When I saw the first promotional article about an upcoming book on women and work from the COO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg, I was very excited. I pre-ordered a Kindle edition. And as I waited for the launch date of Lean In: Women and the Will to Lead, I saw lots more articles, many of them vehemently stating that, one way or another, Sheryl Sandberg had got it wrong.

Eventually my own copy arrived, and as I read it I was pleasantly surprised. I found it deeply resonant on a personal level with my own experiences and recent self-development goals – largely in regard to issues surrounding confidence. The book is basically a 240-page pep talk on having the confidence to negotiate, to put oneself forward for promotions, to take on bigger responsibilities, even if they are outside of one’s comfort zone, to ask for help…and also for women to aspire to the top levels of their respective industries. Even better, it’s a pep talk which is bolstered by pages and pages of statistics and data, and notes about the studies from which the data came (on my Kindle, the final 40% of the book was taken up with references). And surprisingly, despite the often depressing statistics, the end result was inspiring and uplifting. When I finished reading it, I wanted to tell everyone I knew, male and female, that they should read it too.

In particular, certain stories and/or phrases stuck with me, and I find myself thinking about these points again and again and talking about them to anyone who will listen:

“the tiara syndrome”: For me, the great value in this book lies in the reminder to have confidence in my abilities and the courage to take available opportunities. Sandberg provides surprising statistics showing that a majority of women are likely to apply for a job or a promotion only if they feel that they meet 100% of the criteria, while men are likely to apply with only 60% of those skills. This mentality leads to what Sandberg calls the “tiara syndrome”, whereby we wait for our managers to notice our hard work and give us a “tiara”. It’s the career version of waiting for Prince Charming. Instead, we should be thinking of ways to create and put ourselves forward for these “stretch opportunities”.

creative approaches to self-promotion: There seems to be a bias against women who seem too self-promotional, and women are more often expected to be purely team players in contrast to men. This contributes to the difficulties women have in pay negotiations (in the US, women are paid on average 70 cents for every dollar that a man makes) and in obtaining promotions, even when they do reach out and put themselves forward. So sometimes we need to find creative ways to let people know about the good work we’re doing. Sandberg gives the example of a group of women who worked together at the same company, and had regular lunches where they would discuss recent achievements and goals. Afterwards, it was easy for them to praise each other’s work to managers and colleagues, and because they were all praising others rather than pointing to their own accomplishments, the praise was better received. I love this idea, and I hope that more people will start doing things like this.

‘if you have to ask someone to be your mentor, the answer is probably no’: Women (and men) in senior positions can help to even out the gender balance in upper management through mentoring and sponsorship. And yet, Sandberg says, young women often miss the point about what a mentor is, reaching out to strangers rather than colleagues or friends. As she puts it, ‘If you have to ask, the answer is probably no.’ My understanding of this point is that a good mentoring relationship develops from mutual interests and goals. Ideally, if you work with someone whom you really admire, you can learn from them through conversation and asking questions. And, also ideally, the mentor would find it stimulating and learn from the experience as well. If you’re genuinely interested in them as a person rather than just as a ‘senior woman who can help my career’, this mentor/mentee relationship can develop naturally (assuming they are willing to talk and answer questions). The relationship is more ‘friendly’ than a pure business relationship. Sandberg encourages all senior employees, male and female, to find ways of encouraging and supporting junior female employees, and equally for young women just starting out to seek out those whom they admire for guidance (but not necessarily ‘scheduled mentoring time’).

women can be biased against women too: Sandberg encourages both women and men to consider whether they might be allowing a gender bias to creep into their perceptions of female colleagues and employees. As Sandberg points out, if a woman manager feels negatively towards a potential employee or a female colleague up for a promotion, the question of gender bias is far less likely to come up than it would if the manager were male. And yet Sandberg discusses studies in which women were just as likely as men to be subject to such a bias. In one example, both male and female participants were found to judge the highly successful subject of a case study as less desirable to work with when the person had a female name, versus the same person with a male name, despite the achievements and attributes of the case study subject being identical.

focus on the things we can fix most easily, namely our internal barriers, and we’ll be better positioned to address the external barriers: Sandberg gives a memorable example of this concept in a personal anecdote. Working at Google during her first pregnancy, she realised that there were no special parking spots reserved for pregnant mothers. Because of her position and close relationship with the company’s founders, she felt able to mention this problem and now Google has dedicated pregnancy parking. If she had not been in such a high-level position she might have been afraid to speak up and ask. And it was only when she herself became pregnant that she noticed the lack of special parking. None of the male executives objected to the idea, but it simply hadn’t occurred to them because it wasn’t an issue which affected them personally.

This certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t fight against the external barriers at the same time as the internal ones; it doesn’t mean that these external barriers don’t exist; they do, and they are difficult to overcome. But this story is nevertheless a good reminder that the best way to effect change is to be in a position where people are willing to listen to you.

‘don’t leave before you leave’: This is one of my favourite lines in the book, because I relate to it so much. It basically means, don’t talk yourself out of opportunities which are being offered because you’re planning for a possible future instead of living in the present. This section of the book is specifically addressed to women who are thinking of having children in the future and are worried about how to plan for this time, often 5-10 years away, but the advice is equally applicable to any potential major life change.

Often women will hesitate to take on a big career opportunity if they are concerned that they won’t be able to maintain the workload once they have a family. Sandberg tells the story of a young woman at Facebook who was asking lots of in-depth questions about how to balance work and family. When Sandberg asked why, the woman explained that she liked to plan ahead. Sandberg asked the woman if she and her partner were considering having a child, to which ‘she replied that she did not have a husband, then added with a little laugh, “Actually, I don’t even have a boyfriend”.’

Sandberg argues that this approach is problematic, because it prevents young women from attaining the levels of which they are capable before taking time out for their–as yet non-existent–families (and thereby often putting a career on temporary hold). Rather, she argues that the decision to ‘lean back’ should wait until you are actually starting your family. Sandberg states that ‘women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decisions along the way.’ We need to stop shooting ourselves in the foot by planning for family leave before we are even close to having a family.

respect everyone’s choices and don’t judge those with different goals: Some people believe that Sandberg’s exhortation to women to “lean in” implies a one-size-fits-all approach to women’s careers. They worry that she wants all women to aspire to be top-level executives, and there is no place in Sandberg’s world for the many women who choose to “lean back” for family and personal reasons, for those who do not want to attempt to “have it all”, or for those to whom the C-suite is simply not an appealing goal. But for me, one of the most reassuring aspects of the book was Sandberg’s emphasis on supporting every woman (and man)’s choices, whether career- or family-orientated. As she states,

‘There are many powerful reasons to exit the workforce. Being a stay-at-home parent is a wonderful … choice for many people.  …I fully support any man or woman who dedicates his or her life to raising the next generation. It is important and demanding and joyful work.’ [emphasis mine]

This book is simply trying to encourage the women who do, and should, have those aspirations to reach out and take the opportunities that they see. Sandberg states that every woman should have the right to choose her own path and not feel guilty, looked down on or judged by anyone for how she decides to live. And to me that is the most powerful statement that any book about women and work can make.

equality for women means equality for men: A last minor point which Sandberg makes is that once we stop judging women on whether or not they are ‘having it all’ with their career and living up to a domestic ideal of the perfect wife and mother, we will also stop judging men. She points out that stay-at-home dads often face as much, if not more, judgment for their choice, even from their fellow SAH mothers. True equality in the workplace will also mean that no one, whether a man or a woman, will have to be judged for choosing a different or unusual option.

On a final note, I would like to briefly discuss how the message of this book can help women in our own SEO/digital marketing industry, because in some ways the women in this industry are uniquely positioned to take on board the call to “lean in”. The fact that Sandberg’s career took off at Google and led her to Facebook is telling. She is a product of a digital and tech environment. These industries straddle a strange divide between the male-dominated fields of computer science and web development and a culture of flexibility, innovation and rapid growth and change (for instance, Sandberg describes how during her time at Google she could leave the office at 5pm to eat dinner with her family, and return to work later in the evening). We can have greater leeway than most for this type of schedule, with the possibility of flexible working hours and remote working.

Women in the SEO/digital marketing industry are often underrepresented at conferences – particularly as speakers – and as industry authorities more generally, although some of the top performers in our industry are women. But one of the great benefits of the internet-based community which is naturally found in this industry is the ability to demonstrate knowledge and establish authority in a more democratic way, without being forced to wait for our “tiaras” to be given to us. There are exciting opportunities available, and despite the equally apparent barriers, it is time for those of us who are still waiting to make the resolution to reach out and lean in.

———-

Have you read Lean In? Do you agree/disagree with the points it makes? Do you have ideas for how women in the SEO/digital marketing industry can overcome internal and external barriers to professional success?
I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

I first met Bridget a few months ago and realised what a smart chick she is, so when she asked if she could do a guest post on SEO Chicks about the much debated book “Lean in”, I said “heck yeah”. Once I read the blogpost I realised she is right up the SEO Chicks street and should be a regular blogger. We offered her a place on the team, she accepted, and TADA here she is. Don’t miss her first post with the review of the book Lean-In by Sheryl Sandberg. Also make sure you follow Bridget on Twitter.

Bridget, welcome to the SEO Chicks blogging crew! May the force be with you!

I’ve been looking up a host of analytics questions this month – from APIs and integration to dashboards and segments. One minute I’ve just got a quick practical question to double check and the next I’m 2 hours immersed in a world of analytics tidbits that I hadn’t realised.

Then SEO Chick Anna posted some great new tricks and tips on using Google Analytics quickly and effectively - some great keyboard shortcuts in there! It occurred to me that we haven’t really had a roundup of useful analytics posts in some time. And boy are there are a lot out there. So here, to make your lives easier and save you the time I spent getting caught up in a Googling cycle, here are some of the top tips I thought should be shared more. NB. I’m not taking credit for these great posts, I just felt it was about time somebody pulled them together in once place.

1. Analytics PR Dashboard (or why making your own dashboards is a must)

This popped up in my Google Reader the other day and it’s a really great, simple tool that saves us just that little bit of time. I’m a big advocate of building dashboards for clients/bosses. I’ve found that allowing them that immediate access any time they like gets them off my back more and helps them to understand my tasks a lot more. The dashboards should never be in-depth but should provide an ‘at-a-glance’ insight into the site’s performance.

What I’d never really done was take that one step further and break down those dashboards to be targeted at individual needs within a given company. Justin Cutroni of Lunametrics and analytics halls of fame has done exactly that with his nifty little PR Dashboard for Google Analytics. It’s simple, there’s nothing fancy about it and it integrates everything PRs would be interested in at a glance. This includes: Traffic & Conversions from key social sources, Top referring website (exc. social), Number of social shares, etc. Working in a large media agency, that incorporates PR as part of its services, I can say that it is a huge benefit to be able to offer up simple and understandable data, quickly!

And this is just the beginning, the key now is take Justin’s simple and idea and feed that out across all of the key stakeholders. The theory is the same across clients, and for a small amount of effort, you get happy clients/bosses that feel that they have something bespoke and individual to them – that they can understand! I speak from current experience when I say it works.

2. Using Analytics to Track Your Link Building Traffic (or why traffic-generating links are the future)

Another great post from our very own Anna Lewis  over at Search Engine Watch, with helpful tips on how to set up filters within GA to allow you to specifically track traffic generated from links you have built for an SEO purpose. I wanted to include this pointer as it’s a timely reminder of what it is we’re trying to do with our SEO.

Link building is no longer just about link building, it’s crucial to get those relevant, and traffic driving, links that actually mean something for your site. Gone are the days when referral traffic was ‘somebody else’s’ business!

Top tool tip here is SEO Tools for Excel, a nifty little tool that quickly and easily allows you to pivot your data and turn it into something meaningful. I’ve been using this tool a lot recently and am a big fan (NB. if you’re stuck behind a company proxy, it can take a bit of fiddling). Also, see image below, that I took from Anna’s post – a simple example of useful the tool is.

3. Tracking Google Image Search (or why GWT data needs questioning)

Next up is a nice post from Blind Five Year Old,  on tracking image search using filters in GA. I really love the post as it’s:

a) a very simple and elegant solution based on image search referrers that fixes an issue in GA that really bugs me and

b) reinforces the point that we should be happy to use Webmaster Tools data just because it’s easily provided. It never matches up with GA and we should question this as much as possible.

c) allows us to then draw our own conclusions

The trick is simple to base filter (that also provide intact keyword data) to the image search referrer that is not lost from click to visit. So simple I can’t believe I didn’t think of it earlier.

Go forth and filter!

4. A Whole Bunch of Advanced Segments Set Up For Really Really Lazy People (or why sometimes time savers are good)

And lastly, just because I like to help those time-poor (read: LAZY) people among you out there, here’s a whole list of advanced segments set up and ready for you to use at will all packaged up for you nicely by Penguin Initiatives.

Included among these are basic but crucial daily segments such as filtering (not provided) traffic, new visitors that visited more than three pages aka. FANS, and a variety of mobile device segments broken down across all options.

Now none of these are difficult to set up and I’d always recommend you familiarise yourself with your options, setting up your own segments based on your unique business needs. Having said that, I love posts where someone has bothered to pull together a whole bunch of time-saving opportunities so it felt right that I should share.

It’s the lazy man’s cheat sheet: not to be relied on but a great backup to have!

5. GA Tip of the Day (or why you can never know too much)

Last but not least, I wanted to point you in the direction of a website I only recently discovered (am I really behind??), aptly named GA Tip of the Day.

It does exactly what it says on the tin, well not quite – it’s not quite a tip per day but still, it’s great to have an ongoing feed on actionable tips and tricks to keep your GA account in ship shape condition. Some tips are more technical than others, many you may already know, but any tip that you might pick up out of the ones that remind you  that you already know them is a good thing right?

I saw a tip about seeing all of your GA annotations in a list rather than individually. May sound slightly ridiculous but I found this really useful and had no idea I could do it!

Sign up…. what’s the worst that can happen?!

As you might expect my approach to management has changed quite a bit over the years. Similarly my thinking on what makes a ‘good’ manager has also changed.

With this mind, I wanted to share something with you…

It was Steve and Tim‘s very first day at Distilled. They’d be reporting in to me. They’d been through the usual initial induction stuff and were busily trying to install and set up the various tools and apps we use, in addition to battling with Windows 8.

They started at Distilled on Monday 4th March. On the Thursday of that week  (7th) I was due to be flying out to speak at a conference in Italy and wouldn’t be returning to the office until Tuesday (12th). The following Friday (15th) I was down to speak at Distilled’s own conference, LinkLove.

I needed to prep 3 decks (I was speaking twice in Italy), practice said decks, and of course make sure both Steve and Tim were settling in ok, had work to do etc. I also needed to make sure Phil who also reports to me was ok with his client work, not to mention delivering work for my own clients too.

In an attempt to kill several birds with one stone I decided to do a run through of my LinkLove deck in front of our new recruits, plus colleagues Phil and Bridget who kindly offered to sit in and offer feedback.

I’d tried to manage everyone’s expectations ahead of time by highlighting that it was likely to be a pretty shaky run through; however that was kind of the point. In my experience the earlier you present your deck to others, the earlier you get the lowdown on what’s good, bad and just plain ugly – you can then make a bunch of changes and you end up with a much stronger deck as a result.

Sadly the run through which followed could only be described as an unmitigated disaster.

Seriously. It was horrible.

I’d prepared 150 slides for a 30 minute speaking slot which I somehow whizzed through at break-neck speed in less than 15 minutes. Part way through I kind of lost track of one of the points I was trying to make and said something like:

I’m definitely trying to make some sort of point here but I’ve no idea what it is. Screw it, I’m just going to move on.

Virtually nothing about the deck or my performance worked. My introduction was weak. There was no story arc – it was a weirdly ordered unrelenting list of tips. I made jokes which weren’t funny. I failed to engage with the audience. Or my material. There was no conclusion.

Did I mention it was horrible? Oh yes, I did… But it bears repeating – it was HORRIBLE.

So what’s the point? Where’s the punchline?

Sure, totally screwing up a presentation run through in front of new recruits on their first day isn’t perhaps the worst thing that’s ever happened. But I’ve yet to read the ’7 habits of highly effective managers’ post which touts:

Inspire your team by messing something up really badly. Bonus points for making them feel very awkward by asking them to try and constructively critique where you went wrong.

Now I still don’t feel great about what happened.

However rewind 5 years ago I would have beaten myself up about this for months. Back then I had very strong views on what constituted ‘good’ and ‘bad’ managers. ‘Good’ managers certainly didn’t show themselves up like I’d just done. They were inspiring, strong, and together. There’s just no way a ‘good’ manager would have let that happen. A ‘good’ manager would have been better prepared, would have practiced more, would have delivered a *killer* presentation even when they were only supposed to be doing a run through.

That’s all true, however, there are some good things which have come out of this.

Both Steve and Tim have seen first hand that it’s ok to mess things up.

They will also have seen that Distilled is a ‘safe’ environment where you can be vulnerable (and trust me – all the time I was busily messing up the delivery of that deck I felt very vulnerable) and rather than being ridiculed, you’ll get constructive feedback and encouragement to improve.

Finally, I hope that they’ll have seen that sometimes you need to totally mess something up in order to figure out how to make something better.

I think if I’d have been better prepped for that run through I might just have convinced myself and my peers that the deck I’d worked on was pretty much there. I think it would have been a worse deck as a result.

Perhaps messing up might actually make you a better manager.

If (like me) you don’t want your direct reports to fear failure, you can tell them so. But perhaps it’s better to show them. Show them that just because you messed something up (in a right royal fashion I might add) doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world or that there’s nothing salvageable.

It means you’re actively exhibiting the behaviours you’d like to engender in those who report into you. I think that’s pretty powerful.

Over to you dear reader – does messing up make you a better manager?

Or am I busily trying to justify myself post the event?

Image credit – Keep Calm & Carry On

The post includes tips for setting up and using shortcuts, custom reports, dashboards, alerts and keyboard shortcuts – and nifty ways to combine and speed these up further.

As today’s post is all about speed I’ll dive straight in!

Shortcuts

I absolutely love the shortcuts feature! It enables you to save a shortcut to the report of your choice – with all the customisations applied, any advanced segments, filters, secondary dimensions – everything!

I used to find it very tedious to click all the way through to a specific report, apply the filters required and then wait for the results to load. Now all I have to do is click my shortcut link and wait half a second for it to load. The date is the only aspect that resets itself.

To set up a shortcut:

• Navigate to the report
• Apply filters, segments etc so that you’re viewing exactly what you want to save as the shortcut.
• Hit the shortcut link at the top

Now for the clever part! It’s all very well saving your shortcuts, but you then have to open Google Analytics, find the right account, click shortcuts and select the one you want to view. It is much quicker, but what’s even quicker is to set a bookmark up to the report in your browser! Then you are magically only one click away from your favourite or most important report.

I’m not going to calculate how many minutes I save a day through shortcuts, but rest assured, it adds up!

Alerts

To save yourself having to manually check a number of different reports regularly to spot any changes I recommend setting up alerts. With custom alerts you can get an email or even a text if the data sees a certain change. Decide which changes in data really matter to you and set up alerts accordingly.

Alerts could be for:

• Traffic increasing by a certain percentage
• Traffic from Google decreasing by a certain amount
• Social traffic spikes
• Pageviews decreasing
• Views of checkout page decreasing
• Increase in error pages being viewed

To set up Alerts, follow these steps:

• Open the account in the standard reporting area
• Click Intelligence Events
• Click Overview
• Click Custom Alerts
• Click Manage Custom Alerts
• Click Create New Alert
• Fill out the details and tick the box to send an email

My preferred Alert Conditions are % decreases by more than xx% compared to the same day in the previous week. This gives you a direct comparison with a similar day making it more tangible.

Having alerts allows you to sit back and not worry about the traffic or any website problems so much. It helps you work out if you’re losing traffic from Google or if key pages have problems.

The only downside is that you’re not emailed instantly, there can be a slight delay, but chances are you wouldn’t have spotted the changes yourself in that time through manual checks.

Custom Reports

Why check multiple reports throughout GA, with lots of navigational clicking and waiting for things to load, when you could combine all your key data in to one custom report and just check that?

Custom reports are good at being exactly that – Custom! Many businesses will have different focuses and various KPIs to keep an eye on, which means that Google Analytics is never going to be able to make the perfect report for your business, you will need to create it yourself.

A quick and easy way to set up a custom report is to find the most important report within the main interface and then hit the ‘Customize’ button. This allows you to edit the contents of the report to add or remove metrics. You can then add additional tabs with more data and even apply filters.

If you’ve not set up custom reports before don’t let the amount of available options confuse you, the green boxes are the dimensions (information to break the report down by) and the blue boxes are for metrics (the numbers you want), type in what you’re looking for to save scrolling through all the options every time.

The different sets of blue boxes, metric groups, are used for putting additional tabs in the report, using these gives you links above the graph. To have even more information in the report add report tabs at the top, these allow for a whole new report using different dimensions.

Then to speed things up even more you could set the custom report up as a short cut and bookmark it from your browser, speedy speedy!

If you don’t want to build one yourself, check out 10 valuable custom reports and 10 more valuable custom reports on Econsultancy, there are some very handy ones in the posts and comments.

There’s also:

http://www.customreportsharing.com/ – a forum for sharing custom reports

http://www.google.com/analytics/learn/solutions-gallery.html – Google’s own custom reports

Dashboards

Dashboards are a way of quickly highlighting ten top pieces of information of your choice. They’re perfect for getting a quick snapshot of information. Personally, I don’t think they always have enough information so I’d rather use a standard or custom report to get a bigger picture, but if you’re not after the full picture and just want core top level information then definitely set yourself up some dashboards.

I gave away a number of ready made dashboards in my talk at BrightonSEO in 2012, feel free to apply those to your account to get you started.

For additional ones there’s this great site: http://www.dashboardjunkie.com/

Keyboard Shortcuts

One final method for speeding up your Google Analytics use is keyboard shortcuts. They were only released recently and are still relatively unknown but very handy for those who are using them.

While in analytics press the ? key and you will see a list of the available shortcuts pop up:

Voilà!

Hopefully all of these tips combined will help you speed up your data gathering, allowing more time for in depth analysis and optimisation off the back of this to improve the results!

“No.” “That won’t work, here’s a list of all the bad things that will happen, there’s no way you won’t get screwed doing that.” If I wore tshirts with slogans and not just bands with dead members on them, I’d get some made with these emblazoned but of course the company would only muck it up.

So link footprints are always in my head when people either tell me the old methods they used (wow, some of you, just wow) or tell me their great ideas about what to do this month. Link footprints are much less likely to happen if you do just about nothing to build links, but if you do nothing, you’ll never get many links unless you’re an amazing big brand. There’s also not much of a distinction between how we all pursue links, as we have the same goal right? Links. Getting links. Building links. EARNING links. Building relationships, targeting our “pitches”…it’s still the same damn thing in the end.

I’m worried by people who don’t see that they will leave footprints and I’m worried by people who don’t care. Algorithms do change in response to patterns you know, especially patterns of abuse. So what if you’re not buying links and you’re only sending carefully researched bloggers a pitch to write about your product? If the only people writing about your product are stay at home moms who enjoy your specially-designed and patterned origami paper (is there such a thing? Surely the patterns would be bad for ori..oh never mind) then isn’t that a footprint? COULD that hurt you? Eventually I think it could, and it will.

We can use footprints in order to piggyback someone else’s strategy of course, and that is still a very common way to build links, especially for newer sites, or sites who really want to jump up in the rankings. My biggest problem with this is that you’re taking a huge chance by following someone’s else’s potentially problematic pattern that could get slapped in a future update. If some site is ranking highly right now and you copy them by either going after links on the same sites where they have links or you realize that they’re doing 25 guest posts a month, all on the same type of site, and you start doing that, you’re not creating anything unique. We talk about the need for unique content, but what about unique footprints?

Footprints don’t just hurt sites that use crap tactics of course but let’s talk about them for a second…there’s nothing we all love more than identifying someone’s bit of sneakery. As nice as I try to be, when something looks odd, I’ll spend ages digging into it and I will go into a state of ecstasy when I realize that the obviously fake pen name for 50 crap posts is a fairly well-respected SEO who’s been very slack in covering his tracks and has loads of co-citations with his real name. Glory be! I have no interest in outing, but I do like the find. Think of all those guys who write about their finds though. Do you want them to find you?

Note: Positive footprints definitely exist too, of course. Think about Google + and having a nice author footprint on great sites. That can only help you because IT’S GOOGLE. However, this is Dr No’s column so back to negative stuff.

What leaves a potentially dangerous footprint?

Advanced queries: yes, I will use them and recommend them but if you’re only going after link prospects because you found them using advanced queries, well, that’s a pattern of sites right there. They ARE useful, and they can help you wade through some murkier SERPs, but they can definitely create footprints that you may be unaware of. <hollering>ESPECIALLY IF THAT’S THE ONLY WAY YOU FIND SITES. </hollering>(As Paul Madden said, this is venturing into tin foil hat territory but I’m in a particularly negative mood after we’ve all been told that there will be big updates coming soon!)

Guest posts: I love guest posts (yes, still) but as with most forms of link building, people aren’t varying what they do. You can find 1000 guest posts that all list the same exact byline about how the guest author, Maxx Power, “enjoys writing about water treatment issues for folks based in coastal North Carolina.” Please believe me when I say that absolutely no one enjoys writing 1000 posts about water treatment issues for folks based in coastal North Carolina. I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who enjoys writing more than one.

Widgets: I hate widgets, and I feel bad saying that because I used to like them. They leave massive footprints though, of course. If you have specific code for people to grab and display on their site, there’s no way you can avoid some ugly footprints. Should Google know how to handle these and not penalize you for them? Yes. Do they? I wouldn’t bet my life on it. In fact, the only cool thing about widgets is that while I was searching for some “truly bad widgets” I found some truly bad widow’s peaks via Google’s amazing “did you mean?” functionality. I’ll spare you but personally speaking I didn’t think they were all that bad, but then I sport a big fat fringe.

Duplicate content: Guest posts and widgets can of course cause duplicate content. So can press releases and sending out 15 variations of the same article. If you’re using 4 pen names for the same bio line for your articles, it’s quite easy to track. Surely Maxx Power, Smiley McCracken, Gladys McCracken, and Jimmy Cricket don’t all enjoy writing about water treatment issues for folks based in coastal North Carolina, whether it’s on content identified as being by a “guest author”, in a press release, or anything else, and no, swapping “folks” for “people” a few times won’t prevent this from being a nasty footprint. It might annoy someone less though.

The same combination of things all over the damn place: co-citations are all the rage right now so remember that if you always mention certain terms in conjunction with your anchors, that’s a footprint too. When every mention of your brand comes with Jimmy Cricket and the phrase “awesome and inexpensive” God cries.

Am I being overly paranoid here? I mean I am a person who researches ways to avoid death by alligator and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered one nor do I plan to, but just in case it’s healthy to know what to do. (And don’t run in a circle as I stupidly and mistakenly told about 20 people once. It’s a ZIG ZAG.)

One big problem is that we don’t think about what we’re doing once some cool new tactic gets put into play. I know several people who heavily abused of advertorials but were quick to fuss about Interflora’s use of them. Are we just blind to what we’re doing but able to see the bad things everyone else does? I have spent loads of time pointing out potential problems to webmasters, whether they’re clients or not, and many times when I caution them against something, they just point to a big brand or a competitor using that same strategy and assume that it’s fine for them too. I’ll happily admit to doing things in risky ways myself (but always with the client’s permission after being warned about the dangers) but hell, even then I try to minimize the potential footprints. Clients don’t always listen though…maybe it’s time to get louder.

The story of the Interflora penalty is not one of link building gone wrong, nor is it one of a sudden and unexpected penalty. The story of Interflora is something experienced SEOs are going to reference for years as one sterling reason why aggressive link building strategies should be designed and executed by experienced search professionals, and how short-lived high profile brand penalties are.

My father is a lawyer and he once told me a great many years ago “pigs get fatter – hogs get slaughtered”. I think it was in relation to something else I’m sure since SEO didn’t exist (ya, I’m that old) but it seemed an excellent life lesson and fits many situations. It also fits the situation with Interflora and why they got penalised.

This is *not* a penalty related to the blogger outreach they did which delivered a lot of links of varied anchor text (mostly brand), but advertorials (if one thing is to be blamed). I mean, the link farm, footer links, sidebar links, and other garbage weren’t helping but the blogger links certainly didn’t cause the penalty. In fact removing the only thing that could have helped recovery removed and creating bad blood among bloggers was a terrible decision in my opinion.

I’m quite cross with whoever is the SEO at Interflora or whomever is responsible for their digital marketing. I’m thinking papercuts and lemon juice. I’m talking about the individual who thought buying 150+ advertorials using computer-generated text all in the same month was a good idea. Also, who didn’t talk them out of it? Surely this kind of link building doesn’t happen in isolation – you need to buy *from* someone. Who didn’t check the text? Who didn’t care about the timings? Who the heck allowed this insanity to happen?

There was a lot more than advertorial links going on – there were low quality links as well. There are a lot of links lost recently as well. There are a lot of reasons, including article sites and directories losing their PR and therefore value. Jackie Hole suggests what I think many SEOs agree with – low quality links are likely discounted algorithmically and are not passing any value. I’ve experimented with them to differing effect on different sites for different reasons

Nichola Stott though has a different spin on things. She, like me, believes that Google is relying more on human ‘grasses’.  She says “Since Panda, each significant update has relied on human feedback (be it quality raters, or industry professed “grassing up” via webmaster tools) which has informed the machine-learning algorithm. So I’d completely support your theory that the crap is devalued, reason being aspects of Panguin helped identify the hallmarks of that crap.”

There have been a lot of conversations on forums, groups and at conferences about Google basically scaring the crap out of webmasters and using FUD to force people into giving up any and all activity they had done for any reason. I think that the scared panic removal of the Interflora blogger links smacks of this panic fear. It also will encourage the “grassing up” Nichola talks about and I think is starting to happen a lot more often.

Nichola feels that, based on her experience at Yahoo that Google is likely on its third phase of working on algorithmically penalising or removing value from links. I feel that as a core part of the algorithm from its early days, the value of links will never be fully reduced and so link building will continue. The key is strategic approaches to link building and going back to the old reasons for it – traffic driving.

As part of my job, I’ve been working on planning and part of planning is stepping back from the scene and understanding the higher level business goals. Link building is to push up rank. Pushing up rank is related to getting more traffic. Getting more traffic is about increasing sales or leads. So stepping back we want more leads or sales so instead of mindlessly building links, build relationships with relevant communities, relevant bloggers and journalists for on-going coverage (with or without a link) and improving the on-site conversions and bringing together all different departments of sales, advertising and marketing and ensuring they are all working together.

Link building will never die and SEO will never die but what needs to get stronger is strategy, thoughtfulness and taking a step backwards to see the big picture. I’ve always said: don’t be a dick – buy links wisely.

The Scenario

My client wants to ‘have a go’ at video as they’ve heard all about how ‘video sells more’. However, the management don’t want to commit to a budget unless they know it’s going to work (sounds an awful lot like SEO to me!). My mission should I choose to accept it, is to create a marketing video and put together a video marketing strategy with little or no budget.

I have little or no film-making skills, but I have created videos in the past and I did share an office with a video production company for 6 years so I know how much work goes in to making a something that you’d actually want to share (and how much it can cost). I also saw the reels on the cutting floor where various MD’s had insisted on writing the script and appearing in the video.

The result? An expensive looking 16 minute long video set in the lobby of the corporate headquarters with a truly awful speaker telling you things that make you want to go to sleep #moneywellspent.

The challenges I face:

• No one at the client company is comfortable behind the camera
• Currently, there is no camera at the location
• No one can write a script for toffee
• I do not have an army of interns or teenagers at home to help win the internet with cat videos

So what am I going to do?

After a few days with my head in my hands, a mind map, and a bottle of gin – I toyed with the idea of re-purposing Nyan Cat with a corporate logo or creating a Lego Gangnam Style (yes I too was devastated to find it had already been done). So with my best ideas out of the running, I set to task looking for ideas for quick wins or software that might help me out.

I was actually pretty impressed with what you can do for free or with a small monthly fee. If you have the ability to also make your own images, the confidence to be the star of your own video and the time to learn some software skills, you really can compete with the pro’s on a small budget.

5 Ways to make a budget online video:

1. The in Situ Testimonial/Interview Video

Customers on video can be more powerful than you think. It also doesn’t ‘matter’ as much if they look like they’ve been shot on a mobile phone from the 80′s as it’s ‘live’, and these days, people are so used to mobile videos that you can ‘get away with it’.

Obviously, the higher quality you can get your hands on the better, but the purpose of the video testimonial is to show real people, telling the truth about how great your product or service actually is. If the person speaking is genuine and passionate it cuts through the video quality.

How do you get testimonials?

If you have an industry conference, point a camera and ask questions, host a competition and give a prizes for testimonials, or just ask! At the most recent SearchLove Conference – Guy Levine at Return on Digital (who also have video testimonials onsite) cited an example of how to get testimonials in the first place. They opted to buy a Flip Camera that they sent out with orders that included a post paid return envelope – worst case, you lose your cheap camera or customers don’t bother – best case (as was) you end up with hundreds of testimonials on your site which is far more compelling and believable than one or two.

If you want to make a testimonials show reel, all you need to do is get your hands on some video editing software and your logo and message can be exported and uploaded in minutes.

The great thing about testimonials is that you can literally point, click and get them uploaded straight to your channel. It’s also quick, has minimal cost and lower quality video is accepted by the general public.

Live testimonials can have bad sound quality depending on where you are and what you are using, but given that a mobile phone, thinking time and maybe some editing time if you are creating a reel are the minimum specs for creation. It is not a bad starting point.

2. Animated Presentation Software

Slide Presentations

Death by Powerpoint does not seem to be coming to an end anytime soon, but you can use powerpoint to make the basis of a marketing video and import into various other presentation packages.

Packages like Prezi offer glitzy looking zoom in presentation animations, but currently do not support voice overs but you can add sound and you can export the slides to video to add sound or voice overs in post.

If you are not highly skilled or don’t have time to figure out the software, you can import your Powerpoint outlines and animate or put them up as marketing materials on Slideshare. If you do have time, you can export the slides as a video then add in voice overs and incidental music once created.

3. Video Presentation Software

Just because no one else wants to be behind the camera, you can hire actors or rope in the more confident people in the client office. Or you can do it yourself in order to try and persuade the client why they need to be there instead of you.

OK so video presentation software is a little more expensive, but compared to prices that you would pay for an agency to create your masterpiece for you – paying for software that you can use again and again is well worth it.

Interestingly, given that Adobe has taken over the world, they are not shouting about their video product  Adobe Visual Communicator – I could not find a current example anywhere and it does not appear to be on the creative suite, but the very old demo by Serious Magic – the company they bought out – looks impressive.

There are ready made templates, you can import scripts, practice with the rehearsal function and teleprompt and have that newsflash out by the end of your lunch hour. AVC also allows you to import or record direct from a camcorder so for £300 is pretty decent price.

4. DIY Video Animation

Video Animation

Slightly different to the video scribe mentioned below, but they work on the same principles:

• Add your characters or type in your text
• The system animates based on preset filters
• Add your soundtrack or voice over
• Export to video

There are a few packages out there but the standout one for me was GoAnimate - you can bring in your own images, import sound files and create Flash style cartoon based drag and drop presentations, product demo’s and animations. You sign in and create your video online without the need for software downloads.

This package costs from free with a watermark to $50 a month for full HD commercial videos without a watermark.

5. Video Scribe

Increasing in Popularity, the video scribe is an animated whiteboard that does not need an actual person to be in front of the screen but uses hand drawing and sketch animation to tell a story.

There are many services available such as TrueScribe who take on your video project for you – but if you just want to try it out, work out your own story board or announce something quickly, there is a fantastic DIY Video Scribe package from Sparkol called VideoScribe.

Having shown all of these to my client and tried them all out for simplicity, this is the one they want to try first and the one that I found the easiest to use to get a video out in super quick time.

The package costs from free with a watermark to £14 a month with extra features, more control and no watermark. As with GoAnimate, you can import your own sound and image files.

So it seems that for less than £500 a year, with practice and time, you could be creating and publishing as full suite of varied online videos. I may be slightly ahead in that I have a reasonable level of skill when it comes to digital creative software, but I figure that in less than an hour, you could have a professionally rendered video online and ready to test on your marketplace.

There are of course many other packages available so I would love to find out what you are using, and what your experience has been trying to DIY with video. If all else fails – Nyan Cat has currently got 92 Million Views, Gangnam Style well over a Billion so re-purposing them still might work… Or you can jump on the bandwagon of the new craze in town the Harlem Shake.

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the past week or so, you’ve doubtlessly heard that Paddy Moogan has written a book about Link Building :)

I read Paddy’s book this week and figured I write a review here.

I ought to say by way of a disclaimer that I do work with Paddy at Distilled, however this review is impartial – he’s not asked me to write this; nor have I received any kind of financial inducement to do so.

So, what do you get for your $37?

Over 65,000 words (or 287 pages) of Link Building goodness. The book includes sections on the following:

• Link building basics
• The history of link building
• What you need to know about PageRank
• The anatomy of a link – what makes a good (and bad) link
• Planning and executing a link building campaign
• How to scale link building safely
• Penalties
• Building a link building team
• Outsourcing your link building
• Making link building happen
• Social signals and their effect on link building
• The concept of AuthorRank
• Link building techniques
• Link building tools
• Link building case studies
• Link building resources
• Blogs to follow for link building tips
• People to follow on Twitter for link building
• Google Webmaster Tools Videos on link building
• SEO conferences that include link building sessions

Who is the book for?

Paddy says he deliberately wrote the book to cater for those agency-side, client-side and indeed website owners regardless of their level of experience.

I’d definitely concur that regardless of your level of experience there’s something there for you. I’d suggest that the book is particularly useful for people new to link building – I really wish there had been a book like this when I was starting out – I’ll definitely be putting it on the recommended reading list for new starters at Distilled. I’d also encourage agency-side SEOs to share it with their sales team, so that they too can gain a clearer understanding of what link building involves, and therefore, be better able to sell it to clients.

What I loved…

It’s far more than a book of link building tips, as the bullet pointed list of contents above nicely demonstrates. It’s jargon-free and really easy to navigate to the relevant sections. Obviously I read the whole book because I was reviewing it here; however if you didn’t want (or indeed need) to read the whole thing, you could very easily skip to the sections most relevant to you. Here’s how I’d break the book down:

Introductory (or conceptual) sections:

• The basics of link building
• The history of link building
• What you need to know about PageRank
• The anatomy of a link – what makes a good (and bad) link
• Social signals and their effect on link building
• The concept of AuthorRank

Process-focused sections:

• Planning and executing a link building campaign from start to finish
• Building a link building team
• Making link building happen
• Scaling link building
• Link based penalties
• Outsourcing your link building

Hands-on stuff:

• Link building techniques

Resources:

• Link building tools
• Link building case studies
• Link building resources
• Blogs to follow for link building tips
• People to follow on Twitter for link building
• Google Webmaster Tools Videos on link building
• SEO conferences that include link building sessions

Aside from the chapters on link building techniques and tools,  the chapter I got the most out of was the case studies. Sharing real world experiences really isn’t something we do enough of as SEOs – I’d love to see this expanded even further in future editions.

I also really liked how Paddy has provided guidance (and indeed a framework) for determining what sort of links a site needs in addition to providing tips and techniques to actually go and get those links.

Finally, I really appreciate Paddy’s honesty, I think it’s best summed up by the quote below:

“You also need some patience, determination, and hustle in order to build good links. It really isn’t that hard to learn, but it is hard to do. Not because it is technically complicated, more because it doesn’t happen overnight and it can often be unpredictable.”

Grumbles

I’d love to see a Kindle version – in fairness, Paddy does say you can transfer the PDF to your Kindle manually, however I didn’t realise you could do that until after I’d read the book in it’s entirety. I’m guessing you’re much less stupid than me and knew that already. The PDF will work just fine on your tablet apparently, but I don’t have one of those because I’m a luddite.

Speaking of being a luddite I’d love it if hard copies were made available – remember real books, made of actual paper?

This isn’t a personal grumble, however I can imagine that some people might be peeved that either there’s no ‘secret sauce’ or ‘silver bullet’ offered up in this book. If you were hoping for some kind of ‘magic’ way to build millions of links without any effort on your part then this isn’t the book for you.

If you’re looking for a solution like that send me $10,000 and I’ll fix you up*.

What are the scores, George Doors?

I’d have no hesitation in recommending this book. It’s really well-written, is a fantastic resource and well worth the cover price. As I said above I think it’s particularly suitable for those who are new to link building, but there’s something in this book for everyone.

You can get your very own copy of Paddy Moogan’s Link Building Book for $37.

Have you read Paddy’s book yet? What do you think? Do let me know via the comments.

*Don’t do this really. I will just take your money. Oh and laugh at you. A lot.

Instead I think there are two issues at play here, the first being unreasonable or old-school volume targets that simply don’t reflect what algorithms are rewarding today. Yes you can rank a site (albeit temporarily) for terms like “car insurance” or “roulette” with a paid volume-strategy and that’s because it’s a flipping weighted algorithm and half a million mediocre paid links “weigh” more than five hundred, good-quality earned links, but the former strategy is not future-proof. Google in particular are getting better and better at detecting and dis-incentivising this practise; plus there is always a tipping point at which six hundred, seven hundred, one thousand good-quality earned links will “weigh” more than those competitor volume-links. If you’re (or your client is) in it for the long haul and marketing a credible brand then really why risk a strategy that could a huge chunk of your traffic out of circulation, plus court the kind of negative attention your client could do without?

The second issue at play that I really wanted to address here is the notion that some businesses and sectors are so boring that they have nothing to say and no audience to say it to. I’d like to challenge that notion fundamentally and look at tactics and resources for earning links when everyone around you is paying for theirs.

1. One man’s meat is another man’s horse burger.

Friend: “How was work today?”

Me: “Awesome. We discovered some odd syntax in a new clients’ robots.txt file that was causing a weird index loop and creating all kind of duplicate content issues in the SERPs.”

Friend: “Kill me now.”

You get the point of course. Just because a business or sector may be dry as a bone to us it is a source of passion to them and their clients. The fact that a business is a business means that there is a customer base; a desire for the product, a problem that is solved a demand that is met. So what if it doesn’t float our boat?

At the same conference we had in fact just heard tell of a perfect example of this, presented by PushOn’s SImon Wharton, who talked us through their award-winning case-study for client Little Greene. Little Greene make paint. Paint; a topic so boring that we use the drying of it as an analogy for the most boring activity imaginable. Yet as Wharton detailed, to Little Greene paint (and the pride that they take in the richness and range of colours produced) is a point of pride and passion for this business. Little Greene make very high quality paint, which is used by premium decorating services, restoration experts and is approved by English Heritage. Check out this video of the making of Little Greene’s most recent advertisement for a great example of a way to make something that could have been quite pedestrian; instead, visually stunning and an engaging vehicle to convey the passion and quality-commitment of Little Greene.

2. Trade Media

So a business or sector may seem boring to us, however in any sector where there is business to be had there is a trade press about it. One of the oft-cited reasons for difficulties in earning links in such sectors is that there is a lack of online media to approach. Whilst it’s certainly true that there might be less noise, fewer independent blogs and less consumer titles focusing on such products and sectors; that’s just life. There is however, always a thriving (albeit relatively small) community of trades media. I therefore invoke rule 34 on the notion that there’s a lack of online media to approach. If there is business of it, then there’s trade media of it.

Here’s a few little gems…

The Grocer - For all your horse-burger needs

Tunnels and Tunnelling International - Ya dig me?

Microwave Engineering Europe – Not microwaves, but microwaves.

Timber Trades Journal – Got wood

Compound Semiconductors – Not Silicon Semiconductors you fool. That’s here.

Cabinet Maker – I shit you not.

3.  Great Content

Even if your business or industry may be seen as boring, or have little direct appeal outside of its’ own eccentric audience that doesn’t mean that exciting, funny and imaginative content idea are off limits to you. There’s many a B2B or “boring” brand that has created a cult or counter-culture following out of good content. Now this point has been done before in great detail by our very own Hannah, over at SEOMoz, so do read her piece on those companies in “boring” niches who are kicking it.

If you can’t be arsed, then I’m sure she won’t mind me paraphrasing one of the best examples featured in that piece, which is that of Readers Sheds. Yes, it is a thing! It is a thing created by Cuprinol. You know that boring company that produce wood-stain? Maybe the product itself is a bit boring, but what about the very wood we stain? Does that not have its’ exciting applications? I wonder if this is quite a “UK” type thing? We are a nation of eccentrics after-all. Aside. As my fellow-blogger Hannah explains “…people are really passionate about their humble sheds and some people’s sheds are pretty damn amazing. With this is mind, to appeal to all the sheddies out there Reader Sheds run an annual competition to find the shed of the year”.

What’s not to get excited about?

4. Buzz the Brand 

Another way of approaching so-called “boring” products is to look at building a buzz around the brand itself. Ask yourself, five years ago could you ever have imagined anyone expressing excitement about the arrival of a new order of business cards? No. Me neither, but then along came Moo. Moo have created a vibrant brand that offers a great buying experience and customer service, so that the product itself is almost immaterial. Honestly, if you don’t believe me, do a twitter search for [thanks+moo] or [excited+moo] and see for yourself.

Remember people, these are business cards… business cards…

5. Take it to the Bridge Human Conclusion

This is a tip that I picked up from PR supremo Claire Thompson of WavesPR. When faced with a product that’s very dull, or has no complete application in and of itself (such as concrete) Claire advocates taking the product to its’ human-conclusion.

As an example imagine a business that makes thermostatic controls. That’s not exciting, right? But what if you talk to your clients and find out where these integrated components end up? What if it turns out that their biggest customer manufactures incubators for premature infants? Then you’ve got a story like “Thermo Controllers Help Save 5000 Premature Babies in Contract to Supply Medi-Systems Ltd.”

If your client manufactures a product that’s part of a chain, talk to them about where their products end up. What’s the real world application? It’s a marketing approach that’s worked very well for companies like Intel. So very few of us would ever need to consider or touch a Xeon Processor, yet we know through the extensive multi-platform marketing efforts of Intel, that their products help our devices work. And we’re very attached to our various devices in an emotional (as well as functional) way.

Summary

I’d like to suggest that there’s really no such thing as a truly boring product, business or niche and that with a little thought and creativity we can devise stories and campaigns that can resonate with a waiting audience (Little Greene) or can gain a broad cult following (Cuprinol/Readers Sheds) or can excite and reinvigorate a once non-product (Moo Cards). The stories and campaigns we devise need to be positioned and marketed so that they attract and earn the links, citations and brand awareness that we’re looking to achieve for our clients. Really, I don’t think there’s any excuse for sticking to a link strategy that relies purely on paid links because there’s no other way. It’s just about creating and teasing that story out!