Posted by great scott!

Crawling and Indexing. Without them you can't rank. If you can't rank, you can't get search traffic. If you can't get search traffic, your online marketing efforts are going to suffer; and in our industry that is a colossal FAIL.

This seems like simple stuff we all take for granted, but it's critically important to understand what you must do--and avoid--to make sure your site is regularly crawled and then maintained in the primary index of each of the major engines. Even if you think you know it all, take a few minutes to watch this week's Whiteboard Friday...you may just realize you've been ignoring some critical ranking factors.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Crawling & Indexing from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by randfish

I'm not always a fan of Guy Kawasaki's work, but really enjoyed his post on the OPEN Forum - A Dozen Don'ts for Entrepreneurs. I thought I'd take a stab at replicating it with some of my biggest warnings for those in our field.

For the list below, the word "clients" is interchangeable with "marketing manager" or "executive team" for in-house SEOs.

1. Don't Create False Expectations
   Clients are just like everyone else - when you exceed their expectations, they love you. When you disappoint, they're angry. Make it easy for yourself and don't oversell. If anything, undersell your abilities to do great things and let them be surprised. It's a hard thing to do, particularly in a competitive bidding environment, but humility and hard work often shine through in presentations and good clients will see that and honor it.
   _
2. Don't Ignore Analytics
   Website analytics, both visitor traffic and third party metrics, are important parts of SEO. When things are going well, even if best practices aren't being followed, it can be wise to match up data and trends to see what's made a real difference. Don't undertake an SEO project unless you have at least the essential data points (this also comes in handy once changes have been implemented and your work starts to have an impact).
   _
3. Don't Always Take Your Client at Their Word
   If you talk to lots of clients, you'll find that none of them have ever spammed the engines, bought a link, accidentally cloaked for Googlebot or hidden text, yet the statististics tell another story. Never assume your clients are being dishonest, but always watch out for activities they might not be aware of (or might not have realized were problematic). This goes beyond just white and black hat - we had a client who thought they had a couple dozen active domains; turns out they had nearly a hundred - canonicalization alone has been a big project and a big return.
   _
4. Don't Get Into Projects with People You Don't Like
   If ever you get a "funny feeling" about a client, move on if you can possibly afford it. Some people just don't click together, and when interpersonal relationships aren't working, projects have a way of not working out, either. It's always better to get out before something's signed than after.
   _
5. Don't Give an Unqualified Answer Unless You're Extremely Certain You're Right
   If you've been reading SEOmoz lately or hearing me speak at conferences, you'll notice that my advice comes with a lot more caveats than it used to. It's been a tough lesson, but there's very rarely a "this is ALWAYS better than that" in the field of SEO. Exceptions abound, so cage your language accordingly.
   _
6. Don't Confuse SEO & Sales
   If your client comes to you wanting to drive sales with SEO, make sure they're keenly aware of the multiple responsiblities inherent in such a request. Yes - SEO can drive lots of high quality, targeted traffic at the perfect moment for capturing the sale. But NO - SEO cannot convert that visit into dollars. If the website sucks at turning visitors into leads, do the right thing and recommend CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) before they dive into SEO.
   _
7. Don't Rest on Your Laurels
   If you're not paying attention in the SEO world, even for just a few weeks, you can miss massive changes. Look at June! We've had a reversal of position on nofollow and Javascript links from Google, a new engine/algorithm/brand from Microsoft, adoption of rich text formatting in the SERPs, evidence that header tags may not be as valuable as we thought and data suggesting that alt attributes are highly correlated with good rankings. Stay ahead of the curve and devote some resources to industry news - you owe it to your clients and yourselves.
   _
8. Don't Undervalue Your Work
   SEO is hard work. For every consulting hour, there's days of research, testing, reading, surfing and experimenting. Don't undersell your services or accept that what you do doesn't provide tremendous value. If you're being undervalued now, consider how terrificly trackable SEO really is and show them the data. It's almost always on your side.
   _
9. Don't Believe Everything You Read
   Yes, even here at SEOmoz! We certainly try our best to provide high quality, accurate information, as do many other great sites on SEO, but no one is right 100% of the time, and, more importantly, not every piece of advice is applicable for every business or every situation.
   _
10. Don't Underestimate Dev Contributions
    I was recently asked "what's the biggest roadblock to SEO," and didn't need to think for 10 seconds before quoting Mr. Ballmer's infamous adage "Developers! Developers! Developers!" If you get bandwidth cycles for SEO projects, use them wisely. If the developers have made critical SEO errors, don't be quick to criticize - you'll make enemies, and, oftentimes, be guilty of hypocrisy. Stay humble, prioritize the big pieces and make sure you have the resources before you commit to improving traffic.
    _
11. Don't Overstate Your Influence or Abilities
    Just because you have the ear of some important minds at Google/Yahoo!/Facebook/etc. doesn't mean you can influence change within these large organizations. I've heard a lot of stories from companies that worked with SEOs of how they promised to get their penalty lifted or special treatment from an engine because they got a response to an email they sent to a search engineer. Perhaps an even better rule is - don't promise something you can't personally control and deliver.
    _
12. Don't Get Overconfident and Dismiss Other Marketing Channels
    OK, yes - SEO rocks. But don't forget how valuable other marketing activities like email, PPC, CRO, affiliate programs, even display advertising can be for the right scenario. Once you've found the SEO hammer, it's easy to see every problem as a nail - I've certainly been guilty of it. If you can resist, think holistically and provide the best answer from a strategic (rather than tactical) level, you'll become even better and more valuable to your clients.

Your turn - any "don'ts" you'd recommend to fellow SEOs?

p.s. If you haven't read the whole Malcolm Gladwell vs. Chris Anderson with Seth Godin weighing in thing, it's pretty worthwhile :-)

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by RobOusbey

We all like links from big sites right?

Whether it's in an editorial article, a guest post, etc, it's great for sending some strength and trust to your site. However, the drawback of links from big sites, is that you might find it's on a small page. The newly published page will take some time to get indexed, much of it's strength (certainly initially) is likely to come from internal links, and it's unlikely to have a great crawl rate.

The front pages of sites, on the other hand, tend to have a much greater diversity of domains pointing to them and a good crawl rate. Furthermore, Google is likely to look with suspicion at an old article that suddenly gains a new link, compared to site front pages which have new links added to them more often, and legitimately.

So, this suggests that a link from the front page of a small site may be better than a link from an inner page on a large site.


As an example, I dived into the Lifehacker archives, and found their coverage of a handy looking tool, Programmer's Notepad 2. Let's imagine that the site owner had done the work to contact Lifehacker, foster a relationship and ultimately get them to post coverage of the app. You can now see their link on this page:

• lifehacker.com/5105267/programmers-notepad-2-helps-you-code-wrangle (mozRank: 0*, mozTrust: 2.5)

(* N.B.: this page is fairly old, and has been rated by Linkscape - the mozRank is just very very low and rounds off to zero.)
Of course, they've also been mentioned by smaller sites. I imagine that these sites either found out about them through the grapevine, but I like to think that the app's owners also fired off a few mass emails to programming / web dev websites to say "Check this out, we built it and I think you might like it."

So check out some of the small sites that have linked to them from the front page:

Domain	URL MozRank	URL MozTrust
www.pappons.com	1.28	1.12
www.jasonbadams.net	1.78	2.36
links.tecwiz.de	2.08	1.39
dintiradan.ermarian.net	2.49	2.54
www.deleyna.com	2.33	3.24
freeware.startingiseasy.com	3.30	3.00

(Ordering the Linkscape report for the Programmer's Notepad 2 site, by "mozRank Passed to URL" suggests that Lifehacker.com first appears at around the 400th page in the list.)

The downside of a link on the strong-front-page-of-a-less-strong-site is that it isn't going to be around forever, and may be removed at somepoint. However, the strength passed in the mean time, combined with the quick indexation of the links will be beneficial.

This works particularly well when you can contact smallish sites in a very relevant niche. To find those sites, I currently recommend having a drill down in these directories:

• www.Blogged.com,
• dir.Blogflux.com,

and also that you look for directories of sites in that niche. For instance, whilst trying to find some UK craft websites this week, I found that Craftyblogs.co.uk was very helpful. There are bound to be similar niche lists for almost anything you need to look for.

In summary: when planning your linkbuilding strategy, don't forget that whilst links from strong domains can be useful, weaker domains can often pass more strength if you are linked to from the front (or other strong high level) page.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by randfish

My good friend, Aaron Kahlow, posed an interesting question during the Online Marketing Summit yesterday afternoon in Portland, OR. Aaron asked:

If a client came to you with $1 million to invest in a single Internet marketing channel, which one would you choose?

Obviously, the question is a bit ridiculous (given that there's no additional detail provided), but it's designed to elicit an "off-the-cuff" response to a challenging scenario. The answer, of course, is "it depends" - and therein lies the rub. On what does it depend? Well... That's what I hope to answer with this blog post. My goal is not to solve the issue for an individual campaign, but from a very strategic level - asking questions like "where is the company today and where does it want to get to?" then applying those answers to the selection of marketing opportunities. Let's start by defining the macro-level channels themselves, then examine how we'd reach the right conclusions.

Internet Marketing Channels

• Display Advertising
  • The process of placing ads on third-party websites with the goal of creating branding awareness and/or generating traffic
  • Examples: Banner ads, video ads, interactive ads, overlays, interstitials, etc.
• Email Marketing
  • The process of collecting email addresses from potential leads and marketing to them via email messages
  • Examples: Email newsletters, brand building emails, conversion-focused emails, etc.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) 
  • The process of bidding for placement at search engines (major or niche) to earn visibility and traffic when relevant queries are performed
  • Examples: Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Business.com Advertising, etc.
• Online Public Relations
  • The process of generating media from primarily online outlets in order to earn branding and traffic
  • Examples: PRNewswire, PRWeb, Internet media focused PR agency work, etc.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • The process of earning rankings in the "organic" results of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing)
  • Examples: Keyword research, on-page optimization, link building, etc.
• Affiliate Marketing
  • The process of incentivizing other sites to push your product in exchange for a share of the revenue they drive
  • Examples: Commission Junction, in-house affiliate programs, etc.
• Social Media Marketing (SMM) 
  • The process of leveraging social media platforms (small and large) to earn visibility and traffic
  • Examples: Facebook Group pages, Twitter marketing, pushing content on Digg, etc.
• Viral Content Campaigns
  • The process of generating creative content that will help spread your branding/marketing message and earn traffic
  • Examples: Linkbait production, viral videos, guerrilla marketing, etc.
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) 
  • The process of improving the path from landing to conversion to get more leads/signups/customers
  • Examples: Split & multivariate testing, click-through-rate improvements, purchase-process simplification, etc.

Some of these may overlap - for example, viral content campaigns may simply be a means to an end of better search engine optimization - but as they can all be separate entities, engaged in for their own purposes, I've made them distinct.

Primary Variables to Use in the Selection Process

Although other factors should certainly play into the decision making, these three elements are excellent for narrowing down the options:

• Company Goals - What are the top priorities for the business to achieve?
  • Brand Awareness - the current marketplace doesn't have enough familiarity/comfort with your brand to visit, engage or purchase from you.
  • Education - the market for your product/service needs to be created; potential customers don't yet realize the problem they need you to solve.
  • Raw Traffic - your business is monetized with advertising and needs more traffic/page views.
  • Sales - your business has clear market demand on the web that needs to be drawn to your site and converted into leads/sales
• Budget - How much do you have to spend on your marketing effort(s)?
  • Very High: in excess of $1 million
  • High: $100K - $1 million
  • Moderate: $25K - $100K
  • Low: $5K - $25K
  • Tiny: <$5K
• Available Talent - What personnel with free bandwidth or trustworthy, outsourced vendors do you have available? 
  • Strong Dev Resources - you have technology staff ready and able to make changes to your site to support marketing goals
  • Strong Creative Resources - you have writers/artists/brainstormers poised for action
  • Strong Search Resources - you have search marketing talent prepared for battle in the results
  • Strong Social Resources - you have strong online networkers set to engage the Twit-Face-Digg-o-Sphere

General Tiers of ROI, Effort & Cost by Channel

These are based on my personal opinions (though, based on conversations, they appear to reflect the experiences of many web marketers and internal marketing departments). 

I suspect there will be lots of contention about these, particularly from marketers who specialize in non-tier 1 activities. I do think that over time, activities like social media marketing and viral may move to tier 1, but as yet, I believe that companies haven't seen the same consistency or trackability in ROI from these as Tier 1 channels. The eMarketer research I showed this weekend certainly suggests that these newer investments may have a chance to prove themselves fairly quickly.

Formulas for Choosing the Right Channel

Once again, I'm using my own opinions and experiences, but you can use this same format to help with your own decisions, even if the ordering is somewhat different:

And of course, last, but not least, there's the strengths of your organization to consider. If you have amazing talent in these fields, that might sway you to lean more towards particular activities as shown below:

• Strong Dev Resources - lean towards:
  • CRO
  • SEO
  • Viral Content (particularly dev intensive stuff like tools, widgets, etc.)
• Strong Creative Resources - lean towards:
  • Viral Content (particularly written/graphic content that can be produced in a standard CMS)
  • Email (great copywriters write great emails)
  • Display (great designers make great ads)
• Strong Search Marketing Resources - lean towards:
  • SEO
  • PPC
• Strong Social Resources - lean towards:
  • Social Media Marketing
  • Viral Content
  • Online PR

That wraps up my brief, high level summation of this tough question, and hopefully it can help some marketers and marketing departments to find the right paths for their organizations/clients.

I'd, of course, love to hear your feedback and ideas as well.

p.s. OMS Seattle is tomorrow, and I'll be speaking there in the afternoon - hope to see some of you there!

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by MikeK@DanconiaMedia

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

It's been said here before: Press releases are much less powerful than they used to be for SEO purposes. While churning out news releases and submitting them to free sites may not do much, the medium can actually be more powerful than ever if used right. Convincing a single reporter or high-profile blogger to pick up your news is infinitely more beneficial than posting worthless releases all over the place and Digg'ing and StumbleUpon'ing them with your multiple accounts.

I have a somewhat unique perspective about news releases. Not too long ago, I worked full-time as a newspaper reporter, and my inbox was regularly inundated with press releases. Some of them caught my attention and were turned into lengthy stories. Others, however, failed to captivate me or my peers and, as a result, went nowhere.

Here are some tips on how to craft your releases in a way that increases the odds of them getting noticed by the media:

Get to the point. Make it clear from the get-go what your release is about. Don't try to be cute. I used to get releases all the time from PR people who buried the news or tried to get creative with their writing. Sometimes, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what some releases were even about. If you're looking for a creative outlet, press release writing is not the avenue. Try writing a short story.

At least pretend you're objective. Obviously, you have a vested interest in what you're writing about, but it's still important to craft your releases like down-the-middle news stories. Avoid unnecessary adjectives; most adjectives are unneeded. You don't want your release to read like an advertisement. Pick out the newsiest element and concentrate on that.

Speak English. I see releases all the time that are stuffed with industry jargon that most people do not understand. Don't assume that what you're writing about is a familiar subject for the people who'll read your release. Dumb it down. Assume your release will be read by the densest guy in the room.

Send it out manually. Instead of just dumping your releases into submission sites and hoping someone important notices, email it yourself to media outlets and bloggers you think might be interested in it. If you're publicizing a new product, send your release to newspapers in the company's area. If you can, find out which reporters cover the relevant beat and send it to them directly; that usually only takes a phone call.

Have good timing. If you're looking for coverage, sending your release out on Election Day or after hours on a Friday is goofy. Those are good times to release bad news you're obligated to report – any White House spokesman will tell you that – but it'll do you no good unless your story is wildly sensational. News outlets are typically more desperate for copy during the summer months and around holidays.

Act like a human. Interactivevoices' post about getting a link from CNN.com – the only PR10 news site – illustrated this perfectly. There's no harm in picking up the phone and calling reporters directly to see if they're interested in your story. For all you know, the only thing preventing your news from being published is an over-finicky spam filter.

Don't beg. When I was working as a reporter, I didn't realize why some sources were so hellbent on me including links in my stories. Now I know. If your link is relevant to the story, the reporter will probably include it. If not, you're still getting good publicity.

Of course, all of this will only help if you actually have something worthwhile to say. If you think there's nothing interesting to say about your enterprise, you're probably wrong. You just need to think long and hard to figure out what it is.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by randfish

(Intro: This post continues a series of personal growth focused entries. It doesn't have much direct, applicable SEO value, so feel free to skip if that's what you're seeking)

I've learned more in the last 9 months than at any previous time in my life - about myself, about this company and about the worlds of venture capital, entrepreneurship and startups. And, in the spirit of transparency (one of our guiding principles and an ideal I haven't been maintaining as well as I could of late), I want to share, to talk about where SEOmoz is today and why we've decided to explore additional capital opportunities. In fact, I feel compelled - because even if only 100 people, or 10 or just 1 learn something here they can apply to themselves, it will be worthwhile.

Segments in this Post:

• Brief History of SEOmoz
• How Outside Capital Helped Us
• SEOmoz's Growth 2007-2009
• A Short Story that Led to a Decision
• What I've Learned About Myself
• My Top Advice for Other Entrepreneurs
• Got Questions? I'll Try to Answer

A Brief History

Let's start back in August of 2007. SEOmoz was tiny - 8 people growing a business out of a 1,000 sq. ft. office in Seattle's University District (man, do I miss that place) and two people who believed it was going to be much, much bigger - Kelly from Curious Office and Michelle from Ignition. It's only in retrospect that I can really appreciate their foresight, because when they invested $1.1 million in the company that November, I was an SEO geek who wanted to use that funding to solve an SEO problem. My dream was to better understand the web's link graph and how the engines could use that to rank sites & pages. I should have been thinking about the problems faced by those wanting to do SEO and how a scalable, technology solution could be used to help them - like what Vanessa Fox did when she built Webmaster Tools inside Google (more on that later).

Our first round of capital raising was very unique, and for that reason, may be less applicable than other advice on the topic. Nevertheless, I'll try to share that experience and the macro and micro-economic factors that impacted it.

Investment Data via NVCA Press Alert

You can see that not only was 2007 the most active year for venture capital investment, but that Q4 of 2007 was a particularly high spike. It's probably not surprising that SEOmoz took its funding in this type of environment - possibly the best time to raise money from an entrepreneur's perspective since 2000. Why? Because when deal flow is very high, terms tend to be more entrepreneur friendly. Ours certainly were.

It's uncommon (though not unheard of) for a firm like Ignition Partners, with over a billion dollars under management, to put so little capital into a company. Between Ignition & Curious, the amount raised was $1.1 million, less than half the size of their next smallest public investment (Crunchbase has a list here, though SEOmoz's funding amount is inaccurately reported as $1.25 million, and the participants inaccurately listed as 1 - and Ignition does do some smaller deals that aren't listed). Quantity wasn't the only outlier - our valuation, the terms themselves (things like vesting, board structure, preferences, etc.) were very good and the deal closed quickly. Today's funding environment could be a very different story. As you can see from the charts above, the floor fell out in the VC markets last October, and although May 2009 may have been a step forward, entrepreneurs who seek capital today shouldn't expect  seed or series A rounds to look the way they did in November of 2007.

SEOmoz was also helped in this deal by an important factor I think every startup should consider - WE DIDN'T NEED THE MONEY. We were already profitable and growing, already had a brand name in the industry and had attracted interest from multiple investors. I think that every entrepreneur who's considering startup-dom should think about establishing those goals before they go for institutional capital - a profitable, growing company with a product that's on the market and a brand name that's well known makes you:

• A) Lower risk to investors
• B) Interesting to multiple parties and multiple kinds of investors (angels, VCs, private equity, etc.)
• C) More confident in every step of the process
• D) Able to walk away from a deal you don't like

This psychology is so powerful that I can't imagine doing it any other way. If I wanted to build a travel portal to take on Kayak.com, I'd start a great travel site (maybe even just a really interesting blog), build up some brand recognition, use advertising or low-cost premium features to drive revenue and only after those numbers made for a compelling story, approach investors. I'd use that same formula even for a capital intensive business - start with cool ideas, great writing and valuable resources, become a hub for your industry, show web traffic and positive interest, then go fundraise.

We started as a consulting business - in fact, SEOmoz is on a .org TLD because when I started the site, there wasn't even a business behind it (even the name "moz" comes from the ethos of open sharing pioneered by folks like DMOZ & the Mozilla foundation). Gillian and I were running a website design & development shop and learning SEO because our customers needed it and we had no other choice. Eventually SEOmoz got so big and popular as a blog that it made sense to conduct business under that name, and a few years later, we realized consulting wasn't the right way for us to scale this incredible community around us. Those decisions - made much more by accident than grand vision - gave us the credibility and the story that made investors excited.

And yeah, it didn't hurt that Q4 of 2007 was probably the best time to raise money in the last 8 years.

How Outside Capital Helped

Taking the outside investment proved to be an excellent decision, and, to be honest, even in today's market, I'd still consider raising money if I were in the same position again. Outside capital made me a better entrepreneur, focused our company more seriously on the things we needed to do and made us more accountable and metrics-driven. Some companies feel that pressure internally and can build those processes without external help. We needed that external pressure and it's been remarkable. I'll try to detail some of the big ways investment has helped us:

• Metrics Requirements - Any outside investor will require reporting of specific data points about the business from financial, HR, marketing and development perspectives. You're probably doing this already inside your business, and we were as well, but experienced outside perspectives distill the list into the critical pieces, identify important missing criteria and work with you to help develop the raw numbers into actionable data.
• Accountability - A lot of CEOs and company leaders choose that job because it means they're in charge. And while that's certainly an enjoyable perk, bringing in outside investors makes you accountable again - not in the same way a typical boss does, but the responsibility and pressure to perform. In many small companies, very few people beyond the CEO and perhaps one or two others are fully aware of the company's performance or lack thereof - and when things go south (or simply don't go as well as predicted), no one's there holding your feet to the fire. If external pressure can help you excel (as it has with me), then funding provides a great benefit. 
• Board Meetings - Rarely in small companies does leadership take a regular hard look at their priorities, strategy and direction (Will & Duncan, you're the exception, not the rule). Board meetings provide that gut-level check on every facet of the business, and let you step back to see the forest for the trees. They're not necessarily fun, but they will make you a better entrepreneur (and if they don't, it means you've likely chosen the wrong board members).
• Thinking Long Term - Running a business is incredibly hard, and startups, doubly so. With so much time and energy devoted to turning the flywheel, it's easy to miss an opportunity or ignore a fundamental problem that's outside the scope of the day-to-day. Professional investment means you've got a partner watching out for precisely that issue.
• Adding Experience to the Team - Every new person we add to SEOmoz, that's the biggest team I've ever led. Every dollar of revenue that comes in is the most money I've ever managed. With outside investors, they've seen and been through much bigger and can help guide you along the path - whether it's filled with potholes or littered with opportunities that just need to be scooped up.
• Networking Opportunties - VCs know a lot of very important people. From strategic operators at big companies to C-level executives at startups to government, charity and press, you'll rarely find a more connected group. This shouldn't be surprising, as networking is one of the biggest value-adds VCs advertise. The problem is that for most entrepreneurs, myself included, the need for these networks is few and far between, so it seems less valuable than it really is - once your company is in a position to either do big enterprise partnerships or be acquired, those connections can "make or break" the firm.
• Oh Yeah, the Money  - Did you know VCs also provide capital? Yep, it's true - and having dollars to spend when you're a creative entrepreneur with a great plan is pretty awesome.

There are probably a dozen more ways that venture capital investment has helped SEOmoz, and I'm certain that many of them will be immeasurable and possibly even invisible. All of this isn't to say that VC doesn't have it's downsides - there are a few, and it pays to be aware of them:

• Funding is a Time Suck - I'm personally feeling this right now (as I'll explain later), and it's important to be aware of the opportunity cost of seeking investment. For most startups, the CEO and the executive team are essential to running day-to-day operations of the business. When you take time out to build slide decks for investors, meet with VCs, network amongst your contacts and field calls, it pulls time & energy away from the company.
• Control of Your Business is Diluted - VCs build company boards. In our scenario, the board is comprised of three voting members (Gillian, Michelle & myself) and one observer (Kelly). This structure means that company management and founders have the deciding vote in any contentious issue (only one has ever arisen on SEOmoz's board). In a future round, though, we expect that another 2 members would join the board - one individual from the investment firm and one independent member we all agree upon. Just to be clear, though - even in our scenario, there are certain types of votes which must pass with 100% of the board's approval (mostly things like sale of stock, funding, etc.).
• You Have a Boss - OK, it's not a typical boss and you don't report to them on a regular basis, but you do have someone who watches your metrics and performance closely and can replace you if/when that performance is unacceptable. One of the most significant powers the board holds at any VC-backed company is the ability to fire the CEO.
• You Have Fiduciary Obligations - Legal documents bind you to operate the company with its interests, not your own, at the heart of your decisions. This impacts quite a bit of the decisions you make at a company, particularly when you switch from something like a longtime, family-run business (such as ours). It's definitely good for the company (and good for your own internal discipline), but it can be painful at times.
• Your Exit Options are Limited - Retire, walk away, close up shop, sell for a low price because you don't want to go out for higher bids or you particularly like the buyer - these options (and many others like them) become challenging to impossible, once you take outside investment.

As you can tell from my opinions above and my previous advice to myself, I'm a big proponent in spite of these potential detractors.

2007-2009 Growth 

This company looks very different than it did just 2 years ago, and I've been lax in sharing the kinds of numbers and data about the business that was once a signature of my blogging (see 2006 and 2007 financials, for example). While there's a lot that I'm obligated not to share, I'm going to go right up to that line - not just because I think it will make this story more interesting, but because it's part of our guiding principles.

Full-Time Employees

It's tough to build this chart, because the number of full-time folks fluctuates even inside a single year, but I've done my best to approximate the annual averages.

PRO Members

PRO membership has really taken off in the last 6 months - and while we doubled membership from 2007-2008, we were able to do that in just the first 6 months in 2009.

Revenue

Sadly, while I can't share exact numbers, this chart does give an accurate concept of where we are. 2009 is shaping up to be a very exciting year. Although I also can't show margin numbers, I will say that from Nov. 2007 to Nov. 2008, SEOmoz burned capital (approx. 3/4 of the investment we took). Starting in Dec. 2008 and continuing each month through to June 2009, we've been profitable and rebuilt a respectable cash reserve (of course, if you ask Sarah, we still need to sweat every penny of it).

Visits to the SEOmoz.org Website 

 

Traffic is growing nicely as well, though what this chart doesn't show is that 2009 has been virtually devoid of the types of "linkbait" that were a hallmark of the site in 2007 (and much of 2008). We've found that while those efforts can produce great traffic boosts and link growth, we need to focus on conversion rate optimization and the PRO membership product before we return to viral content generation.

A (Not-So) Short Story that Led to a Decision

Last October, just after we launched Linkscape, SEOmoz started fielding between 2-4 calls per month from venture capital firms seeking to place investment. These are exciting, flattering and fun calls to get, and in those initial conversations, the focus makes for an ego-padding chat. It's pretty easy to see why these investors were so interested - no, not because SEOmoz itself is all that awesome (they didn't even know much about us when they called) - it's because of the potential market for SEO:

Via eMarketer's Search Spending Swells Worldwide & Online Marketing Effectiveness

SEO is at or near the top for four different categories:

1. Where marketers get the most conversions
2. Where they get the most branding impact
3. Where they are planning to re-allocate budget
4. Wherethey are planning to increase spend

VCs love this stuff, and they love it even more when the market as a whole appears to be big and growing:

_
Data Source: SEMPO State of the Market Surveys

A predicted spend of just over $2 billion on SEO in 2009 suggests that SEO may finally be earning some respect, just as the growth in PPC spend slows its acceleration rate. Richard Zwicky's SEM analytics company, Enquisite, is an example of this market shift commanding respect. Enquisite's raised over $11 million in venture capital in the last few years (including a series B round of $8 million in February) . His favorite mantra is the disconnect I wrote about last october:

PPC: 88% of all SEM spend VS. SEO: 11% of all SEM spend

PPC: 10% of all search clicks VS. SEO: 90% of all search clicks

Markets don't stay this inefficient for long.

No wonder investors have jumped at opportunities like those Richard presented with Enquisite and others like Conductor ($10 million raised in April), Marin Software ($13 million raised in April), Optify ($2.75 million raised in Oct. '08) and Yield Software ($6 million raised in June '08). And no wonder they were calling up SEOmoz, hoping to learn more about us and see if there was an investment opportunity.

Despite these inquiries, our board meetings in October & November were very operational and tactical. We were at the tail end of turning around from cash flow negative to positive, and there were some high stress moments, capped off by a working "product" meeting in early December. At that roundtable, I presented some concepts for SEOmoz's future product direction and got shot down. And thank goodness I did.

The problem with entrepreneurs like me is that our creativity, emotional attachments to technology and love of product "coolness" can sometimes get in the way of making things that real people find really usable & useful. When that happens, it's even more essential to be surrounded by smart, secure people who feel up to the challenge of challenging you.

After the meeting ended, I spent a lot of time thinking strategically about where we needed to go. That thinking ended up in dozens of notepad pages, and I've shared a few below:

My goal was to get to the core of the "SEO Problem" with a software product, and luckily, I didn't have to go that road alone. Adam Feldstein, a longtime friend of mine, joined SEOmoz in January and we spent an entire week together in the mozplex's meeting room, diagramming a product evolution we've come to call "Turbomoz" internally (much as we did when Linkscape was called "Carhole").

Adam and I presented a walkthrough of our new plan in early April to a packed room, including the SEOmoz board and several internal folks. The feedback was terrific - they loved not only the product itself, but the simplicity, the design, the intuition behind it and the potential to reach a lot more of the market than just the intermediate-to-expert level SEOs that make up the majority of our members today. An early version of "Turbomoz" is set to release in late September.

A few weeks later, I headed to Boston, where I got to spend a lot of time with a great friend and mentor, Dharmesh Shah, the founder of Hubspot and blogger at OnStartups. Dharmesh and I talked a lot about our two companies - how they're growing, what the economic downturn has impacted, where we see opportunities and what makes a startup successful. It was a tremendous learning experience, and something I can't recommend enough to others. If you're currently running a business and can find someone with a similar model who's willing to exchange information and ideas, do it. Being a CEO can be a very lonely job - even close friends and family won't be able to empathize in the same way another CEO can. Many cities even have startup support groups (although they're not usually called that, exactly).

My visits with Dharmesh inspired me to be more self analytical and more self critical. If there are things in the business that aren't working, places where opportunity isn't being executed upon, and chances to make a difference, I owe it not only to myself, but to our investors and, most importantly, to my employees to make the change. As the late King of Pop said, "start with the man in the mirror."

Just a couple weeks later, I landed in San Francisco. If you haven't read the back-and-forth between Silicon Valley vs. Seattle VC/entrepreneur/tech startup, check out Glenn Kelman (Redfin's CEO) comparing the two, Michael Arrington responding & Glenn firing back. There's a grain of truth to the staments they make:

Sure Seattle is beautiful (Kelman talks about lakes and outdoor stuff a lot in his post). And if you want to have a balanced, healthy lifestyle, that’s a great place to do it. If you don’t think you have what it takes to make it in Silicon Valley, maybe Seattle or other mini-tech hubs is the place for you. But the best of the best come to Silicon Valley to see if they’re as good as the legends that came before them. It’s a competitive advantage to be here. And if you aren’t willing to take advantage of every possible advantage to make your crazy startup idea work, perhaps you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur.

The "valley culture" of depriving oneself of everything else except work really does exist, and it's easy to become both enamored and afraid of it very quickly. But I also agree with Glenn that:

So even though all of us in Seattle would probably concede that Silicon Valley is generally better for startups than anywhere else, that doesn’t mean that we have to agree with Michael that Silicon Valley is always better, or better in every way. For starters, people in Seattle have helped me in an open-hearted, small-town way that I might not have found in the Valley.

And where Michael and I really disagree is on whether it is good some times to be away from all the me-too Valley companies trying to make money on Internet ads, even though he complains about them every day on TechCrunch.

I was very lucky to get some of that same "open-hearted, small-town" help, even in the Valley. A few years ago, Michael Eisenberg introduced me to Nirav Tolia, a former EIR with Benchmark, and the two of us have become fast friends. Nirav's just completed a test release of a great startup - Fanbase (should be launching formally in a few months) - and has introduced me to a number of terrific entrepreneurs, nearly all of whom have great interest in SEO. At dinner one night, a fellow CEO (Thomas Layton of Metaweb), crystalized the question that had been weighing on my mind for the last 8 months - should SEOmoz take another round of funding?

Here, word for word (to the best of my memory), is what Thomas said to me:

Let's make this easy. I'll give you three things, you prioritize them, and I'll tell you whether you should take the money.

1. Do you want to be the CEO and in control of the company's destiny?
2. Do you want to make the most possible money from an exit?
3. Do you want the company to achieve the most and become the most it can be?

I don't actually remember which one I picked on the spot... I think I struggled a bit to be confident in my response, and that's because honestly, I hadn't been asking myself that question, even though it's something every CEO/founder should inherently know. A few days later, though, the answer was clear - #3. I want SEOmoz to be all that it can be. I believe in SEO. I believe in the people here. And I believe that with the right help - and another dose of all the positive things our first round brought us - we can achieve even more remarkable things.

Thus, we're exploring the VC path, talking to those folks who've been calling and thinking a bit more seriously about a series B. It's not something we're definitely pursuing, and plenty of circumstances could change our minds about whether it's the right option. As the media is quick to remind us, valuations and deal terms are not great right now, and with SEOmoz in such a strong position, we can afford to be patient, be picky and choose the right partner.

What I've Learned About Myself

• I do well with external pressure, even when it's critical. I think that comes from childhood, when my Dad was obsessed with my grades and it made me work harder.
• I get inspired by those who've achieved amazing things. I want to meet more people like that and spend time with them - it's a remarkable experience.
• I need to do a better job of thinking long term, even when I'm mired in the day-to-day. CEOs are supposed to be visionaries, and it's irresponsible for me to be slacking off.
• I need to find ways to outsource more of my personal workload and trust others to do as good a job or better than I could.
• My stubborness is sometimes useful, but I need to do a better job of letting go when the situation warrants.
• I'm so lucky - so much luckier than I've ever considered - to be where I am. Thankfully, it appears I'm not alone - if Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers (worth reading, BTW) is right, everyone who gets to do these kinds of exciting things in their lives owes that opportunity to the people around them, and I'm no different.

My Top Advice for Other Entrepreneurs

• Don't be too scared of taking venture capital - it gets a lot of negative press, but in the end, you and the VCs want exactly the same thing - for your company to succeed magnificiently.
• Find VCs you love to work with - people you want to be friends with and spend time with and drink beer with. Find people who care not just about your company, but about you personally. I think this has been the best part about Michelle & Kelly on our board - they don't just care about the numbers. They care about us. Seriously consider being flexible on deal terms if it means working with the right people (though often those "right people" are the same ones who'll give you the best deals).
• Be relentlessly self-analytical and self-critical. Work hard to identify your flaws and pad them with team members who can compensate. My relentless optimism and cavalier march to spend money to grow the company is tempered by Sarah's risk intolerance. It's a great balance, and every company needs it.
• Leverage the entrepreneurial community around you. If my experience is any guide, CEOs and startup founders love to help and guide others - and that culture isn't limited to Silicon Valley or Seattle or Boston, either. I've had friends from New York City to Reykjavik to Shanghai, Sydney, London and Nashville lend their time, their networks and their advice. I only hope that I can do as well to help others.

Questions & Answers

In the spirit of this post, and of SEOmoz's guiding principles, I'd like to open the comments to questions and offer to answer anything I reasonably can in a post next week. You can also feel free to email me if you have private questions. One quick thing I'll say is that for those seeking VC, three resources have been of great help to me - OnStartups, VentureHacks and Hacker News.

I sincerely hope this blog post has brought you value and helped bring a little more transparency to a world that's rarely seen outside of Sand Hill Road meeting rooms.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Danny Dover

Update: Google representatives responded to complaints of the Google News delay with the following explanation:

"The spike in searches related to Michael Jackson was so big that Google News initially mistook it for an automated attack. As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a "We're sorry" page before finding the articles they were looking for." - Source

---

 First and foremost, let me extend my best wishes to the family and friends of Michael Jackson. I can only imagine the pain of losing a close friend and then having to watch it play out on a global stage. He made an extraordinary impact on the world and although not perfect, he is a teacher even in death (as evidenced by this post).

The following is a timeline of how the news of the Prince of Pop's death traveled across the internet. Not all the times are exact (they might be off by up to 5 minutes) and not every source is included. All times are GMT.

From an internet marketer's perspective, I found this story fascinating to watch unfold. I was impressed by the speed of information distribution and very surprised to see which site posted the news first. Wikipedia is still the fastest news aggregator. It was faster than Twitter and much faster than Google.

---

19:21 - One of Michael Jackson's employee's calls 911

The next forty-nine minutes are best described as the calm before the storm. The Los Angles Fire Department arrived at Jackson's rented mansion in Bel Air and family members were alerted of the news.

20:10 - (Story Breaks) A small entertainment site called x17online.com breaks the story.

They post photos and a brief story a full 20 minutes before the much larger entertainment site TMZ.com posts the news. Information goes live on the internet. BOOM!

20:30 - TMZ.com posts "Michael Jackson -- Cardiac Arrest"


TMZ.com posts the story on its homepage and the story is distributed to hundreds of thousands of people via RSS. My guess is they paid a pretty penny for the image above and it paid for itself ten fold with all of the links TMZ got from the story.

21:12 - Wikipedia reports Jackson's Cardiac Arrest


A member of Wikipedia adds the news of the Cardiac Arrest to Jackson's Wikipedia article. This is well before any other news or social media source.

21:20 - TMZ.com posts story of death

Report of Jackson's death starts to show up on RSS feeds and eventually Twitter. It is 11 minutes before the first person clicks on a bit.ly link to TMZ.

21:30 - CNNbrk tweets that Jackson goes to hospital

The official CNN account tweets to its 2 million followers that Jackson went to hospital after suffering from a cardiac arrest

21:31 - First bit.ly link to TMZ story

The first bit.ly link about the story is clicked by someone which leads them to the TMZ article.

21:45 - Wikipedia freezes Michael Jackson page

After an explosion of edits to Jackson's Wikipedia article, editors take the step of locking it down in protective status.

21:46 - Wikipedia article discussion has first reports of Jackson's death (Note: Event updated 6/27/09 due to new information)
Wikipedia editors first mention Jackson's death on the article discussion page.

21:50 - bit.ly link reaches high of 2,500 clicks a minute


Bit.ly link to TMZ hits high of almost 42 clicks a second.

22:03 - TMZ story on Jackson's death is submitted to Digg

A bit late to the game, the story that would eventually go on to be one of the most dugg stories ever is first submitted to the site.

22:11 - TMZ story goes popular on Digg

The story is moved to the front page of Digg where its distribution erupts.

22:19 - "RIP Michael Jackson" tops Trends on Twitter


Story takes the next step and appears on Twitter's Trends. Tens of millions of Twitter users now can see the story.

22:20 - MSNBC.com Confirms Jackson's Death

One hour after the news of Jackson's death hits the internet, the first mainstream news source publishes a confirmation article.

22:25 - CNN.com Confirms Jackson's Death

CNN, out maneuvered by TMZ and MSNBC, confirms Jackson's death.

22:27 - Wikipedia first reports Jackson's death

Wikipedia editors get enough evidence to post Jackson's death.

22:34 - Approximately 2000 mentions a minute of Michael Jackson on Twitter

Mentions of Michael Jackson hit an all time high on Twitter with nearly 1,500 a minute. That's almost 20% of all tweets at that time!

22:38 - Twitter starts to overload. First signs of the fail whale

Twitter starts to falter as a result of the massive spike.

22:40 - First stories of Jackson's death make it on Google News

1 hour and 20 minutes after the story is first posted on TMZ, Google News starts to report the story.

22:46 - Google News Results of Jackson's death start showing up on the results page for the query "Michael Jackson"


Google News results top the Google results page for "Michael Jackson".

22:58 - Googlebot crawls CNN twitter feed

Google starts returning CNN's twitter feed in "Michael Jackson" SERP and provides link to cached version.

23:00 - "Michael Jackson Died" shows up in Google Trends

Google trends updates and show's "Michael Jackson Died" as hottest trending item.

23:18 - 4chan.org goes down

4chan members temporarily overload servers. I mention this mostly because I find it really funny. ;-p

23:47 - "Michael Jackson Heart Attack" and "Michael Jackson Cardiac Arrest" show up as suggested search on Google Homepage for "Michael Jackson"


Indirect news of Jackson's death (if someone types "Michael Jackson") shows up on Google's homepage.


My Take Away:

Google has a really big problem and SEOs need to pay attention.

(Note: I choose Google rather than the other search engines because it leads them in all of the aspects I mention below. Everything I say about Google applies even more to the other search engines. I only have a basic idea of how difficult the technology problems are with the issues below. For better or for worse, I hold Google to a higher standard and I am not afraid to expect more.)

First, a little background information. I believe it was Ben Hendrickson who first mentioned to me the existence of three separate time priorities when indexing the web. He pointed out that the current version of Linkscape crawls and analyzes the slow moving web with a delay of about 4 weeks. (This is damn impressive given an index size of 54+ billion pages.) Blogscape (PRO Only) is much faster and aggregates the fast moving blogosphere of millions of feeds with less than 6 hours of delay. While impressive, we are still trying to catch up with Google and have started to run into the same wall as them. Sites like Twitter, have created a new real-time web. It is only in the order of perhaps hundreds of thousands of pages but indexing it is almost useless with a delay of more than a few seconds.

The events of Thursday demonstrated that Google is falling behind in the emerging real-time web. It was 3 hours and 17 minutes after TMZ first announced Michael Jackson had experienced cardiac arrest before it appeared as a auto completion suggestion on Google's homepage. In the computer age that is a huge amount of time. It is 3 hours and 17 minutes during which consumers may choose to go somewhere other than Google to get the information they want.

As SEOs, we largely rely on the success of Google for our incomes. These are the same incomes that put food on the table for our families. It is easy to think that Google's technology is flawless, after all, it really is incredible. However, it is experiences like the events of Thursday that reveal how truly vulnerable the search engines are.

For me it was humbling,

Teaser: SEOmoz does have a plan for the real-time web and we are excitedly working on it. More information to come in the future. :-)

---

If you have any other story sources that you think are worth sharing, feel free to post them in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me or send me a private message if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my profile: Danny Thanks!

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by great scott!

This week, Rand is joined by one of our in-house data geniuses, Ben Hendrickson, to talk more about some of our recently released correlation data to support guidelines for SEO best practices.

While correlation doesn't always equal causation, it's still very interesting to look at the attributes and features high ranking sites tend to have in common.  Comparing this data to known and accepted SEO practices can help to reinforce widely held notions or give us some insight into how the algorithms are changing; both important areas of analysis for successful online marketers.

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - Correlation, Causation & SEO from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

Want to learn even more about what Ben discovered in our data correlation analysis?  He'll be presenting his detailed findings at our SEO Training Series Seminar right here in Seattle, August 24th & 25th.

Do you like this post? Yes No

Posted by Sam Niccolls

(NOTE FROM RAND: Please welcome Sam Niccolls, SEOmoz's newest addition to the consulting team - we hope you all like him as much as we do!)

A lot a marketers focus optimization efforts at the bottom of their conversion funnels. One effective way to examine conversion rates at the bottom of the funnel is to create a custom segment that excludes visitors who bounce. As this segment gives you a view of your engagement data that only shows interested visitors, this is a great way to inform site changes. After all, these visitors are the ones who are most likely to convert into paying customers.

But what about the top of the funnel? Are too many of your visitors leaving on arrival? If so, delve deeper into which pages are causing you the most bleeding. And don't get too far ahead of yourself with site changes before you first identify your highest volume SEO entry pages. To make site changes without looking the top of your conversion funnel is to rent a tux before finding a prom date. It costs a lot and it leads to embarrassment.


Yet many sites still don't think of pages other than their homepage as landing pages. It is not just pimple popping amateurs making this mistake, either. Numerous startups and online retailers, who get 80% of their overall traffic from Google, fall into the trap of designing individual product pages that rank well, drive 50-60% of their overall traffic, yet have bounce rates over 75%.  

Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist, always says your homepage is not a golden door through which all your visitors will pass. And he's right. Search engines have flipped the funnel. Every page that drives traffic is a landing page. But just because Google decides your homepage doesn't mean you can't optimize the performance of your lower level pages. Do you have underperforming product listings, profile pages, articles, or other entry URLs?

If so, here's a quick checklist to revamp your lackluster landings:  

1) Reassuring Policies
If you have reassuring polices, whether they are privacy assurances, guarantees, rebates, returns, or whatever else, tell your first time visitors about them. These don't have to be flashing lights or neon arrows, but look at how scannable your "deep content" pages are. Two things that can be tremendously effective are graphics and icons. In the absence of any images, however, a single line saying "We never sell your personal information" can do a lot. And don't bury these reassurances at the bottom of the page. Put them at the top of the page, or next to your e-mail collection field (if you're collecting e-mail from the page).  

2) Testimonials
You have raving fans, right? I'm sure there are at least a couple in the woodwork. Why not let them sing your praise as part of your introduction to your visitors? Landing page optimization is not a cocktail party. It's okay to brag a little. Especially if it means improving your bottom line. Amazon does a great job of prominently exposing five star reviews on their product level pages, as does Yelp. Both are good examples to look at.

3) No Credit Card Forms
Single page forms are one thing if you are running a free trial period. Just last week I saw some massive returns for an e-commerce site off of some landing pages they created for an SEM campaign where they offered a 14-day free trial. But SEO landing pages are different. They are typically part of your internal site navigation. Plus, they are really more like first dates than "take it or leave it" offers. For this reason, don't be too forward. Show some leg and entice your visitors to click a second time, but save the credit card forms for further down the funnel. I am not saying you can't open the kimono later, but buy your visitors a drink first.     

4) Email Collection
If you have a newsletter, blog, or another way that you maintain an ongoing conversation with customers, you should offer a field for people to subscribe via e-mail and RSS. This might not impact bounce rate significantly, but this type of e-mail collection is inexpensive and it is a great way to increase user retention. Several websites whose sign up button treatments I like are Futurenow, Mint's Blog and Fred Wilson's Blog. As you can see, Mint doesn't show a graphic for "sign up by e-mail," which is a wasted opportunity. More than likely e-mail will comprise the majority of your subscribers. So make e-mail sign up as easy as possible. 

5) Look at Bounce Rate by URL
Unless the volume warrants it, don't analyze individual URLs; analyze URL structures. For example, say you have an article subfolder on your site --  http://www.yourdomain.com/articles/title-of-post. Rather than looking at each individual article, run a landing page report and look at your pages in aggregate. As a sum, what pages are hurting or helping you the most? Where are you retaining visitors? Where are you losing them? If you can learn anything from your most effective pages, apply those learnings to your least effective pages. Whatever your RegEx writing tells you, focus on making the most global changes possible. In other words, change things that will have the greatest, most immediate impact such as headers, persistent a or c columns, and first time user treatments.  

Whatever you glean from your landing page analysis, abandon the myth of the golden homepage. And if you are not thinking of your "deep content" pages as landing pages, identify your biggest opportunities and let your design team go to work. There is probably a lot of low hanging fruit. Besides, if you don't, you might find your website dateless at the conversion prom, and nobody wants to be standing in the rain with a wilted dandelion boutonniere. That's a fate I wouldn't wish on the worst of websites, not even Danny Dover's favorite domain.

Do you like this post? Yes No