Best Traffic Tips

Archive for January, 2010

Posted by Dr. Pete

This post started as a reaction to accusations in the SEO industry that Top X lists, awards, etc. are only going to people’s friends. As I was writing it over what ended up being 2 weeks, I realized just how broad this issue really is, from personal to professional to political. I hope you’ll indulge me as I try to do justice to a topic that goes well beyond SEO.

We all know how it feels to be on the outside looking in. You start out feeling awkward and a little envious, but slowly it turns into something worse – depression, resentment, even rage. Eventually, we find a group to belong to, and the tables turn. No matter how often we were excluded (and maybe because of it), we eventually start to exclude others. It’s a vicious, if all too human, cycle, and it extends to every corner of our social interactions.

My Friends Are The Best

Just ask them; I’m sure they’ll agree. Do we prefer our friends? Do we give them the best opportunities and accolades? Absolutely. This is more than bias, though; it’s the simple reality of relevance. If you ask me who the "best" expert is in some niche of my own field or what the best article is on Topic X, I’m going to immediately draw from what I already know. Stating the obvious, I can’t recommend someone or something that I don’t even know exists.

Of course, there are times when we have a responsibility to dig deeper and look for the best candidates outside of our own limited realm of experience. When I was a graduate student at the University of Iowa, I had the opportunity to be the first student in my department to serve on a faculty search committee. One aspect of that experience that stuck with me was Iowa’s affirmative action policy. It wasn’t about numbers and quotas so much as a core philosophy that we had a professional obligation to search far and wide for the best candidate. We had the duty to leave our comfortable world of people just like us and venture into the world of "them".

Confirmation Bias

Beyond simple relevance is something more powerful, and sometimes more insidious. We all have a natural tendency to take sides, and, once we do, to find reasons why our side is right and the other side is wrong. Psychologists call this "confirmation bias," the often unconscious need to find data that confirms what we already believe. If we like someone, we’ll find reasons to support them and give them the benefit of the doubt. If we dislike someone, we’ll find reasons to be suspicious of everything they say and do. If you think confirmation bias is something only other people have, you’re fooling yourself.

Choosing Sides

Beyond our friends, confirmation bias quickly begins to apply to all of our cliques and teams. If you’re a sports fan, then that team mentality is usually just harmless fun – associating with your team provides a shared emotional experience. I’m a Cubs fan – believe me when I say that I understand the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, although not in quite the ratio I’d like. What happens, though, when that team mentality starts to apply to things like politics, as we’ve seen far too often over the past couple of decades (on both sides of the fence)? Suddenly, our clique is 50% of the population, and our enemies are the other 50%. At best, it’s divisive. At worst, it breeds hate, violence, and bigotry.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Of course, we all like to think that we’re free from bias, but the power of bias is that the flaws that are obvious in others are often hidden and unconscious in ourselves. If I mention that I do SEO, do you picture a savvy internet guru or spam-spewing snake-oil salesman? If you’re an SEO, and you hear that I work with SEOmoz, do you think I’m a paragon of white-hat virtue or part of Rand’s evil conspiracy to take over the industry? Reality is probably somewhere in between. If I tell you that I voted for Obama, do you see a beacon of liberal hope or a Communist bent on destroying our nation? I can assure you that I am neither. So, how do we get past these labels and start to understand people, whether personally or professionally?

Get to Know People

Social media has given us a difficult dichotomy. On the one hand, it’s never been easier to "friend" people in shallow and meaningless ways. On the other hand, we have the tools to get to know our peers and friends of friends in ways that were never before possible. The next time you friend someone, take a moment and find out something about them. Where are they from? What do they do? What kind of music do they like? Do they blog? If they do, read a post. If you see a label ("liberal", "conservative", "Twilight fan"), don’t jump to conclusions. Give that person a chance to speak for themselves.

Play In a Different Park

It’s easy to be self-righteous when you’re surrounded by your fan-boys and girls. It’s easy to get a standing ovation at your campaign rally when you only invite the people who gave you the most money. If you want perspective, you have to give up the home-field advantage. If you disagree with someone, comment on their post instead of running back home to write a rant. Try guest-blogging – even better, guest-blog in a different industry. Try to explain why SEO is worthwhile to an audience of small business owners, designers or UX professionals. It’ll be a tough sell, but you’ll learn a lot in the process.

When In Doubt, Ask

Social media is a mine field of misunderstanding – if you’re not sure what someone means in that 140-character Tweet, ask them. If they write a blog post that seems like a personal attack, call them. It’s not just about being nice – bad blood runs deep, and today’s simple misunderstanding could destroy relationships and opportunities tomorrow.

Open Your Circle

We all remember the people who excluded us, and we too often hold that fact against the universe. Let it go. When you finally get into that circle, especially your professional circle, try to remember that someone else is still outside looking in. Here are a few ways to give someone else a chance, because we can all use a little good karma:

• Promote other people’s links and awards, even the competition.
• If you’re at a conference talking to a group and you see someone standing outside the circle with that awkward look of faux participation, invite them in.
• Make an introduction to help someone’s career along.
• If someone is new to blogging, comment, subscribe, or even link to them.
• When someone challenges you publicly, listen and think before you counterattack.
• Don’t envy other people’s success – learn from it and improve.
• Every once in a while, shut up and listen.

At the end of the day, those of us who have attained some measure of success need to remember that we all had a little help along the way. Try to return the favor once in a while.

Photo licensed from iStockPhoto.com (Photographer: Hélène Vallée)

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You may have noticed that we don’t often blog about email marketing here on the HubSpot blog. Part of the reason for this is that it has been debated whether email marketing is inbound (and thus fits the focus of the blog) or outbound. I got a chance to pose this exact question to folks at the MarketingSherpa Email Summit last week in Miami and a good range of answers came out.

#SherpaEmail Interview: Is Email Marketing Inbound or Outbound?

Interview Highlights

• Create share-worthy emails so that your contacts share that content, helping new prospects find you. - Nikki Schiavone & DJ Waldow, Blue Sky Factory
• Most marketers approach email marketing from an outbound perspective today. - Kara Trivunovic, StrongMail
• If you’re doing email marketing right, it’s inbound. Otherwise you risk spam and deliverability issues. - Justin Premick, AWeber Communications
• Email marketing is about engaging in a dialogue, which is both inbound and outbound.  - Melanie Attia, Campaigner/Protus
• Email is a conversation – where people sign up to hear from you and you respond with timely and targeted emails. - Brandon Wilkins, Bronto
• Email is inbound when it used to attract highly qualified leads organically, and outbound when used to reach out to targeted prospects. - Katie Martell, Netprospex
• A good marketing mix includes both inbound and outbound messages. - Jess Best, Emfluence
• Social media extends the long tail of email by expanding the shareability of email messages to broader networks. - Joel Book, ExactTarget

I would agree with a lot of our interviewees that email marketing, when done right, is inbound. Email is just one means of communicating with your prospects and customers who have opted into a conversation with you. The key is to send relevant and valuable content to your subscribers and also open up that two-way communication, whether it be by email or social media or other channels.

What do you think? Is email marketing inbound or outbound? Would you like to see more email marketing content on the blog?

 

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Posted by great scott!

Last week we unveiled our newest toy, Open Site Explorer, to the world and the response was phenomenal. Now we want to take some time and really show everyone just what this powerful link analysis tool is capable of and answer your questions, so we’re hosting not one, but two FREE Webinars this week!  Wednesday, January 27th at 2:00PM (PST), and Thursday, January 28th at 10:00AM (PST). In each live webinar, Rand will show you around Open Site Explorer, offer tips and strategies for getting the most out of it, explain our new Domain Authority & Page Authority metrics, and answer your questions.

Register for a Getting to Know Open Site Explorer Webinar

Here’s the catch: each webinar is limited to 1,000 attendees. The last time we announced a webinar on the blog, we had over 3,000 people try to register in the first hour, so if you want to attend one of the live sessions, register quickly. If you can’t make it, we’ll have a recording of the presentation available in a couple of days on our webinars page.

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Looooove Webinars and can’t get enough of ‘em? Then you should totally become a PRO Member! In the last couple of months we’ve started running regular webinars just for PRO Members and they’ve been really popular.

In February we’re stepping it up even more. In addition to our monthly educational webinar (February 4th on Analytics), we’re adding a second monthly webinar where we’ll be performing live site reviews of sites submitted by our PRO Members!

PRO Members can head over to the PRO Webinars page for more info on February’s webinars, as well as recordings and slide decks from past webinars. If you’d like to join us for the next PRO Webinar–and possibly even get a live site review–sign up for PRO to access the PRO Webinar page for registration details or just watch your inbox for an invite.

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We would all love to have a private coach to guide us through the ins and outs of internet marketing, someone at our disposal 24/7 to answer all of our questions. Heck, if they would show us exactly how to do stuff that would totally rock! But you know what? If by some miracle you did find one person to be all that for you, you would be seriously cheated. Why? Because you would be missing out on all the wonderful internet marketing techniques NOT used by that one person.

You want to find your own way in the marketing world. Successful marketing is dependent on being unique and flexible. What works for her may not work for you, or for your product. You have questions. Answers are everywhere. How do you find them?

Type your questions into your favorite search engine

There are so many articles and blogs written about internet marketing today that you can’t possibly find all of them on your own. Let your favorite search engine do the looking for you. Simply type your question into the search engine box and click on the search button. You will probably find your new favorite article directory or some really good blogs to follow.

Get active in marketing forums

The Members Forum and NetMarketing Forum are a couple of forums that are frequented by traffic exchange owners and users. You will definitely get your traffic exchange questions answered at either forum. You might even spark a spirited debate! Those are the best threads because you get to see who is passionate about their business. Be sure to put your two cents in there, too. If you have your forum signature set up, you get your website url attached to your post!

Network

It’s not what you know, but who you know. Forge relationships with everyone you come in contact with who is even remotely connected to internet marketing. There are lots of social media tools available to help you with that like Facebook and Twitter. Don’t forget about Traffic Exchange Live!

What do you do when you get there? Help others! You may think you aren’t expert enough to answer questions, but truth is, you know more than anyone that came into internet marketing after you did. And with literally thousands of people getting online everyday, chances are there are a lot of people out there that you can help. When you go to interactive webinars and online conferences, answer questions that you can answer. Post your knowledge in interesting threads in forums. Why let the so-called experts have all the fun? They may even be grateful enough to answer one of YOUR questions.

Tweet your questions

Use your Twitter account to gain an education. Ask your questions, in 140 characters or less, of course, on Twitter. You never know who might answer you. Besides, the question that you tweet will be on your profile page, which will help other marketers find your account and follow you.

Visit your local library

Give your computer a much deserved rest. Get out in the sunshine and go find a real book to read. Let’s face it, some stuff you just won’t find in ebooks. Even Mark Joyner has ebook versions of his published works. Don’t limit yourself to books on internet marketing. Marketing principles are the same online and offline. The psychology behind marketing techniques can be fascinating, too.

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Mitch Joel is president of the marketing agency Twist Image.  Also a blogger, journalist, podcaster, author and speaker, Mitch is one of our featured professors in the January semester of Inbound Marketing University (IMU). (Today’s the last day to signup, and the program commences tomorrow!)

1. You’ve been dubbed the “Rock Star of Digital Marketing” by Marketing Magazine and have been called upon by a number of media outlets (e.g. BusinessWeek, Fast Company, The Globe & Mail, etc.) for your expert opinion. Where does all of your Internet marketing knowledge stem from, and how do you stay on top of the latest trends and topics?

I grew up in a middle-class family with three brothers. Instead of buying us individual gifts, my parents would usually buy one big “thing” that we could all share. We were fortunate enough to have the early gaming systems and one of the first computers. With that came the first modems.

That first time I connected… I was hooked. From there, the advent of the Internet and those first webpages really intrigued me (and it still does). As for “staying on top” – it’s all just passion for me, so I don’t find it that hard at all. I read a ton and listen to a lot of podcasts. I simply could not live without Google Reader, Google Alerts, Instapaper and my iPhone.

2. For businesses trying to come to grips with new, modern marketing methods, what advice or tips can you offer to help them get started?

Setting up a Reader account and listening to the conversation around your brand (using tools like Google Alerts, Twitter Search, Icerocket and Google Blog Search) is probably the best place to start. Once you can understand where the conversation is, who leads, the type of voices and the best place for you to add your voice, you can then start becoming a more active participant. I’d also recommend figuring out the right balance between building your own community and joining an existing one.

Lastly – and probably most important – ask “why?”. Most people are faced in a boardroom with this question: “What are we doing on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc…?” These are the people who are constantly being pushed to do a lot more with a lot less, and their peers (both Junior and Senior) think that the online channels hold the key. There’s a big difference between asking “what?” and asking “why?” – in short, asking “why?” is the strategy and asking “what?” is the tactic, so it’s all about figuring out the “why?” first.

3. Tell me about your book, Six Pixels of Separation. What great takeaways can people expect from reading your book?

Most of the business books out there tend to be written by people giving their perspective of the new online channels either through the lens of a marketer, consultant or technologist. I wrote Six Pixels of Separation as an entrepreneur for businesspeople, using real business language and case stories that really illustrate how business can grow (and yes, that includes making money). This book is the strategy, tools and tactics my business partners and I used to grow our business (as entrepreneurs) from no employees in 2002 to nearly 100 full-time team members with multiple offices.

This book is much more about how to think strategically different and engage in a much more human way in this new world. It’s also not a book written by a pundit. It’s from one businessperson to another. So the key takeaways revolve around: where does my business fit into this, how do I define and build the strategy and is there really any more in it?

4. From your experience producing the Six Pixels of Separation Podcast, what have you learned about podcasting, and what are some marketing advantages achieved through podcasting that you can’t get from other Internet marketing strategies like blogging?

Oh, I really do love audio podcasting as a business and marketing channel. In all of the fuss to rush to Twitter or fawn over some viral videos on YouTube, podcasting is a subtle and ever-growing audio platform that seems to have lost some of its luster in terms of public excitement, but continues to grow in terms of loyal audience. Podcasting continues to be one of the best ways to consume audio and video content. Think about podcasting this way: imagine if all of your consumers can now be the program director of their own radio station, only they can also decide when the shows are “on the air.” That’s podcasting, and it will not only change the way you think about media, it will turn all of your downtime into a moment where you can learn, grow and expand or simply listen/watch some mindless entertainment.

The true business beauty of podcasting is how much more it is like narrowcasting vs. broadcasting. You can create very niche content and target those who are most interested in what you have to say. There’s something about audio (maybe the “theatre of the mind”) that is totally different engagement than say, blogging, and I think many businesspeople drastically minimize the opportunity that still exists with podcasting from a business perspective.

5. We’re so pleased to have you as one of our new professors for our January semester of IMU! What are some online marketing gems students can expect to learn from your “Internet Marketing Comprehensive Review” class tomorrow, January 26 at 1 p.m. ET?

My plan is to lead the participants through my own “tools of the trade.” I’ll be demonstrating how they can better monitor the Web 2.0 landscape, add their brand to other communities, and how to publish their own Blog/Podcast – using only free tools.

By the end of this session they will learn how to use the most current social media tools to improve their business, track what people are saying about them across all channels, how to share this wealth of knowledge with their colleagues, and, ultimately, build a better business.

 

Sign up For Mitch Joel’s Internet Marketing Review

Want to keep learning from Mitch Joel? Register for Mitch Joel’s webinar, “Internet Marketing Review,” the newest class from Inbound Marketing University.

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Posted by RobOusbey

This week, I’d like to make suggestions for a ‘reading list‘ to help SEOs, and others who work online, particularly with website strategies.

But this list isn’t going to be blogs, post and online articles, oh no. These suggestions are entirely offline. We’re going into dead tree mode with eleven books and two magazines. Some of these suggestions you may want to flick through, some you may want to read cover to cover. Others will be suitable for suggesting to other people within your organisation.

There’s no intention that everybody should read all these books (they’re spread over many topics) and my list is far from exhaustive. I’ll welcome your feedback and further recommendations in the comments.

(NB: This post links to Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk to help you find more about the books mentioned. I’ve used affiliate links, and any revenue generated will be donated to good causes through a general disaster/emergency fund.)

Analytics and Data

Web Analytics in an Hour a Day – Avinash Kaushik

This book is regarded as required reading for anyone who needs to understand the concepts behind web analytics and how to properly assess and understand them. Beyond the very basics about collecting analytics data, the book focuses on how to truly understand how it applies to your website’s goals, and using analytics to collect actionable insights that will improve your website.

(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Information Dashboard Design – Stephen Few

This book isn’t directly related to SEO or web strategy, but since reading it, I’ve already had two opportunities to use its advice on effectively presenting data. Even if you’re comfortable creating tables, graphs and charts, the hugely practical and highly actionable advice about combining data into ‘dashboards’ is worth your time to acquire.

Whether you work with sites that need to present data in a way that’s appealing to users, or if you need to produce a dashboard of analytics and search data for use internally (perhaps gleaned from Avinash’s book) then you’ll be able to communicate the information more effectively after taking advice from here. (You’ll also start spotting the terrible data presentation mistakes that others make, but I can’t help you there unfortunately.)
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Usability & Testing

Don’t Make Me Think and Rocket Surgery Made Easy – Steve Krug

Krug’s famous book about design and usability is one of those classic texts that offers the whole premise within the four words of the title, and then goes on to spend the book showing you how to build that premise into your design philosophy. Get a flavour of the author’s style and keen understanding in the sample chapter, How we really use the web.

Krug describes the first book as being about how to think about usability, whereas Rocket Surgery Made Easy is about how to do it – covering the process of improving web site usability though user testing. It’s highly recommended that before you start designing test and recruiting users, you give this book a read; if you’re not planning any user testing just yet, then read it anyway to remind you why you should.

(Buy ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)
(Buy ‘Rocket Surgery Made Easy’ online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer – Bryan Eisenberg & John Quarto-von Tivadar

Complementing Krug’s books, this text focuses on using Google Website Optimizer to set up tests for Conversion Rate Optimisation. Beyond the simple technical aspects of how to run a test with the tool, it teaches how to use an understanding of the buying process and creating strong offering to make websites more powerful.

One reviewer on Amazon was given a copy of the book at SES, and mentioned: "In one recent test, we used the principles learned from the book such as persuasion architecture to setup a test in only an hour that increased lead generation on a high volume ecommerce site by 51%"
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Search Marketing

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web – Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville

How does a book originally written over a decade ago make it into this list? Because when O’Reilly publishes a book by these authors, on a topic so important to the way information is published online and understood / consumed by visitors, the text is going to stand the test of time.

Like many of these suggestions, the book doesn’t just float at a high level, but gets down to ‘brass tacks’ with detailed discussion about designing and implementing IA on websites, and dedicating a significant chapter to choosing whether and how to implement on-site search on a site. (Recommendation by Dr Pete.)
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

The Art of SEO – Eric Enge, Jessie Stricchiola, Rand Fishkin and Stephan Spencer

Despite the incredible ongoing changes in the field of SEO, an ‘all-star cast’ (including SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin) has managed to put together this excellent reference book for search marketers. Before page 50, the authors have covered the basics of how search engines crawl & index the web and search ranking factors; it goes onto cover the technical aspects of SEO, keyword research, competitor analysis & benchmarking, linkbuilding, vertical search and monitoring results.

Most appealing about this book is the understanding that the authors bring from their experience managing SEO campaigns in the real world – such as in the chapter dedicated to building SEO teams, and knowing when or how to appoint a search agency.

The main reason I sound like I’m raving about the book is the same reason you should read it: flattery. Rand dedicated this book to you, the members of the SEO community.
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Search Marketing Standard

Recommended by RobBothan, Search Marketing Standard published a quarterly magazine for the search industry. They promise: "Stop stressing out over the avalanche of marketing advice from online sources and let us filter the noise for you."

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert B. Cialdini

This is a classic book, which chooses to pitch persuasion as a science, rather than an art. The author is a professor of psychology, so this is perhaps expected, but the rigour of explanation in the examples (many from Caldini’s own observations) will help you develop new, more persuasive ways of influencing the visitors to your sites.
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Management & Implementation

Good to Great – Jim Collins

I’ve never before come across a book that is essentially a write up of a research project; it’s particularly special as the research conclusions are highly valuable, and can be actioned. The premise of the work was to: identify concepts which great companies had in common, but that were not implemented by any (or many) companies that were simply ‘good.’

You can read more about what these concepts turned out to be, and see how Rand tested their application within SEOmoz in his 2007 post, Asking the Tough Questions or a similar post by Will, from Distilled’s perspective.
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Getting Things Done – David Allen

An outstanding book that proposes a workflow management system which would seem highly radical to many people with an established system, and terribly common sense to others. The book then leads you into a method for implementing the GTD setup.

From my perspective, the most important message (but one that plays second fiddle to much of the book’s other content) is that your mind is excellent at a certain type of work (creative thinking, problem solving, etc) and shouldn’t be fettered with other tasks (remember to call that client tomorrow, try to come up with some blog post ideas etc) which can be devolved to a trusted system.

You know when you put things by the door, so that you remember to take them with you when you next leave the house? This book provides a way of making sure that your whole life runs that way.
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Agile Project Management with Scrum – Ken Schwaber

Ken Schwaber is one of the authors of the ‘Agile Manifesto’ which outlined the principles behind the methodology known as ‘agile software development’. His ‘Scrum’ process – described in detail in this book – uses a series of relatively fast iterations, typically month-long ’sprints’ between releasing product improvements.

For people who don’t like structures and systems that may introduce additional bureaucracy as a barrier to work, the system may sound terrifying (particularly the formal daily meetings) but trust me: once implemented, Scrum reduces almost every barrier between finding out what needs to be done and actually doing it.

Though designed for software development, the principles can be applied to any product or service that can benefit from incremental improvements (and with a bit of creativity, I think this could easily apply to the output of a great deal of organisations.)
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

Day to Day

Wired

Wired (at Wired.com and Wired.co.uk) is a monthly magazine, covering many facets of ‘technology’, from gadgets to online-strategy. Its blend of creativity and informity will help you keep on top of technological trends and can also spark ideas, inspire design themes and help as a seed for linkbait concepts.

That their staff have coined terms such as ‘crowdsourcing’ and ‘the long tail’ gives an idea of the impact the magazine has had on the internet marketing industry; reading it every month is the only way to make sure that you’re using their next bit of lingo, before it hits the big time.

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home – by David Shipley & Will Schwalbe

Various people have written about how to manage email as part of your daily work life, but this book talks about the specifics of style and writing in the medium. It should help you create better understood, more expressive emails. Sam suggested this book; he said "It was recommended by an e-mail marketer friend and it changed the way I write (and read) e-mails. (…) Really useful."
(Buy online from: Amazon US or Amazon UK.)

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