Inbound Marketing and SEO: Insights from the Moz Blog

Introduction

By Rand Fishkin and Thomas Høgenhaven

The term inbound marketing was first used by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in their seminal 2009 book, but the concept has been around much longer. As far back as 1999, Seth Godin referred to the same concept under a different name in his blog: "Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them."

Over the past few years, many marketers who focus on organic channels like search engine optimization (SEO), social media, and content marketing have started using the phrase inbound marketing to describe the combination of these channels in their roles and responsibilities.

So why are marketers now turning to inbound marketing? Reasons abound, but two in particular are both timely and relevant. First, Google—the world leader in search, with more than 90 percent of the global market share—has evolved its algorithmic considerations massively in the past five years. Google has rolled out new types of search results, cracked down on spam, upgraded its ability to detect and remove low-quality content, become faster and fresher, dramatically dampened many historic SEO factors, and renewed its focus on promoting great brands that produce superlative web content.

Second, practitioners of SEO have evolved. We realize that SEO is a tactic, not a strategy. We realize SEO needs to be used as part of a broader set of marketing tools. In order to succeed in SEO, a multichannel approach is necessary. This book is all about how to perform in a new era of inbound marketing.

SEO Is Changing

Search and SEO are changing. Google is hitting suspicious-looking link networks, devaluing directories, and increasingly penalizing sites with highly dubious link profiles. Underhanded tactics to rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) no longer work.

Optimizing a site used to be about getting to the number one spot in a SERP and staying there. Ranking number one is no longer the only important factor. Click distribution is different than it used to be; it's influenced by rich snippets like star ratings, number of reviews, price, author photo, video preview, publication date, and social annotations. Optimizing your author photo might increase click-through rate (CTR) more than moving up one or two places in the search results will.

Moreover, Google wants the fat head keywords—the small group of keywords that typically drive the most traffic—to themselves. Try searching for credit card offers, flight tickets, and new movie titles. The SERPs are filled with other Google-owned products, which makes sense for its business. This makes it more important than ever before for you to have keywords in the chunky middle (more descriptive terms that drive fewer visits individually, but large amounts of traffic overall) and the long tail (the many, more specific terms that may only drive a few visits each, but can drive a lot of traffic in aggregate).

In many ways, though, SEO is still SEO. Search engines still need accessibility help in order to crawl, index, and rank the content in the correct way. This requires logical information architecture, correct use of meta tags, implementation of relevant schema markup, and use of sitemaps, as well as correct use of Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Center. You still need links to rank for competitive keywords. You still need to conduct proper keyword research. And you still need to produce content that can be understood by humans and robots. Delighting users has always worked pretty well, and will become increasingly more important as the search engines get smarter.

From SEO To Inbound Marketing

SEO is often declared dead—but that concept is just silly. People will always need to retrieve information online, and search is a powerful way to do this. Search and SEO are very much alive, and it's much more fruitful to see search as a part of a bigger marketing mix.

Many of us have suffered SEO tunnel vision, but SEO does not exist in a vacuum. It's increasingly difficult to succeed in SEO when using this channel in isolation. That's where the multichannel approach comes in: Google constantly rewards companies who provide good products, user experience (UI), branding, content, and conversion rate optimization (CRO).

Some SEOs are skeptical of the conceptual expansion of SEO to inbound marketing. We hope to reduce some of this skepticism by briefly addressing two of these critiques:

Critique 1: Inbound marketing is just a new name for SEO. No, it is not. SEO is a tactic. Inbound marketing is a strategy. Inbound marketing is an umbrella term for many marketing channels, whereas SEO is a channel in itself. Some consider social media, content, analytics, and CRO to be part of SEO, but the majority of social media and analytics professionals will hardly characterize themselves as SEOs. In fact, you can do inbound marketing without doing SEO. Inbound marketing is not a new name for SEO, but a name for organic, earned marketing.

Critique 2: Inbound marketing is a branded term used to market the likes of HubSpot and Moz. The term is used and evangelized by companies such as HubSpot and Moz, but we'd be just as happy using terms like organic marketing, permission marketing, and earned media. But marketers are not using any single one of these terms, making it harder to use them broadly. Inbound marketing is rapidly becoming the accepted industry term to sum up all the channels that bring in customers organically.

Inbound Marketing

So, what is inbound marketing? In a general sense, we see it as things you can do on the web that earn traffic and attention, but don't directly cost money.

Don't buy. Don't beg. Don't bludgeon. Inbound marketing is all about earning attention and love. This is often a superior way of marketing, simply because people prefer inbound channels to outbound. According to Google, 82 percent of clicks in the SERPs go to organic results and 18 percent go to pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Less than 1 percent of clicks on Twitter go to promoted tweets. The best and brightest Facebook ads are lucky to amass a 2 percent CTR.

There is no single way to do inbound marketing, and it's not about being everywhere. Your goal should not be to have a presence on all channels, but to really be present where your audience exists. For example, if your target audience is 55+ year-old men, Pinterest might not be the right channel to invest in. It's ultimately about selecting the channels that fulfill your strategic goals the best, and selecting the channels that give the highest ROI.

The channels with the highest ROI are often those others don't invest in—there is so much potential there! This is what Rand calls the short men, tall women rationale: most men are interested in short women, while most women are interested in tall men. Consequently, there are many single short men and tall women who are very attractive based on other parameters. The smart singles, therefore, pursue those tall women and short men the majority tends to ignore. This rationale is one of the reasons inbound marketing works so well: for each dollar spent on inbound channels, eight dollars are spent on paid channels.

Inbound marketing is not free; it takes time and money to create and distribute phenomenal content. But it's often a more cost-effective marketing strategy than paid marketing. We are not arguing that paid marketing doesn't have its place in the world, but the point of this book is to show you how effective and efficient inbound marketing can be.

Investing in Inbound Marketing for the Long Term

The best way to build a brand is to be truly remarkable, recognizable, and authentic—and to provide the world with answers to the question Why? Successful inbound marketing plays a pivotal role in branding, but takes time and effort. Don't invest in SEO—or any other inbound channel—for the short term. Like all well-planned strategies, inbound is a long-term investment.

Inbound marketing helps with brand building, and having a brand helps inbound marketing. It is a positive spiral that rewards those who are already successful, as is illustrated in Chapter 11, The Rich Get Richer: True in SEO, Social + All Organic Marketing. As Eric Schmidt said in 2008, Brands are the solution, not the problem. If you are a good brand, SEO tends to be the solution, not the problem. Through Google, brands receive preferential treatment. Brands get increased visibility in SERPs, and penalties and filters increasingly target unbranded sites. This makes sense, for familiarity breeds trust. You probably recognize this from your own searches. When looking for that new long blue nightgown, you are probably clicking the link to Amazon or Macy's, not the link to longbluenightgowns.biz.

Building your site and marketing efforts for a long-term ROI also solves the old dilemma between using black hat tactics (deceptive or questionable SEO practices that don't follow search engine guidelines) and white hat tactics (best practices to build an experience that's actually valuable to customers and crawl-able by the search engines). Truly remarkable brands do not take the low road or use aggressive marketing tactics. They don't need to.

Why Read This Book?

SEOs are upgrading their job title to inbound marketer, which comes with responsibilities that include a wide array of channels. New marketers are entering this fast-paced industry all the time. While The Moz Blog is a rich resource for inbound marketers, it can be hard to get an overview of the field from its many hundreds of posts. This book curates the best of the blog over the past few years. All of the blog posts have been reassessed and many of them have been updated for relevant content. We hope this book will help you make a steady investment in inbound marketing that gives you good returns over the long run.

ABOUT MOZ

SEOmoz started as an SEO consulting company in 2004 and later became a leading provider of SEO software. In 2013, SEOmoz transitioned its brand to Moz, expanding its product line to include search, social, and content optimization within a single platform, Moz Analytics. Moz's mission is to create products that streamline the inbound marketing process while staying true to the company's TAGFEE* values, giving marketers everywhere a better way to do inbound.

*The TAGFEE code sets the standard that all work and content produced by Moz is Transparent and Authentic, Generous, Fun, Empathetic, and Exceptional.

Part I: SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

By Ruth Burr

Search engine optimization has been around for about as long as search engines have. It's hard to imagine SEO before Google with its current market share domination, but as early as the mid-1990s, marketers were thinking about how to make their products as findable as possible on the web.

The Birth of SEO

In the early days of search, Yahoo! and its cohorts were run like Yellow Pages services: website owners submitted their sites for indexing, and search engines did their best to match up pages with search queries. Most ranking criteria centered on keyword density—did a given keyword show up in prominent places on the page? How many times did it occur in the page's content?

It wasn't long before website owners caught on to search algorithms and began to tailor their sites to meet search engines' criteria. Search engine optimization was born! This meant that the first generation of web marketers had new tools to help get their content in front of the growing consumer base that was the Internet. It also meant that they could, through reverse-engineering the algorithm, easily create hundreds of pages that ranked for search terms without passing much value along to the searcher.

These were the first skirmishes in what would become a battle that continues to this day. Search engines try to create spam-proof algorithms that surface the best content to their users, while marketers struggle to get their sites to the top of the rankings—sometimes, by any means possible.

As weaknesses in their algorithms continued to be exploited, search engines began to look beyond individual web pages to off-page criteria like links. It was around this time that Google came on the scene, and changed everything.

Life After Google

Google's algorithm was based on a concept called PageRank, which weighed on-page factors against value passed from page to page via links. With PageRank, a link to a webpage becomes a vote for that page. It's a form of social proof: the more people who agree that a site is worthwhile, the more credibility that site has.

Google quickly amassed a huge market share, edging out smaller competitors like AltaVista and toppling Yahoo!'s dominion over the search engine space. As more and more people turned to Google to shop, play, and find information, the Google SERPs (search engine

results pages) became the place you had to be if you wanted to succeed online. In 2013, comScore reported that Google had 67 percent of the U.S. search engine market share,

trailed by Microsoft Bing and Yahoo! with 16.5 percent and 12.1 percent, respectively (http://mz.cm/XOG96n). Eager to reach customers on the web, more and more businesses are turning to SEO as a major revenue stream.

As SEO grew as a practice, Google built Google Webmaster Central and Google Webmaster Tools. Now site owners and SEOs could hear directly from Google about new developments and get some hints about what they should or shouldn't be doing to rank well. The algorithm is still more shrouded in secrecy than not, but Google Webmaster Tools does provide some good diagnostic tools to help site owners maintain search-friendly sites.

The modern SERPs look very different than they did at Google's inception, when the top 10 pages were listed as 10 blue links on a white page. Since then, Google has integrated its News, Video, Images, Local, and other vertical searches into one SERP format called Universal Search. It's started utilizing users' search histories, IP addresses, and social media activity to tailor search results to individuals. Google is also constantly experimenting with different numbers of results, new result and ad formats, and even a Direct Answers service that displays the answer to a question like How many tablespoons in a cup directly on the SERP, no click needed. To be successful, it's important for today's SEOs to keep abreast of the latest changes.

Cracking Down

As Google rose to ascendancy in the search engine market, attempts to exploit the algorithm cropped up as fast as Google could squash them down. With updates to Google's algorithm coming every few months, new ways to game the system had plenty of time to take effect before the next crackdown.

That all changed in 2010 with Google Caffeine, an update that marked the beginning of more frequent updates to the algorithm. Now Google is making slight tweaks to the algorithm almost every day, with frequent larger changes as well.

It had been a long-held axiom in the search world that Content is King. Without at least some text content on a page, it was very difficult to show search engines what a page was about at all, let alone that it was unique enough to rank. However, this meant that hundreds and thousands of sites on the web were shoehorning small amounts of unnecessary, keyword-stuffed text onto pages that didn't really need it. Additionally, huge content sites sprang up with page upon page of content designed to rank for queries but not provide real answers, instead using content to draw users in to a page full of ads.

In 2011, Google released a major update called Panda. Google Panda targeted this thin content, looking for more robust signals that content was relevant, unique, and valuable to users. Google has confirmed that Panda is an ongoing algorithmic check that is run periodically to target new thin content.

While inbound links have remained a valuable signal for site authority, they were also one of the most frequently manipulated. In 2012, Google released the Penguin update, designed to target unnatural links such as links from directories and links that webmasters had surreptitiously paid for.

One major upheaval as a result of Penguin was the changing focus on link anchor text. Google had long named keyword-rich anchor text in inbound links as an indicator of quality, but eventually also found that a high percentage of inbound links with keyword-rich anchor

text (as opposed to the name of the website or generic text like click here) was also a sign

of an unnatural link profile. Like Panda, Penguin is a periodic fix that Google runs to catch new offenders.

Panda and Penguin impacted countless websites. Companies who had had search engine success for years suddenly found themselves scrambling. In the wake of these updates, the SEO community has had a renewed focus on white hat SEO—that is, implementing solid business practices to create quality websites within search guidelines, rather than resorting to tricks or loopholes. For more on this, see Chapter 1, White Hat SEO: It F@$#ing Works. 

How Search Engines Make Money

When learning how to rank in search engines, it's helpful to remember that search engines aren't public services; they're businesses, out there to make money. Google's market share is an asset that can be used to sell ads. Sixty-seven percent of the available eyeballs in the U.S. are looking at Google when they're searching, and that's an audience advertisers can't afford to ignore. Charging advertisers to get their ads in front of those eyeballs is what drives Google's bottom line.

What this means to search engine marketers is that Google is going to do everything it can to protect its most valuable asset: its market share. That means that Google will consistently do everything in its power to make sure that people who use Google find what they're looking for. Search engines put a great deal of time, talent, and money into discerning what users want when they search, and which pages don't fulfill those needs.

Tactics That Never Stop Working

Building an algorithm-proof website that won't be hurt by the likes of Panda and Penguin means adopting classic white hat techniques that never stop working. These include building an easily-crawled site; creating content meant to engage users; building relationships and communities to encourage content sharing in order to naturally accrue links; and looking at site performance to consistently improve performance. The benefit of this stance is that SEOs can return to focusing on the user and customer, while still showing search engines that we have quality, rank-worthy sites.

The Future of Search

In addition to a lot of volatility in the SERPs, the last couple of years have brought some really exciting opportunities and resources for search marketers. In 2011, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft all agreed to support structured data through Schema.org. Now we have a hugely expanded ability to give search engines more information about different types of data on our sites, allowing for faster, more thorough parsing of that data (read Chapter 2, Schema.org: Why You're Behind if You're Not Using It for more on the power of structured data).

Structured data has also led to rich snippets showing in search results, which may contain information about the page's author, pictures from the page, reviews of a product or service, or more. These snippets can result in higher click-through rates on search results, even if they aren't in the coveted top three positions.

The advent of social media platforms has also fundamentally changed the web, and web marketing along with it. In the early days of SEO, content creation online was limited to people who had their own websites or blogs. Social media changed all of that. Today anyone can create content on the Internet, and everyone is creating it—from Facebook statuses to tweets to Tumblrs to Yelp reviews. People are interacting online all day, not only with each other, but with brands and businesses as well.

Search engines see social media activity as a measure of social proof much like links are (hence the saying Likes are the new links among SEOs). Google and company aren't about to ignore this vast buffet of data on what people like, how they interact, and what they're looking for—and neither should web marketers. We have so many new opportunities to get our content and products out there and to really engage with consumers. In the modern world of search, businesses need to be participating in conversations around their brands, because they're happening whether the business participates or not.

The most exciting development in SEO has been how much the industry has grown up over the years. SEO has gone from something only a small group of hackers and cutting-edge marketers were doing to a full, legitimate industry. Businesses who might still have been buying Yellow Pages ads five years ago are investing in inbound marketing instead.

Chapter 1: White Hat SEO: It F@$#ing Works

By Rand Fishkin

Editor's Note: This article was originally posted on The Moz Blog in April 2011 in response to an off-site post that dismissed the value of white hat SEO. Since then, Google has released many updates to its search algorithm. Most prominent among the updates are Penguin, which devalues spammy backlinks and over-optimized sites, and Panda (originally launched February 2011 as Panda/Farmer), which hits sites with thin content and link farms hard.

I hate web spam. I hate what it's done to the reputation of hardworking, honest, smart web marketers who help websites earn search traffic. I hate how it's poisoned the acronym SEO, a title I'm proud to wear. I hate that it makes legitimate marketing tactics less fruitful. And I hate, perhaps most of all, when it works.

Here's a search for buy propecia, which is a drug I actually take to help prevent hair loss. (My wife doesn't think I'd look very good sans hair.)

Like most search results in the pharma sphere, it's polluted by pages that have artificially inflated their rankings. This is obvious to virtually everyone who's even minimally tech-savvy, and it has three terrible results:

1. Marketers and technologists who observe results like this equate SEO with spamming. If you've read a Hacker News (http://news.ycombinator.com) or StackOverflow (http://stackoverflow.com) thread on the topic, you've undoubtedly seen this perspective.

2. SEOs new to the profession see this and think that whatever these sites are doing is an effective way to earn rankings, and try repeating these tactics (often harming their sites or those of employers/clients in the process).

3. Consumers learn not to trust the search results, killing business value for everyone in the web world.

Spam removes economic and brand value from the search/social/web marketing ecosystem. If you create this kind of junk, at least be honest with yourself—you're directly harming your fellow marketers, online businesses, searchers, and future generations of web users.

In April of 2011, Kris Roadruck wrote a post called White Hat SEO is a Joke (www.krisroadruck.com/rants/whitehat-seo-is-a-joke). He was upfront about the fact that his post was intentionally provocative, not entirely truthful and more sensational than authentic. Despite these caveats, I think a response and some clarification about my thoughts on black hat in general are in order. I'm responding less because I think Kris believes it and more because of the surprisingly supportive response his post received in parts of the search community.

Some Points on Kris' Post

Kris begins his article with a personal realization:

I started realizing there were only really 2 kinds of white-hats. The ones complaining about how they were doing everything by the book and getting their asses handed to them by unethical tactics, and the ones that were claiming success that didn't belong to them ... because they ... happened to be in a niche that bloggers find interesting or entertaining.

It's easy to preach great content when you have a great subject. But no one gives a shit about non-clog toilets or pulse oximeters or single phase diode bridge rectifiers. Sure you might be able to piece together 1 or 2 bits of link-bait but you can be sure that you aren't going to get the anchor text that you want.

Kris' premise seems compelling and even has elements of truth. Great content does work better in fields where there's more interest from web-savvy site owners. On the whole, though, his proposition is a lie. That lie—that great content doesn't work in boring niches—is one told out of laziness, jealousy and contempt. It's told by spammers to other spammers because it glosses over the fact that white hat, legitimate marketing can work well