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  How to Pitch SEO to Potential Clients an

  Posted by Danny Dover

  Update: Thank you everyone for your patience with the video issues. It looks like our video host's CDN accidentally cached a bad request. Everything should be working now! Party on!

  ---

   In this week's Whiteboard Friday I talk about pitching SEO to potential clients and employers. This post describes the common elements that unite the successful pitches I have witnessed and describes how you can use them to your advantage. Also, I shaved my beard and now look like a 12-year-old boy. (I don't recommend that as a pitch tactic.)

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  Video Transcription

  Hello, Mozzers. My name is Danny Dover. I do SEO here at SEOmoz. Today
  for Whiteboard Friday, I'm going to tell you about something that I think
  is extremely important, and you should, too. Pitching SEO. By pitching
  SEO, I mean presenting the idea of SEO to either potential clients or to
  potential employers. So when I am giving this pitch, I have a few key
  points I make, and then I'm going to go through a couple of rebuttals that
  people usually make back to me.
  
  The first key point that I make, and I always, always do this because it is
  very important, is to acknowledge the snake oil salesman. SEO is an
  industry where there are a lot of people who just kind of suck. They do a
  very poor job of service and it makes the entire industry look bad. So,
  you need to acknowledge those people exist so that the person who is
  hearing the pitch takes into consideration what you are saying. You're
  acknowledging that, yes, they are correct. But there is also this
  alternative that they might now know about. My favorite way of doing this
  is you just acknowledge it and then explain why, what proof you have to
  show that is not how you do your service, be it past clients or
  testimonials or actual data you can show from your results. I prefer the
  latter if possible.
  
  Number two. Strategies are easy but tactics are hard. A lot of times when
  I am explaining SEO, I will come into contact with someone who is like,
  "Oh, yeah, I get it. You've got to build links and content." They're
  absolutely right. That's correct. That's what you have to do. But what
  they are talking about are strategies. Bigger ideas. Building content,
  that is just a broad idea. The actual content you write and the way you do
  it and the way it is formatted, those are tactics.
  
  In SEO, I think that the strategies are easy. They are easy to comprehend.
  They're big and they make intuitive sense. But the tactics are hard. My
  favorite example of this is URL rewrites. The idea is yes, we're going to
  make all the URLs go from here to here. It turns out that doing that can
  be very, very troublesome, and you run into lots and lots of side cases
  just like anything you do with programming. So, I always try to
  acknowledge that yes, the strategies are easy, but you are going to
  probably want a specialist so that you make sure you nail all your tactics.
  
  Number three. PPC and SEO equals the top of the conversion funnel. To be
  completely honest, there are other things at the top of the conversion
  funnel as well. There's email. There's direct traffic. There are lots of
  other things. The two that I focus on are PPC and SEO. PPC is pay per
  click, which is the ads you pay for in search engines and elsewhere and SEO
  being search engine optimization, of course.
  
  These are both tops of the funnel. So, you can either chose to pay on an
  ongoing basis for PPC and get some traffic that way, or you can do it
  through SEO and if you adhere to best practices, it can be free for you.
  Just learn how to do it once, continue with the best practices, and it
  costs you no money. The nice thing about this is that, while 90% of
  budgets go to PPC, only 10% of clicks go there. The reverse of that is
  only 10% of budgets approximately go to SEO, but 90% of clicks from users
  are going to organic results and search engines. Huge opportunity here and
  if you do it right, it won't cost you a dime.
  
  The next one, rebuttals. When I am giving this pitch, there are a couple
  of responses I get from people that I think are very genuine and they make
  a lot of sense. These are the rebuttals they give, and then how I help
  deconstruct that a little bit.
  
  The first one being SEO takes too long. They are absolutely right. SEO
  does take a long time. The way I break down SEO in my head is into
  popularity, which is links, and relevancy, which is onsite, although there
  is an element of links in that too. I'll write a little bit more about
  this in the blog post below. The idea being that SEO takes too long.
  That's true, but not for on page. If you want to just do on page
  optimizations, you can have a lot of opportunity to boost traffic quickly.
  Just do on page to start with. Another trick like that is just installing
  a site map if they don't have one. I've seen that this is easy to do. You
  can have an automated generator do it. Submit it to the engines, and within
  a week or so you'll see results on that assuming they've never had one
  before and other variables are not acting awry.
  
  Number two, it will happen organically. This is one of my favorites.
  People will say, "Oh yeah, we're building links anyway. There's variety in
  our content. We have professional writers. So it's just going to happen
  organically." That is not true. I thought the same thing with my dating
  life. Yeah, it will just happen organically. No, it's not happened
  organically. Same thing with SEO. You can try to do all these things, but
  unless you have some focus, some actual goals, and some plans, it's just
  not going to happen. Search engine optimization, you're not optimizing
  anything. You're just letting it happen. So by putting in just a little
  bit extra effort, you can get a lot more results. That's usually what I
  use there.
  
  The last one is, "I'm too busy." That's something I can totally
  understand. Learning SEO is a complicated process. But, it turns out you
  can have other people do this for you. If you are trading it for money,
  you can just pay someone to do a little bit on it, SEO for you, do an SEO
  audit, and give you some recommendations. Or you can trade, you can do
  some bartering or something else. You can just make it happen. So, yes,
  being busy is an excuse, but not with the potential there is to make a lot
  of money with SEO and a lot of conversion on that.
  
  That's all the time I've got today. I appreciate all of you paying
  attention, or some of you. Not that guy. I appreciate it, and I'll talk
  to you next week. Bye.
  

  Video transcription by SpeechPad.com

  ---

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  If you have any other advice that you think is worth sharing, feel free to post it in the comments. This post is very much a work in progress. As always, feel free to e-mail me if you have any suggestions on how I can make my posts more useful. All of my contact information is available on my SEOmoz profile under Danny. Thanks!

  
  

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  New SEOmoz Web App Now in Beta for PRO M

  Posted by randfish

  If you've been using SEOmoz's tools for a while, you've likely run across the same challenge we have -- the data rocks, but you have to run a separate tool and report for each aspect of your SEO. That's why, for the past year, we've been building a new platform to house all of the features and functionality of the SEOmoz toolset, and includes the ability to track metrics over time. We call it the SEOmoz "Web App."

  
  It's hard for me to resist making this post nothing but a huge collection of screenshots...

  Starting TODAY (right now, in fact!), every PRO member has BETA access to the new web app.

  We encourage you to create your first campaign(s), start tracking some rankings, crawling some pages and getting those optimization recommendations. The web app is our first application to automatically track data for any site(s) you care about on an ongoing, consistent basis, and make recommendations based on what we find. Thus, the real value comes after a week or two of tracking, and it gets more valuable, useful and reference worthy over time. One of our big goals was to make this app give back some beautiful screenshots and reports showing your progress in reducing the crawl problems, improving optimization and gaining in the rankings over time.

  How it Works

  The challenge with doing SEO on sites bigger than a few dozen pages is that no human has time to visit every page on a regular basis and check to make sure nothing is wrong, no opportunities are missed, no errors are present, and no search rankings are being unintentionally forfeited through poor optimization. The web app is designed to solve this by:

  #1 - Crawling all the pages on your site every week and identifying potential issues in three categories:

  • Errors - like 404s, 500s, missing titles, duplicate content, etc.
  • Warnings - such as 302s, overly dynamic URL strings, long title elements, meta refreshes, etc.
  • Notices - not problems, per se, but issues you might want to be aware of like 301s, rel=canonical tags, meta robots blocking, etc.

  
  While we love what Google's Webmaster Tools does on this front, we felt there were a lot more issues we wanted to see.

  #2 - Tracking Rankings on the keywords you choose and automatically grading the pages that rank in the top 50 for their on-page optimization. It's a simple concept, but a powerful one. Why? Because, we often found that:

  • URLs ranking on page 2, 3 or 4 for a keyword phrase could move up dramatically in rankings and traffic with just a bit of keyword tweaking
  • Sometimes, SEOs & marketers might not even realize they had a page that was competitive for a keyword, and showing off that potential automatically could make a huge difference
  • Tracking rankings can help identify potential causes of rising/falling traffic and give a key baseline for performance, particularly as we add in data like traffic via web analytics, keyword difficulty scores and estimated search volume.

  
  Basic rank tracking is great, but we think there's a lot more you can do with the data when it's integrated with other KPIs and metrics

  
  Tracking competitors simultaneously is helpful for those SEOs who want to keep special tabs on select sites

  #3 - On-Page Grading & Recommendations serve as a great companion to rank tracking, enabling easy identification of low hanging fruit (poorly optimized pages that still rank in the top 50 results are often huge opportunities for improved rankings and traffic). We built this feature because:

  • It's frustrating to figure out the best practices for on-page optimziation, but our correlation and ranking models work have made some valuable strides that deserve to be shared.
  • No one can visit hundreds or thousands of pages and find all the keywords that are suboptimally targeted. The web app (particularly in concert with tip #1 below) can and it will message these with easy-to-parse grades and simple recommendations.
  • You can feel confident that the on-page recommendations are consitently updating with best practices. As we learn more through testing/research or as algorithms change (we re-do our ranking models every few months), that information will quickly make its way into the on-page report cards.

  
  An "A"! That's good news. Still missing a few recommendations that might be worth checking out, though.

   

  

  Aha! Using the keyword in the alt attribute might be a good addition (both for normal web rankings and for image SEO)

   

  #4 - Link Analysis for your site and those of key competitors. This tab is still in progress, but in the future, we plan to integrate all of the link analysis abilities of Open Site Explorer and add historical tracking, competitive SERPs analysis and more.

  

  Much more functionality coming soon

  #5 - One Comprehensive System to Rule It All. More so than any single feature, we wanted to begin the process of replicating all the functionality of SEOmoz's PRO tools into a single, integrated platform. You should be able to do all your SEO from one place - the web app. The functionality released today is just a tiny part of what's to come.

  
  
  Now I can see and access all the sites I care about from one place in my PRO account.

  Here's a video of me whiteboarding a bit more about the new web app:

  How Does this Affect My PRO Account?

  If you're already PRO, think of this as a big, new feature that's ready to start tracking data for you today. None of the old tools, functionality, guides,  Q+A, tips, webinars, etc. are going away. We're just adding the web app as a key part of the SEOmoz PRO package.

  We are, however, making a few shifts that I think you'll really like.

  Previously, PRO membership tiers had limits for how many Linkscape reports they could run. We've scaled up our servers to the point where we can handle pretty hefty quantities of requests, so as of today, we're removing your Linkscape advanced report limits - all PRO members can now run unlimited numbers of Linkscape reports. Q+A remains the same, as does access to all the other tools + content.

  Here's the new PRO membership plans:

  

  You may notice we've changed our pricing; however, these prices are for new members only.  Existing PRO members will continue to pay what they have in the past, but receive the expanded benefits and privileges we're launching today. It's our way of saying thanks for joining us in the early days.  PRO members - you'll get an email soon detailing the improvements/upgrades to your membership.

  If you're not yet PRO, we're keeping the PRO price of $79/month available until August 25th (14 days from now). After that, the price will go up to $99/month. If you sign up now (at $79/month), you'll be grandfathered in and won't be subject to future price increases.

  And, as always, as PRO membership gets better, you'll get immediate access to new features & upgrades and we'll never raise your price.

  5 Quick Tips to Get Started

  The web app is certainly designed to be largely self-explanatory and I'm sure many of you have already jumped in and given it a spin. But, for those seeking a few tricks, here's some that we've found in the last few weeks of using it for projects (some in concert with our consulting friends at Distilled).

  #1 - Import some of your top referring keywords from your analytics

  When I started the SEOmoz campaign, I grabbed our top few hundred keywords that referred traffic and imported them through the manage keywords input box (which kindly accepts CSV, TSV and carriage-return separated inputs).

  

  By exporting my list of top keywords from Google Analytics and pasting them into the web app, I've got easy tracking on tons of keywords I care about, and a chance to find some missed opportunities.

  

   

  #2 - Find pages that rank in the top 10-30 with low grades (Cs, Ds and Fs)

  When my rankings and on-page reports came back, I found tons of pages that got Cs or Ds ranking in position 5-50, ripe for improvement.

  
  Those Cs, Ds and Fs are gonna turn into As and send us a lot more traffic!

  The best part is the automation - it's a simple process, but an incredibly tedious one if performed manually. The web app's a lifesaver on that front. Those Cs, Ds and Fs, if improved to As and Bs, will likely bring up rankings, particularly on the less competitive terms and phrases and those where I may have the links I need to rank, but never took the time to do on-page optimization. Editing a few page titles and adding some keywords to content never felt so rewarding.

  #3 - Use the "grade any page" easter egg feature

  The web app's on-page optimization system will soon be replacing our tired and somewhat rickety term target tool. In the meantime, you can run "one-off" reports through an easter egg feature. Just create the keyword you care about and you can edit the URL field manually to grade any page for any term/phrase:

  

  Notice the highlighted portion in blue in the screenshot - easter egg FTW!

  #4 - Apply labels to your keyword groups to separately track relevant data/metrics

  Nearly every section of the app allows for filtering based on keyword group, error type, etc. By building smart keyword groups (via the "manage keywords" page) to align with the types of terms/phrases I care about, I can separately build reports showing performance in rankings and on-page optimization for those labels.

  

  #5 - Point out crawl diagnostic issues to a friend or potential client

  If your friend has a website with some crawl issues, I'm sure they'd appreciate having that pointed out - you can even export the crawl results to CSV and email it over. Likewise, if you've got clients or managers you're trying to convince to do some SEO fixes, the diagnostic visualization can be very handy to show off the problem.

  

  Sending over this report might just bring your buddy a bit more search traffic (or help you win a new client)!

  What's Next?

  Oh, believe me - we're just getting warmed up. :-)

  Our engineering team is committed to regular updates every few weeks, starting with something big a couple weeks from today. Those updates will add features, fix bugs and help grow this web app into the platform professional SEOs deserve - a system that lets you perform all of the essential tasks of SEO from one place - from building, submitting and managing XML Sitemaps to tracking your ROI from organic keywords through integration with your analytics package to tracking search results in verticals like video, maps/local, news, images, et al. to mapping your crawl data from Webmaster Tools against your indexation of pages receiving search traffic (we've had some good chats with the WM Tools team about integrating their API in cool ways) and much, much more.

  We'll be publishing a post this weekend inviting you to vote for features you'd most like to see. That feedback will be used to help prioritize our work, so suggest now, vote on the weekend and you'll see what you want in the app even sooner!

  We Need Your Feedback

  The web app is the basis for our future plans around providing great SEO software, and we need your help to make it amazing. On every page of the web app, you'll find a feedback tab on the left-hand side of the page. Please click it often and tell us what you found frustrating, what more you want to see, and even what you liked and want more of. Our team reads every one and build priorities based on the most-requested features.

  We also know there's going to be bugs at launch. Some early ones we're aware of include:

  • Slowness - many of the web app pages take 10-15 seconds or more to load depending on the quantity of keywords, issues or other data involved. We're working to cache much of this in databases for much faster retrieval in the next few weeks.
  • Crawl & Rankings Retrieval - your first data will take 5-20 minutes to populate. We do an initial "speed crawl" of 250 pages, but to be respectful of server load issues, we're pretty cautious with our requests. That first hour inside the app after creation may feel a bit empty, but just wait, it gets much better :-)
  • On-Page Grades - edge cases, including keywords that are out of order or have odd broad matching aren't perfect yet. We'll be working to fix this and make this experience as seemless as possible.
  • Root Domains - currently, campaigns can only be created with single subdomains (e.g. www.seomoz.org, not *.seomoz.org). We're working to make root domains an option as well, so you can track all the pages at mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com, blog.mydomain.com, etc. in one campaign.
  • Adding more than 10 Keywords Simultaneously - to help with load as we begin public testing, we'll only collect rankings for the first 10-20 keywords entered immediately (within 10-15 minutes). If you add 50 or 500 keywords at once, we're limiting rankings and on-page checks until your next update date for now.

  This isn't just another tool - it's a new approach for SEOmoz - creating an application that uses crawl data, APIs and integrated research to improve your productivity and simplify SEO.

  But, we need to be realistic - in this first iteration, we're not just in beta, we're at the nascent stages of the app's potential. What we're launching today is pretty remarkable, and I feel confident that for nearly everyone reading this post, it can help you earn a considerable amount more traffic from the search engines. That said, the future is what we feel best about, particularly since we hope to have your help in the improvement process.

  This is very much a BETA launch, but we think you'll enjoy playing around with the app and get a lot of value in return. So, what are you waiting for? Go build a campaign!

  p.s. If you'd like to learn more, check out our FREE WEBINAR on the Web App coming up this Friday, August 13th at 10am Pacific - Register here. And you can still sign up for the SEOmoz Tools Training at our Seattle Seminar later this month (we've just added more seats).

  
  

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  5 Ways to Build Links at an SEO Conferen

  Posted by jennita

  This week I pretty much have two things on my mind: beta launch and conferences. Since Rand will be covering the beta launch later today (wheeeeee) I thought I'd focus on the conferences. Along with preparing for our own PRO Seminar later this month, we've been discussing the various conferences we'll be attending and speaking at over the next few months. Personally I'm getting excited for SES San Francisco next week. With the change of venue and being a part of Connected Marketing Week it's going to be a great event. It also got me thinking about how attendees and speakers can use going to the conference as a link building exercise.

  Anyone can easily acquire a few links by sponsoring the event, but I wanted to come up with some creative ways to gain links without actually paying anything. Ok, well without paying for anything more than the cost of attending the event. Let's get started!

  1. Speak at the event

  Speaking on a panel is one of the easiest ways to get a link directly from a conference. Unfortunately it's also probably the most difficult for most people. Not everyone gets excited about standing up in front of a room full of fellow internet marketers and speaking. But if you're the type who loves what you do, has great advice, experience and/or examples on a specific topic and doesn't mind speaking in public, then it's time to get rolling! There are tons of conferences (seminars, trainings, etc.) from big to small, international to local that you could speak at. Find the one that's right for you and reap the rewards from the links.

  Ok, so where do the links come from? First, you'll normally get a link from the actual conference itself where they list their speakers. You'll also get links from people who write about the session you speak on. For example, Lisa Barone always links to the speaker's website in her liveblogging coverage. Here's one of many examples.

  

  Simply by speaking at the event puts your name and company out there to the masses and gives them a reason to write about you. But perhaps speaking isn't your calling, let's see where else you can gain a link or two.

  2. Liveblog or Livetweet

  There are a number of benefits of live blogging, such as adding great content to your site and hopefully increasing your SEO value. But don't forget that many conferences will link to liveblog coverage of their event. Booyah! Now... don't get me wrong, live blogging is NOT easy. It can be a gruesome task where you spend the entire day typing, making sure you catch as much of the sessions as absolutely possible and still find time to eat and use the restroom. I personally attempted it once, but we can all see how well that went over (hint: I haven't done it again). Hats off to all those amazing livebloggers out there who do it time and time again at all the major conferences!

   
  Some of the amazing livebloggers you'll see at conferences: Lisa Barone, Richard Baxter, Barry Schwartz, Virginia Nussey

  If you're new to liveblogging or tweeting you might want to start small like with a local meetup. With a smaller venue, liveblogging isn't such a daunting task if you only have one or two sessions and speakers to cover. Plus not as many people are covering the small events, so the competition isn't fierce.
  
  Another alternative to liveblogging is livetweeting. While you'll probably only get links to your Twitter account via retweets and Twitter roundup posts, you will probably get more followers who could in turn link to you at some point. Ok, so this may not be a direct link, but the idea of a future link is good enough for me.
  In both liveblogging and tweeting, you have to be able to type and type quickly. If that isn't your thing, and you just like to attend the conference, take notes and learn in your own way, there's another tip that will earn you a few links. Bring bloggers food, drinks, a power cord, whatever! If you see that a liveblogger tweets about being thirsty, bring him/her a bottle of water. How much do you want to bet that you'll get a link in that post (or maybe from Twitter) from that blogger? I'd say that's a high likelihood.
  
  In general if you bring someone of the Linkerati something nice, you might get a link out of it. Last year I roomed with Keri Morgret at SES San Jose and she brought triple chocolate muffins to the room!! Now if that doesn't deserve a link from SEOmoz, I don't know what does. Just sayin.

  3. Take Photos and/or Video

  This is a super fun way to not only get some sweet links but think about how many people you'll meet. It's the easiest way to network at a conference because pretty much all SEOs want their photo taken. :) But the key is, after you take the photos, be sure to publish them! Write a post and link to the people in the pictures or post them on your Facebook page and get more "likes" to your page.

  Dana Lookadoo is probably THE BEST at taking great photos throughout the conference and then publishing them right away. She's received several links from the SEOmoz blog for taking photos we used and then linked back to her. In fact, all the photos of the livebloggers from above Dana, took at various conferences (thanks for the great photos again!). 

  4. Get involved!

  Whether the conference is large like an SMX or just a small meetup, everyone loves volunteers to help. This is also a great tip to getting a free pass to an event. Sure you have to put in a little work and help out, but in the end you'll learn a lot and will probably get a link or a thank you on Twitter. Earlier this year I helped Michelle Robbins at SMX West and got a great thank you from her after the fact via Twitter.

  

  Just think of the possibilities here. If you can donate a little of your time, you can easily get a link or two out of it.

  5. Do something crazy

  Seriously, not even kidding here. If you do something out there, something a little different than the norm that people can get excited about, then they're going to write about it! Off the top of my head I can think of three different instances at conferences where people did things just a bit crazy, and the story went completely viral! I'm talking shaving your head, winning a pony and bigwatah. I won't go into all the details about these events but let's quickly look at a few Google searches.

  A search for "bigwatah" shows 4 posts talking about the event that happened at SMX East in 2008 plus tons of photos. Then a search for "evan fishkin shave head" (tee hee hee) shows at least 10 posts and 3 videos of Matt Cutts shaving Evan Fishkins head at Pubcon 2009.

  That's just the tip of the iceburg. I'm pretty sure much crazier things have and could happen. As long as you don't hurt anyone in the process, I say get a little crazy!

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  Whew! That's a lot of linkbuilding that can happen in just a couple days time. As you head out to a conference this summer or fall, think about ways to not only gain knowledge but also to create a few backlinks. Remember that many of the people who will link to you who are at a conference are probably SEOs themselves. Which means they probably (not always, but probably) have a fairly decent authority site to send you some juicy links (dang. did I just say "juicy links" I hate when people say that). I'd love to hear some of your ideas or ways you've been able to build a link or two while attending a conference.

  
  

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  Cited from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/wqnb2z2c3qQ/5-ways-to-build-links-seo-conference
  Reversing the SEO Process: The Chocolate

  Posted by randfish

  I've had the chance to talk to lots of folks who are just starting out building new web businesses, many of them for the first time and a few with some experience under their belt. What worries me is that a lot of these new businesses are reversing the SEO order of operations; making it 100X more difficult to succeed than need be.

  How Do You Bake Chocolate Chip Cookies?

  Seriously. I don't mean a recipe; I mean close your eyes and think about the standard methodology and order of operations you follow. If you're like me, it looks something like this:

  1. Determine what kind of cookies you're making - crispy, chewy, big, small - and what quantity.
  2. Line up your ingredients - flour, eggs, sugar, baking soda/powder, butter, salt, vanilla extract, chocolate chips
  3. Mix together ingredients in some relevant order
  4. Form dough balls
  5. Bake for appropriate time period
  6. Remove from oven; eat

  Now let's imagine SEO as a part of your recipe - you're trying to bake a great web business, and SEO is an essential ingredient. Let's say for the purposes of our analogy it's the chocolate chips.

  Here's how many websites bake their SEO-chocolate chip cookies:

  1. Mix together some of the ingredients (maybe the butter, sugar, eggs and flour)
  2. Form dough balls
  3. Bake for appropriate time period*
  4. Remove from oven
  5. Realize there's a few missing ingredients - vanilla extract (social media strategy), salt (viral content) and, oh yeah, the chocolate chips (SEO)
  6. Sprinkle these on the cookies

  Now instead of this:

  
  Courtesy of SavorySweetLife's excellent post

  You've got this:

  

  Not quite as appealing.

  A website that's pre-built its content, pre-conceived of its information architecture, pre-envisioned its marketing & communications strategy and already created its underlying code, CMS and functionality without considering SEO impact will always be at a severe disadvantage. And when it comes to links, that disadvantage is even stronger.

  We all worry about a poorly built site and whether it will be accessible to spiders, but I see so many SEOs who approach a business or a site that's got many of the basics right and think, "OK, I just need to get some links." If instead, we flipped this thinking on its head and said "wait, this website hasn't established a strategy for link acquisition? Then we need to go back to the drawing board," the results might be dramatically better.

  For every aspect of search engine optimization, there's a critical need to make it part of the business strategy, particularly as the field gets more competitive. If you've put together a remarkable company, solving a tough problem with a great website, you could still lose in search (and social) to the relatively amateurish competitor who asked and answered these critical SEO strategy questions before building their business/site:

  • What does my site do for web content creators (Linkerati) that rewards them in such a way that they'll naturally share my brand and link to my site?
  • What content is in demand (or soon will be) that aren't sites aren't addressing well (and how do I effectively keyword target that demand)?
  • What functionality/organization will make my site more attractive to search engines?
  • How do I build ongoing SEO refinement and growth into my business processes?

  The site that answered those questions during the brainstorming phase is the one who can overtake the existing market leaders and win the rankings. Those who keep trying to sprinkle chocolate chips onto already-baked cookies will have a painful time trying to keep up.

  * Notice my conspicuous lack of a pun about "half-baked" sites. I plan to use this karma on some horrifyingly bad joke in the future.

  p.s. Credit for the analogy goes to the same person who bakes me most of my chocolate chip cookies. She's pretty awesome.

  
  

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  Cited from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seomoz/~3/_qcAnjgoLz8/reversing-the-seo-process-the-chocolate-chip-cookie-mistake
  A Simple Guide to Creating Linkbait

  Posted by Melissa at Distilled

  So you want to get links, but don’t know how to start creating linkable content? Let me walk you through my process for creating awesome linkbait.

  1. Identify your target niche.

  

  Start by looking at your competitors' links.

  They are probably more edible than these links:

  This is a basic step for SEO, so really it's something you should have on file already. Look back over your competitors' links. Have they done anything that was particularly link-worthy? Look at deeper pages. What sort of things are people linking to in these pages? This should start to give you some idea of what sort of niches are interested in what you do.

  2. Identify your angle.

  When you look at your competitors' links, you'll see which bloggers and websites linked to them.

  What did they link to and in what context? What else are they linking to? And what's going to make them link to your stuff? That is, what can you add?

  Well, have you ever asked? Obviously, you won't get an answer from all of your target bloggers and websites, but the ones you get a positive answer from will already be interested in your content before you begin creating it. And people with a vested interest in your content will only be a good thing.

  3. Create your content.

  There's not much I can say here. Just create something that answers the above questions. If infographics do well, do that. Photo essays? Well, get your camera out - or get a freelancer to do it if you're not confident in your own photography skills.

  

  If they want creepy monkeys, well, maybe they’re not worth targeting...

  4. Promote your content.

  Start with the bloggers you've already talked to. As I said above, they helped out with your content, so they have a vested interest. Be sure to point out which bit of their suggestion was used in the content. That way, they can brag about how awesome they are. And let's face it: the best way to get people to link to you is to massage their egos.

  After you've got a few links from the people you've talked to, then you can go to other bloggers and websites, saying that buzz is building for this content. When you can show that people are interested in your content, it creates a desire within other people to join in. No one wants to miss the boat, after all.

  In my own experience, I find less explicit requests are better, that is, saying "I think you and your readers would like this", rather than simply asking for a link, is more effective. I find that it's better to suggest you're doing someone a favor instead of asking them to do one for you.

  So I've done all that. What next?

  Let's say you're targeting 'tents'. You've already done some linkbait based on what has been successful for your competitors. But there are loads of people who use tents besides hardcore camping bloggers, so how would you go about targeting them?

  Well, camping has undergone a bit of a resurgence in loads of markets thanks to the recession, so maybe you can target women who aren't super into camping. What to these women link to online? Well, loads of things, but there is a bit community of knitters online, and coincidentally, one of your employees loves knitting (isn't that handy?) Why not create patterns for knitted tent sculptures or other camping-related stuff? Whatever it is, just make sure it's interesting enough to get attention and useful enough to be worth sharing.

  But don't forget: at this point, you don't know that knitters are going to link to content like that.

   

  But if they like knitted cake, they probably will like knitted flashlights.

  You don't want to waste your time creating and promoting content that won't work. Check that the knitting bloggers link to outside sources. Make sure knitting websites include content from outside sources.

  Make sure the niche you are targeting will not only like what you do, but will LINK to what you do.

  At the end of the day, that's what this is all about.

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  Image credits:

  Vienna sausages - Changlc on Wikimedia Commons
  Creepy monkey - kevsunblush on Flickr
  Knitted cake - freeform by prudence on Flickr

  
  

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