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Rand Fishkin, profile picture
Uploaded byRand Fishkin
PPTX, PDF41,927 views

F%$#! Link Building. Content Marketing FTW

The document discusses strategies for content marketing versus traditional link building. It argues that content marketing through blogs, videos, and other tactics can build links naturally while also growing brands and communities. Specific content marketing examples are provided that demonstrate how content can be aligned with businesses, discover audience interests, and leverage emerging platforms to achieve viral sharing.

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Related topics:
Link Building Strategies• Content Marketing•
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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