Link building mediocre to great
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The document discusses moving from mediocre to great in business. It suggests beginning with discovering your strengths and weaknesses through techniques like the "5 whys." There are three main problems that can lead to mediocrity: not doing anything, not doing the right things, and not acknowledging weaknesses. To go from good to great, businesses must cultivate their strengths and spikes of amazing performance. The document provides tools to assess strengths and weaknesses across different areas of a business compared to competitors and aspirations.
![WILL CRITCHLOW
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Pitch a big idea and a small next step
[Also – set up a learnch with colleagues]](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/linkbuildingmediocretogreat-120409164845-phpapp01/85/Link-building-mediocre-to-great-82-320.jpg)
Link building mediocre to great
- 1. Mediocre to Great WILL CRITCHLOW
- 2. WILL CRITCHLOW http://dis.tl/website-survey (Take a copy, then you can access the form)
- 3. WILL CRITCHLOW Start with the “5 whys” WHY? Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mloberg/5055462314/
- 4. WILL CRITCHLOW Quickly modified to the “3 or 4 whys” Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lasse_chr/2063315220/
- 5. WILL CRITCHLOW There are 3 main problems I see Not doing Not doing Not anything enough / the acknowledging right things weaknesses
- 6. WILL CRITCHLOW There is a rarer problem right at the top … Not cultivating spiky enough spikes
- 7. Mediocre to Good Mainly about activity and removing gaps / barriers WILL CRITCHLOW
- 8. Good to Great More about cultivating spikes of amazing WILL CRITCHLOW
- 9. WILL CRITCHLOW Discover
- 10. WILL CRITCHLOW Discover what it’s going to take
- 11. WILL CRITCHLOW Discover where your strengths and weaknesses lie
- 12. WILL CRITCHLOW Pitch
- 13. WILL CRITCHLOW Agency types: I don’t mean “only start getting paid after this”
- 14. WILL CRITCHLOW Experiment
- 15. WILL CRITCHLOW Invest
- 16. WILL CRITCHLOW Let’s dive into the details
- 17. WILL CRITCHLOW Discover
- 18. WILL CRITCHLOW Ever graded anything out of 5? 1 2 3 4 5 • 5% of • Almost • Almost • Almost • Arrogant responses no-one no-one everyone few Better than average, but could be better
- 19. WILL CRITCHLOW We live in an “exceptional takes all” world Source: http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in-mobile-phone-profitability-and-revenues/ Apple at one stage had 9% of the handset market but 75% of the industry’s gross margin
- 20. WILL CRITCHLOW Yes, that Y-axis is in $billions Source: http://barefigur.es/
- 21. WILL CRITCHLOW
- 22. WILL CRITCHLOW No experience: I don't know about this area / haven't worked on this / it isn't relevant to my role
- 23. WILL CRITCHLOW Basic competence: I have done some work in this area.You can delegate me tasks but I may need support or I may have a few questions
- 24. WILL CRITCHLOW Core competence: I am rarely stumped in this area and can handle poorly-defined tasks with no worries. I can teach, train and manage others' work in this area.
- 25. WILL CRITCHLOW “Distilled expert”: I am one of a small number of people everyone in Distilled turns to with “1%” problems in this area
- 26. WILL CRITCHLOW Renowned expert: I am acknowledged outside Distilled for being right at the top in this area
- 27. WILL CRITCHLOW I created a self-assessment for websites Permission Design Content Investment USPs assets
- 28. WILL CRITCHLOW
- 29. WILL CRITCHLOW None / N/A: Not something you do (successfully)
- 30. WILL CRITCHLOW Basic competitiveness: You invest time and money in this area
- 31. WILL CRITCHLOW Core competitiveness: You keep pace with and occasionally outstrip competitors in this area. In most areas, for most companies, this will be as good as it gets
- 32. WILL CRITCHLOW Industry leader: Known for being at or very near the top of all sites in your industry in this area
- 33. WILL CRITCHLOW Internet leader: An impartial observer has selected you as a case study / example of excellence in this area across all niches online.
- 34. WILL CRITCHLOW “Internet leader” Many companies achieve nothing rated this highly and it will be exceptionally unusual to score this highly in multiple areas.
- 35. WILL CRITCHLOW Internet leader: An impartial observer has selected you as a case study / example of excellence in this area across all niches online. Get used to it, a conflation of “good” and “famous” is just how the world works
- 36. WILL CRITCHLOW
- 37. WILL CRITCHLOW
- 38. WILL CRITCHLOW http://dis.tl/website-survey (Take a copy, then you can access the form)
- 39. WILL CRITCHLOW Important: score on an exponential scale
- 40. WILL CRITCHLOW We see interesting things from the plot
- 41. WILL CRITCHLOW Of course it doesn’t explain all variation National brand outperforming their website’s “quality”
- 42. WILL CRITCHLOW We should really think of it as dynamic Startup with great site and products that hasn’t won loads of links (yet)
- 43. WILL CRITCHLOW Action: line yourself up against competitors Conditional formatting is your friend
- 44. WILL CRITCHLOW Action: compare to aspirations Conditional formatting is your friend Arena Flowers Oyster These are the easiest areas to change in the short term
- 45. WILL CRITCHLOW Arena Flowers is investing in content http://www.arenaflowers.com/video_campaigns/dubstep_flowers My advice? Don’t stop doing this, but focus hard on how you can build permission assets out of it – particularly repeat visitors to the site.
- 46. WILL CRITCHLOW What would I focus on for Oyster? In some ways harder to work out how to move the needle Oyster Digging deeper into this, we see some spikes (non-commercial email list and influencer relationships) and some gaps (community / UGC). I would double-down on the spikes before addressing the gaps.
- 47. WILL CRITCHLOW Sometimes you need someone else to tell you
- 48. WILL CRITCHLOW - @willcritchlow See the Whiteboard Friday: Replicating Google’s Panda Questionnaire
- 49. WILL CRITCHLOW Plotting direct visitors against linking root domains is interesting “how to write a blog post” Targeted bloggers “how many links should an infographic get” Much more likely to get tweeted
- 50. WILL CRITCHLOW Funny vs. Interesting http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/how-to-write-a-blog-post/ http://www.distilled.net/blog/reputation-monitor/how-many-links-should-an-infographic-get/
- 51. WILL CRITCHLOW How?
- 52. WILL CRITCHLOW Pages report filtered to content you’re interested in Choose the subset of content you want to analyse
- 53. WILL CRITCHLOW First, get unique visitors (direct traffic segment) Make sure # results is greater than number of rows, then export to TSV Remember this number for later
- 54. WILL CRITCHLOW Then get domains linking to that content Then export to TSV again
- 55. WILL CRITCHLOW You want to change sub-domains to root domains There is no way of doing this algorithmically. I whitelisted a few TLDs and then stripped any sub-domains that didn’t match. I didn’t need it to be perfect.
- 56. WILL CRITCHLOW Those aren’t all followed links! I don’t care. Traffic sent by links is still one of my favourite metrics for judging a link’s worth. Zero traffic = meh Lots of traffic even if nofollow = much more interest
- 57. WILL CRITCHLOW A bit of Excel gets you linking domains and unique PV (direct segment) for each piece of content
- 58. WILL CRITCHLOW Put both axes on a log scale to see detail “how to write a blog post” Targeted bloggers “how many links should an infographic get” Much more likely to get tweeted
- 59. WILL CRITCHLOW ~0.5% of visitors link to our blog content (from a new domain)
- 60. WILL CRITCHLOW Surprisingly high correlation on many sites (This is SEOmoz) Web developers cheat sheet
- 61. WILL CRITCHLOW ~0.4% of visitors link to SEOmoz blog content (from a new domain)
- 62. WILL CRITCHLOW The main reason we have fewer links than SEOmoz is that fewer people see our content
- 63. WILL CRITCHLOW Some other similar things you could measure
- 64. WILL CRITCHLOW Average number of referring domains per piece of content
- 65. WILL CRITCHLOW Average number of new referring domains per piece of content
- 66. WILL CRITCHLOW Average number of new pieces of content getting links each month
- 67. WILL CRITCHLOW Actions Try out my self-assessment Benchmark against key competitors Benchmark against aspirations Compare gaps in quality to gaps in performance Run the analytics stats to get baselines
- 68. WILL CRITCHLOW Take this kind of thing into the next stage Arena Flowers Oyster These are the easiest areas to change in the short term
- 69. WILL CRITCHLOW Pitch
- 70. WILL CRITCHLOW Example of pitching to (existing) client Details changed to protect the innocent
- 71. WILL CRITCHLOW Recently pitched a “travel big picture”
- 72. WILL CRITCHLOW Big photography works. Lightning strikes repeatedly
- 73. WILL CRITCHLOW You have (and can get) amazing photos Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizacole/2628863845/
- 74. WILL CRITCHLOW It scales beautifully – endless themes Colours, landscapes, animals, beaches, people, etc. Link: http://pinterest.com/nicolewaites/drive-until-the-map-turns-blue/
- 75. WILL CRITCHLOW But start with an experiment We might be wrong (more about launchrock later)
- 76. WILL CRITCHLOW Business model comparisons A metaphor business people understand
- 77. WILL CRITCHLOW Content library = Physical real estate Drives footfall to point of sale. Lets great product do its job Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coda/74796428/in/photostream/
- 78. WILL CRITCHLOW Good conversion rate = Efficient supply chain Gives you pricing power and / or allows a bigger marketing spend Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crawfishpie/489771072/
- 79. WILL CRITCHLOW Lifestyle business vs. Growth company Is there scalability and flywheel potential in your link building strategy?
- 80. WILL CRITCHLOW We run through HBR case studies at lunchtime
- 81. WILL CRITCHLOW Some are even directly relevant to pitching http://hbr.org/2010/01/how-i-did-it-aflacs-ceo-explains-how-he-fell-for-the-duck/ar/1
- 82. WILL CRITCHLOW Actions Pitch a big idea and a small next step [Also – set up a learnch with colleagues]
- 83. WILL CRITCHLOW Take sign-off on experiments to the next stage
- 84. WILL CRITCHLOW Experiment
- 85. WILL CRITCHLOW To find out what works for you To prove what works to someone else
- 86. WILL CRITCHLOW “I can’t stop reading this analysis of Gawker’s editorial strategy”http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/03/i-cant-stop-reading-this-analysis-of-gawkers-editorial-strategy/
- 87. SPEAKER NAME - EDIT FOOTER 33 percent fewer posts; 40 percent greater traffic Kerry Lauerman, Editor in Chief, Salon.com Source: http://open.salon.com/blog/kerry_lauerman/2012/02/03/hit_record
- 88. WILL CRITCHLOW GE has an award for “ambitious failed projects” More info: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/Appointments/article670525.ece Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/4204934214/ Jeff Immelt, Chairman of GE, cultivator of spikes
- 89. WILL CRITCHLOW Career tip – show your boss this clip: “how quickly the world owes him something”
- 90. WILL CRITCHLOW The MVP isn’t what you think it is (if you haven’t actually read the book)
- 91. WILL CRITCHLOW On-track on the hockey stick “On track” over here cannot (should not) be “successfully made no money yet”
- 92. WILL CRITCHLOW Use tools like launchrock.com
- 93. WILL CRITCHLOW This page has a 40% conversion rate
- 94. WILL CRITCHLOW We built it in 10 minutes www.distilled.net/store/u
- 95. WILL CRITCHLOW Also love kickofflabs.com
- 96. WILL CRITCHLOW Good excuse for off-site creativity
- 97. WILL CRITCHLOW A brief look at the stats
- 98. WILL CRITCHLOW It even ranked (was #1 when the news broke)
- 99. WILL CRITCHLOW Actions Read The Lean Startup Take one element of your big vision and launch an MVP experiment ASAP (what could you launch on Monday?) Update reports to include the metrics your experiments are focussed on
- 100. WILL CRITCHLOW Take the evidence and ideas to the next stage
- 101. WILL CRITCHLOW Invest
- 102. WILL CRITCHLOW Checklists help us win Since last time, I’ve actually read the book. Key (new) take-aways: • Use shorter checklists • Communication checklists are a good idea • Ask “what should we do if that goes wrong?”
- 103. WILL CRITCHLOW Excerpt from our creative ideas checklist • Can you find 10 target sites in 10 minutes? • Have they linked out to content like this before?
- 104. WILL CRITCHLOW Making plans
- 105. WILL CRITCHLOW Inputs: SERPs / Competitor identification Competitor tactics (What are they doing? What works? Where are they winning?)
- 106. WILL CRITCHLOW Outputs: Activity plan (with activity targets) Testable assumptions (activity results & results outcomes)
- 107. WILL CRITCHLOW Measure progress towards your plans Who hates planning? I thought I did, then I realised I hate plans See this presentation for more of my thoughts on that: http://www.slideshare.net/willcritchlow/metrics-that-matter
- 108. WILL CRITCHLOW Discover what you need to improve and to win Pitch big visions and small next steps Experiment to find ways to improve and to persuade Invest with evidence and experience in hand
- 109. Thank You Any Questions? WILL CRITCHLOW