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GAMIFICATON
16 WAYS TO INTEGRATE GAMIFICATION FEATURES INTO
YOUR SEO STRATEGY
Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget
With thanks to Fabian Alvares, Stephanie Chang, Hannah Smith, Joanna Lord, Lindsay Wassel,

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VIA: http://www.hgtv.com/holidays-and-entertaining/our-25-favorite-halloween-ideas/pictures/page-4.html

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READ THIS BOOK

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I love http://dribbble.com/ - to become a popular player, the you need to earn follows and likes from other players. You
have to be invited (drafted) by another player. Great designs win business.

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#1 Award points for participation

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POINTS
Points are a fundamental unit of measuring performance in a Gamified system. They’re everywhere. Points do not
guarantee success but they are necessary.

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#2 Integrate a leader board to
rank your heavy users

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LEADER BOARDS
Inbound.org’s leaderboard at http://inbound.org/top-members/

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#3 Create a virtual currency to apply reward
discounts on your retail site

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Fab.com – awards cash to spend in store to users and makes inviting them easy

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XBOX Live uses entirely virtual currency (Microsoft Points) when you perform actions important to
their growth, completing surveys, referring friends, etc.

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#4 Assign status

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Higher contribution creates improved status – status influences perceived reputation and can benefit outside of the
environment in which status is achieved. Status is amazingly powerful!

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#5 Create tangible rewards for your users
for participation, like stickers

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GETGLUE.COM GROWTH
Check out GetGlue.com - Source: http://tnw.co/ribCso

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#6 Incentivise profile completeness

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PROFILE COMPLETENESS
Linkedin motivates users to complete their profiles by scoring the level of profile completeness. This
encourages commitment and motivates repeat usage.

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#7 Reward your users for creating content or ideas

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ANSWERING YOUR USER’S QUESTIONS
Create a question, earn points. Answer the question, earn points and status. SEOMoz.org/q

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How to make being environmentally friendly fun? VW created “the fun theory” for users to compete by creating an
innovative environmentally friendly idea…

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#8 Incentivise content creation with financial
reward (pay people for their hard work) and
competitions

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1st Place: $1000
2nd Place: $500
3rd-20th Place: $200
Receive 6% On-going Commission!
Minted.com – Set Challenge > Design > Rate > Win > Sell

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#9 Motivate your visitors to register

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Not logged in…
http://icanhascheezburger.com/ If you want to get collectibles straight away, you can by buying cheezburger
coins http://lolmart.com/product/coins/ and you can use this virtual currency to customise your profile.

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#10 Motivate your users to refer a friend by giving
Away a little of what you have the most

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MOTIVATE USERS TO INCREASE SUBSCRIBER BASE
Dropbox.com rewards the user for completing steps and inviting friends. For every friend who joins, bonus space is
awarded to the referee and the referrer.

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#11 Motivate your users to link to you

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Heh. If Google’s doing it, it must be ok.

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#12 Incentivise your users to share your stuff
via their social networks

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GIVE USERS STATS IN THEIR PROFILES
Why don’t more companies tell their users (their brand advocates) how valuable they are?

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#13 Implement a QA system for Long Tail and
user votes

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Month1:
12,188 Page Views
Av. Time on Site up 81%
Implement a minimum viable product and iterate

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#14 Create badges that evidence expertise
(and add to your profile pages)

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#15 Award points and badges for comments

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IMPLEMENT DISQUS RANKS FOR WP

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#16 Focus social activity on a shared outcome

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THANK YOU
Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget
Twitter: @richardbaxter
Blog: seogadget.co.uk
Email: richard@seogadget.co.uk

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Appendix – slides that didn’t make the grade

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NITRO FOR NON DEVELOPERS
“Reward visitors with free chips to get them playing, and they'll keep coming back for more (while
exploring your site). You'll even earn 50% of the revenue from chips your players purchase. “

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FOR WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPERS
Check out: http://bunchball.com/products/nitro, www.badgeville.com and
http://www.bigdoor.com/developers/ or this ruby gem: http://rubygems.org/gems/userinfuser