Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

I rarely do promotional posts unless I really believe in a product, and the person behind it. Andy has beat me to providing a linkbaiting service that I think will hold an enormous amount of value for subscribers. The service consists of writing an article that has a very high likelihood of going viral, and giving it the gentle nudge it needs for success in the social network arenas. Mr. Hagans has explained his service to me, and it is a great mix between public relations, viral marketing, and search optimization. All totaled - it looks like a pretty awesome service - and I’m sure if it wasn’t, Andy wouldn’t put his name on it. I don’t think he’s officially launched yet (though he gave me the okay to post this), so get in before the demand and price rises.

From Andy’s site:

* Quality organic links from blogs and other Web sites that will help organic SEO efforts (and yes, link baiting has been approved by search engine representatives as a “white hat” tactic)
* Brand exposure on social bookmarking and tagging sites, which can lead to mindshare overnight
* A large amount of traffic (thousands to tens of thousands of unique visitors)
* A feature piece of content on your Web site that will receive bookmarks, citations and links over time, and which will further entrench your Web site as unique and valuable to the community and Web as a whole.

This is probably a great place to mention Rand’s linkbaiting service as well - which is geared more towards application development that is likely to go viral. I really can’t picture Rand offering a poor service either.

Great stuff guys.

Pick your niche. Know your demographic. How many times have you heard it? Ten. A hundred. A thousand? Yes. It is cliche. Yes, every SEO, SEM, marketing company, ad agency, and business consultant says it. Mainly because it’s right. No one LIKES the used car salesman approach of the “hard sell”. No one wants your BRAND forced down their throat. They want Tivo’d TV, XM/ Sirius radio, no banner ads, and only products that aren’t blurred out on MTV. They want products that were placed and reviewed positively by people they identify with. They want to buy from someone they trust, who has taken at least five minutes to TALK to them before trying to swipe their pocketbook.

Blogs work because they have a voice. There is a person behind it, and it feels like they are talking to YOU. I felt like I knew Rand, Aaron, Andy, and many others well before I met them in person. Their conversational tones and attitudes that were similar to my own inspired me to drop them a note, and made it pretty easy to talk to them once I did meet them, and realized we were pretty much on the same page (at minimum with many theories of SEO, etc.) Now imagine if I was their customer. Imagine if they had talked to me in that SAME tone, and were selling me something that I really WANTED.

Without going all cluetrain crazy on you, marketing is a conversation, and there is nothing like a good first impression (or a bad one to ruin any hopes of future success). It’s always a pleasant surprise when I get a consulting request out of the blue that says, “I like your honest attitude, and approach to SEO…do you think you can help us?” These types of leads are generally the best, because their reading of the site improved their learning curve by educating these folks not only to my SEO methodology, but my personality and approach as well before I ever spoke to them directly. I’d much rather work with someone who has read this site, then trying to do RFP’s off a site where 10 other people are vying for the opportunity.

Generalities suck. Even with blog posts. So I am going to give you specifics. The specific that worked very well for me, was being a part of Business networking international - without getting into all the pros and cons of the organization, I will just say that it is probably only as good as your individual experience. When I was back in Saginaw, I had a pretty good group, and small business owners can always teach you a lot (because it’s TOUGH to be one and get the bills paid). Being a part of BNI taught me how to talk to YOU - yes, you - the rainmaker in the ad agency that needs to learn to do SEO better, and understands the value of it.

While there were some sketchy MLM-esque qualities to the organization, there were also some very cool ideas that I got from it. The biggest one being - BE SPECIFIC when looking for leads. The principle of BNI is to get leads for and from your networking counterparts - everyone gives a 1 minute “commercial” that tells the rest of the group what types of referrals they would like. I, for example, was selling computer networking services for SAMSA at the time…now do you think I got a better response if I said:

A: SAMSA does computer networking for people in the area. If you know ANYONE who needs their computer worked on, please let me know. We can help.
–or–
B: I’m looking for the contact information of the network administrator at Acme public schools. I heard that they are planning to upgrade their systems next year, and I’m hoping someone can introduce me to someone there that may know the network admin so I can tell them why we’re the right fit for them without sounding like a cold caller.

Warm leads are nice. Specifics to the right people help you get the RIGHT leads. That’s the essence of BNI - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. What it TAUGHT me was that the more specifically that I targeted my market, the more likely I was to get a positive response.

Putting my own theory into action: I’m really looking for a Charter Captain in Montauk, NY or surrounding areas, who’s willing to swap services. I can help make sure every tourist fisherman that searches the web for charters finds your boat first, if you can help me catch a tuna, shark, (or various other tasty species I can stock my freezer with). If you’ve got a nice warm lead for me, I’ll be happy to send you some nice frozen tuna steaks if and when I bring one home, along with probably a link or two, and answers to any SEO questions you may have. If you’ve caught fish in the area, I’d love to hear your stories too:)

That’s Great - But How Does This Apply to Search Marketing?

Search marketing is still marketing. It gives you the ability to be MORE granular and specific with your requests. It gives you the ability to be highly specific to what you’re looking for. The more specific you focus your site, copy, and SEO efforts, the more likely you will be to find your “perfect” target customer. If you don’t think about the QUALITIES of your “perfect customer” you will never be able to start a conversation, or actually meet them. Even with permission marketing, you’re going to need a LITTLE interruption to get some attention. You know we all dislike interruption, so you had better use your interruption wisely.

If you are a florist in San Jose that only works for weddings, what do you think converts better, a search for:
a - “california florists”
b - “san jose wedding florists”

There may be MUCH more volume for “florists”, but chances are if you are JUST located in San Jose, you are going to get a bunch of traffic that you don’t need, and just wastes your time with phone calls. You may get a few diamonds in the rough that turn to business, but if you think like your customer, you can become the customer and understand how they search.

I repeat: WRITE TO YOUR USERS.

Combine the title advice of Dan Kennedy and Copyblogger’s surefire techniques with Michael’s how to get your non-tech site into digg and you should start to get the point here.

Geeks are starting to own media, because they are the only ones who care enough to figure out how to “digg” or social bookmark. Everyone else may be reading, and suddenly geeks are becoming even cooler by default because their interests are rising to the top of places like digg and the new netscape. Understanding technology is geek chic. Understanding “cool geeks” is your mission should you choose to accept it.

Know your users, and figure out how to talk with them. Figure out their needs, and their wants before they ever respond to the conversation you start, and it will be natural once they do. Don’t try to fake the funk, because they’re gonna see right through you. Be genuine in identifying with people, and they’ll respect what your selling when you do finally make the pitch.

If you check 1-2, my word of advice to you is just relax
Just do what you got to do; if that don’t work, then kick the facts
If you a fighter, rider, biter, flame-ignitor, crowd-exciter
Or you wanna jus’ get high, then just say it
But then if you a liar-liar, pants on fire, wolf-crier, agent wit’ a wire
I’m gon’ know it when I play it
It’s bigger than Hip-Hop
- “Hip-Hop” by Dead Prez

Okay, so now that Myspace is the #1 site in the world, I think it’s finally time to embrace the space with a full marketer’s mentality. Despite the Myspace’s title being disputed, it’s hard to argue that there is an incredibly large market with a whole lot of potential. I haven’t dove in wholeheartedly yet, but from my very unscientific experiments on myspace at school there is an extremely high level of loyalty with myspace. My favorite stat is that myspace has 40 pageviews per visitors ON AVERAGE. That was a pretty amazing number to me.

While on vacation, I’ve seen two seperate instances of television ads that used Myspace URLs. I thought this kind of odd at first, but with increasing difficulty to both purchase (and then rank) new domains, it makes pretty good sense. Both the movie “John Tucker Must Die” and the TV show It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia advertise Myspace Urls. This is in addition to thousands of groups dedicated to virally marketing and promoting various different topics, including one of my favorites, Entourage, which attempted a viral campaign via Myspace.

Benefits of My Space Optimization

Quicker Search Engine Rankings
“It’s Always Sunny” didn’t fair so well in the rankings, but “John Tucker” gets a #2 ranking for the phrase on Google with the intended myspace page.

No need for domain or hosting

Immediate audience with massive distribution

Drawbacks of My Space Optimization

No control over web host or downtime

Rather slow servers due to large volumes of traffic

No ownership of content
No ability to 301 traffic or content if it needs to move. If links are built, they can’t be redirected to appropriate areas.

Little way to track statistics and visitors (that I’m aware)

Search rankings are nice, but I really prefer converting traffic. The TRAFFIC is definitely there, now we just need to hope that myspace users start looking for more than friends and dates, and searching for more high dollar items that can be monetized (especially if they implement their own search technology after their search function contract expires). There’s definitely a ton of potential with Myspace, it’s only a matter of getting creative to harness some of the enormous viral marketing opportunities.

MySpace Optimization Resources

• Myspace: Good for more than just hanging out
• Getting to know Myspace
• MySpace gold at MarketingVOX
• Myspace marketing
• My Social Marketing
• Much more on “myspace marketing”

Volkswagon’s new commercials
But hey, what’s the logic behind not having ALL the new commercials online in case people like me who are begging for you to market to me to link to you and give you some credit for a good job?
(more…)

Link valuation is the most fundamental component of current SEO strategies in my mind. There are certainly other important aspects to ranking well, but without understanding how to put a value on a link you are sunk. That’s why I harp about it on a daily basis, and think about it myself just as often.

Pubcon conferences are always exceptional for the insights that are triggered by being around of a slew of intelligent resourceful people. One of the ideas that had sort of dawned upon me beforehand, but was driven home during the conference was a new idea on pitching viral marketing to a client based on the value of the links that are naturally attracted.

Branding is a bonus
I must first say that I barely believe in branding. I understand the concept, and I’m sure there is value to it, but since I can’t measure it well enough…I don’t like it. I don’t like big brands that waste money in the commercial equivalent of political lobbying. If you have to pay to tell people how cool you are…you lose coolness points in my mind. This leaves me as a direct marketer. I love ROI tracking. I love analytics. I love seeing the bottom line and making it grow. Of course this isn’t always possible, but to me, branding is a bonus.

The SEO Lifecycle
I really enjoy link development. Well, let me re-state…I really enjoy TRAINING on doing link development. I have put in my time Link Serfing, and I still do from time to time to keep my skills in the area strong. There is nothing like coming across a nice strong link with a lot of googlejuice flowing and getting them to vote for your site through a simple e-mail. Little link serf’s have grown up all over the world from sending requests for a backlink to becoming CEO’s of million dollar companies. The power of a good link is enormous. The understanding of this power has lowered the barrier to entry to nearly all industries, creating a unique window of opportunity for those that stumbled accross it.

In order to be a good SEO, you must understand how to value links. In order to truly appreciate the value of a good link, you must hunt for and acquire links for your site or someone elses. Link begging is a tough job. Link bartering isn’t all that much easier. As folks get better at these jobs they learn negotiation skills, SEO skills, networking skills, and much more. As their skills improve, there is the expectations of advancement. If these expectations are not met in a company setting, the link serf will continue the stages of the SEO lifecycle, and the best of them will go on to become their own business owners, or self employed.

Link Monger’s Anonymous
1. We admit we are powerless over links — our lives have become unmanagemeable trying to measure everything in toolbar PageRank.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and that someday algorithms will no longer rely so heavily on a link popularity which is a ballot box that we can stuff, but more likely something with a much higher barrier to entry that will restore the balance of power back to those who have maintained control for so long already in all nature of industry.

3. Made a decision to return to sticky content development with a focus on natural link acquisition.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our backlinks.

5. Admitted to Google, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of how unnaturally acquiring links can be wrong.

6. Were entirely ready to have Google remove any sites that were artificially inflated by off-topic links that did not occur “naturally”

7. Humbly asked folks at Google to reconsider relevancy - that it can sometimes be commercially defined (as in the case of Bill Gross inventing PPC) and asked that they redefine their concept of legitimate advertising to include the use of relevant text link advertising for the benefit of improving search engine rankings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed through reciprocal linking, suggestion of linking schemes, and links pages, and became willing to make amends to them all if only by explaining to them how search engines work these days.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal link inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through e-mail and message boards to improve our communication with Google and other search engiens, as we understood it, asking only for consideration of relevant text link advertising and it passing link popularity to help sites rank.

12. Having had a webmaster/SEO/marketing professional awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to link mongers everywhere, and to practice these principles in all our development so that webmasters/SEO’s/marketing professionals will be viewed in a more positive light despite their link mongering tendancies.

So What’s This Got to Do with Viral Marketing?
Well, it is basically me trying to bid farewell to link mongering. I love links. From directories to reciprocals, bought, borrowed, begged, and bartered, links have been excellent to me. I have, however, always been one to look for the easier way of doing things. I’ve also always been a guy who liked good ideas. It’s sometimes hard to pitch good ideas to people, and even harder yet to monetize them to make it profitable. In my mind, viral marketing has become the easy way to get links. If you understand social dynamics and what will be widely adopted, you have a much better chance at creating a successful website through linkbaiting than through hours and hours of link development. (Hmmm…I’m starting to sound like the “create good content militia”).

Now this is not to say that I don’t like link development. I think it still has it’s place along with just about every other type of link. Links aren’t going to hurt you as long as there is a natural distribution of the different types linking to your site. Link buying, press releases, presell pages, etc. are just a piece of the puzzle. Someone who’s been a link developer, however, understands the immense value of a good viral marketing campaign if only for the links. Make it easy for people to link to you. Maximize the benefit of your links in the same ways that you would if you were requesting them directly. Steer the nature of the link to benefit you the most with incentive based viral marketing.

Link development alone won’t make you millions. SEO is not a silver bullet. The understanding of the fundamental principles, however, help to visualize bigger more creative ideas that can make a site “tip” to achieve critical mass. Understanding that paying $50 per link per month for several dozen a good link will cost you tens of thousands in a year (and for the right links may have two to several dozen times ROI through their value in the SERPs), sure make that viral campaign that make cost 10, 20, 30 times your link development initially seem much more attractive. It makes it much easier to do the math if you understand the numbers.