gamification for seo - what you need to know - #sascon by @richardbaxter

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,

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

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

LEADER BOARDS

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

GETGLUE.COM GROWTH

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#6 Incentivise profile completeness

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Linkedin motivates users to complete their profiles by scoring the level of profile completeness. This

encourages commitment and motivates repeat usage.

PROFILE COMPLETENESS

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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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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.

Not logged in…

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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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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.

MOTIVATE USERS TO INCREASE SUBSCRIBER BASE

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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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Why don’t more companies tell their users (their brand advocates) how valuable they are?

GIVE USERS STATS IN THEIR PROFILES

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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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Richard Baxter, Founder, SEOgadget

Twitter: @richardbaxter

Blog: seogadget.co.uk

Email: richard@seogadget.co.uk

THANK YOU

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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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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

FOR WEB APPLICATION DEVELOPERS