Rand Fishkin, the founder of the awesome SEO software and tools company SEOMoz, recently gave this excellent presentation at a Hackers and Founders meetup that makes a case for inbound marketing and provides actionable things to attract customers through this channel. If you haven’t tried SEOMoz, they have a free 30 day trial that is worth checking out (affiliate link).
Here are some key takeaways from the presentation:
- People don’t like interruptive ads.
- Having a remarkable product, like a USB Doomsday Device, makes it easy to earn links and social shares.
- Search is one of the most popular online activities – 92% of internet users do search.
- In the last year Google saw one of their highest levels of growth in the number of searches.
- Search sends highly qualified, highly targeted traffic.
- Kimpton Hotels fulfilled a request of a customer who requested kittens and Reese’s Pieces and the story made it on Reddit, which received a lot of attention.
- The first position on Reddit can send 40,000 visitors in an hour.
- Create content that people can embed on their site with a link to you like the Simply Hired trend graphs.
- Simply Measured can export your Twitter followers into Excel which can be used to request links.
- Followerwonk can be a great way to find and build relationships with journalists who cover your sector.
- Reward the person who is referred like DropBox.
- Creating a list of top blogs or sites can earn you links.
SEOMoz provides a ton of free resources for learning about search engine optimization including a great Q&A feature that allows you to ask the community any questions you have. I highly recommend their free guides like the Beginner’s Guide to SEO and The Professional Guide to Linkbuilding. They also have an awesome weekly free video series called Whiteboard Friday which has grown to hundreds of informative videos. Their webinars are top-notch and provide great information and tips on SEO.