain. If your domain isn’t www.YourWebsiteName.com, you don’t own your platform. If you can’t publish what you please, with the wording, sales messages, and images you please, you don’t own your platform.”

– Sonia Simone via copyblogger.com

2. Help, not hype, your customer

The goal of content marketing is to allow the potential customer to develop a trusting relationship with you. One of the best ways to develop that trust is by answering customer questions and offering information in a clear, honest, and transparent way.

If the product or service that you offer is part of that message, then feel free to reference it. But if your content comes across more like an advertisement or a sales letter, then you’re not doing content marketing; you’re doing sales and advertising.

Trust is not built by pushing sales. Trust is built by selflessly helping people looking for help. In fact, anything but hard selling will probably do just fine. Some people tell personal stories. Some people seek to entertain. Some people seek to inform. It all depends on your target audience. What are they interested in? What do they care about? As long as you’re not selling, the possibilities are pretty much endless.

“Content marketing is not just about amplifying your message to your customer, it is about helping them find what they are looking for. Discover your customer needs by searching what they are looking for online and what they are saying about your category/sector. Provide them with a program to meet these needs, whether it directly impacts your business or not. Your audience will find the help useful and you will become top of mind when they are looking for someone in your sector. And don’t forget the power of the face to face contact or ‘just asking’ the question.”

– Kaitlin Walsh via bluechipcommunication.com.au

3. Write what people want to read, not what you want to write

If you’re planning to succeed in your content marketing efforts, there is one big thing that you have to understand right from the start: it’s not about you. It’s never about you. It’s not about your company. It’s not about your product. It’s not about your service. It’s not about how great your company/product is. It’s not about the amazing charity work your president does. It’s not about how fun it is to work at your company. It’s NEVER about you. And the minute you try to make it about you, that’s when you lose their trust, and that’s when you lose another potential customer.

Repeat after me: It’s ALWAYS about them, never about you. This is content marketing. It’s not sales, and it’s not advertising. If you want to do sales and advertising, that’s perfectly fine, but just don’t do it in your content marketing. Write for the reader, always.

“Your content should always have an audience in mind. That means you should have their needs in mind, too, not your own. Remember, content marketing should provide something valuable to people. So although you may want to write about how terrible your day was or how someone should do something about the lines at delis in grocery stores, that’s not the kind of thing people will want to read. They want to read something that’s written about the things they’re thinking about. So ask yourself what concerns and delights your audience, then go from there.”

– Blaise Lucey via constantcontact.com

4. Reference industry influencers

Even if you are the undisputed thought leader in your specific niche or areas of expertise, it doesn’t mean that you are the only person with something valuable to add to the conversation. In fact, you make yourself seem more trustworthy and confident when you reference other players in the marketplace.

I’m not saying that you have to specifically cite your direct competition (although sometimes that’s a great idea) but people are way better informed these days than you might think they are. Customers are savvy. They know that you’re not the only expert, so if you try to pretend that you, are guess what? Say it with me this time: they start trusting you less.

Referencing other experts is also a great way to show that there are others that agree with what you’re saying. This is huge. Guess what else? Search engines love it, too. And just in case you’re not fully convinced yet, try this one. The people that you reference will be thrilled that you mentioned them, and will likely help promote your content for you for free! Ahhh, viral marketing, sharing…everybody wins!

“When discussing a specific topic within your content marketing piece, it can be helpful to reference and cite individuals who are known to the audience and have authority on the topic. People love to see their own names published and will likely promote the content on their own for free, thus further spreading the exposure and influence of your brand and its expertise.”

– Marc Purtell via searchenginejournal.com

5. Create content for all types of readers

Branch out from your normal niche and target readers in a wider variety of related niche. This doesn’t mean that you go way off on a huge tangent from your core demographics, but people do have other interests. For example, accountants aren’t just interested in accounting.

Let’s say you’re a real estate broker. What things, other than buying a house, are people moving to a new city interested in? People with houses often have pets. Where are the best dog parks in your area? People with houses often have kids. Where are the best schools in your area? Best restaurants in the area? Best home improvement contractors in the area? Best landscapers in the area? Best doctors in the area?

Let’s also revisit #4 here for a minute. How thrilled do you think the local contractor/doctor/restaurateur will be with you and your company if you reference and link to them in a piece of your marketing content? Especially if it’s a ‘best of’ type post, you’ll come out ahead. 

That may have been an easy example, but use your imagination for your specific industry/niche. What other things are your target customers interested in? You know your customers better than I do (right?).

Another point is that people have friends, and you never know who will see your content and pass it on to a friend that they think it will be more useful for. I do this all the time, and I’ll bet you do, too. I may not care about buying a house, but if I happen to see a post entitled ‘Best Pizza Shops in Yourtown, USA’ written by a local real estate agent, I may just tell my friends that are looking for a new house how cool I think your real estate agency is for writing such a post.

These actions go a long way toward showing your customers that you care about them and that you’re trying to help them, not just trying to sell them on your company. That, more than anything else (arguably), builds massive trust.

“The cardinal rule of content marketing says that you need to create content for your ideal reader in order to attract the right leads and customers. Most companies follow this to the T, no matter how niche their industry is. So even though their content is excellent, it does not get seen by too many people. Content marketing success takes time and I suggest that you create content for readers other than your ideal reader so that it attract more traffic to your website and social media pages. Instead of focusing on creating just one type of content for your target audience, create some popular content to service other readers.” 

– Jessica Davis via socialmediatoday.com

6. There is more to content than links

Content marketing is so far above and beyond the classic SEO link building tactics of the past. These days, it is likely better to think of links in terms of the direct traffic you’ll get from them, rather than any SEO benefits they may or may not contribute. I’m not suggesting that backlinks are no longer important for SEO. What I’m suggesting is a change in mindset. Links that will actually get clicked through to your site are the better ones for SEO, anyway.

That being said, if you think of content marketing as a way to get link juice, you’re doing it wrong. Content creation is all about engagement building and trust building. Let the SEO benefits work themselves out. What’s good for engagement and trust is also good for search engine optimization.

A link from a reputable site is valuable because of the number of people that will click on it and come learn more about you and your company. And it just so happens that the search engines will love it for that exact reason too; win-win.

“Content Marketing is so much more than getting links. It’s the glue that holds your funnel together. It’s the reason a prospect visits your site, it’s the reason they choose to move further down the purchase path, buy a product and return to your site time and again.”

– Kieran Flanagan via seomoz.org

7. Don’t forget the “marketing” in content marketing

Until now, I’ve talked mostly about content creation, but there is one other huge piece to this content marketing puzzle: content promotion.

It’s incredibly shocking, but one of the biggest problems I see is that small business owners seem to be embarrassed about promoting their content. None of them seem to have any trouble trying to promote their products and services within their content, but once the content has been created, they’re timid about telling people it exists.

My best guess is that they’re not proud of their content. Maybe that they don’t think their writing is very good, or that their content is boring, or something along that vein. If that’s the case, let me try to help you a bit with that.

In general, if you’re being helpful, people don’t really care if your writing is a little rough around the edges. If you’re getting people the information and answers that they’re looking for, they will very easily forgive non-perfect writing. In fact, very often it can make you seem even more human to them.

Furthermore, the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. Nobody starts out being a great writer, a great blogger, or a great content marketer, but the sooner you start ‘practicing,’ the sooner you’ll get better at it. I promise, it gets a lot easier very, very quickly. As a matter of fact, read my I Hate Blogging post here and you will see I am in the same shoes as many people who struggle with writing.

You don’t ever have to be perfect; you just have to help and/or entertain your readers. If you do that and keep working at it, you’ll be fine. But you must promote your content. If you don’t promote it, then no one will ever read it, in which case, it’s useless. The days are long gone where you could just post a new piece of content and hope that people would find it via search (or because you had built boatloads of spam links to it).

As discussed in point #1 above, this is where social media and your social media connections come in. Use your social channels to guide traffic back to your freshly minted content. If people like you on social media, they’ll want to learn more about you. Give them a way to do that.

If you’re just starting out on sharing your content through social media, here’s an example of what you can say:

“Hey there folks, I just wrote up a quick post about some cool local resources I’ve been working on recently. If you have a moment, take a quick peek and let me know what you think. I’m just getting started with this whole content marketing thing, so any feedback you can give me will be greatly appreciated. Here’s the link, thanks!”

This may be the one piece of advice I can give you that will determine your fate in content marketing more than any other. If you are too embarrassed to promote your content, then you may as well give up on the whole idea of content marketing right now. Go do PPC instead.

“Do you know why your content marketing campaign is going to fail? It’s not because you can’t write great content… it’s actually because you don’t know how to promote it. You can learn how to write great content, but if no one reads your content and links to it, there’s no point in putting it out there.”

– Neil Patel via quicksprout.com

8. It’s all about relationships

If people can see you actively participating and being a team-player, then they will treat you accordingly; as a member of the team. [ Insider Tip: That’s the goal! ] The bottom line with social is this: you have to be an active member of the team. It’s not enough to just stop in and share a few things here and there, a day or two before you’re going to need those same people to share your stuff for you. You have to be active. You have to be part of the team; a member of the community. It’s not a wishy-washy kind of thing. It’s a commitment; a commitment to your community. Your network depends on you to be there for them, just like they are there for you.

This doesn’t mean that you have to be on social sites all day long. This also doesn’t mean that you have to promote every piece of content that every member of your social network produces. It does mean however, that you stay involved and engaged consistently.

If people see you actively sharing and promoting other people, they will be that much more likely to share and promote your stuff when the time comes. The time to make friends on social media channels is way before you need them.

“I’ve heard this mantra a lot, but it wasn’t until my first crack at this that I really understood how crucial relationships were. The people who were ultimately the ones to contribute something to the post were the ones I built the best relationships with. They were the ones that (for whatever reasons) responded to comments I left on their blog posts or replied to my tweets in the initial weeks. They were the ones who I was able to engage with in a personal way over email. And now they’re the ones who are appreciative of the opportunity and exposure and are interested in working with me again in the future.”

– Mike Arnesen via mikearnesen.com

9. Think like a publisher

Whatever business you’re in, your website and/or blog is now a venue for that industry/niche. That’s just pure fact; no way around it. The trick, though, is learning to re-train your brain to treat it as such. Go down to your local book store and grab a few magazines that catch your eye, and then study them. Study their format, study their layout, study their focus. Whether you like it or not, you are in the “online magazine” publishing business now. The fun part is that you get to talk about stuff you’re already an expert in.

Use your site to engage, entertain, and inform. That’s all you really have to do. The hardest part is remembering to do that every time you sit down to write another piece of content. One of the quickest/easiest ways to do that is to write content that answers common customer questions. That sounds simplistic, but it’s incredibly useful and engaging for people seeking answers. And if you can do that in a fun interesting way; all the better.

“You are not an advertiser [emphasis added]. An advertiser disrupts but a publisher educates and connects in a two way communication. Don’t put too much emphasis on your brand. The goal is to engage your visitors and in due time, your brand will get the proper recognition. Always put value in your content. To be accurate, content is not king but value is. It’s not enough to have content that is readable and no grammar mistakes. What matters is the substance of the content. What’s in it for your visitors? What value will they get?”

– Mark Acsay III via webbythoughts.com

10. Use other sites to find out what kind of content people want

I saved this one for last because it always seems to be a major sticking point with small business owners, and I wanted it to be fresh in your mind as you finish up this post. Small business owners oftentimes think that they have nothing to say, and nothing to write about.

We started this conversation in #2 above, and then again in #9 talking about answering customer questions in a fun, interesting way (and that should get you started in a big way), but eventually, you’ll probably want to start branching out a bit with your topic ideas. The best way to do that is to watch what your competition is writing about, and also what other industries closely related to yours are writing about.

Read other good blogs on your topic and then just write similar articles with your own opinions and insights on the same topic, and try to make it better. I’m not suggesting that you copy anything from them obviously; just that you get inspired from them. This is also a great way to incorporate #4 and #8 above.

Everyone does this. Everyone gets inspiration from things that they see (and read) elsewhere; it’s how the world works. Inspiration comes from building on top of what has come before.

This very post is a perfect example. I was inspired by the people that I quoted here. I read their posts, I picked my favorite tips from each of them, and then I added my own thoughts on the topics. I didn’t have to quote and cite them, this post would have been perfectly fine on its own, but I did quote and cite them because it makes for a more interesting and engaging article. Plus it helps with a bunch of the other tips mentioned above.

“Sometimes it’s hard to know what people want to read about. One way to find this out is to visit sites within your industry. Check their blogs and see what posts get the most tweets and shares. In the internet marketing niche, social media is all the rage. If you write a post about Facebook or Twitter, it’s guaranteed to get more shares. Do some research to find out what kind of post are popular in your industry and write that type of content. You don’t want to write these types of posts every time, but it’s a great way to boost traffic when it fits into your publishing schedule.”

– Joseph Putnam via kissmetrics.com

Conclusion

It’s a wonderful time to be a small business owner. The Internet and content marketing has made it possible for us to stop chasing the media, and instead, become the media. You are now a magazine publisher for your own industry (and/or a local niche). Your voice can be as big or as small as you want it to be. It can start small and then grow. Or it can just stay small and that’s okay too. You are in total control here. There’s no reason to ever feel intimidated by the process because you control the process.

Just remember, the goal of content marketing and its sidekick social media marketing is to inform and entertain prospective customers in a way that inspires them to trust you for the right reasons; authentic, legitimate, deserving and well-earned trust. When the time comes for them to buy something, they buy from people they trust: you. Which, as I may have mentioned once or twice already, is the whole point of all this stuff. Trust, trust, trust; burn that into your brain. Content isn’t king. Trust is king. Content is just how you get there.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

Posted by James Finlayson

This post was originally in YouMoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

How do you get links in a post-penguin world? For far too many the answer seems to be, exclusively, guest posting. Today I’m going to give you four reasons why I think this tactic is as dangerous as those it replaced.

Note: I’m not about to say that ‘all’ guest posting is bad – in the same way not all directories are automatically spammy. I’m also not about to say ‘all’ guest bloggers will be penalised. What I will do is point out the dangers of guest posting as Google becomes increasingly intelligent; and what you can do to avoid them.

Link Quality

Penguin really hurt sites that relied on low-quality links. Many have responded by setting a minimum domain authority threshold when prospecting. To keep the process efficient they then remove sites with a DA over a certain level – seeing these as less likely to accept content.

No new site owner ever sat down and thought ‘hmm, well I best not link to buybluewidgets.com today, my domain authority’s only 28 – I’ll wait a few months’. Equally, the reason Mashable’s not linking to you isn’t because your DA has yet to hit a magical level. If you offer something of value links naturally come from a huge variety of high, medium and low quality sites. High quality links are rare naturally, that’s part of what makes them so valuable, but they do occur. As a result, a completely natural link portfolio looks something like this:

I’ve now started to see new sites, fresh out of a ‘successful’ outreach campaign whose link portfolio looks like this:

There’s little way that this could have occurred un-engineered and, if it’s obvious to us then it’ll be obvious to Google too.

“Mass guest posting is dangerous because it creates an unnatural looking link quality graph.” [tweet]

Link Type

Conventional wisdom tells us that directories are bad, blogs are good and academic links are amazing. Tools like Link Research Tools and Linkdex allow you to break up your competitors’ links by type – if SEO tools can do this then so can Google. I took a vertical at random and wasn’t surprised to see this:

It’s not unusual to find sites with a huge percentage of their links coming from directories and these are sites we currently think of as having engaged in low-quality link building. So your site proudly strides in to the market and builds this profile:

I’m not saying that you need to replicate the industry standard – that’s not going to put you ahead of your competitors. I am saying “A link profile made up of only one type of link looks unnatural – whatever those links are.” [tweet]

Link Location

Google devalued footer links because they’re too easy to game. Google devalued sidebar links because they were being purchased en masse. Are links in author boxes next? When you’re consistently relying on links in guest-post author boxes you’re building a very obvious footprint. Due to the author box’s proximity to the author markup, relatively standard layout and positioning on the page it would be incredibly easy for Google to algorithmically target them in the same way it did sidebars and footers.

When a link’s in the middle of a post there’s an assumption that it’s there because it’s relevant. When a link’s in the author box it’s rarely there for the benefit of the user – it’s the writer’s payment for the post. It’s a box in which the author advertises themselves. So it could be argued the author box is a form of paid advertisement. How long until Matt Cutts does a video saying those links should be no-followed?

That’s all before you consider that the link’s in a box that gets skipped over by readers. That means you can expect virtually no traffic from it. Wouldn’t it be better to be building links that drive traffic as well as rankings?

“Anchor-text-heavy links in author boxes look fishy, even to non-marketers; let’s stop building them.” [tweet]

Authorship

Google’s really started to push authorship as an important signal. So, many guest bloggers have used their own name (or repeatedly the same name) in each of their guest posts to build up their authority. This has led to a great new form of competitor link-building. If you’re an agency, this creates a competitive issue:

Whoever you are, this creates two other problems:

1. Your competitors can Google your name and easily find your link-building efforts – no SEO tool necessary.
2. Whichever domain you’re building links to has a large number of their links coming from a single author.

Every SEO knows how important domain diversity is; having a large number of your links coming from a single author is the authorship version of putting them all on the same domain. Assuming all other factors are equal (including average link quality), which of these do you think Google would be likely to rank more highly:

In real life it’s natural to assume a company that has lots of people talking about it is more important than one nobody’s heard of – that has very few people mentioning it; shouldn’t Google follow the same principal with linking authors?

Let’s assume Google gets smarter still. On your Google profile there’s a nice box for you to enter your employment history. What if Google used that data to make a graph similar to this?

Search engines see links as an indicator of quality because they’re essentially recommendations. If most of a company’s recommendations are coming from its own employees would you trust them? You’d probably just ignore those recommendations. What if Google decided to discount all links created by a company’s own employees? Simpler still, what if Google decided to ignore all links created by SEOs where those links are in articles that aren’t talking about SEO? Google’s collecting all this data now, why wouldn’t it use it?

“One person authoring the majority of your links looks like link building – because it is.” [tweet]

Fundamentally, this all comes back to Dr Pete’s Top 1 SEO Tips For 2013 – diversify. Each of the issues is a problem of oversimplifying the link building process. I’m convinced that taking a holistic view to inbound marketing not only provides the highest ROI, but will increasingly become the only ‘safe’ way to aggressively grow a company’s reach online.

Takeaways:

1. Don’t rely on any one type of site for a majority of your links; build links of all types into your plans.
2. Be aware of the quality of links you’re building, but make sure to keep the overall portfolio looking natural.
3. Don’t use a single author for all your content – vary it between different, real, people. When using external writers, use their authorship to help further vary the mix.
4. Split up different parts of a client’s campaign between different team members; that way there should naturally be a slightly different approach applied across the client’s links.
5. Oversimplifying a link building process may make it faster, but the footprint it generates also makes it riskier.

Have you begun to scale back, or even phase-out, guest posting? Let me know in the comments below.

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