Rand's presentation from the Dublin SEO Summit on irrational biases in marketing.

1. Choose Tall Women
(and short men)
http://bit.ly/choosetallwomen
Rand Fishkin | @randfish | Dublin SEO Summit 2012

2. Let’s talk about dating…
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

4. Here’s the problem

5. Height Is Holding You Back…
As women’s height rises, messages drop (the opposite is true for men):
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online-dating/

6. Height Is Holding You Back…
Not only is height a poor, arbitrary limitation, most lie about it:
http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-biggest-lies-in-online-dating/

7. Remove the Irrational Bias
And You Can Get Every Other
Criteria You Want, Fulfilled

8. Let’s Apply This Principle to
the Marketing World

9. 6 Irrational Biases
(and how your inbound marketing can benefit by rejecting them)

10. Bias #1: Ranking Position is All That Matters
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mission-imposserpble-establishing-clickthrough-rates

11. CTR is Influenced By More than Position

12. CTR is Influenced By More than Position
Star Ratings, Reviews & Price
Author Photo
Date of Publication
Video Snippet

13. Start w/ Great Titles, Meta Descriptions & URLs
Terrible
Excellent
Snippet Testing Tool: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

14. Profile Pics = CTR Boost
Rel=Author Guide from AJ Kohn: http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/how-to-implement-rel-author

15. Video XML Sitemaps = CTR Boost
Video SEO Guide from Wistia: http://wistia.com/doc/video-seo

16. Rich Snippets: High Value in the Right Niches
Visual Rich Snippet Guide: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-visual-guide-to-rich-snippets

17. Bias #2: SEO is About Ranking for the “Money” Keywords

18. The Chunky Middle & Long Tail Are Amazing

19. Google Wants the Head for Themselves

20. Google Wants the Head for Themselves
The only non-Google link
visible without scrolling

21. Regular Content + UGC = Long Tail Success
Tens of thousands of pages of content created by
professional marketers (our writers and those who ask Q+A)

22. Scale of ROI from SEO Activities Over Time
2004-2009 2010-present
Highest
Value
Make the website’s pages Create content people
accessible to engines want to consume & share
Build links to individual Make the website’s pages
URLs for higher rankings accessible to engines
Optimize on-page Optimize on-page
keyword usage/targeting keyword usage/targeting
Create content people Optimize metadata,
want to consume & share schema, rich snippets, etc
Optimize metadata, Build links to individual
Lowest
Value schema, rich snippets, etc URLs for higher rankings

23. Bias #3: AdWords is All The Keyword Research You Need

24. Search Suggest Is a Great Keyword Research Tool

25. Search Suggest Is a Great Keyword Research Tool
Great tool for grabbing search suggest data: http://ubersuggest.org

26. Google News: Research the Undiscovered Keywords
In the next 1-5 days, these will all
have significant search volume

27. Social Media Leads to Queries

28. Tools for Tracking Social: PopURLs
http://search.popurls.com/

29. Tools for Tracking Social: Topsy
http://topsy.com/s?q=dublin

30. Bias #4: My Site is the Only Place to Do SEO

31. Controlling Brand SERPs Matters

32. Earning Rankings on Other Sites May Be Easier

33. Dominating SERPs is a Powerful Tactic

34. Consider SEO for Your Profiles &
Content on these Sites, Too.
R
Users: 90mm 900mm 200mm 120mm 10mm
Users: 15mm Millions 14mm 7.5mm 18mm

35. Bias #5: Social Sharing is Fire & Forget

36. What You Say and How Matters

37. Timing Matters
At the highest point, only ~6.5% of my followers are online, which
means only 4,514 of my 69,458 followers could possibly see a tweet.
Via http://followerwonk.com

38. Repetition Matters
The 3.5% online at night are almost certainly not
the same as the 6.7% online in the morning.
Via http://followerwonk.com

39. Link Placement Matters
URL at the end & hash URL in the center of text blocks, no
tag next to the URL usernames or hashes around it

40. Hashtags & Mentions Matter
Using the event hashtag will get
Mentioning me makes
it in front of IFBC attendees
sure I see it, which
might mean I RT

41. Snippets Matter in Google+
Not a great image (4:3
style format works best)
Comes from title &
meta description

42. Snippets Matter on Facebook
When @jennita (Moz’s
community manager)
shares content on
Facebook, she’ll often
upload an individual image
from the post to make it
better stand out in the
Facebook timeline

43. Bias #6: There’s No Simple Way to
Increase Traffic

44. Site Speed Optimization: Simple.
Data from @jcolman of REI
http://www.slideshare.net/jcolman/web-performance-optimization-the-silver-bullet-of-seo-and-ux

45. 404, 500 & 302 Fixes: Simple.
http://google.com/webmasters and/or http://pro.seomoz.org can help ID these

46. Re-targeting: Simple. Increases Traffic.
Best retargeting providers?
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/comparing-the-top-4-retargeting-companies

47. Sharing New Content on Each Network. Simple.

48. Remove Irrational Biases.
Win at Marketing.

49. Choose Tall Women (and short men)
http://bit.ly/choosetallwomen
• Email: rand@seomoz.org
• Tweet: @randfish
• Blog: moz.com/rand