The Making of MozHow the
power of inbound marketing took our startup from near-bankruptcy to surprising success<br />Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmoz<br />March 2011<br />

An Early History of Moz:
1981-2002<br />Rand begins working for Gillian, building websites for her traditional marketing clients<br />Rand + Gillian start by building small web presences for Seattle-area companies<br />2002<br />1997<br />1981<br />2001<br />Gillian (Rand’s Mom) founds the company that will become SEOmoz<br />Rand drops out of UW, 2 classes from graduation to work full time w/ Gillian<br />Text Goes Here<br />

Our Consulting Business: 2003-2006<br />Deeply
in debt from a series of failed projects and poor decisions, and struggling to succeed at SEO, Rand starts the SEOmoz blog<br />A growing reputation and hig-profile clients make 2006 SEOmoz’s first profitable year.<br />2006<br />2004<br />2003<br />2005<br />When 3rd-party SEO services fail to help clients, Rand starts to do it himself.<br />After several viral content pieces, the growing popularity of SEOmoz attracts a 4-page Newsweek article on SEO.<br />Our 2006 financials are here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seomozs-2006-financial-statements<br />

The Transition to Software: 2007<br
/>Moz’s first “premium” membership cost $39/month. We still have “grandfathered” members at that price: http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/13/free-to-paid-tips/<br />

Raising Venture Capital: Nov. 2007<br
/>Invests<br />$100,000<br />(observer seat)<br />Invests<br />$1 million<br />Kelly Smith<br />Michelle Goldberg<br />Board of Directors<br />Founder<br />Founder<br />Rand Fishkin<br />Gillian Muessig<br />Rand’s wife comically marked up the VC-post: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/seomozs-venture-capital-deal-closes-financials-for-jannov-2007<br />

Building Linkscape: 2008<br />We made
a comic series at launch to help SEOs understand the project<br />(almost no one read it) http://www.seomoz.org/linkscape_comic.html<br />

January 2010: Open Site Explorer<br
/>Great coverage from sources like SELand (http://searchengineland.com/seomoz-launches-open-site-explorer-33892) and MSDN (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/searchblog/archive/2010/04/22/using-the-seomoz-open-site-explorer.aspx) helped make OSE a hit<br />

The Evolution of PRO Membership<br
/>From a collection of disparate tools (Jan. 2007 – Aug. 2010) to a campaign-based app that tracks everything in one place (Sep. 2010-)<br />

Subscription Growth<br />“PRO” rises to
$79/month in October 2008<br />PRO moves to $99/month in September 2010<br />“Premium” costs $39/$49<br />Highest ever growth came when we sent our first email marketing message:<br />http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/seomoz-case-study/<br />

Moz Today<br />PRO Subscribers:<br />10,300<br
/>API Customers:<br />20 Paying, 250 Total<br />Employees:<br />32<br />Board of Directors:<br />Rand, Gillian& Michelle<br />Total Capital Raised:<br />$1.1 Million (2007)<br />2010 Revenue:<br />$5.7 Million<br />Gross Margin:<br />~83%<br />

Entrepreneurship Lessons Learned<br />

Don’t Give Up<br />

Today, Rand’s credit score is
still so bad that he can’t rent an apartment or make any large purchases (car/house) or get a credit card!<br />

Choose a Small Number of
Metrics<br />

Basic Metrics<br />More Advanced<br />Total
Paying Subscribers<br />Subscriber Growth + Acceleration Rate<br />Average Revenue / Subscriber<br />Distribution of Revenue/Member<br />Avg. Subscription Duration<br />Cohort Analysis of Subscription Duration<br />Gross Margin<br />Net Profit<br />Gross Revenue<br />Cost of Customer Acquisition<br />Cross-Channel Distribution of Costs<br />Customer Lifetime Value<br />

Track Them Insanely Well<br />

Our Weekly Reporting<br />All our
weekly metrics are updated on a company intranet to make it easily accessible to everyone at Moz.<br />

Get Everyone in the Company
Focusing on the Numbers<br />

Weekly Email Updates<br />These email
updates go out to everyone in the company every week.<br />

Create a Consistent Culture<br />

Moz’s TAGFEE<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/what-we-believe-why-seomozs-tagfee-tenets<br />

Hire the Right People<br />

Traits We Seek in Mozzers<br
/>Excited about the Mission<br />Care deeply about Quality<br />Excellent Cultural Fit<br />Balance of New & Experienced<br />Productive w/o Instruction<br />Strong Instincts<br />http://www.seomoz.org/about/team<br />

Divide Big Challenges into SmallOnes
to Successfully Scale<br />

How We Built an Index
of the Web<br />The completed index of Wikipedia proved viable, and we began a project to do web-scale indexing of billions of pages.<br />At launch, we had only a single index – it was December before we could create a second one!<br />Oct. 2008<br />Feb. 2008<br />Dec. 2007<br />June 2008<br />We began a project to crawl and index the content of Wikipedia.org as a test run for the web.<br />Our estimates put our web crawl abilities around 5 billions URLs, giving us data on ~30 billion pages. Lots of testing, failing and re-trying would occur prior to launch.<br />Text Goes Here<br />

Marketing Lessons Learned<br />

Selling is Painful<br />

At Moz: No Sales Team<br
/>http://randfishkin.com/blog/50/what-i-learned-about-sales-but-foolishly-forgot-when-raising-vc<br />

Education Builds Trust and Community<br
/>

Moz Community<br />http://www.seomoz.org/community<br />

Forms of Content that Worked<br
/>

A Blog We Update Every
Day<br />

“Viral” Targeted Content<br />http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors<br />

“Viral” Targeted Content<br />http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization<br />

“Viral” Targeted Content<br />http://www.seomoz.org/seo-industry-survey<br />

Graphics + Illustrations<br />

A Weekly Video Series<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/33<br
/>

Research + Data Sharing<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements<br
/>

Research + Data Sharing<br />http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-blog-stats<br
/>

Slide Presentations<br />http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/inbound-marketing-for-startups-in-2011<br />

Webinars<br />http://www.seomoz.org/webinars<br />

Successful Marketing Channels<br />

Forums<br />Viahttp://boardreader.com<br />

Forums<br />

Blogs<br />Via http://blogsearch.google.com<br />

Blogs<br />

Comments + Conversations<br />

Search<br />Via SEOmoz’s Google Analytics
Data<br />

Search<br />Via SEOmoz’s Google Analytics
Data<br />

Twitter<br />http://www.twitter.com/seomoz<br />

Twitter<br />Via SEOmoz’s Google Analytics
Data<br />

Facebook<br />http://www.facebook.com/SEOmoz<br />

Facebook<br />Via SEOmoz’s Google Analytics
Data<br />

Email<br />http://www.mailchimp.com<br />

LinkedIn<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/33<br />

Slideshare<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/33<br />

Scribd<br />http://www.scribd.com/doc/49640820/SEOmoz-the-Future-of-Great-Links-Feb-11<br />

StumbleUpon<br />http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/www.seomoz.org/<br />

Hacker News<br />http://news.ycombinator.com/<br />

Hacker News<br />Hacker News is
one of our top sources for new visitors, but it’s very spiky and has extremely low engagement.<br />

Quora<br />http://www.quora.com/Rand-Fishkin/answers<br />

Quora<br />As Quora’s traffic spiked
into 2011, SEOmoz benefitted from the questions we’d answered on the site – a good reason to participate in “up-and-coming” inbound marketing channels<br />

Conferences + Events<br />http://randfishkin.com/blog/57/why-im-a-conference-whore<br />

The Inbound Marketing process we
useIn 4 Simple Steps<br />

Step #1: Discover<br />Find inbound
marketing paths that look promising and make a list.<br />Step #2:Test<br />Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.<br />Step #3: Measure<br />Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact<br />Step #4: Repeat<br />Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.<br />

News/Media/PR<br />SEO<br />Email<br />Research/White Papers<br
/>Blogs + Blogging<br />Infographics<br />Comment Marketing<br />Social Networks<br />Online Video<br />INBOUND MARKETING!(AKA “free” traffic sources)<br />Forums<br />Webinars<br />Word of Mouth<br />Social Bookmarking<br />Podcasting<br />Direct/Referring Links<br />Type-In Traffic<br />Q+A Sites<br />http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-rich-get-richer-true-in-seo-social-all-organic-marketing<br />

Results:Traffic & Financial Data<br />

Traffic 2007 - 2011<br />In
February, 2011, Moz+OSE had1,000,000 visits combined for the first time.<br />

Traffic Distribution March 14, 2010
– March 15, 2011<br />

Software Revenue at SEOmoz: 2007-2011<br
/>

Q+A<br />Rand Fishkin, CEO &
Co-Founder, SEOmoz<br /><ul><li> Twitter: @randfish

Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

Email: rand@seomoz.org</li></ul>You can now try
SEOmoz PRO Free!<br />http://www.seomoz.org/freetrial<br />