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.
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!
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!
As you may be aware, we collect a lot of data at Eightfold Logic, and have been doing so for a few years. Last week, I was looking at the lists of online marketers, and the voting numbers, and began to think about them in the context of traffic delivered, and its value. I had a broad sampling run from a swathe of web sites across industries and geographies to ascertain which channels deliver the most raw referral traffic. Later, in another post, I’ll dive into quality.
It’s amazing how much marketing attention is focused on social considering the volume of referrals it drives to businesses, relative to other customer acquisition channels. However, it’s understood that used effectively, social is more about the pre-site-visit experience, and market awareness. That said, very few organizations are using social media marketing effectively. Effectively harnessing this inbound marketing channel opportunity will be of paramount importance going forward for companies to survive and succeed.
It’s been quite interesting watching the response to the lists about online marketers that I started published two weeks ago. . There have been over 3,000 voter submissions in the last week. That’s a lot more than I ever expected. Additionally, I’ve received many text messages, voicemails, DM’s, blog comments, and emails with suggestions of who else could be included on the lists; I appreciate all these notes.
Some people also chose to send me their own names for inclusion. One person appears to have submitted their name for inclusion ~50 times! Fortunately for you, I’m not publishing your name, but if you’re reading this, you know who you are. You’re claiming to be an Internet Marketer of some skill: Do you honestly not know that it’s easy to determine if traffic repeatedly originates from the same places or computers?
Other than the notes from a couple of manic individuals repeatedly suggesting themselves, lots of people sent me some great suggestions. I’ve been trying to follow-up on them by reading things by and about these contributors. There are some valuable resources I’m discovering, or re-discovering. Thank-you! Some of the useful suggestions are found in the blog comments of the appropriate posts.
The suggestions I’ve received go to the point of the series. It’s not been about who gets the most votes, but, that said, I will publish lists thereof. The attention seeking has been for all these valuable contributors whom I wanted to recognize via this forum. Some of the people on the lists are already well known, and justifiably so. Others are not well known yet, but they provide great information about different facets of online marketing, and should be a resource that anyone with any level of interest in the space can turn to for insights.
I do appreciate all the attention that these lists have generated, and hope that people will share the results widely – that only goes to accomplish the goal of providing these people recognition.
As for the voting; it’s been really interesting to see whose inputs are heavily valued, despite their not being common industry names. It’s also been extremely interesting to observe which channels have been driving the most traffic via social media, and other sources, as well as observing which channel’s traffic has the best user behavior once they visit the site. I’ll likely have a few posts coming out reporting on user behavior trends. Quite interesting really! For instance, as it stands right now, the day of the social media experts tweets drove the lowest RT and clickthrough activity per post or mention. Perhaps that’ll change before the lists close…
Finally, there have been two individuals who received no votes. (Bet you want to know who, eh?) I was shocked at who they were, and presume it’s because their communities did not overlap as heavily with the search or social marketplace community represented here. Hopefully they’ll learn about these lists before I close them.
In the meantime, if you haven’t checked out the lists of great contributors (or voted), please do so now at:
Is Google Planning to Kill SEO?
Bravo to Econsultancy for winning link-baiter of the week with this story. Econsultancy claims that “If a recent patent comes to fruition, it seems the big G may have plans to undo all your hard work in favour of their own know-how.” Back in 2004, Google filed a patent, which was recently granted, for something called ‘Enhanced Document Browser with Auto-generated Linkage.’ It seemed to me a rather broad description with multiple applications so I followed the link to the USPTO website to read the abstract.
The abstract states: “Additional documents are automatically located that are relevant to an original document, such as a document being read by a user, and also potentially relevant to personal information of the user. The additional documents may be located based on descriptive information that includes personal information of the user and content information of the document being read. The additional documents, or links to the additional documents, may be incorporated into the document being read. In some implementations, the additional documents may be presented in-line with the document being read, such as through an in-link link or text snippet. The user can thus be efficiently presented with additional information that is relevant to the original document being read.”
Huh? Kill SEO? My less histrionic interpretation would bet on Google implementing this in a way that would show users an overlay of related personalized content and information similar to what Google Maps does with local business information today. Or Google Adsense… Then again, that’s one possibility and only one personal interpretation. Remember, just because the patent was recently granted doesn’t mean Google hasn’t already implemented the technology described therein.
Near the end of the article the writer says: “On the other hand, it {could be} a dynamically generated, personalized link builder that works based on personal user preference, surely the Holy Grail of SEO.” Ahhh, so the shoe drops. Maybe SEO will live to see another day…
So what have we learned? This is a great example of how link-baiting can quickly build a large number of inbound links to your site (although I’m unsure of the success of this particular story). Just take care not to take too much liberty with the plot line.
Google Dynamic Linking David Harry from SEO Dojo offers a more reasoned analysis of the newly awarded patent to Google on dynamically generated links.
Phase One Link Building Strategies
Greg Shuey writes an encouraging article for budding link builders on where to find that low-hanging fruit. He outlines five easy steps that range from internal linking of resources to directories and link reclamation (404 pages).
4 Ways Link Builders Should Use Twitter
Interesting article on using Twitter as an alternative to traditional link building activities. Not only can social media sites like Twitter help you find link building opportunities but also help identify hot trends and what’s going on in your particular niche in the online world. With a large enough following and the potential of retweets, site owners can garner significant traffic from links on Twitter even though they are nofollow.
Over the last few days I’ve been publishing lists of people I read or whose online marketing comments I find useful / interesting. I hope you’ll add all these individuals to your bookmark list of people to turn to when you need advice across various search and online marketing disciplines.
The challenge with putting together any of these lists is to make sure that you don’t forget anyone. I have missed some along the way, and once I realized the error I added them to the appropriate list after publication.
There’s also some great contributors I wanted to note who write scant amounts themselves, but rather highlight great resources for others to read. Finally, there are some individuals who mainly contribute via public speaking engagements; they’re perhaps the most difficult to reference, as it’s hard for non-attendees to understand the context of the contributions.
On each of the earlier lists, I’ve had comments from people about why “XYZ” wasn’t on the list. In some cases it was an obvious error, in others, it’s because they fit on so many lists that I was saving them for this final one. The most obvious name in this category was Danny Sullivan. As I wrote in my first post, he really should be on everyone’s reading list! He contributes across so many areas, I could have included him throughout, so instead of listing him five times, I saved him for this list.
Today’s final list in this series is about amazing cross-channel contributors; I’ve tried to include mostly people who didn’t fit the other lists. Being on any of these lists reflects a very broad range of contributions to the industry. This list in particular is of people who have made contributions spanning multiple areas of online marketing. These people write authoritatively, OR, they provide commentary about areas of interest and point their listeners or readers in the direction of great, meaningful content. In the latter case, they’re like great filters for all of us, pointing people to the essential nuggets they should keep track of, but sometimes miss.
As this is the last list in the series, I’ll be closing voting on all the lists within a week, and then getting around to publishing some interesting results, with links to the places to find the best contributor’s content.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me: Richard Zwicky - zwicky@, tweet me @rzwicky, or leave a comment below.
If you’ve missed them, please read further down the blog for the prior lists of great online marketing contributors across SEO, PPC, SMM, and link-building!
Over the last four work days, I’ve been publishing lists of people, broken out by online marketing disciplines. These are individuals whose writings or commentaries I recommend that people should read to keep abreast of the industry. I’ve broken them into areas of expertise as I saw fit - SEO thought-leaders, PPC experts, and strategic and tactical SMM thinkers. I have two more groups I want to reference in this series: 1) Link-Building masters, and; 2) Cross-Channel contributors. Then I will start compiling the data for publication.
Today, it’s the link-builder’s turn. These are all people I’ve read, and whose work I recommend you look at for link-building advice. Some is tactical, some strategic, but it all has its place. Presuming you already look at some, I’d like to know which 5 are the ones you reference the most often?
If you haven’t looked at the earlier lists, I’d suggest you look at them now. For the Search Engine Optimization Experts list: SEO; For the list of PPC Experts, PPC; and for the list of top Social Media Marketers, SMM.
Last week I began a series of posts to answer a question I keep getting asked by people entering the industry, attending conferences, or even veterans looking for new sources of information: Whose writings I have found useful, by discipline. On Friday, the post was about PPC experts, and on Thursday, SEO thought leaders. If you haven’t read those posts, please do, and please read what these people are saying.
By now, I hope you’ve read the other posts you’ll know the point of this series is that it’s easy to list off a few names, but there’s an incredible span of knowledge out there and experts in many different areas. Everyday single day, there’s great new content being published, and I want to share with you whose contributions I regularly find to be useful and valuable. While they may not all publish regularly, what they do share is practical and should either makes you consider something new, or provide you with insights as to how to do something ever better!
Of my list, who’s your Top 5, and who am I missing out on?
Yesterday, I started a series of posts to answer a question I keep getting asked by people who are entering the industry, attending conferences, or even veterans looking for new sources of information: Whose writings I have found useful, by discipline? Yesterday I posted about SEO writers
It’s easy for everyone to list off a few names, but there’s an incredible span of knowledge out there and experts in many different areas. Unless you read a good, broad sampling, and not just the few same ones every day, you’re not going to become truly proficient in any one domain. That’s because there’s always cross-over. If you think that you can succeed as an SEO without properly understanding the fundamentals of the other disciplines, good luck to you.
Everyday, there is great new content being published, but these lists are about who do you find provides the most useful information for putting skills into practice? The people whose contributions I find the most valuable may not publish daily or even weekly, but when they do, what they share is practical and either makes you consider something new, or provides you insights as to how to do something ever better! Some will mostly use Twitter to highlight other people’s articles of interest for their own readers [or polls ].
The list of people I know whose contributions I value is so large that I found that it was easier to create lists around themes, or concept groups. Some people are better known than others, but that doesn’t mean their writings are more helpful: The reality is, some people are incredibly knowledgeable, and while they don’t write a lot, or do so with flair, what they write matters.
If there’s someone you think I’ve missed, send me a comment - I’m trying to recognize people by discipline, and it’s possibly I see them more in one concept group than another. If you’re not on this list, perhaps you’ll be on one for another discipline, or perhaps your knowledge is so broad it’s hard to pin you into any one group! There’s also a few people who fit into two or more categories.
There is one person not on any of the lists on purpose: Danny Sullivan. I like him personally, and value and enjoy what he writes. But, let’s face it, he’s on everyone’s reading list.
Top 5 Results will be published at a later date.
And if you haven’t looked at the list of SEO’s I’ve regularly turned to, please do so.
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
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