2) Check Your Sites Referral Traffic For The Past Year

I would go back over the last year to see which sites consistently send you the most traffic overall. This can vary a lot from month to  month.

3) What Sites Drove The Most Value?

Judge these referrals based on if they added value to your site. The value could be traffic, revenue, account sign ups etc.

4) Discover What Strategy Drove The Referral Traffic?

After you see what sources drove the most value, look to see what strategy led to getting traffic from those referrals so that you can replicate it. A few examples could be:

• Forum Participation
• Guest Post
• Sales/Promotions
• Press Coverage

5) Drop Referrer Sites Into SimilarSiteSearch.com

6) Reach Out To Similar Sites With Strategy That Worked Before

I use Buzzstream to really speed up this process! I love it because it does all of the following:

• Finds contact information
• Pulls site metrics (page rank, domain authority, site rss feed)
• Use templates to quickly email them.

How do you find and connect with communities?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

Summary

1. Choose an  asset that deserves links  
2. Use Buzzstream to  quickly find potential websites, pull their contact information, and speed up outreach
3. Enjoy saving hours of precious time

Buzzstream Link Building For Assets Tutorial

Don’t Have 15 Minutes? Skim through these screen shots

1) Decide On 1 Linkable Asset To Target!

How to get links from Zombies? 
For this example lets try to build links for this REI Zombie Infographic

Examples Of Other Scalable Linkable Assets

• Infographics
• Tools/Calculators
• Data / Whitepapers
• Also good for finding sponsorships in your niche

2) Log Into Buzzstream OR (Try A Free Trial)

3) Set Up A Black List – So they don’t end up in your prospects

A List Of Global Domains To I Like To Exclude

*tripadvisor.com
dailymotion.com
*squidoo.com
livestrong.com
ehow.com
*about.com
*wikipedia.org
*amazon.com
*amazon.co.uk
*flickr.com
*about.me
*facebook.com
youtube.com
plus.google.com
*foursquare.com
*linkedin.com
*twitter.com

4) Figure Out Your Search Queries & Advanced Search Operators

Tools To Develop Search Queries

• Google Suggest (Don’t Hit Enter!)
• Soovle
• UberSuggest

Articles For Creating Advanced Search Queries

• Search Operators For Link Building by Himanshu Sharma of SEO Takeaways
  
• Anything by Garrett French over at Citation Labs
  
• 106 Sponsorship-Based Link Building Queries by Ontolo
• John Henry Scherck of TLCSEO.com

Always Test Before Scaling!

• Test out your advanced search queries to see the kind of results you get for that query

5) How To Quickly Filter Results From Prospecting

Filter based on your goal metrics 

• >=  PR 6 (Less likely to get contact info or to be covered)
• <= PR 1
• Start with highest PR then quickly start going through & eliminate bad matches by domain name
• Give remaining url’s a Custom Fields (under settings)
  • Set up Custom Field under settings
  • Tags are more for categories like Finance, Environment, Business, etc.
  • Custom Fields are  for very specific research like linkable assets

6) Approval & Outreach

Approving Sites

• Use the Buzzstream Buzzbar or start outreach and only email sites you think are a good fit

Finding Approved Sites

• Can only find sites that are approved
• Search for them by using the custom field

Speeding Up Outreach In Buzzstream

• Use an email template to speed up outreach
• BCC to your inbox to help keep track & follow up
• Schedule emails to be sent at best time for open rates

Questions, Comments, Feedback?

I look forward to them in the comments!

I’ve been a fan of Gary since my friends at Anchor Wave had me read Crush It. So when I saw his Q&A a day interview series I jumped at the opportunity. It was a great interview and I learned a lot, hope you do as well. Enjoy!

How do you communicate the value of new media to companies?

Gary: How do they value their old school ways of marketing?

“The best way to show ROI or value for new marketing is to compare it to old.”

How do they value banner ads, search, radio, television, newspaper, or direct mail? By doing this you will get back to the essence of what they are trying to do as a company — which is to tell a story to customers somewhere during the decision-making path.

That starts helping people understand the value of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, etc. a whole lot better once you bring it back to why they ever had value for those other ways of marketing.

Understanding the ROI to their company for a newspaper ad or why they do a banner ad on a website helps to start the discussion going forward.

How do you help companies transition into new media?

Gary: Trust!

“I’m not in the business of convincing people to do this”

It’s been easier for me to get buy-in from companies on social media because that is all I’ve done & they’ve seen the success so it’s allowed me to leverage that.

A lot of agencies are trying to get into Social Media, but the companies don’t know if the agency can really do it well. They need to see the proof.

Should executives be involved with their own accounts?

Gary: I don’t think every CEO needs to be involved, but charismatic ones that bring value and like people should. I definitely need every CEO out their crushing it.

“If you don’t bring value you don’t need to be there, the end.”

Tips for people to effectively use social media:

Gary: If you don’t have the team or the resources you don’t win.

“There are no shortcuts in this, not even close, and that is a rude awakening to a lot of people.”

People and time are the fuel that makes social media work.

If you can’t allocate the resources, time, and energy; it won’t work. This is the most “what you put into it, you get out of it” platform we’ve ever seen and if people do not adjust to that, then they literally have no shot!

Thoughts on using automated social media tools:

Gary: When you use something like an automated response on Twitter, it makes people not feel good.

“Businesses need to learn that it’s about the context of the impression that matters more than the amount of impressions.”

Give value. Give value. Give value… And then ask for business. People who figure out that formula win, because too many people out there ask for business, ask for business, ask for business or some others who are great on Social Media who give value, give value, give value, but then never ask for business.

Finish this sentence – I wish I would’ve thought of _____

Gary: Facebook

Who is someone we are all going to know in 5 years?

Gary: Kelly McCarthy (Senior Vice President at VaynerMedia)

What conference do you find most valuable?

Gary: SXSW – I’m able to be very efficient with my time & meetings

Favorite movie of all time?

Gary: Return of the Jedi

Do you think the new star wars movies coming out will hurt the brand?

Gary: With Star Wars, people are being romantic about the way it was, but it’s a new generation, it’s a new thing, it’s all business. It’s a mix of art in that business, but it’s still business, the end. You’re more then welcome to not watch them.

“The best way to go out of business is to be romantic about things.”

The book that everyone should read?

Gary: The one that adds the most value!

“Read from those who have actually made money have proof of execution”

If your life is too stressful and reading fiction will help you then read that.In the genre of businessness books I say to read from people who have actually made it happen.

Read from people like Jason Fried’s Re Work or Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness because those are entrepreneurs who have actually made money. Not that a journalist or professor can’t be right, but I believe in the proof of execution.

Bill of Green Lane SEO gave me a lot of great tips & advice for E-commerce SEO. If you aren’t yet he is a great person to follow on Twitter ( BillSebald )

How did Bill Sebald get into marketing?

In my teen years I was considering psychology, working in the media, or slacking off. Ultimately I fell into marketing during a communications major at Penn State, and realized that it had components of at least two of my above interests. A couple years later I hooked up with a CD shop in Ambler, PA that was looking to sell products on a website. A progressive idea at the time.

They wanted to be CDnow.com for used CDs – these were the days when it was rare to have a shopping cart, and even rarer to get someone to give you a credit card number over the internet. We did guerrilla digital marketing, and I was hooked. From there I started my own music and commerce websites, learned graphic design, and started doing SEO (which was basically as simple as resubmitting to engines over and over – this was 2001, a year or so before the Google invasion). I also spent some time in the music industry, so I got to learn a different side of marketing there.

What do you love most about your job? What gets you excited?

( image source)

I love that after all these years it remains a somewhat niche industry. Relatively speaking only a few really savvy companies truly get the value. I love becoming part of these companies and helping them see success in this industry. I also actually enjoy the chaos, energy, and challenges our “sub-culture” provides. It’s pretty rock and roll and still somewhat guerrilla in my opinion.

What are some of the challenges you encountered when you started optimizing e-commerce sites?

In 2005, the complexities of database/dynamic web design seemed to grow out of step with the growing demands of Google’s algorithm. URLs got uglier as Google started to get more vocal about their expectation of needing them cleaner.

Communicate Early

Duplicate content started growing out of control while Google burdened SEOs with keeping it manageable. In my experience, most e-commerce website developers I worked with were struggling to meet internal demands without either knowledge of SEO or the interest in being slowed down by one. I learned quickly that one of the biggest challenges of being an e-commerce or enterprise SEO is that you need to be aggressive and “crash” other department’s parties, unless you like being on “clean-up” threads later. Back then SEO was so much more reactionary, which drove me nuts. I started making friends with the business and project managers who fed these projects so I could be part of the plan from the FRS stage. That meant a lot of internal presentations, meetings, schmoozing, and even more email threads. Networking (even internally) always pays off.

Networking (even internally) always pays off.

Explaining ROI

Then of course, there’s the ROI challenge. A client gives you a dollar, and expects you to forecast how many you’ll give back. For every client or company that understand the nature of SEO, I had an equal amount refuse to accept it but demand their expectations be delivered. I had bosses ask me to “invent” numbers to sign or placate existing clients (those relationships always failed).

Luckily I also had some bosses allow me to set expectations correctly. I was never comfortable putting my name on a forecast I didn’t believe in. You need targets and goals, but when it comes to SEO, I didn’t want to sign myself up to be the fall guy. Some SEOs are OK with that (that’s why there are so many hit-and-run SEO companies), but I don’t like the contention that comes from it.

Where SEO Fits In

However, we’re in a much better place now. Analytics and attribution tools, along with maturity of the SEO space has killed much of the previous fuzziness. At its base, the ROI of e-commerce SEO is simply the possibility to play in a space that all your competitors are in only because they took the risk before you.

Transactional keywords may always fall to PPC first, but SEO is the leader in informational searches which lead to plenty of sales at some point in the purchase cycle, despite the life of a typical tracking cookie. We might as well use all the data we can get in 2013.

SEO is the leader in informational searches which lead to plenty of sales at some point in the purchase cycle

Getting Things Implemented

Despite these two things (which really doesn’t bother me, it’s part of the game), the true frustration for me is implementation. I don’t know anyone in e-commerce SEO who doesn’t constantly hit roadblocks when trying to enter projects. Usually e-commerce sites (including those who are the younger brother counterpart of large brick-and-mortar stores) have limited funds and a lot of projects vying for that money. E-commerce campaigns are usually the most cost-conscious, complicated engagements you can have as a digital marketer.

How is optimizing for e-commerce sites different from optimizing regular sites?

1. Lots of Conversations Internally things tend to move slow with e-commerce development companies – I remember months of conversations on robots.txt specifications, canonical tag implementation, nofollow implementation (when we used it for PageRank sculpting), XML issues, URL parameter streamlining, and pagination. Lots of email threads with lots of different departments. Code updates seem to cost more, usually due to more QA scrutiny.

2. Overlay Content Externally, vendors started putting out content overlays (that sniffed search engine spiders and served optimized content upon recognizing one’s visit) only because they understood how difficult it was for most platforms to do this natively. For example, ChannelAdvisor’s NSA, Netconcepts’ Gravity Stream, YourAmigo – most are gone these days. They weren’t optimal solutions, and I’ve seen them really screw up Google, but some of these overlays are still around.

Admittedly I used one in a prior job. Google actually told us they knew about it, but because we were “cloaking with positive intent” we were allowed to continue… for now. Still, we got off it in a hurry, because we didn’t want Google to ever misunderstand our intent in the future. It was a multi-million dollar change to our ecommerce platform, which gave more SEO controls to our clients in the long run.

To see a live example, YourAmigo lists Avon as a client; by using a user-agent switcher Chrome extension, where I tricked Avon into thinking I was Googlebot, you can see a different URL. Other sites would take advantage of this technology and show much more than a different URL – you would often find optimized title tags, body content, internal links, header tags, etc., that a user wouldn’t normally see when they navigated to the page with a regular browser.

3. Duplicate Content Issues E-commerce has a lot of content duplication, either from distributor or vendor feeds that are being shared with lots of other sites, scraping, or even through their own syndication of feeds to 3rd party CSEs or shopping portals. Again, with limited control over the dynamic templates, this can be a frustrating thing to get a hold of. Cease and desists don’t work.

Sometimes it makes more sense to constantly wash and enhance your content and try to beat your old, stolen content. When you’re dealing with so many URLs you really need to pay attention to those parameters and duplicate URLs. Search engines have gotten a lot better at consolidating them. Remember when they used to tell us not to worry too much because they were on it? Yeah, well the canonical tag came out a few months later.

They still need our help. I think it’s important to focus on these URLs if not just for optimizing your crawl budget. The index may sort itself out eventually, but if you’re constantly spending time updating and adding new pages, you want your crawl to be as efficient as possible. Otherwise a lot of the traditional stuff a regular site does can work for e-commerce. Buying guides, user generated content, how-to content, and continually writing language that convinces engines that you’re more than a thin, low-text commercial site and more of a “for the people” type authority that just so happens to sell stuff too, can go a long way.

What are the most common mistakes you see on how e-commerce sites are built?

Not Enough Text

These days the number one issue is low volumes of text. Plenty of pictures, but not a lot for an engine to read. I typically produce a spider emulator snapshot of the actual content on a website, then ask the client to tell me what Google will think this page is about. 9 times out of 10 they have no idea what page I pulled the content from, and can’t figure it out based on context. That’s a real “a-ha” moment for clients. “If you can’t figure out what to rank this for, how will Google?” Luckily SEO is much more mainstream for e-commerce platform developers these days, so a lot of the traditional platform issues are fine out of the box.

Not Working As A Team

I think an SEO’s job is to come in and try to create something unique for every important page, and work with UX teams to create funnels that make sense to users and engines alike. Even if you only have budget to follow the 80/20 rule, or some variation of it, e-commerce SEO is as much about what the page says (contextual) as it is creating efficient crawls and improving findability (technical).

How do you decide which categories/products to target?

I break it into phases and living calendars. Seasonality is huge for e-commerce. Product margin is big. I like to be there to compliment other incoming company marketing initiatives, too. Then I relate all this to competition for low-hanging fruit. Start getting some wins so there’s an organic halo effect into the other pages. It makes getting the big wins much more likely down the road. I also try to do a parallel content marketing strategy to build authority on pages. Ideally I work with the client or business teams. I never go in pretending to be the expert in an industry.

Ask the right questions and the business may unknowingly set your course for you.

What is your favorite strategy for e-commerce sites?

That’s a hard question for me. I don’t think I have a “go to” strategy, or a favorite per se. My favorite part of any campaign is drawing one up from scratch. I usually find that connecting with other branding and marketing channels flows nicely into SEO if you can get all the other parties on board (which isn’t always easy considering the silos in retail businesses).

But if I have to answer the question, content strategies are always solid, whether they’re on a microsite, sub-section of the main domain, or just category pages. Simply finding the information searchers need, finding what differentiates your copy from the the competitors, and building out exactly what searchers need. I like to build my content strategies out for 3 month spans, which tends to work well for seasonal changes and keeps the whole process agile. I’m big into content marketing for e-commerce.

How will e-commerce optimization change in 2013?

In terms of SEO, not really. Definitely in other channels. I’m very curious about some of the new things PPC and mobile are trying to do together. I think the whole mobile landscape will continue to advance (which is obvious considering the trend from each Q4 in the last 5 years).

A few more useful rich snippets will probably come out, and the knowledge graph will likely get smarter which could either improve or repel clicks.

It’s a matter of time until social signals start to be impactful, but I don’t know if this is the year it explodes through Google Plus. I just don’t see the signs, but anything is possible. I don’t see any big changes on the horizon like I did in past years – at least not yet, and that’s a little disappointing.

I think we’ll be talking more about responsive design for e-commerce, and microformats, but not as a new, exciting thing. I think SEOs should continue to get into CRO and UX so they can get happier customers from search.

What I’m not hearing as much about as I’d like is attribution. I think that’s something that should only get more attention by SEOs, so they can build strategies around it (and increase their job security!). There are untapped strategies to build out via a customer’s purchase journey.

I think SEOs should continue to get into CRO and UX so they can get happier customers from search

What resources would you point people to if they wanted to learn more about e-commerce optimization?

E-commerce seems to be a niche that there’s surprisingly less resources on, which is unfortunate.

All the big SEO sites hit e-commerce optimization from time to time, but specifically I’m on these sites often:

• InternetRetailer.com
• PracticalEcommerce.com

Also, guys like Jonathon Colman and Everett Sizemore should be on your radar.

Quick Questions

Your blog is named Greenlane SEO & you have your own hashtag. Can you please explain: I don’t know where the hashtag came from – I’m thinking Anthony Pensabene (@content_muse) after a crazy night in Seattle where I, well, misbehaved.

I’ve seen it used on tweets I wasn’t part of, usually referring to something wild. I’m not that wild (anymore), but I like going along with it if it makes people laugh. Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good tweet. It’s probably annoying to all the Twitter fans of W.G. Sebald (the writer) who actually follow that hashtag.

The company name is a lot less interesting. For a brief time I lived in Perkiomenville, PA. Green Lane park was a great man-made lake and fishing spot. There were a few rocks I used to sit out on and relax. It’s where I decided to go solo. One day I’ll change the name, but I’ve had it since 2005. I’m open to suggestions!

Got a suggestion of what Bill’s site name should be? Please leave it the comments!

Mac or PC?

PC. Only because I know how to build them and debug them fairly well (though Windows 8 might make me abandon Microsoft altogether). For a while I tried my hand at graphic design, and still found a way to resist a Mac (despite how powerful they were). I have an iPad, iPod, and iPhone 5, but the Mac’s confuse the hell out of me.

Droid or Iphone? I’m addicted to the iPhone. I probably have as much money sunk into apps as any Gizmodo reviewer. I’m the guy who slows down 4G for everyone with my highly abused unlimited data plan. AT&T hates me.

Drink someone can buy you at conference?

Any microbrew IPA will make you my best friend. Triples are top of my list, but if you really want us to get in trouble, Jack Daniels is the way to go. #sebald

Getting Everything Organized

For the longest time I was looking for a place to organize my life, but it was difficult to sync photos, voice memos, webpages, etc into one place. That was until I discovered Evernote! This video does a great job explaining everything that Evernote can do.  

Step #1 Collect Everything!

Evernote provides several tools that allow you to collect everything on and offline.

• Evernote Web Clipper- Clip any website or online text to tag and save for later.
• Photos – Search images by text which is perfect for business cards, labels, or signs.
• Audio – Keep interviews and personal voice memos organized

Step #2 Tag & Note Everything

After you’ve collected all of this information you need to be able to easily find it. The best way to do this is to develop a tagging system. Here are three resources I would check out.

• The Evernote Bible - Beginners guide to Evernote
• The Secret Weapon - Complex Evernote organizational system. Lots of step by step videos. 
• IFTTT Evernote Recipes - Ways to leverage & automate using Evernote

How Do You Stay Organized With Evernote Or Otherwise?

I am always looking for ways to become more efficient and organized. Would like to hear how you stay on top of your game.

Deciding Which Keywords To Track

When deciding on which keywords to start tracking for this blog I didn’t have much time to do all the research so I decided to find what keywords I am already ranking for. I wanted to see if I am close to page 1 for any terms that could be quick wins if I targeted them. To do this I used the free version of SEM Rush.

I Rank For What? What To Do …

So when I dropped my blog into SEM Rush I found out that I am sitting on a Bull Riding Affiliates dream, all because of my experience of riding a Real Bull! By far the best $20 I ever spent, if you ever are heading out to AZ I got a few things you should check out.

I did some research around this for affiliates or other lead gen opportunities but there really isn’t any so it turns out I’m sitting on a fools gold mine. At least now if you see a big Wranglers Jeans banner on my personal blog you’ll know why. Another interesting keyword that I have some rankings for is Easter Egg Cards so watch out Hallmark!

What Have You Surprisingly Ranked For?

What keywords were you surprised to rank for and what did you do with them. I think a lot of you out there will have some great stories!

I recently got to talk with Joshua Davis during his Reddit AMA the other week. Joshua writes for Wired.com as well as GQ and Mens Health.Josh has had an interesting road as a journalist which has led him to produce The Underdog: How I Survived the World’s Most Outlandish Competitions
which covers him competing as an arm wrestler, matador, and sumo wrestler!

More recently he has written John McAfee’s Last Stand where Josh accounts for the crazy currentcontroversy around the creator of the popular McAfee antivirus software.

Josh was nice enough to give some tips and insight on what it takes to be a journalist. Hope you found it as helpful as I did. If you have any further questions please leave them in the comments and hopefully he will pop in and answer them.

When did you know you wanted to be a journalist?

I never planned to be a journalist. It came about unexpectedly. Back in 2001, I heard about the US National Armwrestling Championship. I decided to enter for the experience but ended up placing 4th in the US and going to the World Championship in Poland as part of Team USA. A good friend of mine was a journalist and suggested that it would be a good magazine article. He helped me put together a pitch and suggested some publications that might be interested. Maxim ended up commissioning it and I’ve been a full time journo ever since!

What do you love most about your job?

I enjoy meeting unusual, interesting people. I’ve always liked talking with people.

How have you been able to write for publications like Wired, Mens Health, and Outside?

I pitch the magazines stories. One of the things I love about journalism is that there’s a low barrier to entry. You just have to have a good idea and then write up a short summary. Send it to an editor and if it works for them, they commission it and send you out into the world. I spend a lot of time thinking up new stories, tracking people down and trying to figure out what I want to write next.

How do you build & maintain relationships in the industry?

Wired is located in San Francisco, where I live, so I get to see the editors there often. I try to get to NYC at least once a year to catch up with folks there.

What stories do you enjoy writing the most?

I like trying to understand complex people. I also like stories that have an element of adventure. Put those two together and I’m on it!

What are some tips you would give someone aspiring to be a journalist?

Spend time getting to know the magazine you want to pitch. Then pitch them front of the book, smaller stories. That will allow you to build up a relationship with an editor so that you can prove your dependable, can meet a deadline, and can write. Once that relationship is established, you pitch a more ambitious feature.

How often do you get pitched on stories? What makes a pitch good or bad?

People rarely pitch me directly. I get a ton of spammy PR stuff that I automatically delete. But if somebody has an amazing story about an interesting person and they email directly, I will pay attention. That usually doesn’t happen though!

Do you use social media as a journalist?

In the McAfee case, I used Twitter to keep people up to date on what was going on. On the reporting side, I comb through twitter feeds, facebook pages, etc when reporting a story.

What’s your next adventure?

Getting my kids to bed!

Question or Comments?

Would like to hear from you in the comments!

This strategy  works especially well for companies that already produce high quality photos for their clothes, gear, equipment, food, etc. Again please use this list as a means to find the right communities to connect with your audience and not to spam the internet for weeks.

If you have additional sites or tools that would benefit those in our industry please leave them in the comments.

Photo Ecommerce Sites

https://svpply.com
http://playwho.com/
http://yeay.me
http://www.wanelo.com/
http://www.thefancy.com
http://www.etsy.com/
http://www.nuji.com/

Photo Communities

http://dribbble.com/
http://www.notcot.org/
http://500px.com
http://designspiration.net
http://www.behance.net
http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

Photo Bookmarking Sites

http://pinterest.com/
http://ffffound.com/
http://vi.sualize.us/
http://weheartit.com/
http://www.imgspark.com/

http://www.mymodernmix.com/

http://dropular.net/
http://piccsy.com/
http://www.freshbump.com/
http://www.picocool.com/
http://9gag.com/
http://imgfave.com/

Finding Niche Communities

Every industry has a specific community and finding them can be extremely helpful. The tool that I use to help me find these communities is  Similar Site Search. I wrote more about how to use Similar Site Search in this post on the SEER blog.

How To Use Social Media To Your Advantage

I love this tweet where Anthony shares his philosophy on how to really use social media to your advantage. I  could not have phrased it any better.

“How do I use social media to my advantage?” You don’t. You use it to communicate with your market. Listening is the advantage

— Anthony Pensabene (@content_muse) September 28, 2012

Example Of Communicating To Your Market

I experienced first hand an example of Anthony “effectively communicating with his market” when he thanked all the people that RT’d one of his blog posts. At first it looks like a simple Thank You tweet, but knowing Anthony the link intrigued me so I had to click it.

@scott_dodge @thegonzoseo @juliejoyce @explorionary @madeale @onreact_com @zen2seo @ben_beck @rootswebsol bit.ly/RtYj83

— Anthony Pensabene (@content_muse) October 9, 2012

The link contained this animated gif:

How The Group Responded

By the time that I got around to checking my Twitter feed it was already filled with lots of responses from  the other great marketers mentioned.  My favorite response was this one by Chris Dyson.

@thegonzoseo @content_muse @scott_dodge @juliejoyce @explorionary @madeale @onreact_com @zen2seo @ben_beck ¯_(ツ)_/¯

— Chris Dyson (@RootsWebSol) October 9, 2012

Conclusion

A lot of times I find myself looking at the size of someones social media  following to determine how important, knowledgeable,  or influential they are, but I appreciate people in the online marketing community who are showing me that  the quality is much more important then quantity. 

How do you connect with your network? Look forward to reading them in the comments.

How did Nick Eubanks get into marketing?

That’s an interesting and fun question to answer. I guess I should start off with a confession… if you would have told me in college that I was going to be in the marketing industry, I would have thought you were crazy. I had my heart set on working in the financial and real estate industries and really didn’t think I would ever do anything else…

Funny how life works out.

While in school I worked as an analyst (financial/business/real estate) for a handful of companies, usually working 30 hours per week while also completing an average of 17-19 credits per semester – needless to say, I stayed busy. The heavy workload paid off, and I was able to land a great job with a growing software company as a marketing communications manager, immediately after I graduated.

My experience working within the bureaucratic confines of Fortune 500 firms in some of my analyst roles lent itself well to marketing enterprise level software. The software itself was pretty slick in terms of functionality, but was in an extremely boring industry; regulatory accounting (Sarbanes-Oxley), and the interface looked like something from the early 90′s.

At the time SEO was not the buzzword it is today, and far from being an industry of it’s own, so it was relatively easy to get top rankings, although they weren’t receiving much search traffic at the time; something like 3,500 searches per month. However, more and more often I had prospects calling and emailing me asking about how we got to page one on Google rather than asking about the software.

After just over a year with the firm, I left for a position at a more entrepreneurial-focused company and began consulting, 2 years later I started my first agency with 2 partners, and the rest as they say, is history.

So What is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)?

Optimizing for conversion certainly means a lot of different things to different people. To me it means removing any and every impediment that could potentially prevent a conversion.

What can be considered a conversion?

I would say a conversion is when a user completes a measurable action that positively contributes to the success of a campaign.

What’s your favorite example of a successful CRO campaign?

I am perhaps a bit bias towards average revenue per user (ARPU), but I would have to say Wider Funnel”s Campaign that double revenues per visitor for travelguidesfree.com.

Beyond that I was really impressed by the Conversation Rate Expert approach to optimizing the initial sales page for SEOmoz.

What tips do you have so people make the right goals?

Don’t just focus on the end-game, like revenue or sign-ups. Pay attention to metrics that can be early indicators of future revenue or sign-ups, like engagement metrics, such as time on page, shares via email, or tracking when a user prints a page.

What tools do you use to measure conversions?

I like tracking everything, including ‘micro-conversions,’, these could be things like scroll position, social shares, or up/down votes.

I use a wide mix of free, paid, and proprietary tools including Google Analytics, Google Content Experiments, Visual Website Optimizer, and an internal conversion rate monitoring dashboard.

 ( Video Explanation of Google Content Experiments )

If a site doesn’t have a lot of traffic or conversions, how can they test CRO?

Honestly this may sound like a bit of an oversimplification but in my opinion there is no better, faster, or cheaper way to get unbiased and real feedback than through ad-hoc user testing. For this I love usertesting.com.

I would recommend using a minimum of 3 participants for any test, but if you’re on a bootstrap budget, spending the $39 for just one user test will give you tons of actionable feedback on where users are getting hung up in your conversion funnel.

What blogs, posts, people would you recommend to learn more about this subject?

My favorite CRO blogs are:

• http://whichtestwon.com/ <– personal favorite of Nick Eubanks
• http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/
• http://online-behavior.com/
• http://www.widerfunnel.com/blog
• http://www.conversion-rate-experts.com/blog/

In terms of posts they are mostly a collection from the blogs above, but there are a few specific posts worth sharing:

• http://johnnyholland.org/2012/02/behavioral-heuristics/
• http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/the-awesomeness-factor-cameron-gray-on-agile-and-ux
• http://www.zeldman.com/2012/08/21/google-analytics-in-real-life/

The people I follow for both information and inspiration are:

• Derek Halpern
• John-Henry Scherk
• Ross Hudgens

Questions About CRO? Put them in the comments.