How SEOmoz Built One Million Links in Thirty-Three Months

Seach Engine Smorgasbord
Five top-ranked search engine optimization blogs and five top online marketing blogs for your reading pleasure.

1. How SEOmoz Built One Million Links in Thirty-Three Months - 2007-06-23 12:44:15-04
   

   Posted by randfish

   Just look at it. The beauty - so magical, so inspiring. I feel like Gatsby finding Daisy again after all those years. It's enough to bring a tear of joy to this bearded SEO's eye:
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   Of course, coming back down to Earth for a minute, I have to realize a few things:

   1. It's almost certainly not accurate (Yahoo's making an estimate)
   2. There's no reward (although maybe there should be - one million links medal awarder opportunity awaits!)
   3. We still get less than 30% of our traffic from search
   4. Indextools tells me that fewer than 300,000 of those links have ever sent any traffic
   5. Google Webmaster Central thinks the number is only 250,000 (although they themselves admit to not reporting fully)
   6. Oh yeah - and we fell from ranking #7 for SEO at Google, to ranking #15 (losing our spot to a site that looks like it was designed in 1998, has only  3,300 links and links out to "sexy lingerie" in the footer)

   So, the news isn't all good, but it still feels like a milestone, and one worthy of sharing. Certainly, in the sphere of search marketing focused sites, SEOmoz has had great success appealing to the linkerati and growing links virally, with virtually no manual, manipulative or paid link building.

   The important question, the one that's valuable to you as readers is, how did we do it?

   Actually, there were three keys to our linking success - Content, Community and Timing.

   Content
   The links we've generated spawned from other website owners in the field of Internet marketing (and related disciplines) and primarily references the source material we've built up here on the site. Our blog, articles, tools & antics follow less of a link "bait" formula and more one of link "appeal." The content we put out isn't just designed for a link - it's really designed to make our readers into raving fans. Every blog entry I write, each tool we design and every article that's authored has both a value proposition - primarily that it will make you a better marketer - and an emotional appeal - hopefully, you'll get a sense of the personality, voice and style behind the words and grow to enjoy the rapport.

   Many of our content pieces have generated remarkable numbers of links individually:

   • Web 2.0 Awards - 72K + 30K = 100K+ links
   • Beginner's Guide to SEO - 6.5K + 5.6K = 12K+ links
   • Page Strength - 4K + 3.5K = 7.5K+ links
   • Search Ranking Factors - 14K + 9K = 23K+ links
   • SEO Blog - 19K + 34K = 53K+ links

   However, you can see from the above that only 15-20% of our links flow to those main pages, while another 5% point to the homepage. As with all things SEO, it's about the long tail of 5-10 links that point to each individual blog post, a few hundred to an article here or there, rare links to our profile pages or services pages, etc. It's a "natural" looking backlink profile primarily because it was built 100% naturally (OK, maybe 99%).

   The takeaway lesson here isn't about SEOmoz's own content, though. It's about applying the same principles to your own projects or clients. Here's my top five list of suggestions for following the tactics that have worked for us:

   1. Don't be afraid to try something new - We experimented with quizzes (which are apparently down... need to look into why that is), tried expert-sourcing, built a recommended list with no kickbacks & gave premium content a shot. Some of these were great successes, others only mediocre, but experimentation proved key.
   2. Be timely & topical - When Web 2.0 was a hot buzz word and everything with the term in its title got Dugg, we built the Web 2.0 awards. When people started wondering on the forums what the ranking factors were, we asked the experts. When Dan Thies (KW Guru extraordinnairre) complained back in 2004 that there was no way to automatically measure keyword difficulty, we built the first version of the tool.
   3. Make it usable & attractive - Other folks have replicated (or even preceeded) much of the work that we've done, but I think our user interface and design prowess (primarily Matt's doing) are responsible for a lot of the visibility we've had over other alternatives.
   4. Present something different - The SEO world is particularly filled with the same coverage of news, events & search matters. SEOmoz has always tried to stand out by NOT covering the mainstream, but instead, providing our own take on topics that are often ignored by others. By creating news & providing unique information, our content doesn't have to compete with Danny's or Barry's or Andy's.
   5. Writing quality - These poll numbers from Vizu's blog research PDF tell the story far better than I can:

   

   Community
   Next on my list of big factors that have contributed to SEOmoz's link-earning succes is community, by which I mean, primarily, community participation and engagement by mozzers in the wide world of the web and the even wider offline world (yes, the ratio is still Internet < Real World).

   I've personally met and interacted with between 2-4 thousand people over the last 3 years - shaken hands, shared meals and drinks, held conversations and exchanged business cards. As much as the online world connects us, the real world ties the knots in those binds. Once an in-person connection has been made, a true relationship exists and it's those relationships that have built up much of the goodwill and branding that carries over into readership and links on the web. I'd urge anyone who's involved with building a brand on the web not to ignore the power of direct relationships. You don't have to be in the world of webdev or marketing, either, just look at how Allan Dick of Vintage has done it.

   My top 5 tips for making your community connections valuable:

   1. Don't pretend to care, actually care - I think this lesson took me a few years to learn, but it's been invaluable. While it might seem like a good idea to feign an interest in a person you meet, it's far better to actually be interested in them. There's a difference, and almost everyone can tell. Personally, I probe until I find something fascinating, and trust me, there's almost always something you can connect on when it comes to people you meet during professional networking events - a school, a mutual friend, an industry event, a news item, a hobby, etc. Whatever that common ground is, find it - your reward will be a positive connection that both parties remember.
   2. Follow up by email - Inevitably, you'll get lots of business cards. When you do, read them, visit those sites and send the giver an email. Granted, due to the high volume of cards I exchange (usually more than 50 cards per conference day) now, I no longer have time to do this, but when I did, it was incredibly rewarding. I'd visit their site, shoot them an email with some kind words and maybe some suggestions and naturally, they'd remember me, remember SEOmoz and, equally important, I'd remember them (or at leas their site).
   3. Stay out of gossip - I admit that I sometimes have a hard time following this one; it's an incredibly compelling subject, particularly after a few beers. However, particularly when it comes to personal gossip, you're actually building more risk than you are reward. Joking about an inept speaker or sharing an anecdote is fine, but stay away from relationships and company/organizational politics as much as you can - I've been burned a few times by this one.
   4. Use some personal branding - Yeah, I know the yellow shoes are getting a bit old & dingy (and my new pair was stolen), but they've had a great impact on building a recognizable brand. I'm not suggesting that's for everyone, but if you can have something remakable about your personal appearance, background, storyline or style, it makes you memorable and that's a very good thing at events where people are meeting dozens of new faces for the first time.
   5. Strategic name recall - I'm awful with names. But, I make a big point of trying to remember. I use all the normal techniques (call them by their name a couple times in conversatino the first time you meet them, associate it with something they're wearing or where they're from or something you talked about, etc.) but I also get a bit sneaky. You can always go for the "what's your email address" question, look for a badge, ask for another business card, or quickly introduce them to a colleague - hey, I'd like you to meet Rebecca (then they say their name and now you know it!).
   6. BONUS - Involve your connections - If you've just met someone you think is an important resource for the future, or simply someone you'd like to spend more time with, get them involved in something together on the web after the event ends. Interview them for your blog. Ask them if they'd comment on something you've written or get their opinion on something that relates to both your fields. Those shared experiences through email will make the bond stronger for the next time you see each other and give you something else to discuss and relate to.

   Timing
   I've said a few times that I feel that starting a new blog about SEO in 2007 is a huge challenge, while blogging about a new niche (where's the unofficial iPhone blog? the 2008 campaign in the search engines blog? the social networking wars blog?) that's on the verge of becoming popular is a much better choice. When SEOmoz started writing about search marketing (way back in 2003, though we didn't start the blog until October of 2004), there was relatively little competition. SearchEngineWatch didn't start their daily blog (in a blog format) until August of 2004 and with the exception of the major forums and fewer than a dozen other popular sites in the niche, we were ahead of the curve.

   SEOmoz also began at a time when search and search marketing achieved broader popularity. Our article in Newsweek was one of the first in a national, non-tech magazine to specifically cover the art of organic search marketing and the Web 2.0 movement that spawned in that same time period placed new emphasis on startups and stalwarts in the web world generating traffic from the engines. Google went public, they started dominating marketshare and they rose to become one of the world's biggest brands during our first couple years on the web, all of which boded particularly well for SEOmoz, too. We couldn't help but be caught in the rising tide of an exciting time.

   Timing is also about playing it smart, though. Our blogging and articles and tools have changed over time to reflect where we believe search marketers' interests lie. We've moved from heavy coverage of IR theory & algorithm analysis to coverage of news & events to forum discussion and into a primarily educational role (with lots of entertainment and industry insider tidbits to boot). Now, we're actually diving back into testing and experimentation of all kinds (I'll have another post in the next few weeks with "what to expect from SEOmoz in the next 6 months"), back into PPC and back into broader marketing beyond search. If you can recognize trends as they happen (or, better yet, before), you're going to have a lot of success in attracting links and attention.

   Alright, folks, that about does it for it tonight. I hope that my post has inspired you and informed you about some of the things we've done right (and wrong) and how it's helped us achieve what I would have considered 3 years ago to be nearly impossible. I'll wrap up with a quick look at some data for other sites in the search marketing field, to give you an idea of relative link popularity.

   Note - all numbers are from Yahoo!, which tends to fluctuate 10-20% daily. My counts are taken on July 2nd at 12:45am (yeah, I'm always up late).

   • SEOBook.com - 1.7 million links
   • SearchEngineWatch - 1.3 million links
   • SEOmoz - 1.13 million links
   • SEOChat - 955K links
   • Battelle's Searchblog - 606K links
   • SearchEngineLand - 300K links
   • SERoundtable - 403K links
   • MattCutts - 371K links
   • SearchEngineJournal - 332K links
   • MarketingPilgrim.com - 181K links
   • SearchEngineGuide - 176K links
   • Official Google Webmasters Blog - 105K links
   • Shoemoney - 102K links
   • HighRankings - 88K links
   • Bruce Clay - 85K links

   p.s. Yes, I'm taking a subtle stab at the fact that Yahoo! linkcounts aren't terrific data points, and yes, I realize that this blog post is, thus, infused with irony.

   
   

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2. links for 2007-06-30 - 2007-06-30 03:30:03-04
   Analyzing the Facebook Platform, three weeks in Marc Andreesen's lengthy take on Facebook for business (tags: Facebook) How Facebook could crush MySpace, Yahoo!, and Google. Slate.com article on Facebook (tags: Facebook) Facebook Application Review of Toolbar for Firefox Toolbar just to stay in touch with Facebook (tags: Facebook) Share This
   
3. How Richard Binhammer is Changing the Face of Dell Online - 2007-06-30 04:00:00-04
   

   Getting people to try out your product is great, and when they like it and buy it, that's even better. But whether they will stay with you in the long-run, (i.e developing customer loyalty) and whether they will become repeat customers depends a lot on how you treat them once they have given you a nod. And part of how you treat them includes talking to them when they express their disappointment or an issue their having. With the internet, and now that everyone has blogs, it has become even more important to see what people are saying about your company online, and responding to that.

   We have written about Dell many times before, and gave special importance to Dell IdeaStorm, the company's socially driven consumer engagement, correspondence, and feedback initiative. If you look at the comment section of when we wrote about them, you will see that Richard Binhammer from Dell not only posted his response to the article but also replied to the concerns of other people commenting on our post. This is not the only instance that this has happened. Richard also joined the conversation on our further commentary on IdeaStorm and Dell's open source initiative.

   And our blog isn't the only one that people from Dell are commenting on. I have seen similar comments from Richard elsewhere on the web as well, trying to address people's concerns and trying to join conversations about dell. And this genuine effort is certainly paying off. People have been impressed with the reaching out and have responded positively. Here are two such examples:

   Richard Ames

   Well, today I received an email from Richard Binhammer of Dell's Corporate Group Communications. I didn't contact Dell at all. Dell found me, or rather my post, and so it is doing exactly what I suggested it needs to do. Dell is proactively, it appears, trying to find out what's gone wrong and fix it.

   ...

   So perhaps I'm wrong about this being the beginning of the end for Dell. The first step in any recovery is admitting you have a problem and then listening hard to find out ways to fix it. Maybe Dell's doing what it needs to do to get back on track. I wish them well.

   A. Benjamin

   I've had a couple emails from Richard B. at Dell who seems genuinely interested in helping me solve my problem.

   ...

   I applaud Dell for the effort...

   As you can see, while online media makes it very easy for people to express their problems, it also makes it abundantly easy for companies to see who exactly is having a problem, what the problem is, and to address them on a person to person basis. And Dell's efforts in this regard are clearly helping them address their customers' needs and to change their opinion of the company and the company's customer support.

   
   
   
4. Closed Platforms & Proprietary Formats Kill Market Opportunity - 2007-06-30 05:55:45-04
   This is a free flowing post based on interesting links of interest I recently came across. It compares online markets to offline markets.
   
5. Papers from the Eighth ACM Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce 2007 - 2007-06-30 12:06:18-04
   From June 11th to June 15th, the ACM Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce (SIGECOM) held its eighth conference in San Diego, California. There were a good number of accepted papers for the conference, and I was able to hunt a few of them down online. Budget Optimization in Search-Based Advertising Auctions (pdf) Cliff Stein from [...]
   
6. Saturday Night Link Fever - 2007-06-30 23:53:04-04
   Since we're apparently in the mood for grammar, check out Daily Writing Tips for more nuts and bolts guidance for writers. How to Use StumbleUpon to Promote. Roberta shows you how to pitch a blogger. What makes people buy? Find out. How to Write a Persuasive News Release. Work from home (or hope to)? You should be reading Success From [...]
   
7. Your Corporate Image Online - What Not to Do - 2007-07-01 04:49:10-04
   

   The reason why I write about how companies are managing their corporate profiles online is because based on this we can learn and apply lessons to our own companies. Just like yesterday we covered how Dell is successfully engaging disgruntled consumers and addressing their woes, today we will look at how Microsoft is doing the exact opposite.

   A few days ago, hundreds of consumers started complaining how running Forza 2 (a racing game for Microsoft's Xbox 360) was causing systems to crash and become unrecoverable. Over 900 users came together on a forum to voice their concerns. And rather than addressing these concerns, Microsoft decided that the best way to deal with customers having problems was to delete the entire thread about the problem (while pretending that it was exclusive content). No thread, no problem, right? No, in fact they were absolutely wrong.

   

   As a result of Microsoft's ignoring of these concern and deleting the thread where users were voicing these concerns, not only is the company further angering the already angry consumers, but is also causing them to generate more bad press for the company. One user summarized how these (formerly loyal) customers feel about Microsoft now:

   All they want is money. I demand an explanation...

   The first step (as cliche as it is) is to acknowledge that you have a problem. Once you acknowledge it, you need to reach out to those affected by the problem and try to rectify it as soon and as efficiently as possible.

   
   
   
8. Does Search Disrupt the Business World? - 2007-07-01 06:57:27-04
   Google is at least as greedy as any of the companies they claim to be morally superior to.
   
9. Exploring Yahoo's Photosharing Applications - 2007-07-02 00:55:03-04
   Most of my use of Yahoo's photosharing application, Flickr, involves posting images from patent applications, so that I can show them here. But I put some photographs on Flickr too, and I've even geo-tagged a few of them by dragging them to the location where the shots were taken on a map. Yahoo has another [...]
   
10. BlogScope Offers Unique Ways to Search the Blogosphere (blogspot for now) - 2007-07-02 01:58:46-04
    One of the papers presented at the WWW 2007 involves the efforts of researchers at the University of Toronto to provide some interesting ways to search blogs - BlogScope: Spatio-temporal Analysis of the Blogosphere The application described is online in "preview" form - BlogScope. It's presently tracking 9.90 million blogs with 76.78 million posts [...]
    
11. Finding Some of Your EDU Links with Yahoo Search - 2007-07-02 08:05:12-04
    There has always been this perception that links from domains with a .EDU TLD is better than links from .COM, .NET, .ORG and so on. Chris Boggs covered the debate with Are Links From .edu and .gov Domains Really "Better?"...

    

    
    
    
12. Google Says Use Search Ads to Help Improve Health Industry's Credibility - 2007-07-02 08:21:18-04
    I was strongly considering skipping this topic, but the amount of buzz an official blog post at the Google Health blog named Does negative press make you Sicko? caused, was pretty significant, in light of all the iPhone buzz this...

    

    
    
    
13. 5 - 6 Percent of Searches Spell Their Searches Wrong? - 2007-07-02 08:33:20-04
    The 5 to 6 percent figure is not scientific, it is based on several members sharing their log file statistics in a Cre8asite Forums thread. Those that did the leg work to figure out how many people they see come...

    

    
    
    
14. Comparing AOL's Search Data to Google's Estimate of Unique Queries - 2007-07-02 08:42:13-04
    The other week we reported that Google said about A Quarter of Google Searches Are Never Seen Before. Since then, Google clarified that the 25% figure was just a ballpark figure. JohnMu (aka SoftPlus) has started a thread at Cre8asite...

    

    
    
    
15. Yahoo SmartAds Bridging Search Ads & Behavioral Targeting - 2007-07-02 09:11:00-04
    The New York Times reports Yahoo is launching "SmartAds." SmartAds is a product that leverages behavioral targeting data with search data, to generate "custom advertisements on the fly." How does it work? For example, a person who had recently searched...

    

    
    
    
16. Yahoo! Slurp Crawling Wild? - 2007-07-02 09:20:53-04
    WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums thread report a spike in activity with Yahoo Search's web crawler, Slurp. People have noticed a large increase in page hits and bandwidth usage, caused by Yahoo! Slurp recently. I run several sites and I have...

    

    
    
    
17. Google Accounts Security Issue Confuses User Authentication - 2007-07-02 10:15:52-04
    A very strange thing happened to a member who posted about her experience in Google Groups. Apparently, while logged into her Google account, she was browsing forums threads. When trying to respond to messages, she noticed that replying failed. It...

    

    
    
    
18. What Should Google Do About Proxy Sites? - 2007-07-02 11:29:55-04
    A Google Groups thread points to a serious concern first brought up at WebmasterWorld where proxy hijacking has become a lot more prevalent. As you can see, Barry reported on this last week. Adam Lasnik writes in to shed some...

    

    
    
    
19. Hyperlinking Keywords to the Same Page: Spam, Usability Issue, or Both? - 2007-07-02 12:05:12-04
    A webmaster asks WebmasterWorld if hyperlinking terms on a single page to link back to that page is considered spam. His argument is that it shouldn't be construed as spam if it's only being used for emphasis. However, the majority...

    

    
    
    
20. Link Quality: Perception is Reality - 2007-07-28 13:17:21-04
    Perception of quality and brand awareness (as signals for trust) often trump true quality, usefulness, and how strongly a link source discriminates.