link building mediocre to great

WILL CRITCHLOW

Mediocre to Great

WILL CRITCHLOW

http://dis.tl/website-survey (Take a copy, then you can access the form)

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Start with the “5 whys”

WHY?

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mloberg/5055462314/

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Quickly modified to the “3 or 4 whys”

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lasse_chr/2063315220/

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Not doing anything

Not doing enough / the right things

Not acknowledging weaknesses

There are 3 main problems I see

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… Not cultivating spiky enough spikes

There is a rarer problem right at the top

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Mediocre to Good

Mainly about activity and removing gaps / barriers

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Good to Great

More about cultivating spikes of amazing

Discover

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Discover what it’s going to take

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Discover where your strengths and

weaknesses lie

Pitch

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WILL CRITCHLOW

Agency types:

I don’t mean “only start getting paid after this”

Experiment

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Invest

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Let’s dive into the details

Discover

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WILL CRITCHLOW

Ever graded anything out of 5?

1

• 5% of responses

2

• Almost no-one

3

• Almost no-one

4

• Almost everyone

5

• Arrogant few

Better than average, but could be better

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We live in an “exceptional takes all” world Source: http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in-mobile-phone-profitability-and-revenues/

Apple at one stage had 9% of the

handset market but 75% of the

industry’s gross margin

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Yes, that Y-axis is in $billions Source: http://barefigur.es/

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No experience: I don't know about this

area / haven't worked on this / it isn't relevant

to my role

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Basic competence: I have done some work

in this area. You can delegate me tasks but I

may need support or I may have a few

questions

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Core competence: I am rarely stumped in

this area and can handle poorly-defined tasks

with no worries. I can teach, train and manage

others' work in this area.

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“Distilled expert”: I am one of a small

number of people everyone in Distilled turns

to with “1%” problems in this area

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Renowned expert: I am acknowledged

outside Distilled for being right at the top in

this area

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Design Content Permission

assets Investment USPs

I created a self-assessment for websites

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None / N/A: Not something you do

(successfully)

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Basic competitiveness: You invest time

and money in this area

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Core competitiveness: You keep pace with

and occasionally outstrip competitors in this

area. In most areas, for most companies, this will be as good as it gets

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Industry leader: Known for being at or

very near the top of all sites in your industry

in this area

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Internet leader: An impartial observer has

selected you as a case study / example of

excellence in this area across all niches online.

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Many companies achieve nothing rated this highly

and it will be exceptionally unusual to score this

highly in multiple areas.

“Internet leader”

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Internet leader: An impartial observer has

selected you as a case study / example of

excellence in this area across all niches online.

Get used to it, a conflation of “good” and

“famous” is just how the world works

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http://dis.tl/website-survey (Take a copy, then you can access the form)

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Important: score on an exponential scale

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We see interesting things from the plot

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Of course it doesn’t explain all variation

National brand outperforming

their website’s “quality”

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We should really think of it as dynamic

Startup with great site and products

that hasn’t won loads of links (yet)

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Action: line yourself up against competitors Conditional formatting is your friend

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Action: compare to aspirations Conditional formatting is your friend

These are the easiest areas

to change in the short term

Arena Flowers

Oyster

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Arena Flowers is investing in content

My advice?

Don’t stop doing this, but

focus hard on how you

can build permission

assets out of it –

particularly repeat

visitors to the site.

http://www.arenaflowers.com/video_campaigns/dubstep_flowers

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What would I focus on for Oyster? In some ways harder to work out how to move the needle

Digging deeper into this, we see some spikes (non-commercial email list and influencer

relationships) and some gaps (community / UGC). I would double-down on the spikes

before addressing the gaps.

Oyster

Sometimes you need someone else to tell you

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WILL CRITCHLOW - @willcritchlow

See the Whiteboard Friday: Replicating Google’s Panda Questionnaire

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Plotting direct visitors against linking root

domains is interesting

“how to write a blog post”

Targeted bloggers

“how many links should an infographic get”

Much more likely to get tweeted

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Funny vs. Interesting

http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/how-to-write-a-blog-post/ http://www.distilled.net/blog/reputation-monitor/how-many-links-should-an-infographic-get/

How?

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Pages report filtered to content you’re interested in

Choose the subset of content you want to analyse

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First, get unique visitors (direct traffic segment)

Remember this number for later

Make sure # results is greater than number of

rows, then export to TSV

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Then get domains linking to that content

Then export to TSV again

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You want to change sub-domains to root domains

There is no way of doing this algorithmically. I whitelisted a few TLDs and then stripped any

sub-domains that didn’t match. I didn’t need it to be perfect.

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Those aren’t all followed links!

I don’t care. Traffic sent by links is still one of my favourite metrics for

judging a link’s worth.

Zero traffic = meh

Lots of traffic even if nofollow = much more interest

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A bit of Excel gets you linking domains and unique PV

(direct segment) for each piece of content

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Put both axes on a log scale to see detail

“how to write a blog post”

Targeted bloggers

“how many links should an infographic get”

Much more likely to get tweeted

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~0.5% of visitors link to our blog content (from a new domain)

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Surprisingly high correlation on many sites (This is SEOmoz)

Web developers cheat sheet

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~0.4% of visitors link to SEOmoz blog content (from a new domain)

The main reason we

have fewer links than

SEOmoz is that fewer

people see our

content

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Some other similar things you could measure

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Average number of referring domains per

piece of content

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Average number of new referring domains

per piece of content

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Average number of new pieces of content

getting links each month

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Actions

Try out my self-assessment

Benchmark against key competitors

Benchmark against aspirations

Compare gaps in quality to gaps in performance

Run the analytics stats to get baselines

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Take this kind of thing into the next stage

These are the easiest areas

to change in the short term

Arena Flowers

Oyster

Pitch

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Example of pitching to (existing) client Details changed to protect the innocent

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Recently pitched a “travel big picture”

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Big photography works. Lightning strikes repeatedly

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You have (and can get) amazing photos

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizacole/2628863845/

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It scales beautifully – endless themes Colours, landscapes, animals, beaches, people, etc.

Link: http://pinterest.com/nicolewaites/drive-until-the-map-turns-blue/

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But start with an experiment We might be wrong (more about launchrock later)

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Business model comparisons A metaphor business people understand

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Content library = Physical real estate Drives footfall to point of sale. Lets great product do its job

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coda/74796428/in/photostream/

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Good conversion rate = Efficient supply chain Gives you pricing power and / or allows a bigger marketing spend

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crawfishpie/489771072/

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Lifestyle business vs. Growth company Is there scalability and flywheel potential in your link building strategy?

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We run through HBR case studies at lunchtime

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Some are even directly relevant to pitching http://hbr.org/2010/01/how-i-did-it-aflacs-ceo-explains-how-he-fell-for-the-duck/ar/1

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Actions

Pitch a big idea and a small next step

[Also – set up a learnch with colleagues]

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Take sign-off on experiments to the next stage

Experiment

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To find out what works for you

To prove what works to someone else

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“I can’t stop reading this analysis of Gawker’s

editorial strategy” http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/03/i-cant-stop-reading-this-analysis-of-gawkers-editorial-strategy/

SPEAKER NAME - EDIT FOOTER

33 percent fewer posts;

40 percent greater traffic

Kerry Lauerman, Editor in Chief, Salon.com Source: http://open.salon.com/blog/kerry_lauerman/2012/02/03/hit_record

WILL CRITCHLOW

GE has an award for “ambitious failed projects” More info: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/Appointments/article670525.ece

Image credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/4204934214/ Jeff Immelt, Chairman of GE, cultivator of spikes

WILL CRITCHLOW

Career tip – show your boss this clip:

“how quickly the world owes him something”

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The MVP isn’t what you think it is (if you haven’t actually read the book)

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On-track on the hockey stick

“On track” over here cannot

(should not) be “successfully

made no money yet”

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Use tools like launchrock.com

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This page has a 40% conversion rate

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We built it in 10 minutes www.distilled.net/store/u

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Also love kickofflabs.com

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Good excuse for off-site creativity

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A brief look at the stats

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It even ranked (was #1 when the news broke)

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Actions

Read The Lean Startup

Take one element of your big vision and launch an MVP

experiment ASAP (what could you launch on

Monday?)

Update reports to include the metrics your

experiments are focussed on

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Take the evidence and ideas to the next stage

Invest

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WILL CRITCHLOW

Checklists help us win

Since last time, I’ve actually read the book.

Key (new) take-aways:

• Use shorter checklists

• Communication checklists are a good idea

• Ask “what should we do if that goes wrong?”

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Excerpt from our creative ideas checklist

• Can you find 10 target sites

in 10 minutes?

• Have they linked out to

content like this before?

Making plans

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Inputs:

SERPs / Competitor identification

Competitor tactics (What are they doing?

What works? Where are they winning?)

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Outputs:

Activity plan (with activity targets)

Testable assumptions

(activity results & results outcomes)

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Measure progress towards your plans

Who hates planning?

I thought I did, then I realised I hate plans

See this presentation for more of my thoughts on

that:

http://www.slideshare.net/willcritchlow/metrics-that-matter

WILL CRITCHLOW

Discover what you need to improve and to win

Pitch big visions and small next steps

Experiment to find ways to improve and to persuade

Invest with evidence and experience in hand

WILL CRITCHLOW

Thank You

Any Questions?