Links Are Effects, Not Causes

Quit obsessing over backlinks. Instead focus on how you can provide something of value to your consumers.
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GM’s Doing it Wrong: Facebook Marketing Lessons

Posted by wrttnwrd

By dumping Facebook, GM’s doing it wrong

GM made a huge stink last week when they pulled their $10 million Facebook advertising budget.

They’re doing it wrong. And you can learn some valuable lessons from their mistake:

Facebook is the best display advertising deal on the internet

The Register pointed out that Facebook ads average a .05% click-through rate. Click-through rate is the total number of clicks on an ad, divided by the number of ad views, or impressions. That’s very low, compared to .4% on Google’s Display Network.

But you can purchase ads on both networks on a cost-per-click basis: You only pay if someone actually clicks on the ad. If a GM ad shows up on my Facebook page, and I glance at it but move on, GM doesn’t pay a thing. But I still saw GM’s ad. It’s free display advertising!

There’s no way to pin a value on that glance, but there is a value. If nothing else, GM just occupied attention otherwise available for Toyota.

Managed correctly, Facebook advertising is an unbeatable display ad bargain. GM’s losing a huge branding opportunity.

Understand earned media

Social media is earned media. Selling in earned media is a two-step process:

  1. Attract and build an audience over time.
  2. Then you sell to that audience.

Facebook ads boost step 1.

GM claims Facebook ads aren’t delivering results. But they’re measuring the wrong results, I’ll bet: They’re looking at clicks, sales and web site traffic. They should be looking at new followers, share of voice, and the quality of the following they build.

You can grow your brand without paid Facebook ads, by posting to your Facebook page. In our tests, 2-4 great posts per day is the minimum effective pace for a major brand. Post less often and your brand shrinks. General Motors posts every 1-2 days, at best. With that pace, and without ads, they can’t grow their brand.

Don’t repeat their mistake: Understand earned media. Your Facebook following is a long-term asset. It’s a community that’s primed for your marketing message. Neglect it and you’ll fail. GM has to either maintain their ad spend (clearly they won’t) or step up their other efforts (hopefully they will). As it stands now, when GM stops their ad campaign, their Facebook page will stagnate.

Learn to measure earned media

You can measure the return from earned media on Facebook. Run Facebook-specific offers. GM could run a regional campaign with participating dealers and offer cash back, or free oil changes for 3 years, or similar. See how many people participate. Use the performance of those campaigns over time to track the value of your average Facebook follower.

That’s only part of the value generated, but it’s a start. It lets you sketch out a comparison of ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ ads, content and offers.

Learn to measure earned media performance.

Don’t amputate for a hangnail

$10 million is a huge Facebook spend. Chances are, GM can optimize it and improve performance, or reduce waste by removing non-performing ads and segments. Instead, they’re chucking the entire budget baby out with the bathwater. If GM applied the budgeting technique to print and television, they’d shut down those campaigns, too.

If you manage a Facebook campaign, you’ll hit a point where you want to turn it off. Don’t. Instead, test, refine and improve. Use Facebook’s amazing segmenting tools to create precisely-targeted ads.

Don’t hack off a limb because of a hangnail. That’s what GM is doing.

Keep perspective

Facebook ads represent .5% of GM’s total marketing budget. To be worthwhile, Facebook ads would need to generate 45,000 cars sold. Staggering numbers for you and I, but for a company that sold 9 million cars last year, that’s a totally achievable goal.

My last advice: Don’t shut down an ad spend that’s less than 1% of your budget unless you’re 100% certain it’s a failure. When the stakes are low and the potential high, keep perspective. Bottom line, that’s what GM forgot to do, and it’s going to hurt them a lot more than Facebook in the long run.


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Facebook Friends 101: for Businesses

I'm going to assume you already maintain a Facebook account for your business; in fact, I know of some companies with Facebook accounts that never bothered building a separate website. I won't go into the logic behind that. Right now, I'm just going to assume that your business is on Facebook, and you're hoping to use the social network to help it grow. That means you need to learn how to make and keep friends on Facebook without annoying them. If your company includes a physical presence where customers show up, you can start making Facebook friends simply by mentioning that you have a Facebo...
Posted in Website Promotion Help | Comments Off

Getting Started with the Mozscape API

Posted by Lisa - MozStaff

I’m pretty new here at SEOmoz, and one of the projects I’m working on is improving the Mozscape API wiki content so it’s easier for you to learn how to access all of the cool data available through the Mozscape API.

I decided to jump in and try to figure it out. My initial plan was not to cheat... that is, not use the help I have as an employee that’s not available to most API users.  But I got stuck, so I had to change the rules... You’ve heard of Calvinball, right?  I made a new rule that I get to cheat, as long as I share.

Joining the Game

I’d already signed up, since I work here, but this part isn’t hard. If you’re not already a member, go to http://www.seomoz.org/api/keys, and either sign up for a free PRO trial, or register for the SEOmoz community. Both of these give you access to the free version of the Mozscape API. If you like what you see and want more requests and full access to the API, details on what’s available are on our API Pricing page.

Getting My Secret SEOmoz API Key

This part would fit right into Calvin Ball... I get a secret key! Once I’m signed in, the Getting Started page shows the Generate API Credentials section. I wasn’t sure what to put in the Your Access ID section, so I just clicked the button. Then had to agree to the terms of service, and clicked it again, and voila, I have my Access ID and my Secret Key.

Tip #1: You don’t enter Your Access ID, we generate it. Just read our terms of service, click the box agreeing to them, and then push the big Generate Secret Key button (or Regenerate, if you’ve already done it once).

Secret Keys, Signatures, and Signed Authentication, Oh My!

As I looked at creating my first API request, I came to a complete standstill figuring out how to authenticate my request. My problems were completely self-inflicted, but I had to resort to cheating to overcome them.

Cheat #1 - Asking for internal guru help

I’d started reading the forums, and the number one issue on the forums at the moment is failed authentication. Before I started this exercise, I’d read a forum post that said the authentication example on the Getting Started page was old and no longer the recommended way to do things.

This led me to ignoring what it actually said on this page, and trying all sorts of things to create a Unix Timestamp and Valid Signature on my own, when it was sitting in front of me the whole time. It took talking to folks here to get me back on track.

Tip #2: Remember that the forums represent a moment in time.  We’ve been changing things, and fixing things, and what you read in the forums *could* be outdated.  We noticed the sample was bad, wrote about it in the forums, and then fixed it, meaning the forum post is now out-of-date.

The Sample Valid API Signature really is a Valid API Signature

After the above flailing about, and my first cheat, I realized the Sample Valid API Signature is actually a genuine, A#1, valid API signature, and allows me to do a query right away.

So, I was able to use the Sample Request on the Getting Started page to get the correct member ID, timestamp, and signature in the correct format.

Tip #3 & 4:

  • If you've been flailing about after getting your secret key (as I did), you'll need to refresh the page to update the timestamp. The timestamp on the sample is only valid for about 5 minutes.
  • Your signature has to be base64 and then URL encoded. This is why the Signature line on the Getting Started page is slightly different from the Signature in the Sample Request, which has been encoded for you. Make sure you use the Sample Request string.

 

URL Metrics for the Win

Once I realized the signed authentication was provided for me in the sample request, it came down to just using the wiki documentation to modify the request for the URL and metrics that I wanted.  The URL was easy; I just changed the website in the sample request from “www.seomoz.org&2fblog” to the website of my local food coop.

Then, since the sample request uses the url-metrics API call, I looked up how to add the URL metrics I wanted on the URL-Metrics API wiki page. I picked these metrics:

Metric Bit Flag Returns
Title 1 ut
URL 4 uu
Subdomain 8 ufq
Links 2048 uid

Adding all of the bit flags for these up gives me 2061. So I put 2061 in the Cols parameter.

Cheat #2 - Knowledge Aforethought

Since I’ve been here a little over a month, I had already looked at the URL-metrics API page, and been working on improving the content there. So I already knew how to use the Cols parameter and how to add up the bit flags to get the metrics I wanted.

Hobbes gets the Link Data

All of the above modifications to the Sample Request gave me my first working query:

http://lsapi.seomoz.com/linkscape/url-metrics/www.snoislefoods.coop?Cols=2061&AccessID=<my_member_ID>&Expires=<My_sample_timestamp>&Signature=<My_sample_signature>

I put it in a new browser window, hit enter, and got my first response:

{"ufq":"www.snoislefoods.coop/","uid":864,"ut":"Organic Produce Co op, Natural Food Cooperative | Sno-Isle Natural Foods Co-op Everett WA","uu":"www.snoislefoods.coop/"}

Success! I used the table on the URL-metrics API page (excerpted above) to interpret my link data.

Changing the Rules

So, this is what I learned that might be helpful to you if you’re just starting out. Now, most of the time, you’re not going to access your link data by typing a request like I did in the browser window, but I hope this helps you in understanding what all of the moving pieces are when generating your queries programmatically.

After my experience with this, I’ll be working on improving the Getting Started page, forum pages, and the wiki docs to help you avoid the parts that confused me on my first go around.

If you have any suggestions, success stories, or really good cheats, I’d love to hear from you. Email api@seomoz.org.

Lisa - Mozstaff


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If Matt Cutts Was Made of LEGO, What Would He Look Like?

Maybe something like this...

Matt Cutts Drawing.

...or this...

Matt Cutts Drawing.

A bunch more here, with cut & paste code near your favorites.

Categories: 
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7 Achievable Steps For Great SEO After The Penguin Update

Posted by Chris Warren

The Penguin update sent a strong message that not knowing SEO basics is going to be dangerous in the future. You have to have the basics down or you could be at risk. Penguin is a signal from Google that these updates are going to continue at a rapid pace and they don't care what color your hat is, it's all about relevance. You need to take a look at every seemingly viable "SEO strategy" with this lens. What you don't know can hurt you. It's not that what you are doing is wrong or bad, the reality is that the march towards relevance is coming faster than ever before. Google doesn't care what used to work, they are determined to provide relevance and that means big changes are the new normal.

eHow / Demand Media after the Panda update

All that said doing great SEO is an achievable goal, make sure you are taking these steps.

1. Understand your link profile

This is essential knowledge post Penguin. The biggest risk factors are a combination of lots of low quality links with targeted anchor text. There seems to be some evidence that there is a new 60% threshold for matching anchor text but don't forget about the future, I recommend at most 2 rankings focused anchor texts out of 10. The key metrics I look at for this are:

  • Anchor text distribution
  • The link type distribution (for example, article, comment, directory, etc.)
  • Domain Authority and Page Authority distributions

The goal here is to find out what is currently going on and where you should be going. Compare your site with the examples below.

Tools for this:

For anchor text Open Site Explorer gives you an immediate snapshot of what's going on while MajesticSEO and Excel can be better at digging into some of the really spammy links.

Distilled Anchor Text

Natural anchor text profile

Great Excel templates for DA/PA analysis

Balsamiq Link Profile

Natural Domain Authority profile

For link type analysis I use Link Detective but it seems to be down at the moment (please come back!).


Link Detective

UNNATURAL link type profile

2. Learn what makes a good link

Great links:

  • Come from respected brands, sites, people and organizations
  • Exist on pages that lots of other sites link to
  • Provide value to the user
  • Are within the content of the page
  • Aren't replicated many times over on the linking site

Those are lofty requirements but there is a lot of evidence that these high value links are really the main drivers of a domain's link authority. At the 1:00 mark Matt Cutts talks about how many links are actually ignored by Google:

That's not to say there isn't wiggle room but the direction of the future is quite clear, you have no control over how Google or Bing values your links and there's plenty of evidence that sometimes they get it wrong. The beauty of getting great links is that they aren't just helping you rank, they are VALUABLE assets for your business SEO value aside. At Distilled this was one of the primary ways we built our business, it's powerful stuff.

3. Map out your crawl path

This is a simple goal but it can be very difficult for larger sites. If it's really complex and hard to figure out then it's going to be hard for Google to crawl. There are few bigger wins in SEO than getting content that wasn't previously being indexed out there working for you.

Crawl Path


Sitemaps unfortunately can only help you so much in terms of getting things indexed. Furthermore, putting the pages that are the most important higher up in the crawl path lets you prioritize which pages get passed the most link authority.

4. Know about every page type and noindex the low value ones

I have never consulted on a website that didn't have duplicate or thin content somewhere. The real issue here is not that duplicate content always causes problems or a penalty but rather if you don't understand the structure of your website you don't know what *could* be wrong. Certainty is a powerful thing, knowing that you can confidently invest in your website is very important.

So how do you do it?

A great place to start is to use Google to break apart the different sections of your site:

  1. Start with a site search in Google site search
  2. Now add on to the search removing one folder or subdomain at a time Subtracting from site search
  3. Compare this number you get to the amount of pages you expect in that section and dig deeper if the number seems high

Note: The number of indexed pages that Google features here can be extremely inaccurate; the core idea is to reveal areas for further investigation. As you go through these searches go deeper into the results with inflated numbers. Duplicate and thin content will often show up after the first 100 results.

5. Almost never change your URLs

It's extremely common to change URLs, reasons like new design, new content management systems, new software, new apps... But this does serious damage and even if you manage it perfectly the 301 redirects cut a small portion of the value of EVERY single link to the page. And no one handles it perfectly. One of my favorite pieces of software Balsamiq has several thousand links and 500+ linking root domains pointed at 404s and blank pages. Balsamiq is so awesome they rank their head terms anyway but until you are Balsamiq cool you might need those links.

Balsamiq links

If you are worried that you have really bad URLs that could be causing problems Dr. Pete has already done a comprehensive analysis of when you should consider changing them. And then you only do it once.

6. Setup SEO monitoring

This is an often overlooked step in the process. As we talked about before if your content isn't up and indexed any SEO work is going to go to waste. Will Critchlow has already done a great job outlining how to monitor your website:

  • Watch for traffic drops with Google Analytics custom alerts
  • Monitor your uptime with services like Pingdom
  • Monitor what pages you noindex with meta tags or robots.txt (you would be shocked how often this happens)

Some more tools to help you keep an eye out for problems:

  • Dave Sottimano's traffic and rankings drop diagnosis tool
  • Google Analytics Debugger
  • The various rank tracking tools
  • SEOmoz's Google Analytics hook formats landing pages sending traffic in an easy graph

7. Embrace inbound marketing

To me inbound marketing is just a logical progression from SEO, thinking about your organic traffic in a vacuum really just doesn't make sense. Dedicate yourself to improving your website for your users and they will reward you, Balsamiq which I mentioned earlier is a perfect example of this. I guarantee you they have done little to no SEO and yet they rank first for their most important keywords and have a Domain Authority of 81. How did they do it? Less features.

balsamiq process

So what does that really mean? Balsamiq had a rigorous dedication to what their customers really wanted. That's really good marketing, smart business and intelligent product design all in one. Remember the future is all about relevance to your users, if you aren't actively seeking this you will get left behind. There is no excuse anymore there are plenty of proven examples of making seemingly boring page types fascinating and engaging.

Want to learn more?

If you need more high impact changes to your SEO check out the topic list for SearchLove San Francisco, it's the first time Distilled is going to be doing a conference on the West Coast.


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4th Annual Jell-O Snarf Crowns New Champion [Video]

Today was the 4th annual SEO.com Jell-O Snarfing contest

Last years champion, Greg Bay, ,decided to go on vacation rather than stay and defend the title he has held for the last 2 years. (Shame on him)

But this year was a very exciting event, as well as disgusting. While some came to compete, others had no idea what they were getting themselves in to.

“I embarrass myself every year” says Ash Buckles, president of SEO.com. He continues to say “But I still talk trash to throw off the noobs”

Boyd Norwood, director of SEO says… “I was the only male in my heat, and the girls slayed me!”

This year the winners were:

  • 1st Place: Ryan Hanvey
  • 2nd Place: Daniel Woodall
  • 3rd Place: John Rodriguez

Enjoy the video recap of the 2012 SEO.com Jell-O Snarf… the contestants are already planning on strategy for next year!

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With Today’s IPO, Will May 18, 2012 Now Be Known As Facebook Day?

Facebook… love the social network or hate it, finally went public today. Many investors are running wild to get their hands on some of the newly minted shares of the social media behemoth. Shares were set to open up at $38 a share, and according to CNN, the stock started trading at $42.05 when the stock began trading at 11:30ET. Shares are expected to jump much higher in the early going.

Some of the news I have heard today say that buying Facebook is a suckers bet. Big corporations and the rich get access to the stock first at the lower dollar amount, and turn around and sell it back to “the people” at an inflated price. I am sure there is a lot of that going on, but over all I think this is great for Facebook, Zuckerberg, and all the Facebook employees that will become millionaires today. In fact, I stand up and applaud… (and secretly wish I would have thought of it!… oops, guess that is not a secret now.)

The future of Facebook as a public company is what intriges me. Some people compare Facebook to Apple, but Apple has a definite product they are selling, not to mention a rabid fan base. What is it Facebook sells to consumers? Sure they have the game network, as well as the paid advertising platform… but at the end of the day, what will make this company worth the expected $104 billion dollars to you and me? And how does the love hate relationship users of the platform have, in regards to privacy, come into play?

I’d say the closest comparison to Facebook in the stock market world would be Google. Google makes most of their money from advertising… but they have jumped into consumer products with the Android platform etc. Will Facebook eventually come up with a product or service that people will want to actually buy? Or will Facebook even need to? Time will tell I suppose.

According to CBS news, today Facebook will be the 23rd largest company in the U.S. (as measured by stock market value) putting Facebook ahead of shopping giant Amazon.com. However, Facebook ranks 909th in terms of annual sales globally. Pretty interesting don’t you think?

So, for better or worse, today may very well be known as Facebook Day.

What are your thoughts… will you be buying shares of Facebook? Do you think the need to pander to investors will help, or hurt the social giant? Let’s keep the conversation going below in the comments!

Until next time…  Doc

Posted in Blog, facebook, mark zuckerberg, Social Media | Comments Off

Facebook IPO By the Numbers

While there will no doubt be tremendous demand for Facebook stock today, as it begins trading at 11 AM Eastern time, there should be plenty of it available. As David Angosti reported for Search Engine Journal, the social network raised its target IPO price range to $34 to $38. The move prompted a number of Facebook's major stakeholders to increase the number of shares they plan to offer - and in some cases, that number went way up. I am not a stock broker; I don't even play one on the Internet. But I think even the people who crunch these kinds of numbers for a living would be amazed by the c...
Posted in Search Engine News | Comments Off

Ways to Win Customers and Influence Rankings – Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Starting up your own consulting agency can be quite a difficult process and often times the most challenging step to your endeavour will be finding new customers or clients.

In this week's Whiteboard Friday we will be covering some tips and tactics that you can use to get referrals and win customers. Don't forget to leave your own advice in the comments below.

Happy Friday Everyone! Enjoy!



Video Transcription

Howdy, SEOmoz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Last week I got an email from a Moz fan who said, "Hey, Rand, I am trying to start up my SEO consulting business. My network is not that great yet. How am I going to find clients? Can you point me to a blog post?"

We've done several over the years, but I thought it was a great time to refresh and offer some practical tips and tactics for finding new business. I know there are a lot of folks out there who are seeking clients, who are considering going out on their own and starting their own consulting business, who've had success in-house, who've had success at other agencies. Let me give you some of the things that worked for us when we were in consulting and that work for a lot of the folks that we connect with in the field. Obviously, nearly 40% of SEOmoz's membership are folks who do consulting and agency work, the other 60% being in-house. Of course, we get to interact with a lot of these people and hear their stories of what works well for them. I thought I'd start with a few of those.

So number one, if you're just starting out and you have nothing else going on, I strongly recommend building a handful of case studies. What I mean by this is having a few sites and pages and projects that you can point to, even if you're very early stage. Even if you're saying, "You're my first professional customer," that's fine, that's okay. But have a few things that you've done in the past to show off your work.

So your brother has a hobby site, great. Maybe you've helped him to rank for a few keywords. Maybe you've helped him to build up a powerful Facebook fan page. Maybe you've helped him with some web marketing efforts on his Etsy store, whatever it is. Your friend's got a LinkedIn profile. Maybe she needs some help outranking some other people who are ranking for her name. She knows that she's going to be on the job market. You want to help her get position for that. You're going to help her create other profiles and write some guest pieces and all this kind of stuff that's going to help her show up highly in Google for her particular name. Maybe there's a personal blog, either one that you're running, one that someone else is running, a family member, a friend, and you can help optimize that site, get the right things installed in WordPress, get it moved over from Blogspot, get the post titles, doing some keyword research, having a few of the posts go hot. Great.

Now you can point to all of these case studies when clients talk to you and say, "Well, let me tell you about some of the things that worked well for this. Go to Google and search for this, you can see this page ranking, the reason that it's ranking so well are these different things that I did. I can help you with that kind of stuff." Having those case studies in your back pocket makes you very credible and believable, even if you are a very first-time consultant.

Of course, if you have a history of working with clients, one of the biggest problems that the SEO field has always had is that a lot of clients say, "Hey, I don't want you discussing my particular project. I'd prefer you didn't share and disclose which types of things you've worked on for me or what you've done." That's okay, and that's another great reason to have this handful of case studies that you can show off so you can say, "Hey, here's a few clients we've worked with" or "I can't tell you who they are, but if we sign an NDA, I'll be happy to disclose the names, and then they can serve as references, and then you can see the projects publicly that we've worked on, and those include some of these other ones."

A great follow-up to this is to actually offer some pro bono work, and there are two types of organizations that I strongly recommend this for. The first one is local charities or non-profits. It could be national non- profits and charities if you have a high profile and you want to do that. So here's Adorable Adoptions. It's an animal shelter. It's not actually an animal shelter. It's an animal shelter I just created in my mind. Lives here in Seattle on this whiteboard only. Fantastic, right? So you can do some SEO work to help them rank well for adopt a pet, or thinking about what to do with my pets, or those kind of things.

The other one that I think is a really good option is when you see small local startups kicking things off, so maybe it's somebody's personal project, something they're putting on Kickstarter, or something that they're launching for the first time and some friend of yours through a network or through Twitter or through Facebook, you've seen that they're launching this product through the TechPress. Great. Especially if they don't have a lot of venture backing and they're kind of on a tight bootstrap budget, maybe the founders still have day-to-day jobs, offer to kick in and help out. "Hey, do you need some help with your web marketing? I've done some things. I'm trying to build a portfolio, and I would love to show you guys how I can kick ass and then maybe build up some referrals in your network." They're going to be very, very grateful for that, especially those early stage folks who don't have time and energy to focus on the marketing components. So I really like those.

But I have a pro tip here. Make the offer very specific, and make your pens work too. Make the offer very specific. The reason being here is that if you offer to do some work, you can find yourself in these pro bono types of situations where there's just a lot of demands on your time, and as your business gets going or you have other projects you need to work on, those demands can become problematic. It can feel like a big conflict. So make sure that when you commit to something, you're committing to a very specific project that has a clear end date or that has a very clear end point. So once that project or that date has been reached, you can reach back out and say, "Hey, really loved working with you guys. I hope you'll recommend me in the future. I'd love to be able to use you as a reference for some future clients that I might get." Fantastic, but you've made that closure happen and sealed that deal. Of course, if they need more of your time, they can ask for it and those kinds of things, but you want to have that built in from the start. If you don't, you can get into a messy territory.

Number three, be a connector of people. Maybe you're an introvert or you have introverted tendencies and you don't love to go networking, that's okay. That's fine. But help people to find each other. Be on top of your local ecosystem in whatever world or niche you're in and whatever geographic region you're in. By being on top of what's happening in the field, you can say, "Hey, I noticed that you said you're looking for some software to help you with recruiting. I heard about The Resumator last week via TechCrunch or HackerNews or whatever. I'd be happy to make an introduction because I reached out to the founder there when I heard about it." Don Charlton, the guy from The Resumator probably doesn't need SEO help, but just as an example. And then help put those people together. If you have friends, if you have colleagues from former jobs, if you have people that you know through friends or family that have needs, putting them together and making those introductions can be fantastic. That becomes a referral source all on its own, and you will quickly see that other people who you've connected in the future will say, "Hey, you should meet so and so. She helped me connect with this person in the past, and she knows SEO stuff. So you should talk to her." Great way to get business.

Number four, choose a specialty. For goodness sake, especially right now it's critical because the field of web marketing is so crowded. There are so many people doing so many things that if you can choose a specialty and focus on it and then write about it and become known for it, this can really help your career.

I'll give you a great example. So this guy over here who I'm going to label AJ Kohn. So AJ, right, San Francisco-based SEO guy wrote what I consider the definitive guide to Google+ for marketing and SEO, and does a fantastic job of posting on there regularly. He's the only person I see in my stream who's really posting six, seven, eight, nine times a day, posting a bunch of interesting stuff, a bunch of fun stuff, personal stuff, whatever it is, great photography stuff that he always posts. He's made his topic area very unique. He started on Google+ in the very early days, was an early adopter of that. He wrote the definitive resource for it. By the way, he also wrote the definitive resource for Rel=Author and setting that up for sites, which I think is a great offshoot of that specialty. He contributes continuous updates to that and to other sites, like SearchEngineLand. He offers, obviously, to guest write for others, and he's showing off his skills by actually winning in that arena. When I do a lot of searches inside my Gmail account, which is the one that's connected to Google+, there's AJ, the stuff that he's Plus 1'd and shared and all these things, always ranking on page one for me because he shares so much content around the things that I consume. So he's done a great job of this.

There are tons of areas of specialty that still need or could use people in them. I would still say even old school kinds of things, like we need a new update to the old masters of curated research, guys like Dan Thies and Richard Baxter. We need someone who's getting into that world. We could definitely use someone to talk about the great advantages of Pinterest or LinkedIn. Chris from 97th Floor, Chris Bennett, does a phenomenal job with link-based still, infographics, interactive graphics. Once you get that association and are known for those specialties, people remember you, you have that branding, and then you're going to get recommended for these things. So find something you love and find the unique angle on it and the specialty. Phenomenal way to get content out there on the Web and get your name known.

Number five. This seems counter-intuitive, but when you're most desperate for business is when you make a lot of mistakes as an SEO consultant. I did this myself all the time, and I've talked to so many other people from the consulting and agency world who do this as well. They go, "Well, we have some people time free. I have some hours free. We really need the revenue coming in." So you expand to take on projects and customers that you normally wouldn't. The problem is that a lot of times, remember with accounts receivable, you're not getting paid with a credit card up front here. So you need to count on that trust factor and the likeability factor and the familiarity to make sure. It's actually a great idea when you're desperate to be able to say to someone, "Hey, I'm sorry. This is not in my wheelhouse. You're not the right kind of customer for me. I hope that you'll refer business my way, but let me point you over to this other person who does this work and who I think would be a fit." That interaction is oftentimes going to be much more positive than, "Yeah, let's start some client work. Well, I can't pay you that much, and besides I know you're desperate for business. So I'm going to offer you pennies on the dollar or 50% your normal rate. Then you're going to be locked into a contract with me, and by the way I'm unpleasant to work with." This makes for very frustrating stuff. So be cautious not to be accepting everything, to be cutting your rates, all that kind of stuff early on or when your business is struggling on the consulting side. A lot of the times, particularly in our field, you can take on some personal projects that are likely to either win you business over the long term or can actually be a channel for direct revenue, so anything from an affiliate project to a blog that sells advertising, this kind of thing.

Number six, my last recommendation and probably the best one I've got, this is via Wil Reynolds over at SEER Interactive. Help people. Help everyone you can and not just in the ways that are around marketing and SEO and social media and inbound. Help everyone you possibly can with anything that you can possibly do for them. So you see somebody who has a problem on Twitter, someone needs help moving something and you go, "Man, that guy's pretty cool. I'd really like to know him. You know what? I've got a van. I'm going to offer to pick up that chair that he needs at whatever furniture store. I'll reach out over Twitter or maybe I'll reach out over email." Fantastic, right? You have a friend who's out of work. I know you're struggling as well, right? You're trying to find clients. You obviously don't have a position for them, but it doesn't matter. As you're looking across clients, you're meeting with someone, maybe they don't take you up on it and you say, "Hey, I know that we didn't end up being your SEO agency. I didn't end up being your consultant, but I have a friend who's really good at project management and you said you were looking for a project manager position. I'd love to make the introduction." Fantastic, just by helping people in any way you can. There's a new local news site out there. There's a new neighborhood blog. Fantastic. Offer to contribute. Get to know all the people in the space. As you build up a network of people who know you and like you and who you've done nice things for in the past, you will have no problem winning clients and influencing referrals in the future.

All right everyone, I hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. I look forward to maybe seeing some tips from you down there in the comments, and we'll see you again next week. Take care.

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