1. F#$%! Link Building.
Content Marketing FTW.
Rand Fishkin | CEO
http://bit.ly/mozcontent2012boston

2. Classic Link Building

3. Discover Link Opportunities
http://www.seomoz.org/labs/link-finder/index.php

4. Brainstorm Acquisition Tactics
Travelpod built an embeddable quiz that universities use… What can I do to get .edu links?

5. Pound Head Against Wall
Feel free to use this high quality link acquisition email. Effectiveness not guaranteed 

6. Keep Pounding
But, I really
want a link!
test

7. Damage Brain
Manual link building has a surprising amount in common with stuffing crayons up one’s nose.

8. Earn Links… Painfully
1-2 links per hour of link building is fairly common, particularly if you don’t have a great site to work from.

9. Give In to the Dark Side
http://www.bloggingtips.com/2012/03/22/link-authority-review-the-next-buildmyrank-alternative/

10. Buy Some Links
Always a fun time: http://fiverr.com/gigs/search?query=links

11. Go Overboard
Once you’ve gone to “supreme link pyramid elite,” you know you’re desperate. http://www.wickedfire.com/links-
seo/154095-supreme-all-one-seo-solution-only-28-proven-results-dominate-google.html

12. Get Burned
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/unnatural-link-warnings-blog-networks-advice

13. Retreat and Try Again
BTW – If you need a simple meme generator: http://imgflip.com/memegenerator is pretty solid

14. Why Links Are in Danger

15. Links Were Never Really Votes
Does the author mean
to endorse this page?
Does he mean to say it
should rank better for
“a very similar thing?”
Search engines found links useful as a proxy, but most of those linking on the web don’t intend to contribute to the link graph.

16. The Algo Wasn’t Intended to Benefit Marketers
http://marketingland.com/is-googles-over-optimization-penalty-its-jump-the-shark-moment-in-web-search-8633

17. But SEOs Are Better at Links than Everyone Else
Linklove London Last Friday via: http://foliovision.com/2012/03/31/distilled-linklove-conference-london-2012-review

18. WebSpam Struggles to Keep Up
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-google-makes-liars-out-of-the-good-guys-in-seo

19. Many Links are a Thorn in Search Engines’ Side
An enlightening example of spammer mentality: https://www.google.com/search?q=build+my+rank+alternatives

20. Google’s Clearly Trying to Move Beyond Links
Individual link
metrics have lower
correlation over
time, while social
signals rise.
Via http://www.seomoz.org/blog/facebook-twitters-influence-google-search-rankings

21. Sharing on the Web Has Evolved
It used to be that
the “Linkerati”
controlled the
web’s sharing.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/21-tips-to-earn-links-and-tweets-to-your-blog-post

22. Today, the “Linkerati” are a Far Bigger Group
Via http://www.slideshare.net/fullscreen/PewInternet/022612-nfais-newnormalpdf/6 (Pew Internet & American Life Project)

23. Tactical SEO

24. I Want to Rank Higher For This Query
Ranking here
will bring me
more customers
https://www.google.com/search?q=custom+kitchen+knives

25. Decision Time
OPTION A:
Create lots of great content, start
OPTION B:
a blog, shoot some videos, build
Point some @#$%ing
up a community via social
links at my page.
networks, participate in
forums, try to earn some press…
Option A sounds like a lot of work…

26. Most SEOs Make the Obvious Choice
YEE-HAW LINKS!!
Option B can certainly work.

27. Strategic Marketing

28. What Really Matters to a Business on the Web?
Competitors Tactics: Avg Cost of Acquisition:
Paid Search $95.00
Banners & Display Ads $150.00
Brand Advertising $Unknown
Television, Radio & Print Media $180.00
Contextual Ads $115.00
Paid forms of acquisition are easier to measure, optimize and invest in. Management’s comfortable with them.
The engines/platforms make it easy to buy them. Why wouldn’t you use paid acquisition?

29. What Really Matters to a Business on the Web?
“Inbound” Tactics Avg Cost of Acquisition:
Organic Search $15.00
Social Media Marketing $35.00
Blogs & RSS $60.00
Community / Forum Participation $20.00
Video Content $70.00
If you invest in inbound tactics, your cost of custom acquisition can be dramatically lower than the competition’s

30. What Really Matters to a Business on the Web?
COCA / CLTV = This
Ratio. Strength here
means you have more
to invest in every other
part of the business.
Thanks to Cascadia Capital for the chart: http://www.cascadiacapital.com/

31. Decision Time
OPTION A: OPTION B:
Content + SEO + Social + Point some @#$%ing
Community + Press links at the page.
Which one of these truly
results in lower COCA?
This time, Option A looks a lot more appealing.

32. Five Reasons I Invest in
Content vs. Links

33. #1: I Want to Invest in Multiple Channels at Once
More Long
Higher More Brand
Tail SEO
Conversion Rate Visibility
Higher Organic CONTENT! Stronger Social
Search Rankings Following
More Direct & Bigger Fanbase & More Referring
Bookmarking Traffic Community Links
Content, by its very nature, creates multi-channel marketing opportunities and wins.

34. #2: I Want to Be Proud of My Work
Am I making the Internet a better place?

35. #3: I Want Strategies that Last No Matter What
If this is the future, I
better build a memorable
brand that has positive
signals of every kind.
I want marketing that will last even if Siri replaces Google, social replaces search, apps replace the web, etc. (note: I don’t
actually believe any of those things will happen, but I do like to be prepared)

36. #3: I Want Strategies that Last No Matter What
Who knows, maybe DDG is really on to something: http://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html

37. #4: Content Builds Links While I Sleep
Virtually every link here is
editorially-given because
of content we’ve produced
https://www.google.com/search?q=seomoz+-site:seomoz.org&tbs=qdr:h (qdr:h at the end of the query narrows to results from just 1hr)

38. #5: Content Builds Brand Loyalty & Trust
http://thisismadebyhand.com/film/the_knife_maker play 4:45 - 5:45

39. OK. What Content Should I Make?

40. Don’t Limit Yourself to Content About Your Subject
This blog might work for
them, but IMO, it’s far too
topically specific and not
“interesting” enough to be
consistently share-worthy.
http://www.theofficesuppliessupermarket.com/blog

41. Discover What Your Audience Shares
Three tools: http://followerwonk.com, http://topsy.com, and Google’s Discussion Search

42. Brand Your Content to Align with Your Business/Products
Fiskars Scissors (fiskars.com) runs the amazing Fiskateers blog (http://www.fiskateers.com/); a great example of alignment.
Though, for SEO, I wish they’d gone with fiskars.com/fiskateers or fiskars.com/blog

43. Or Brand Your Product to Align with Your Content?
Coudal Partners is a
fascinating example of this.
This is basically what we did at SEOmoz – created a product that fit with the content + audience we’d built

44. Remember, Content Can Mean:
Actual Content Community Products Platform/Data
The “content” you produce and market can be much more than just a blog (though blogs are pretty awesome at this)

45. After London, Lots of Blog
Posts Appeared…

46. And My Presentation’s Online

47. So, I Decided to
Change Things Up a Bit

48. Content Brainstorming &
Concepts for Your Websites

49. After Landing in Boston, I Tweeted:
My tweet

50. Gentlemen’s Hats from a Bygone Era
http://thefedorastore.com and http://fedoras.com

51. The Fedora Store
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPKe9OfWs-M

52. We Need Some Content Branding
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPKe9OfWs-M

53. The Infographic of Hats!
This - http://stuff.daviderickson.com/hats-infographic#comments – is the best I could find

54. The Infographic of Hats!
This - http://www.infographicsshowcase.com/trusting-beards-infographic/ - is what I’m talking about.

55. Online Hat-Selection Tool
This - http://www.millerhats.com/hatcare_index/hatfaces.html - is the best I could find 

56. Rank Top Hat-Donning Social Media Participants
I used http://followerwonk.com, but you’ll also want to check blogs, Facebook, etc.

57. Coffee Beans & Espresso Machines
http://needcaffeine.com

58. NeedCaffeine’s Website
http://www.needcaffeine.com/

59. Erasable, Caffeine-Monitor Board Next to My Desk
http://designtaxi.com/news/351340/In-Caffeine-We-Trust-An-Infographic-To-Track-Your-Coffee-Consumption/ - but simple/erasable on a mini-whiteboard

60. Caffeine Tracking/Contest Mobile App
Make the leaderboard publicly accessible for those who opt-in, and then link to the social accounts of the most caffeinated members.

61. Rating Drinks on an Official “Caffeine Scale”
Rate every beverage from every store possible on caffeine content, taste and caloric content and have a monthly dynamic leaderboard.

62. Weird Foods and Drinks that Contain Caffeine
Ugh… And this is one of the
best articles I could find.
Rate every beverage from every store possible on caffeine content, taste and caloric content and have a monthly dynamic leaderboard.

63. Costumes Beyond Halloween
No domain given, so I’ll just work on the concepts. BTW – that Yodabot is awesome.

64. Analysis of Hollywood Costumes
http://clothesmonaut.wordpress.com/category/costume-analysis/ - buy this blog, or re-create it.

65. Give Awards to the Best “Street-Spotted” Costumes
You can set up an
alert/search, watch for
these, tweet to the winners
and ask for permission to
feature their photos.
https://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/costume%20twitpic – you can use a few modified versions of this query, too

66. Coverage of Non-Halloween Costume Events
http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=fremont+zombie&m=text – there’s tons of these.

67. The Best Part…

68. I Came Up With All of These Between
5:30am-7:30am this Morning.

69. Imagine What You Can Do
with Time, Effort and
A Full 8 Hours of Sleep 

70. Rand Fishkin | CEO
@randfish
www.seomoz.org/blog
rand@seomoz.org
http://bit.ly/mozcontent2012boston