1. An
APPSUMO + MIXERGY
Production
SEO for
Startups*
Building A Brand and Getting
Found by Customers
with
Rand Fishkin
Co-Founder & CEO, SEOmoz
* Transcript

2. Startup SEO Transcript
STARTUP SEO I should go after. How do I decide?
Andrew: So, Rand, do you have an ex-
ample of what our listener will be able to do Rand: Yeah. This is a tough call, right? I’m
at the end of this program? going to look at my traffic sources over the
last few months, and if I go in and look at
Rand: Yeah, I think I can definitely do that, the keywords that sent me traffic, this is in my
Andrew. So why don’t we talk real quick Google Analytics account for the SEOmoz
about a promotion that we did. We’re try- website. I can see that there are a lot of dif-
ing to hire some engineers and, specifically, ferent keywords sending me traffic, but not
get people to refer software engineers to all of them are sending great quality traffic.
SEOmoz. I’ll show you something cool that Some of those send conversions, people who
we’ve done recently. Let’s see if you search end up buying a membership or taking a
for “refer an engineer,” oh, look at that, what free trial or signing up to get e-mail from us,
a convenient coincidence. “Refer an engi- and some of them send traffic that’s of low
neer” surprisingly comes up number one and to middling quality at best.
there you go; “Refer a software engineer to
SEOmoz, make $12,000.” So here we go. We can look down the list,
and you can see some branded terms. SEO,
This is a promotion that we did and then that’s a pretty good keyword, get a lot of
we did some SEO around it. We figured it traffic for that. SEO tools, our toolbar, SEO
would be very convenient if we could just tell blog, that’s a good one to rank for. But you
people, we’re out at a conference, we’re get this idea of like, huh, if I just looked at
meeting people at a hack-a-thon, “Google the things that are already sending me traf-
‘refer an engineer’ and you’ll not only see fic, I wouldn’t have that idea of opportunity.
that we’re good at SEO, which is something Where could I go and find the keywords that
we should be good at, but also exactly the might send me great traffic? And to do that,
promotion that you need.” You don’t have Google’s actually got some really good tools
to hand them a business card and you don’t for this. So let’s go in here and search for
have to give them the URL. You can tell them “SEO tools,” and I can say I only want ideas
to just Google “refer an engineer.” So it’s a close to my website, but I’m going to be
cool thing. pretty international.
Andrew: That’s incredibly powerful. By the Andrew: How do we get to that? We go
way, I can’t believe you’re offering $12,000 to adwords.google.com, and we look for
to anyone who refers an engineer to SEO- keyword tools?
moz. That gets my attention on its own.
Rand: That’s right, or you can just search for
Rand: I was going to say and the engineer AdWords tool or keyword tool in Google. I
gets $12,000 for signing up. Yeah, so we went believe keyword tool, the first result will come
all out with this. up as that AdWords tool. There you go, the
first one. Google is also reasonably good at
Andrew: Wow. All right. Well, I’d like to their own SEO, which is nice. When I do a
learn how to do that. Here’s one of the first is- search in here, it will show me a few things
sues that I have. I don’t know what keywords that are kind of interesting. I get this idea of
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3. Startup SEO Transcript
how many searches there are per month, the Google AdWords. Monthly global search-
competition. Now remember, that’s AdWords es gives you an indication of how many
competition, not SEO competition. searches are being done, and local monthly
searches, I guess, means in your neighbor-
I get this list and then I can say, “Well, why hood, in your part of the country. Is that
don’t we sort by the global monthly search- right?
es, free SEO tools, SEO tools for keywords,
Google SEO tools, best SEO tools.” These all Rand: Right. So in the advanced options
might be kinds of things that I would consider. up here at the top, if I had selected just the
And if I want to, the next step that I might United States, for example, I can redo that
take is actually buying some of these in paid search, and then the local monthly searches
search. So if I do a quick search here. should show me just the queries that are tak-
ing place in the U.S.
Andrew: I just wanted to make sure that
I understood what was on that page be- Andrew: I see.
fore we move on past it. Is it still up on your
screen? Rand: And that’s what I’m seeing now. So
6,600 in the U.S., 33,000 worldwide.
Rand: Sure. It’s right here.
Andrew: What’s our goal here, Rand? Are
Andrew: There it is. we looking for a phrase that has not much
competition but a lot of global searches?
Rand: Essentially, we’ve got these keyword
columns, and then we’re showing global Rand: It depends on what you’re trying to
and local searches. The biggest thing to be do. The three things that I really look for in a
aware of over here on the left-hand side is keyword – and only a few of these can be
this match type. See that broad, exact, and gotten from this tool – you want as high a
phrase? volume as possible while being relevant to
the things that you’re trying to achieve. So
Andrew: Right. SEO tools might be very relevant for us. It’s
probably not super relevant for lots of other
Rand: If I show only exact, it’ll make sure that people.
it only shows phrases that contain that exact
word, and that can actually be a much bet- Andrew: Right.
ter idea. So let’s do that.
Rand: If you have specific e-commerce prod-
Andrew: And at the top, you typed in a ucts, the more specific those products, those
key phrase that was already sending you queries tend to be, the more products you’re
traffic and you’re looking for phrases around likely to sell versus the broad searches. Let’s
it that might send you even more traffic. say I’m selling Batman comic books. Some-
What you’re seeing is keywords on the left. one who searches for Batman is probably go-
The competition, I guess the bigger the bar, ing to be a terrible customer. Someone who
the more competition there is for people searches for Batman the Dark Knight graphic
who are trying to buy those keywords from novels is probably an excellent customer.
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4. Startup SEO Transcript
low difficulty.
So the volume is one thing. The value or
potential value of the conversions is another. Rand: Yeah. One of the things that we like
And then the third one is difficulty. Unfortu- to do is kind of store this data just in a key
nately, competition only shows you the dif- table here. So you can see, I guess I recently
ficulty or the price of ranking in the AdWords searched for “what is the best chat tool for
results. So let’s take a quick look at a Google customer support,” which is actually kind
search result over here. Here’s SEO tools, of surprisingly hard. But here are some easy
and you can see SEOmoz up there at the ones: “Dreams La Romana,” not too hard;
top being a high amount. So right there’s an “Maritime Hotel New York,” less challeng-
ad, and then here are the normal results. So ing; and then tougher things like “pony and
we’re ranking fourth for that, below the new peanut butter,” which are harder to search
search, unfortunately. This is called the or- for. And there’s the volume, so I can get kind
ganic results, and Google doesn’t really give of a sense and then maybe build out a da-
you a great idea of what it takes to rank in tabase or build out an Excel spreadsheet,
those results, but luckily, there are some tools rather, that can help me identify which terms
to help with this. and phrases I should be targeting.
I’m going to show off a tool that SEOmoz Andrew: So we come up with a few
makes that does this. But there are several hunches and we test those hunches by buy-
other ones, too. If I search for a keyword dif- ing keywords that match those phrases. And
ficulty tool and I type in “SEO tools,” it’ll give if those phrases covert for us, then we know
me a sense of how powerful and important we’re on to something, we’ve got keywords
those sites are that are ranking. Wow, that that we need to try to rank for in the organic
is extremely [inaudible 07:42] results. That’s search results. What do we do next?
going to be very hard to try and rank for or
to try and move up in. And there I’ve got the Rand: This process is not entirely unchalleng-
Google AdWords volume number that I saw ing, but the biggest thing that we need to
[inaudible 07:51] from the tool, as well, sort of do next is what I call keyword targeting. So
showing that. why don’t we just do a quick on-page opti-
mization. It’s kind of nice that we rank for all
So I can see, based on the importance, this this stuff because it makes it easy to find. This
is from SEOmoz data, but page authority, process of on-page optimization is essentially
domain authority, how tough is it going to be we want to do some things on the page to
to outrank the pages that are in there. And indicate, not just to search engines, but also
you can see those top four results. Oh, man, to visitors that this page is about the topic
those are beasts, those are monsters. That’s that they are searching for and it contains
going to be hard. So what you want to find great information on that topic, maybe a
are words that have high volume, high value, great tool, a great resource, something they
low difficulty. can download.
Andrew: I guess using both these tools, we The search results, particularly in the organic
can figure out which are the right keywords, side, bias towards things that people want to
which are the ones that have high volume, link to, want to share, have good, relevant,
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5. Startup SEO Transcript
deep, accurate content, oftentimes have use good alt attributes and good text in their
good visuals or video or images. Those are all alt attributes, but we also see that people link
the kinds of things that we need to be think- more to those pages and they share those
ing about when we’re building these per- pages more on Twitter and Facebook and all
fectly optimized pages for Google. these kinds of things.
It’s much less about things like, “Oh, I need to I’m just going to quickly show you inside
worry about putting my keyword seven times WordPress. This is my personal blog, and I’ll
on the page or using the meta keywords show you in here it couldn’t be easier to
tag,” which isn’t even used anymore by the target a keyword inside WordPress. It’s really,
search engines, and much more about say- really quite simple. You can see at the top,
ing, “Hey, here’s the keyword. Let’s make “enter title here”, and then there’s the post.
sure that the first word is in the title and it’s in Let’s say I wanted to target something like
the first few paragraphs and that the subject “Andrew Warner rocks the house,” which is
of the page is actually about that, because probably a highly competitive search result,
search engines do pretty sophisticated text lots of people are trying to rank for that. It
analyses to try to figure these things out. And gets so many searches every day, it’s just
then let’s make sure that it’s super relevant unbelievable.
and valuable for visitors so that they’re very
happy when they see that result.” And then I might want to say, “Why does An-
drew Warner rock so hard?” It’s easy, right?
Andrew: Okay. So if I were to use Word- I’ve got these things in here. Maybe I want
Press, Drupal, Joomla – I’m looking here to make a graphic showing the amount of
at a list of all the publishing platforms that rocking that you’ve done over the years, that
are out there – they all make it easy for me graphic showing a nice chart going up, may-
to put in my keywords in the sections that be a picture of your face, the kinds of things
you’ve got up on your screen right now, on where people would think, “It’s relevant, it’s
your blog post. And what you’re saying is if sharing worthy, it’s got good content, it an-
you’re targeting a phrase like “SEO tools,” swers the question. I’m very satisfied by this.”
in that header, use the word SEO tools. If You can see Google doing so many things
you’re using SEO tools as one of the phrases over the last few years to make sure that the
that you’re targeting, make sure to include relevancy and the quality of the results that
it in the blog post itself. Even in the picture, it they have is going up dramatically, especial-
looks like we should include it? ly the last few months.
Rand: Yeah. Well, what I would say is in the I don’t know if you’ve heard about things
picture, what I really like having is, for exam- like the Google Farmer update or the stack
ple, a relevant image that someone might overflow update that they made, but both of
say, “Wow, that’s a great image. If I was go- those had a big impact on a lot of, let’s say,
ing to make a presentation and I was going low quality sites going down.
to talk about this topic, that’s the image I
would want to use.” That means lots of good Andrew: And with all those changes,
things for your page. Not only have we seen what we’re talking about here today still
better ranking correlations with pages that works, still applies, and it sounds like you’re
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6. Startup SEO Transcript
saying it works even more because the com- image. Let’s go throw an image in here. I
petition that was creating shoddy text and can select a file. I’m going to pretend that I
shoddy content before is getting downgrad- don’t have ten pictures of you on my hard
ed. drive already. It’s being a little slow here.
There we go. Let’s take this back link screen
Rand: Yeah, that’s exactly right. It’s kind of shot and we’ll put that in there.
a beautiful symbiotic relationship. If you’re
doing great inbound marketing, great con- So when I upload this file, I might want to do
tent creation, and doing these things with a things like call the file “Andrew Warner rocks
sharing-likely audience in mind, you just have the house” and I might want to make the
so much more opportunity to rank because alternate text, which is the text not just that
Google is doing such a good job. search engines see, but remember, anyone
using a screen reader, anyone who’s on a
Andrew: Now that I understand the ba- mobile device that’s not rendering images,
sics, I understand that I’d want to have a that’s the text that they’re going to see to
good picture, I’d want to have a good describe the image. So you really want to
headline, I’d want to have content that re- make sure that you’re not spamming or
lated to my keywords, what about the other misleading with that because you’re not just
elements of the page here, like categories, fooling the engines, you’re essentially screw-
the tags are somewhere on there, maybe ing over blind or disabled users and mobile
even the excerpt? What else should I be device users. So that’s a really bad thing to
paying attention to, to help me with the . . . do.
Rand: There are a few things that can make But we can go in here and say, “Andrew
some sense. For example, I might want to Warner rocks” into my alt text there, and I
have something like, let’s take this up here can save my changes and have that nice
and we’ll make it the headline, heading one. relevant image. Well, we’ll assume this is a
That might actually be a good idea because relevant image. It’s not in this case, but you
it will make it stand out for users, and the H1 get the idea. We can put that into the blog
has some SEO value, as well. I might want to post. So these are quite good things to be
add a new category. So not necessarily, but doing for SEO.
if I decide that Andrew Warner is a topic that
I’m going to be writing about a lot or maybe But this on-page optimization is really kind of
I’m going to be writing about people who the tip of the iceberg. It’s the things that you
rock the house quite a bit, I can create that don’t see, the things behind the scenes that
category, and now it lives inside that catego- really matter.
ry. It helps tell the search engines, “Hey, this is
relevant,” and it helps tell visitors when they Andrew: First of all, I’ve got to tell you,
get to my site, “I want to know more people I’ve read some of this stuff before and it just
who rock the house,” and they can click that didn’t click with me until I saw here up on the
link and see those types of things. screen. The other thing that I like about what
you’re doing is I don’t feel overwhelmed. I
We also talked about the images, so I might feel like I could do all this stuff. Can I set up
want to do something like put in an actual WordPress? Absolutely. Is Joomla similar to
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7. Startup SEO Transcript
this? Absolutely. Can I do this tomorrow? Can Oh, look at that. That’s no good. I have used
I do this as soon as you and I are done? A the words “title tag” 21 times on this page.
hundred percent. It’s possible I’ve gone a little bit overboard.
I might want to look into that. Maybe I’ve
Rand: Yeah. gone too far. But I’ve done a lot of other
things right. I can see this is pretty good.
Andrew: I don’t feel overwhelmed and Here’s a nice little explanation.
that feels good, because a lot of times SEO,
it feels like there are all these experts that are So this type of stuff, it tends to be pretty sim-
really good at it and I’m never going to learn ple. If you want to go deep down the rabbit
any of it and I’d better just stay away and hole, there are always options. That’s why
leave it to the experts and just mind my own there are experts in this field and consultants
business. who charge $1,000 an hour is because there
are deep ways to do it. It’s so wonderful
Rand: One of the things that’s pretty nice because, like you said, you can pop open
about this is let’s say that, for example, I WordPress, do a little bit of keyword research,
don’t have WordPress or Drupal or Joomla say I want to target this keyword, build a
or some of these easier systems, and I’m page around it, and then start working on
wondering did I do a good job, did I not do marketing that page, which will really bring
a good job. There is a free tool on SEOmoz more links and references to it and help it
to help do on-page analysis. There are other move up in the search engines.
good ones out there. I just want to express
that this is simple, basic stuff. You don’t need Andrew: All right. I’ve got a couple of
to know very much about SEO at all to be other questions about on-page optimization,
able to do this. actually three questions. The first is: What is
on-page optimization and as opposed to
So let’s take, for example, a page. Why don’t what?
we take our SEO tools page on SEOmoz and
plug it in there. So here’s this SEOmoz.org/ Rand: On-page optimization is all the stuff
tools, and I can plug that in and do some on- we’ve been doing. It’s essentially anything
page optimization. Oh, look, here we go. So that I do on my actual website or web pages
here’s title tag, something that SEOmoz might to help make them rank higher. It compares
want to rank for because lots of people are itself, I guess, to off-page optimization, which
searching for title tags. How do I optimize for is really about the links and citations and
that? And here’s a nice little report grade. references to the page; things like, “Can I
I’ve got a B. Maybe I want to get an A. What get the news to link to me? Can I have other
would I have to do to get an A? Well, I can bloggers link to me? Can I have forums linked
scroll right down here and see, “Oh, I haven’t to me?” Those kinds of things.
used rel=canonical. That might a good idea,
because if people are producing my URL, Andrew: The other question was: We talk-
linking to it with weird things like the Feed- ed about categories and how we can cat-
Burner or Twitter parameters at the end, it egorize our posts to make them more useful
might not be getting all the credit it could.” for users and for search engines. What about
tags? I know that that’s another feature.
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8. Startup SEO Transcript
version, I get a different URL but with the
Rand: Yeah. Actually, there’s a great blog same content. So the engines have this really
post about this if you ever want to learn a tough time saying, “Wait a minute. Which
ton about the history of meta tags. Danny one is the original? Which is the one that I
Sullivan from Search Engine Land did a great should rank, because there are these four
article called “The Meta Keywords Tag 101: different versions? They all look really similar.
How to Legally Hide Words on your Page.” Some of them earn links. Should we be as-
He talks about how, back in the old days of signing that link juice separately, or does it all
SEO, this was really important and search go to one page?” And this is a great way of
engines really stopped using it around 2002 telling the engines, “Hey guys, this page over
to 2003, and now they’re all publicly saying, here, that’s the original. Any other copies
“No, we don’t use the meta keywords tag at that you might see of this, refer them back to
all. We ignore it. It doesn’t help with ranking. here.”
It doesn’t even help with discovery.”
So we can essentially take something like I’ve
You can see Danny doing a test in there of got category systems that create multiple
his meta keywords tag and showing how it versions of the same page, or I’ve got print-
doesn’t impact anything. At SEOmoz, we only URLs, or I have something like session
have some correlation data showing it’s use- IDs, the guy down here in Orange who’s got
less. So, the only thing I would say about the these session IDs at the end of his URLs. All of
meta keywords tags is if you want to show those can be solved with the rel=canonical
your competition all the keywords that you’re text. It’s a [inaudible 23:33], I think the en-
trying to rank for, I recommend using it. If you gines came out with it, I guess, whatever day
don’t, then I wouldn’t recommend doing it. this blog post was published, 2009, and it’s
been super helpful.
Andrew: Okay. Then you used a phrase
earlier that I wanted to come back and ask Andrew: Okay. And I see the blog post up
about. Rel=canonical, what is that? there on your screen, too, and people can
go directly to it. So we talked about on-page
Rand: The canonical URL tag is something optimization. What’s next?
that the search engines came out with be-
cause they realized that there’s a big prob- Rand: From here, the next part is where the
lem in the SEO space in general. Basically, tough part really begins. In SEO, the build
the canonical URL tag, I’ve got some nice it and they will come mentality, generally
cartoons here that help illustrate this. The ca- speaking, does not work. Unless you can
nonical URL tag was meant to solve a prob- find an area or a niche where nobody else
lem that exists across the Web and has for a is competing, you’re going to really have
long time. to get your feet on the street, start beat-
ing down people’s doors, and make them
Check out this URL. I’ve got SEOmoz.org/blog aware that you have this great content.
and then I’ve got SEOmoz.org/blog?ref=123.
And you see this all the time. If I follow a link When I look down the search results . . . let’s
from Twitter, from FeedBurner, if I’m on a site do a quick search for your name, Andrew.
like the New York Times and I click the print Hopefully this won’t bring up anything em-
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9. Startup SEO Transcript
barrassing. I can see here that the first two re- nels, many of which will lead back with a link.
sults are from Mixergy. In fact, they’re ranked Even the ones that don’t can lead to a sec-
even higher than your personal website, An- ond order impact of more people seeing it,
drewWarner.com. One of the reasons for that finding it, and linking to it.
is that there are more links pointing to Mixer-
gy, and higher quality links potentially, point- Andrew: Okay. So we go to all the sites
ing to Mixergy saying, “Here’s where Andrew that you talked about and we point there
Warner talks about these things.” So even and we create links back to our site and
though look it’s not in the title tag, [inaudible we get content that’s so exciting that oth-
24:55], and it is clearly in the title tag here, it’s ers link back. What about using the phrases
in the title tag of your Twitter account. that we picked out in the first segment of this
program? How do we use them when we’re
Twitter is a really powerful website. It’s sur- getting traffic and when we’re getting all
prising that they don’t rank. But, wow, that’s these links?
strong, and it’s [inaudible 25:06] based on
the fact that lots of people are referencing Rand: Sure. Let’s go back to our “refer an
it. Google invented page ranks, just a classic engineer” example. Google came out last
link citation method, and now there’s all this year and said, “We’re now using Twitter data,
focus on links. So you need to be out there the links that are tweeted in Twitter, to help
marketing, trying to earn those links and ref- us rank results, kind of like the way we used
erences back to your site. links for the last decade.” So we said, ‘Hmm,
really? All right, let’s make a custom bitly
Andrew: I see. Okay. So that’s the off-site URL that uses our URL shortener and then the
optimization that we need, the right content text of that URL is ‘refer-an-engineer.’” This is
that will get people to link over to us. probably one of the things that helped this
page rank so well because everyone started
Rand: Yeah. And once we write it, we can’t tweeting it and linking to it with “refer an en-
just stop there. We need to then go and gineer.” That definitely is going to help it rank
proactively promote it. Just like we wouldn’t higher than it ordinarily would.
build a great piece of software and then sit
on our hands and hope that people are go- I like to think really hard when I build my bio.
ing to come and use our software, or make The biography that I’m putting together
a great startup and not tell anyone about, goes onto a lot of different websites. I make
we’ve got to go tell people. sure that, okay, [inaudible 27:44] to SEOmoz.
I make sure that the name is in there, and
That’s where social media and inbound when I link to my wife’s site, I’m going to put
marketing have been so great. I can go to her name in there and then I’m going to link
Twitter and I can tell my friends about it. I can to these sites in a relevant way. I’ll link to the
go to Facebook and I can update about it. I book that I wrote, “The Art of SEO,” in a rel-
can write a blog on that site and tell people evant way. So thinking about how you’re link-
about it. I can make presentations and up- ing is important.
load them to SlideShare and DocStoc and
Scribd. I can make videos and put them on I wouldn’t go overboard with this. Just like
YouTube. There are all these marketing chan- everything else on the planet, you can abuse
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and manipulate it and that causes lots of name. So using those in the bio intelligently.
nasty problems. Be smart about what you I would love it if, maybe sometime soon, “40
say. Don’t just put click here and here, check Under 40” list or “30 Under 30” comes up in
this out, and oh, here’s another thing you there.
should look at. Call them what they are. Call
them what you want to rank for. Use the text Andrew: So if anyone says, “We need to
that people are searching for. It’s not just find a hot new entrepreneur. Let’s look at the
good for search engines, it’s good for people ‘30 Under 30’ or ‘40 Under 40’ list,” you want
who are browsing that page, too, because them to be able to come up on your page
they know what they’re going to find on the and say, “Let’s find out more about Rand.”
link that they click.
Rand: Yeah, you got it.
Andrew: I remember after I interviewed
you, one of the first things I did was, in order Andrew: That’s the way it would work if
to give you your biography on my page, I just that was your plan.
copied and pasted the bio exactly as you
wrote it with all the links and everything that Rand: Exactly. When I come up, I want Mix-
you had and put it in the bio on my page ergy, for example, to rank number one for
with the links. So what I was doing there was interviews with entrepreneurs or learn entre-
saying, “40 Under 40” list and linking to, since preneurship. So I might say, “Andrew Warner
that’s one of the phrases there that’s hyper- runs Mixergy, the number one startup site
linked, I was linking the way you wanted me for learning entrepreneurship,” and you can
to, to the page you wanted me to point out. have that whole phrase, “Mixergy learning
Why did you pick “40 Under 40” as one of the entrepreneurship” link back to the Mixergy
phrases that you were going to hyperlink? website. That’s probably a great way to go
because your bio gets put all over the Web
Rand: In this case, what I’m actually trying to in these ways.
do is to get these things to generally rank for
or to appear next to when you search for my And it’s not just about bios, it’s about all sorts
name. So what I want to see is the words and of things. When you have a signature link
phrases that are associated with Rand Fish- that you might leave in a forum, or in your
kin. Actually, let’s do a quick Google search. Quora profile when you’re answering ques-
You can see a bunch of these rankings. So tions in there, you might want to have those
there’s my LinkedIn profile, my Twitter profile links point back. Google now has profiles.
that I link to, there’s my personal blog that There’s Google Profiles. I was just testing that
I’ve been linking to. This stuff works kind of out a couple of days ago. They let you cus-
well. tomize the text that you want to have over
here. There’s my SEOmoz company profile,
I’ll show you some others. So Mixergy, there’s my personal blog, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter. I
the interview I did with you, which is some- can actually edit the text of what those links
thing I regularly link to, the book, “The Art are. I should probably do that.
of SEO” book, SEO, the blog, the interview.
These are all kinds of things that I want to Andrew: I see. So we find the keywords,
come up and want to be associated with my we use them on our page, we start tweet-
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11. Startup SEO Transcript
ing out the keywords that we want so that to that SEO Chat page. Why don’t we take
people start re-tweeting using the phrases a look through the linking domains and see
that we’re coming up with. We link to them which domains, which websites, are actually
from our profile and all over the place. Even linking to them. Wow, they’ve got a link from
from bit.ly, you go to bit.ly and you create a Wikipedia, from StatCounter, from Reference.
shortcut and you customize that shortcut by com, Squidoo, Submit Express, from Word-
adding the key phrases that you want. What Press, from Mashable. That’s a pretty good
else? Those seem pretty easy. What’s the set of links. I can export to CSV and sort of
next level of difficulty beyond that? see the specific pages, or I can click on the
linking pages tab and see where those links
Rand: The difficulty, in a lot of these cases . are coming from.
. . so this is our bit.ly account and you can
see that I can create a keyword. I’ll just go For example, I might want to say, “Just show
ahead and make a quick link here to show me the followed and 301 links from external
you. I might say, “Oh, let’s customize that link to just this page and filter those results.” Then
so that it’s keyword-difficulty as opposed to I can get a real sense for like, huh, Web De-
just fm6qvs.” That might actually be a smart signer Wall, okay. They got a link from there. I
thing to do when I tweet it out. That’s pretty wonder if I should contact the guys who run
cool. Web Designer Wall, which are a couple of
pretty cool bloggers in the design space and
What I was going to say is that the tough part see if next time they write about SEO, could
comes in when you’re trying to outrank peo- I could contribute an article for you. I’ll write
ple who have quite a bit more years of doing a good piece about SEO, and then in my bio
SEO work, of trying to rank for these things or the snippet about who I am, who wrote
ahead of them. For example, let’s say boy, if the article, I can link back to my stuff. Maybe
I want to overtake SEO Chat, which started I can even get listed on that SEO guide for
running about three or four years before designers page if they like my stuff better.
SEOmoz did, has had a tools page for a long
time, has had a lot of people linking to them, Andrew: I see. And if I see Mashable on
they’ve got embedded tools, I might actu- there, I can reach out to Mashable. I know
ally want to figure out something like, “Hey, that they take a lot of outsourced writers or
where did they get their links? Can I get the contributed writers and ask to write a blog
same links or some of the same links that they post there.
got, some of the same links that all these
other people got?” Rand: Guest posting is a great way to go. It’s
not just these sort of more manual systems
Andrew: So how do you do that? of link building. You also want to be thinking
bigger and broader, like, “Hey, how could I
Rand: Well, it turns out there are actually build something that everyone would always
some good tools. This is a tool called Open be linking to? Maybe I could build an em-
Site Explorer, and most of it is free to use, beddable widget. I’ll make an SEO tool or I’ll
much of it is free to use. So I can dive in make a tool or a graphic that someone can
here, click “get link data,” and now I can go put on their website and then it will auto-
see here’s all these people who are linking matically link back to me with the right kinds
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of anchor text.” Rand: The best luck that I’ve actually had is
finding people who do great design work
Infographics are really popular for this. I’ll and contracting them to do it specifically.
show you a great one. This comes from Oli I think a lot of what I’d call the infographic
Gardner, who’s the Director of Inbound Mar- farms out there create kind of low qual-
keting at Unbounce, Unbounce being some ity stuff that people don’t share as much. If
pretty phenomenal software for creating you have an in-house designer or someone
landing page testing. Here is their new guide you love that you contract with, or you do
to online marketing. It’s a phenomenally cool a search like “CSS gallery”, look, here’s CSS
infographic. It actually illustrates a lot of the Elite. Why don’t we see who’s listed in there?
things you and I have been talking about, Wow, this guy looks like he has an awesome
about inbound marketing and all these dif- looking site. Let’s see who the guy who de-
ferent kinds of things. signed that is and I’ll contact him.
So you can see here – content marketing, Andrew: Gotcha.
analytics, conversion rate optimization, there
are things in SEO. I can actually take this Rand: So those kinds of things, particularly if
graphic, and if I want to, I can embed it right I’m going through and I’m like, “Oh, I love
on my site. So you see I grabbed that piece these. That artist, that art style meshes with
of code there and I can paste it right into my my design aesthetic. I want to do this.”
blog or my website if I want to show it off.
Andrew: All right. Now that we know what
And then what’s great is, they were pretty to do on our site, what to do off-site, how
smart about this, so they have the anchor do we measure success and know whether
text say “Unbounce, the DIY landing page we’re on the right track or need to adjust?
platform.” That’s who made this infographic,
Unbounce, the DIY landing page platform. I Rand: That’s a great question. There are a
bet if I go “DIY landing page platform,” what couple of things that I recommend. I don’t
do you know, Unbounce, fantastic. They’ve totally want to push our own stuff, but I would
done some smart marketing. They didn’t say that SEOmoz Pro is actually quite good
spam anyone. They didn’t manipulate any- for this. A couple of things that is does nicely
thing. They just made a great infographic are crawl diagnostics, so crawling your web-
showing off all this stuff, sharing it with the site every week, finding errors and warnings,
right people, getting some good people to keeping track of keyword rankings so you
guest post about it. And now, boom, they’ve can see when you’re going up and down,
got the top three positions for DIY landing keeping track of your link and traffic data.
page.
You can also do all of this stuff more manu-
Andrew: This is a little outside the scope ally and for free, so I don’t want to suggest
of our conversation, but is there a place that this is the only way. For example, Google
that you know of that you can recommend Analytics is totally free and I can go in here
our audience go if they want infographics and I can see my search traffic and I can see
made? which keywords are sending me traffic. I can
measure over time how many different key-
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words are sending me traffic. Which engines? of the search engines are missing out some-
How much? Which pages is that going to? how, and that probably means you’re miss-
Are there pages that used to earn traffic that ing out on traffic.
no longer are? You have to do some modifi-
cations to the service to see all these things, So I might want to go in here and say, “Hmm,
but it’s quite good. what is going on, because this page, footer
link optimization for search engine users,
Two services, Google and Bing both make there are 100 pages that link to it.” I can click
webmaster tools. They are completely free. those, see them all, and then say, “Oh, man,
Site owners can register with them. I’m going I wonder what I did wrong. Something must
to try and dive in here, depending on if I can be broken about that page. I should go in-
remember my password. They even give nice vestigate. Maybe someone on my engineer-
warnings like, “Hey, we found a lot of URLs ing staff broke the page. Maybe the page
on Open Site Explorer. You might want to be was just timing out for a little while. Maybe
aware of that.” That was back last year, so I I made a dumb error in my CMS and I told
think we’re probably okay at this point. But WordPress to block Google bot from visiting
we can dive in and they’ll show me some this page.” Whatever it is that I did, I want to
data that’s pretty accurate. The search find those things, know where they are be-
query data, unfortunately, inside webmas- fore they start really hurting my search traffic.
ter tools, for some reason, is really bad. Use
Google Analytics, it’s much more accurate. Andrew: I see. Anything else that we
I know, they’re both Google, you’d think should be measuring or other tools that we
they’d get it right. should use to measure?
The crawl errors are phenomenal. I can click Rand: I do like Bing webmaster tools, as well,
on this. I can see, “Oh, look. Here are all which I would recommend. But between
these 403 errors. Here are the ones that were these, you’re going to get a pretty good
in my site maps. Here are the soft 404s. Here sense of how things are going for your site. I
are URLs that timed out.” might actually suggest doing some custom
reporting. On a regular basis, the marketing
Andrew: What does all that mean? What team here at SEOmoz has sort of key metrics,
are all these errors, and why should we be KPIs, that they’re trying to achieve in terms of
paying attention to them? social media traffic and search traffic and re-
ferring link traffic, direct traffic, e-mail market-
Rand: I’ll start with the reason to pay atten- ing traffic, all of those things. So they’ve got
tion. Any time Google or SEOmoz Pro or kind of a leader board up on a whiteboard
something finds an error, you should probably and they write all those down, they keep
pay at least a little bit of attention, because track of them in an Excel spreadsheet, and
what it means is that there’s an automated every board meeting we can report those.
bot that crawling through your site looking for
pages, looking for keywords, and it’s having That’s actually a really smart idea, no matter
problems. This means that you are not poten- what size you are, having those data backed
tially capturing all of the opportunity that you marketing efforts. Marketing has become so
could be capturing. It means that the spiders technical and there are so many channels
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14. Startup SEO Transcript
that it comes through that all of these are re- getting 50 to 100 search visits a day and 50
ally smart. to 100 social visits a day. I haven’t been blog-
ging regularly, so that’s actually been going
Two more things that I’ll just point out. They’re down now. But you can see results reason-
not for everyone, but if you produce a blog ably quickly. It depends on a few things,
and you do a lot of social sharing, I think Post- though. It depends on the niche you’re
Rank offers some really phenomenal intel- targeting. It depends on what kinds of traffic
ligence essentially about the blog posts that those keywords are sending. It depends on
are produced, whether they get tweeted, or how much content you’re producing and
Facebook liked and shared, or mentioned on the effort that you’re putting into this.
Hacker News or Reddit or Digg, these kinds of
things. But what’s beautiful about all this stuff, SEO,
social, inbound marketing, etc., is that it re-
The second one is if you are producing a ally relies on your creativity and your hustle.
blog and you are doing RSS feeds of any If you’ve got great hustle and you can just
kind, FeedBurner is a really excellent thing go out after this stuff and you’ve got great
to have running on your site. FeedBurner will creativity and can come up with great ideas
show you your feeds. They’ll show you data and execute on them, you are going to win
about them. That’s another good solution. in this space. That’s what I love. It’s not about
spending the most money, being the biggest
Andrew: Yeah, I use FeedBurner all the brand. It’s about being the best, the most
time and have for years, but I didn’t know creative, the most interesting, the most for-
about PostRank. I’ve got to check that out. ward thinking, and doing the best work.
Rand: You’ll like it a bunch. Andrew: That’s motivating to know that
it’s all within our control. Now we know the
Andrew: I’ve never seen them before. I levers that we need to manipulate, that we
love tools like that. How long will it take for need to adjust, and we know what to do
me to start seeing measurable results from all and we know how to measure them. This has
the work that we talked about in this inter- been very helpful. Thanks, Rand.
view?
Rand: My pleasure, Andrew.
Rand: I started a personal blog probably in
November, and by January I was regularly
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