F#$%! Link Building.
Content Marketing FTW.
Rand Fishkin | CEO
http://bit.ly/mozcontent2012

Classic Link Building

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

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

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

Keep Pounding
But, I really
want a link!
test

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Why Links Are in Danger

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.

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

But SEOs Are Better at Links than Everyone Else
And worse at karaoke… via http://www.distilled.net/jobs/seattle/search-marketers/

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

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

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

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

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

Tactical SEO

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

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…

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

Strategic Marketing

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?

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

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/

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.

Five Reasons I Invest in
Content vs. Links

#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.

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

#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)

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

#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)

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

OK. What Content Should I Make?

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

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

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

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

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)

10 PRO Tips to Do
Content Marketing Right

#1: Dollar Shave Club’s Video Launch
Expose everyone to your
great content; don’t hide it.
http://www.dollarshaveclub.com/

#2: Every Time Zone Visualized
Suggest links! And
make it painless.
http://everytimezone.com/

#3: FeeFighters’ Brilliant Blog
Make your tagline give
you great anchor text
A smart move from http://feefighters.com/blog/

#4: The Economist’s Graphics Blog
Hmm… I wonder if a blog
all about charts & graphs
will get lots of links and
embeds?
Choosing a linkbaity content style is a smart move: http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail

#5: Zemanta’s Blog Links Tools
Puts your images and content in front of
800K+ bloggers while they’re writing
Try out the demo here: http://www.zemanta.com/demo/ (no, I’m not affiliated with them in any way)

#6: Twitter Stories
This is basically just
content curation +
unique design
Unique visualizations make for remarkable share-ability: http://stories.twitter.com/

#7: Slate’s Partnership with Q+A Site Quora
Emerging content platforms
desperately need visibility and
monetization; you need
content. Make it work!
Description of the partnership here: http://www.quora.com/blog/Quora-Partners-with-Slate

#8: Koozai’s Viral Blog Post Via Google News
Use every weapon in the
arsenal – News, Video
Rich Snippets, Rel Author,
Schema, etc.
It’s naturally assumed great content will fall flat without link building. However
this post had no outreach but journalists and authors found it on Google News
and linked to it, which sparked a debate that got us 473 backlinks from 106
domains (without doing outreach).
- Mike Essex, Koozai
Via http://www.koozai.com/blog/search-marketing/are-ebooks-the-new-content-farms-2901/

#9: See Jane Work: Demographically Targeted Office Supplies
Harnessing the power of an already-united group can yield tremendous results

#10:
This strategy, which I’m
calling “pridebait,” is just
cheating.
Even more effective?
Nominating/mentioning
those who have HUGE
social followings.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2107952_2107953_2109626,00.html

#10:
This strategy, which I’m
calling “pridebait,” is just
cheating.
Even more effective?
Nominating/mentioning
those who have HUGE
social followings.
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2107952_2107953_2109626,00.html

Rand Fishkin | CEO
@randfish
www.seomoz.org/blog
rand@seomoz.org
http://bit.ly/mozcontent2012