Inbound Marketing for Startups in 2011: Earning great traffic w/o spending a fortune dime

Inbound Marketing for Startups in 2011:Earning great traffic w/o spending a fortune dime

Rand Fishkin, CEO & Co-founder, SEOmozFebruary 2011

Our only marketing expense? Flights + hotels for conferences/eventsMore at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-history-of-seomoz

How’d You Do That?

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-rich-get-richer-true-in-seo-social-all-organic-marketing

Blogs + Blogging

Comment Marketing

News/Media/PRSEO

Social Networks

Word of Mouth

Q+A Sites

Forums

Online Video

Podcasting

Webinars

Research/White Papers

Infographics

Social Bookmarking

INBOUND MARKETING!(AKA “free” traffic sources)

Direct/Referring Links

Type-In Traffic

Email

It all starts with

Content Marketing

A Blog We Update Every Day

“Viral” Targeted Content

http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

“Viral” Targeted Content

http://guides.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-search-engine-optimization

“Viral” Targeted Content

http://www.seomoz.org/seo-industry-survey

Graphics + Illustrations

A Weekly Video Series

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/category/33

Build it and they’ll come?

Nope. Build it, then market it.

Comments + Conversations

Social Networks

Data and charts of our Facebook and Twitter account performance via http://export.ly

Social News / Bookmarking

http://news.ycombinator.com, http://delicious.com, http://stumbleupon.com and http://reddit.com have historically performed best for us, but you should test results

Q+A Sites / Forums

Conferences + Events

SEO

Email Marketing

We use/love http://www.mailchimp.com (who now has a cool free option for early stage folks)

Let’s get specific with some

Advanced Tactics

Involve a Sharing-Incented Community

The brilliant strategy by http://www.urbanspoon.com made them one of the biggest players in the local restaurant business and got them acquired by IAC

Design Like an “Award Winner”

Check out http://google.com/search?q=css+gallery for tons of great galleries and inspiration

“Skip” the Competitive SERPs

Leverage the QDF Algorithm

Watch the actual commercial at: http://www.hulu.com/adzone2011#50120562

Investigate the Competition’s Top Content

Sort of a shameless plug, but http://www.opensiteexplorer.org is the best way to do this

Examples of more startups that

Rock Inbound Marketing

OKCupid

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

EngineYard

Engineyard does awesome stuff on their blog, job board + site in general – http://www.engineyard.com

Mint.com

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dating/

Adioso

Adioso’s microsite for Valentine’s Day is here – http://howmuchdoyouheartme.com

Visual Website Optimizer

http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/

The Inbound Marketing process

In 4 Simple Steps

Step #1: Discover

Step #2:Test

Step #3: Measure

Step #4: Repeat

Find inbound marketing paths that look promising and make a list.

Invest a few days/hours building authentic value in that niche/sector.

Use your web analytics to track primary + second-order impact

Throw out low ROI projects; repeat high ROI ones.

Q+ARand Fishkin, CEO & Co-Founder, SEOmoz

• Twitter: @randfish

• Blog: www.seomoz.org/blog

• Email: rand@seomoz.org