John Doherty's Blog

18 Mar

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 11 comments

It All Started At Linklove

I started doing SEO pretty hardcore back in the very beginning of 2010 when I was working as a book publisher from a small alpine town in Switzerland. When I discovered SEO, I had no clue where it would take me (literally and metaphorically), the people I would meet, or everything I would learn and what that would push me towards.

I started full time in Philadelphia, working with a couple of other awesome guys who mentored me, taught me the importance of hustle, and made me get insanely better at my job through data. We were a powerhouse team, and I still say that if I were to go back inhouse someday I would want both of them on the team with me.

That’s not the point of this post, though. You see, this past Friday (March 15th) was the final Linklove that Distilled plans to put on. We don’t believe that linkbuilding is dead or dying, but it has definitely changed and many of the old tactics and tricks that worked so well for so long (crap directories, aggressive anchor text, spun content, sidebar widgets en masse) have gone out the window and even become toxic. I wish I could tell you all about my adventures in the past months with link removal and the insanity of the cost both in terms of effort and impact to the business being affected.

But that’s also not the point of this point.

You see, two years ago today Linklove changed my life. Read more about It All Started At Linklove …

27 Feb

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 7 comments

Talking about Scale in Marketing

It’s unfortunate that Google’s ranking system (quality/quantity of links) forces SEOs to try to scale everything. Reciprocating cycle.

— John Doherty (@dohertyjf) January 21, 2013

I tweeted this about a month ago when I was frustrated at Google for still allowing sites in some verticals to rank off of bad content or links simply because they are a brand and “belong” in that search result. In fact, one could argue that users expect these companies to be there. After all, it makes sense for a company like John Deere to rank for [tractors], no?

Is this fair of me, though? Is it Google’s fault that SEOs have to scale their efforts of content creation and linkbuilding to become competitive in competitive verticals?

I’ve stewed on these thoughts for a bit of time and come to a few conclusions. Many of these might not come as a shock to you, but I think they’re worth stating.

14 Feb

John Doherty Posted in Entrepreneurship 7 comments

Talking Entrepreneurship and Product Marketing with Dan Martell

Entrepreneurship is a hot topic these days, and one that you may know I am quite passionate about if you are a return reader here.

After I interviewed Leo Widrich of BufferApp a couple of weeks ago, I was put in touch with Dan Martell who is a B2B SaaS founder coach as well as former founder of Clarity.fm, Flowtown, and Spheric Technologies. Clarity exists to connect experts with other entrepreneurs in order to create a knowledge-sharing ecosystem where the experts can also earn some money in return for having conversations with those seeking to learn from them.

Fun fact: you can book a call with me through Clarity: https://clarity.fm/dohertyjf

We talked about products, the importance of focus, the importance of revenue generation as early as possible, freemium, entrepreneurial goal setting, and more. Have a read or listen and let me know your thought in the comments!

29 Jan

John Doherty Posted in Uncategorized 10 comments

The Internet’s Content Problem

The Internet has a content problem. Every day more and more content is being pushed out into the nether regions (ok, that’s inappropriate) of the Internet and most of it is terrible. And worse than that, the good content that is published on the Internet is few and far between and hard to find.

My goal with this blog is to help people get their content found. Because of this I’ve written posts like:
11 Ways To Drive Gobs Of Traffic To Your Site
A Blog Is Not A Content Strategy
Linkbait Is Not A Content Strategy
The Future of Cross Platform Publishing

We’re being inundated with a lot of crap content as well these days. Every post I see on Inbound.org (so basically all content produced by “marketers”) is “How To…”, “X Reasons That…”, “The Ultimate Guide To…” Read more about The Internet’s Content Problem …

21 Jan

John Doherty Posted in Marketing 7 comments

Talking Marketing with Leo Widrich of Buffer

On January 15th I had the great pleasure to get to do a video hangout with Leo Widrich, one of the main guys behind the well-loved social media tool Buffer. I reached out to Leo because I’ve been following him for a while on social media and reading his blog. I’ve been seeing Buffer’s awesome growth over the past year (I even became a paying member recently), so I was interested to get Leo’s take on marketing, especially content marketing.

Leo is a smart young marketer, and I was quite intrigued to hear that Buffer’s content strategy was heavily influenced last year by Rand Fishkin’s Content Marketing Manifesto talk from last year’s SearchChurch meetup in Philadelphia. Leo said that since they took Rand’s advice to heart, their traffic to their content has quadrupled and they have seen a lot of success. I was also intrigued at the end of the video how Leo talked about their strategy going forward in regards to content, but you’ll just have to listen to the whole thing to find that out 🙂

Also, if you like this sort of format, my company is running Fireside Chats with Marketers in NYC as meetups this year. Sign up if you’re interested.

10 Jan

John Doherty Posted in Uncategorized 11 comments

Becoming A Better Writer

A lot of talk has happened about content, content marketing, and blogging in 2012. We can thank Google, Tom Critchlow, and people like CopyBlogger for this, and I truly do. I love content and writing, and content writing and content marketing. I love it so much that I told people to stop blogging if they’re not going to put the time and effort into it.

I often have people tell me that I’m a good writer. That’s not a humblebrag, it’s a statement of fact. The truth is that I have always been a writer and loved writing, but honestly I used to suck at it. I’ve been writing on the Internet, on blogs of various kinds, for a decade now. And honestly, a lot of my stuff used to suck. And honestly, a lot of content I wrote on this site when I started it almost 2 years ago now….sucked.

I think I’m a decent writer and blogger now. So how have I done it?

The answer is plain and simple – I’ve written, practiced, and analyzed the results, and then written some more, practiced new lessons, and analyzed the results, then I write… You get the idea. Read more about Becoming A Better Writer …