My presentation at our London Linklove 2012 conference.

1. Mediocre to Great
WILL CRITCHLOW

2. WILL CRITCHLOW
http://dis.tl/website-survey
(Take a copy, then you can access the form)

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Start with the “5 whys”
WHY?
Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mloberg/5055462314/

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Quickly modified to the “3 or 4 whys”
Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lasse_chr/2063315220/

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There are 3 main problems I see
Not doing Not doing Not
anything enough / the acknowledging
right things weaknesses

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There is a rarer problem right at the top
… Not cultivating
spiky enough
spikes

7. Mediocre to Good
Mainly about activity and removing gaps / barriers
WILL CRITCHLOW

8. Good to Great
More about cultivating spikes of amazing
WILL CRITCHLOW

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Discover

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Discover what it’s going to take

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Discover where your strengths and
weaknesses lie

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Pitch

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Agency types:
I don’t mean “only start getting paid after this”

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Experiment

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Invest

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Let’s dive into the details

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Discover

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Ever graded anything out of 5?
1 2 3 4 5
• 5% of • Almost • Almost • Almost • Arrogant
responses no-one no-one everyone few
Better than average, but could be better

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We live in an “exceptional takes all” world
Source: http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/03/first-apples-rank-in-mobile-phone-profitability-and-revenues/
Apple at one stage had 9% of the
handset market but 75% of the
industry’s gross margin

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Yes, that Y-axis is in $billions
Source: http://barefigur.es/

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No experience: I don't know about this
area / haven't worked on this / it isn't relevant
to my role

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Basic competence: I have done some work
in this area.You can delegate me tasks but I
may need support or I may have a few
questions

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Core competence: I am rarely stumped in
this area and can handle poorly-defined tasks
with no worries. I can teach, train and manage
others' work in this area.

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“Distilled expert”: I am one of a small
number of people everyone in Distilled turns
to with “1%” problems in this area

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Renowned expert: I am acknowledged
outside Distilled for being right at the top in
this area

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I created a self-assessment for websites
Permission
Design Content Investment USPs
assets

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None / N/A: Not something you do
(successfully)

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Basic competitiveness: You invest time
and money in this area

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Core competitiveness: You keep pace with
and occasionally outstrip competitors in this
area.
In most areas, for most companies, this will be as good as it gets

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Industry leader: Known for being at or
very near the top of all sites in your industry
in this area

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Internet leader: An impartial observer has
selected you as a case study / example of
excellence in this area across all niches online.

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“Internet leader”
Many companies achieve nothing rated this highly
and it will be exceptionally unusual to score this
highly in multiple areas.

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Internet leader: An impartial observer has
selected you as a case study / example of
excellence in this area across all niches online.
Get used to it, a conflation of “good” and
“famous” is just how the world works

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http://dis.tl/website-survey
(Take a copy, then you can access the form)

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Important: score on an exponential scale

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We see interesting things from the plot

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Of course it doesn’t explain all variation
National brand outperforming
their website’s “quality”

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We should really think of it as dynamic
Startup with great site and products
that hasn’t won loads of links (yet)

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Action: line yourself up against competitors
Conditional formatting is your friend

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Action: compare to aspirations
Conditional formatting is your friend
Arena Flowers
Oyster
These are the easiest areas
to change in the short term

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Arena Flowers is investing in content
http://www.arenaflowers.com/video_campaigns/dubstep_flowers My advice?
Don’t stop doing this, but
focus hard on how you
can build permission
assets out of it –
particularly repeat
visitors to the site.

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What would I focus on for Oyster?
In some ways harder to work out how to move the needle
Oyster
Digging deeper into this, we see some spikes (non-commercial email list and influencer
relationships) and some gaps (community / UGC). I would double-down on the spikes
before addressing the gaps.

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Sometimes you
need someone
else to tell you

48. WILL CRITCHLOW - @willcritchlow
See the Whiteboard Friday: Replicating Google’s Panda Questionnaire

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Plotting direct visitors against linking root
domains is interesting
“how to write a blog post”
Targeted bloggers
“how many links should an infographic get”
Much more likely to get tweeted

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Funny vs. Interesting
http://www.distilled.net/blog/social-media/how-to-write-a-blog-post/ http://www.distilled.net/blog/reputation-monitor/how-many-links-should-an-infographic-get/

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How?

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Pages report filtered to content you’re interested in
Choose the subset of content you want to analyse

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First, get unique visitors (direct traffic segment)
Make sure # results is greater than number of
rows, then export to TSV
Remember this number for later

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Then get domains linking to that content
Then export to TSV again

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You want to change sub-domains to root domains
There is no way of doing this algorithmically. I whitelisted a few TLDs and then stripped any
sub-domains that didn’t match. I didn’t need it to be perfect.

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Those aren’t all followed links!
I don’t care.
Traffic sent by links is still one of my favourite metrics for
judging a link’s worth.
Zero traffic = meh
Lots of traffic even if nofollow = much more interest

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A bit of Excel gets you linking domains and unique PV
(direct segment) for each piece of content

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Put both axes on a log scale to see detail
“how to write a blog post”
Targeted bloggers
“how many links should an infographic get”
Much more likely to get tweeted

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~0.5% of visitors link to our blog content
(from a new domain)

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Surprisingly high correlation on many sites
(This is SEOmoz)
Web developers cheat sheet

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~0.4% of visitors link to SEOmoz blog content
(from a new domain)

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The main reason we
have fewer links than
SEOmoz is that fewer
people see our
content

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Some other similar things you could measure

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Average number of referring domains per
piece of content

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Average number of new referring domains
per piece of content

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Average number of new pieces of content
getting links each month

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Actions
Try out my self-assessment
Benchmark against key competitors
Benchmark against aspirations
Compare gaps in quality to gaps in performance
Run the analytics stats to get baselines

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Take this kind of thing into the next stage
Arena Flowers
Oyster
These are the easiest areas
to change in the short term

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Pitch

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Example of pitching to (existing) client
Details changed to protect the innocent

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Recently pitched a “travel big picture”

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Big photography works. Lightning strikes repeatedly

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You have (and can get) amazing photos
Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizacole/2628863845/

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It scales beautifully – endless themes
Colours, landscapes, animals, beaches, people, etc.
Link: http://pinterest.com/nicolewaites/drive-until-the-map-turns-blue/

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But start with an experiment
We might be wrong (more about launchrock later)

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Business model comparisons
A metaphor business people understand

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Content library = Physical real estate
Drives footfall to point of sale. Lets great product do its job
Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coda/74796428/in/photostream/

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Good conversion rate = Efficient supply chain
Gives you pricing power and / or allows a bigger marketing spend
Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/crawfishpie/489771072/

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Lifestyle business vs. Growth company
Is there scalability and flywheel potential in your link building strategy?

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We run through HBR case studies at lunchtime

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Some are even directly relevant to pitching
http://hbr.org/2010/01/how-i-did-it-aflacs-ceo-explains-how-he-fell-for-the-duck/ar/1

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Actions
Pitch a big idea and a small next step
[Also – set up a learnch with colleagues]

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Take sign-off on experiments to the next stage

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Experiment

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To find out what works for you
To prove what works to someone else

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“I can’t stop reading this analysis of Gawker’s
editorial strategy”http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/03/i-cant-stop-reading-this-analysis-of-gawkers-editorial-strategy/

87. SPEAKER NAME - EDIT FOOTER
33 percent fewer posts;
40 percent greater traffic
Kerry Lauerman, Editor in Chief, Salon.com
Source: http://open.salon.com/blog/kerry_lauerman/2012/02/03/hit_record

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GE has an award for “ambitious failed projects”
More info: http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/public/Appointments/article670525.ece
Image credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eschipul/4204934214/ Jeff Immelt, Chairman of GE, cultivator of spikes

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Career tip – show your boss this clip:
“how quickly the world owes him something”

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The MVP isn’t what you think it is
(if you haven’t actually read the book)

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On-track on the hockey stick
“On track” over here cannot
(should not) be “successfully
made no money yet”

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Use tools like launchrock.com

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This page has a 40% conversion rate

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We built it in 10 minutes
www.distilled.net/store/u

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Also love kickofflabs.com

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Good excuse for off-site creativity

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A brief look at the stats

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It even ranked (was #1 when the news broke)

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Actions
Read The Lean Startup
Take one element of your big vision and launch an MVP
experiment ASAP (what could you launch on
Monday?)
Update reports to include the metrics your
experiments are focussed on

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Take the evidence and ideas to the next stage

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Invest

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Checklists help us win
Since last time, I’ve actually read the book.
Key (new) take-aways:
• Use shorter checklists
• Communication checklists are a good idea
• Ask “what should we do if that goes wrong?”

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Excerpt from our creative ideas checklist
• Can you find 10 target sites
in 10 minutes?
• Have they linked out to
content like this before?

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Making plans

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Inputs:
SERPs / Competitor identification
Competitor tactics (What are they doing?
What works? Where are they winning?)

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Outputs:
Activity plan (with activity targets)
Testable assumptions
(activity  results & results  outcomes)

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Measure progress towards your plans
Who hates planning?
I thought I did, then I realised I hate plans
See this presentation for more of my thoughts on
that:
http://www.slideshare.net/willcritchlow/metrics-that-matter

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Discover what you need to improve and to win
Pitch big visions and small next steps
Experiment to find ways to improve and to persuade
Invest with evidence and experience in hand

109. Thank You
Any Questions?
WILL CRITCHLOW