The Eightfold Logic Blog
Inbound Marketing and Power
It is not always easy to get a client, external or internal, to do what you need them to do.
The world of Inbound Marketing necessitates involvement from many different entities within an organization and one group often has overall responsibility. The responsibility of this group is greater than just to produce instructions for others to implement, their responsibility is to develop power to get things done. I define Power as the ability to get things done through other people. This does not mean that the group is anointed as powerful and everyone must follow what they say. Instead, the group must develop power in their own way regardless of what title/authority has been formally given to them.
Sometimes, other groups will put up barriers and make it difficult to get changes made to a site or other inbound marketing material. In these situations, it is important to think about the following:
1) What kind of power does this group have in the organization?
2) What other groups are closely aligned with this group?
3) Who in the organization supports this group?
4) How can your group become more closely aligned with this group or those that support the group?
If you or your group is responsible for any portion of your company’s Inbound Marketing strategy, try thinking about the way you work with other people from an organizational behavior perspective and see what kind of power you can develop to get things done.
How do you develop power to get things done?
Thoughts on Google Instant
We’ve been getting a lot of questions today about our thoughts around the launch of Google Instant and what this ultimately means for search. Overall, I think this was a positive change because it makes search more accessible to a wider audience and in my opinion, it’s a killer feature. I see a few big effects of Google’s new feature.
First, predicative queries should allow users to get to a more varied set of information than they otherwise would have. Why? Because Google now makes it easier to construct longer, more specific queries. When a user starts typing in what they are looking for, google will not only predict what that is, but will also provide the user with other alternatives. For example, typing in “San Francisco “ provides a user with some suggestions of what to search for. The user can easily filter through that and then combine them with other suggestions to really explore the results of what they are looking for.
The second effect is the auto refreshing of results. This really allows the user to explore the results of a query and then easily refine them. This can be done right from the search box without having to wait for a full page refresh. This makes refining queries and exploring results much quicker and easier.
The overall effect of these major features will be to put more of an emphasis on long tail queries. We’ve done some research in the past on query length and I expect a trend to form placing more volume on longer, more specific queries. Obviously, we’ll be monitoring this to see if it comes true.
SEO Implications
From a pure SEO standpoint, I don’t think this really shifts anything in the overall strategy. There are already people calling this the end of SEO and other non-sensical claims. I don’t want to re-iterate counter arguments to this, especially since Danny Sullivan has already done so in a very eloquent fashion. In short, it’s not and likely it’s probably a good thing for SEO.
What are your thoughts on Google Instant? Have you started doing anything different because of it? Leave us some comments below and let the discussion continue.
The most underused tool in the marketing toolbox – Linking?
Sometimes I don’t understand things - including the inner workings of marketing professionals. Yet I’ve tried to tackle this challenge and have been building and selling marketing applications for marketing folk for decades. I know that working complex web analytics products can be daunting. Marketing automation even more so. How does one create and allocate lead scoring and attribution? What is the LTV of a customer?
But linking? Gosh, don’t we all know the value of inbound links? Don’t we know how search engines work, for God’s sake? Well, apparently no. This knowledge is not as universal as one would think (Hope! Assume!).
A few months ago we released Linker which, in short, is a dating site for sharing and creating links. A Match.com for SEO link building. The good news? We’ve had thousands of people start to take advantage of the service. The bad news? Only five percent of them have ANY links on their site! This data floored me.
So we took matters into our own hands and today released our findings as well as made our link building tool FREE . We understand that linking takes time, which could explain the incredible low rate, but with our Linker product it should be much easier. At least that’s our hope. So, world, let’s get found. Let’s use the product and link away. I would be happy to hear from any of you!
Who’s Been in Search the Longest - Results
Last week at SES San Francisco / Connected Marketing Week, I had the pleasure of introducing Bruce Clay for the SEO 101 session. I’ve known Bruce for many years now, and since people often ask me “how long has Bruce Clay really been involved in search,” I thought I’d turn that question into some audience participation with a poll: Who’s been in Search Longer? Forty-two (42) people in the room responded! Once again, Al Gore just missed the win;
Who’s been in Search Longer?
36.73% Bruce Clay
34.69% Al Gore (He invented search too!)
20.41% Bono (He still hasn’t found what he’s looking for)
8.16% Marco Polo
Thanks for all who participated, I hope you enjoyed the session!
Who’s Been in Search Longer?
I’m at SES San Francisco, part of Connected Marketing Week. This morning, I have the pleasure of introducing Bruce Clay for the session “Search 101.” It thought I would have a little fun with Bruce, and ask the audience:
If you have any comments, ping me during the session - @rzwicky
Poll Results - Top Link-Building Expert: Eric Ward
Continuing on yesterday’s PPC Experts results list, I’m continuing to use the opportunity that Connected Marketing Week presents to post some of the results to the lists I created around top experts in the various online marketing disciplines.
I’ll probably repeat myself in all the poll results, but the lists have been a pleasure to publish, as people are constantly asking for recommendations around who to turn to for advice within different areas of online marketing. This format allowed me to share my recommendations, in a format that allows everyone else to weigh in and share their insights too. Over 3000 individuals participated in this series of polls. Thank-you to all!
Today, I’m publishing the list of top experts you turn to most for link-building advice. As you can see from the original list, this was a really strong group. Every single one of them is incredibly knowledgeable, and worth being on anyone’s reading list.
Your top 5 favorites were:
1) Eric Ward
2) Wiep
3) Debra Mastaler
4) Dave Davies
and a tie for fifth;
5) Rand Fishkin
5) Ralph Tegtmeier - Fantomaster / “Fantomeister”
The graphic, for all of you to see the distribution:
Poll results - Top PPC Expert - David Szetela
I thought it would be interesting to use Connected Marketing Week to post some of the results to the lists I created around top experts in the various online marketing disciplines.
As I’ve written before, the lists have been a pleasure to publish, as people are constantly asking for recommendations around who to turn to for advice within different areas of online marketing. This format allowed me to share my recommendations, in a format that allows everyone else to weigh in and share their insights too. Over 3000 individuals participated in this series of polls. Thank-you to all!
The first set of results I thought I would share was from the list of PPC Experts. The PPC Expert you feel most comfortable turning to for PPC advice is David Szetela, who received 14.6% support!
1) David Szetela
2) Andrew Goodman
3) Joanna Lord
4) Brad Geddes
5) Marc Poirier
In fact, the top 5 vote getters received 50% of the total support, as shown in this graph:
Congratulations to all! If you missed the list - view it here.
Thanks to everyone for participating - @rzwicky Richard Zwicky
Should You Consider “Author Authority”?
August 6th, 2010 by Richard Zwicky
Search marketers are familiar with signals. One of the truisms is the logic: if no one links to your site, it can’t be considered important, therefore why should it appear in the search results? The more quality links referencing your website or web pages, the better.
A lot of signals or factors behind links can affect the quality, relevance, and value of these citations. Perhaps there’s another signal to consider: Author.
If you’re interested in learning more, earlier today Search Engine Watch published an article I submitted on the topic of Author Authority. The idea came to me while reading a recent patent which was issued and assigned to Google. I’d love to get your thoughts and feedback!
Thanks!
Richard / @rzwicky
Tags: authority, authority score, GOOG, Google, linking strategies, links, marketer, Marketing, patent, Search Engines, SEO Link Building, social marketing
Posted in Commentary, Google, Inbound Marketing, Link Strategies, SEO, SMM, Search Engines, link building, search marketing, social marketing | No Comments »