SEOs are Growth Hackers

SEOs are Growth Hackers

Growth hacking has become a buzzterm in the past 6 months, ever since this post written back in April by Andrew Chen. There’s even a growth hacking agency in New York City (linked at the bottom of the post) and startups are starting to hire growth hackers to help them scale up their user base faster.

I’ve heard the growth hacker term thrown around a lot, and have experienced both positive and negative reactions to it from people I know.

The goal of this post is to define down what a growth hacker is, how this integrates well into online marketing, and then to give a few examples of some growth hacks I’ve either seen or heard about that have helped tech startups grow. Read more about SEOs are Growth Hackers

The Future of The Visual Web and The Future of SEO

The Future of The Visual Web and The Future of SEO

I swore at my computer the other day (sorry Mom). You see, I had just seen a tweet that led me to this page:

That, of course, is the current Airbnb homepage, where they announced that they have built out neighborhood pages, such as my neighborhood of Boerum Hill.

I didn’t swear because they launched something that I wanted one of my clients to launch. I swore because they did it so damn well. These pages are beautiful. They have local knowledge, large photos (which is rare for travel, but makes so much sense), and they don’t talk about themselves – rather, they let people see the area and qualify themselves, with only a call to action at the end.

This marks, in my mind, the final step in a move towards the visual web – these pages are going to rank because they are so useful and beautiful (though they do need to work on SEO on these pages) and they will naturally attract links.

The web is becoming visual; SEOs need to get on board. Read more about The Future of The Visual Web and The Future of SEO

A Blog Is Not A Content Strategy

A Blog Is Not A Content Strategy

Content marketing has been around for years, but until recently Google was not making good on their word to rank content that deserves to rank. Instead, we could all easily find examples where sites were ranking off of low quality directories, link wheels, blog networks, and many other tactics. But since Penguin, Panda, and the myriad of other algorithm changes this year, SEOs have started to finally embrace content as a viable means, but we’re still running into old mindsets from clients, and honestly a lot of SEOs are not good at creating linkworthy content. Read more about A Blog Is Not A Content Strategy

The Myth of Overnight Success

The Myth of Overnight Success

America seems to be enamored with the idea of “overnight success”. We see people who become seemingly overnight sensations, often through discovery on Youtube, and are catapulted into the limelight. We see people on TV who become hyper-successful because they were on a reality show or something of the like. These people seem like “overnight successes”. I don’t think there’s any such thing, though.

Examples

Let’s look at a few of my favorite examples. Read more about The Myth of Overnight Success

Agile Project Management

Agile Project Management

There has been a lot of buzz around agile marketing/the agile methodology in the SEO/online marketing space in the past month or so.

I blame Jonathan Colman. First he did an interview here on this site, then he spoke at Mozcon, then he did a Whiteboard Friday, and all along the way for the past couple of years he has done presentations that have shaken things up.

He’s gotten SEOs started talking and thinking about agile marketing and project management. As SEOs/marketers, we’re not able to make developers get things done faster, but we are able to optimize how quickly we get things done for our clients (and then the work is onto them), unless we are doing the work directly on their sites for them in which case we are able to affect that timing.

So where and how do agile practices intersect with marketing? What if you’re a consultant – how do you do it? I’ve worked with a good number of clients up to this point, so I’d like to share with you my methodology for it. Now remember, I’m not one of those consultants who talks to their client, then goes away and prepares a 100 page document and presents it to them, then follows up with a phone call to discuss it. Read more about Agile Project Management

Building Landing Pages That Rank for SEO

Building Landing Pages That Rank for SEO

I’ve seen an alarming trend recently in startup websites. Most want to follow this model:

It’s not uncommon to see this sort of page on a startup’s website:

It’s super simple, just a few points, and a form (and this even asks for your phone number. Talk about asking for too much on the first date). And the reality is that it’s not going to rank for anything substantial because there is simply nothing useful on the page for the search engines to index and rank.

Today let’s talk about the difference between squeeze pages (directed towards conversion) and ranking pages (that can also convert, but will do so at a lower conversion rate). Read more about Building Landing Pages That Rank for SEO

Expedia’s Brilliant Page Type Strategy

Expedia’s Brilliant Page Type Strategy

Every now and then I come across a strategy that is absolutely brilliant and need to share it with the world. I recently came across a strategy like this from Expedia, while doing competitor research for a client. At Distilled, we talk about page types a lot, which basically means your site’s taxonomy. These are all examples of page types:

  • Categories
  • Product pages
  • Guides
  • Homepage

Expedia is combining a few of these in a really smart way that is helping them rank these pages well.

They are putting their guide content on their city hub pages, and getting links for travel guide related keywords that are partial match anchors for their main keywords!

Let’s take a look. Read more about Expedia’s Brilliant Page Type Strategy

Do Real Industry Stuff

Do Real Industry Stuff

Just last week I was sitting in the audience in the Westin in Seattle where I heard Wil Reynolds give a talk that was basically titled “Do Real Company Stuff“. Intriguingly, a few days before I had a brief exchange on Twitter with Branko, who I greatly respect and greatly enjoy his insights. He had just published this post on SEObook about small businesses and Google’s recent algorithm updates.

I wrote another post as a response to what he and others have said about outing, but I’m publishing this one instead after hearing Wil’s talk. Read more about Do Real Industry Stuff

The Anatomy of A Viral Marketing Product Launch

The Anatomy of A Viral Marketing Product Launch

“Virality” has been the talk of the Internet, and especially blogging and marketing, worlds for a bit of time now. In my day-to-day I work with and have a lot of conversations with startups whose investors are constantly pushing them to “make the product more viral”. I’m not convinced that “virality” within a product is necessarily a positive, as a lot of people have been frustrated by the forced sharing that is now occurring throughout Facebook and the social web.

Where virality is useful, though, is when launching a new product. Everyone has a book or product idea, but relatively few know how to market their product well, especially pre-launch, to have the maximum number of people possible ready and willing to buy, share, and promote the product for you once it launches.

So how do you build virality into a product launch? How do you build this set of people? This is the question I am going to tackle today.

Read more about The Anatomy of A Viral Marketing Product Launch

4 Ways to Build An Online Audience

4 Ways to Build An Online Audience

What if I told you that you don’t need a ton of followers to be successful online? And what if I told you that you should not even think about having an audience? What if I told you that thinking you need a lot of followers is the wrong way to go to actually gain a lot of followers?

You Don’t Need 10,000 Followers

If you get nothing else from this post, you don’t need 10,000 followers. What you need is 10 engaged followers who will share you stuff to their engaged followers. We talked about reach a few weeks ago in my personal branding post. This is how you gain a larger audience that keeps giving back to you – finding people who have reach that you can make friends with.

Read more about 4 Ways to Build An Online Audience

Announcing My New Project

Announcing My New Project

I’ve been a writer all my life (I wrote my first short novel when I was eleven years old) and a blogger since 2001. I had the most awesome neon green and royal blue Xanga site you have ever seen!

My love affair with the blogosphere has waned in recent years though. Since I started in marketing professionally a few years ago, either the amount of crap writing and production has increased, or I have become pickier and pickier with less patience for content that adds to the noise instead of the signal.

I have also noticed that it is easier to complain about things that annoy you than to change them.

Today I put that to an end. Read more about Announcing My New Project

11 Ways to Drive Gobs of Traffic to Your Website

11 Ways to Drive Gobs of Traffic to Your Website

This is mostly a search marketing blog, but I’ve written before about how SEO is not a complete marketing strategy. In fact, it should be a piece of a larger marketing strategy that includes email, possibly paid search, social, content, and even display and print. Here’s Rand’s inbound marketing model that many of you are familiar with:

I’ll be the first to admit that search might not be the best way for your site to get traffic. Search takes a while to take effect (often you won’t see returns for 3-6 months, and it grows slowly oftentimes even then). Read more about 11 Ways to Drive Gobs of Traffic to Your Website

Why SEOs/Inbound Marketers Should Work Onsite

Why SEOs/Inbound Marketers Should Work Onsite

Because the rules of SEO have changed in the past 6-18 months, especially with the release of algorithms such as Panda and Penguin, as digital marketers we now have to think broader about how our work affects the other parts of the marketing ecosystem. Like Hugo said in his recent post:

…[W]hat I didn’t realize at the time was how this relatively small sharing gesture would result in a significant surge in collaboration, implementation, and general advocacy on the part of this particular division. In fact, the amount of effort and emphasis that this group provided extended beyond SEO and into one of the other channels that I manage.

And the result has been obvious lift in ROI for both of these channels as well as a much stronger sense of rapport between my team and this parallel business group.

Being in New York City, I’ve had the fortune to be able to go work onsite with a few of my clients. This has afforded me to the opportunity to get to know all of the employees as friends (we’ve been working together for over 6 months now), which is a greatly underestimated competitive advantage when working with a consultant. Couple people who are motivated, talented, and smart with mentors who are experts in their fields, and all of a sudden you have a very formidable company pushing flywheels that are all pushing a larger company flywheel. Read more about Why SEOs/Inbound Marketers Should Work Onsite

Shut Up About Yourself

Shut Up About Yourself

Have you ever noticed how a lot of companies pay lip service to wanting to become a “thought leader” in their industry, and lead through great content, yet when they start writing all that comes out is self-promotional drivel that, let’s be honest, no one wants to read? I have.

Most businesses, in my opinion, don’t understand the difference between old-school “marketing material” and the new school of online marketing – thought leadership materials and other remarkable pieces. This has led me to one conclusion:

Everyone wants a brand experience. No one wants a marketing experience.

Read more about Shut Up About Yourself