Most Startups Fail

They fail because they exist in an environment of extreme uncertainty. They seek to bring innovation – a brand new way of doing something – into a market. And because they bring something “new” and “different” they’re never sure whether people will respond positively or negatively.

It’s a risk startups must take, because it’s the only way you can enter an existing market. You have to provide a “better’ way of doing something, else why would people switch from their current product to use your product? It’s that innovation that makes startups small businesses, and it’s that innovation that continues to attract customers to product a medium sized business. Repeat that cycle until you’re Google.

Investors Hate Uncertainty

The problem with large companies is that investors don’t like operating in an uncertain, high risk environment. They need to focus on making money, and in order to do that they need to accurately project how the company will perform in the future. A company with steady growth will attract investors, which gives the company resources needed to expand market share. The focus changes from product innovation to steady growth, which means innovation usually takes a backseat. Why?

The nature of innovation is uncertainty. How many times did Edison fail to create a working lightbulb? Why do we have WD-40 or Formula 409? Truly innovative ideas fail 70% of the time, and that’s the kind of uncertainty that investors would rather avoid.

The Delima

So now you have a delima… Innovation is required for companies to attract customers. Customers are required for companies to attract investors. Investors are required for companies to support operations. The problem of course is that investors are adverse to uncertainty, and uncertainty is inherent to innovation.

What To Do

There are a few ways for companies to remain innovative without taking on startup-like risk.

1. Acquire innovative companies – Last year Google acquired 26 companies. That’s one every 10 business days. Could you imagine your company acquiring another company every 10 days?
2. Hire entrepreneurs.  Google rarely acquires companies for their technology. They buy them to hire the people who created them.
3. Steal ideas – Kidding. No I’m not. Apple stole  the graphical interface from Xerox. Microsoft stole it from Apple. Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from the Winklevoss twins. Ideas are worthless. It’s what you do with them that count.
4. Breed Innovation Yourself

Breeding innovation. This is the idea that I’m most excited about – how to foster and grow innovation from within your organization. Here’s an idea that I’d like to see the company I work for implement.

Hackatons

I’m proposing a company sponsored hackathon. Pit you and your co-workers against teams from other companies in your industry to see who can create the most disruptive technology in 24 hours.  Set some rules, send the invites, rent a co-working space, snag some judges, buy some trophies and set aside a few days of company sponsored, uninterrupted team hacking. Any ideas or technologies that your team creates belongs to the company. Hold these types of events once or twice a year to help your organization breath the sweet air of innovation without introducing massive uncertainty to shareholders.

What Say You?

What sort of things have you done that led to innovation in your company?

Recently I asked some of my favorite bloggers about the biggest lesson they learned in their first 6 months of blogging. The answers I got were fascinating, educational and often surprising.

This and next week I will run a series of posts sharing my findings, and today we’re starting with none other than Mr. Leo Widrich.

Leo is the force of nature behind the Buffer App, an indispensable tool in anyone’s Twitter arsenal. He has written for many highly regarded blogs and has probably had the highest creative output of any other blogger I know of in his first 6 months of blogging.

So, without further ado, let’s see what the biggest lesson was Leo had learned in his first 6 months of blogging.

This is what Leo had shared with me.
Learning What People Want
This goes back to the famous Paul Graham quote, that only a selected few can get printed on a t-shirt:" Make something people want."

Within 6 months of blogging, I got a great feeling of what it means to build something that people want. Not just readers, but users, press writers and people of all sorts. It would be foolish to say I have an understanding of it, but I definitely tasted what it is.

For readers: Within my first 6 months of blogging, I could learn which types of headlines do best (list posts, HOW TO’s and completely crazy stories), which lengths of posts does the best, which layout of posts does the best and so much more. I don’t mean learning about it, but experiencing it, seeing which posts I wrote got more traction, whilst others don’t. This was amazing.

For press writers: Being a blogger helped me a great deal to understand what others want to write about – because I am a writer myself. Approaching the press for stories about Buffer became a lot easier, my pitches much more focused on them and their readers and the level of understanding – from writer to writer, much more casual and comfortable.

For users: As a blogger I learnt that no one likes to read announcements or pure facts about the achievement of you and your startup. So I started to turn everything into guides, HOW TO’s and actionable tips that anyone can use for their advantage right away. This post might be a great example to showcase this.

For myself: Lastly, I learnt what I wanted myself. This came mostly through my personal blog. Blogging as a form of personal development is my most recent discovery, but helped me tremendously already. Spilling my thoughts on a canvas, to shape and form how my brain works is one of the things I would have never discovered without.

So in short, if there is anything I would recommend, it is to start blogging.
There It Is
So there it is. Pretty amazing insight from the guy that did it all. I especially love the ending. You really just have to suck it up and start blogging.

What is the biggest lesson you learned in your first 6 months of blogging?

Every company I’ve ever worked for has issued PCs to their employees. I hate it. They are ugly, they break, they get viruses, they are slow, the operating system is terrible… PCs drive me nuts!

I don’t know how IBM sold their horrible line of ThinkPads to every major corporation in the world, but they did. And now, like a decedent from a sinful race, we are all forced to live in a PC based culture which is frankly poison to everyone and everything that it touches.

Now I present to you, “Business Justification for MacBook’s in the Workplace”

1. Your MacBook doesn’t need an antivirus program
2. Your MacBook won’t die during a presentation
3. Your MacBook won’t make you feel like a fool when you are in a meeting with a creative agency
4. Your MacBook won’t give you back problems, because you won’t be lugging around an 8lb brick
5. Your MacBook doesn’t need to be rebooted 6 times a day
6. Your MacBook’s operating system gets better when new versions are released
7. Your MacBook wirelessly syncs to your iPhone – which should be standard issue as well
8. Your MacBook let’s your AirDrop files easily to nearby computers
9. Your MacBook has a built in camera for video conferencing
10. Your MacBook easily connects to new wireless networks without the need to fiddle with IP properties
11. Your MacBook lets you multi-task without things grinding to a halt
12. Your MacBook doesn’t have a loud fan pumping out heat from a poorly designed motherboard
13. Your MacBook has a search feature that actually locates files
14. Your MacBook makes employees happy

If you have 100 employees and you can improve an average of 8 minutes of productivity a day with the above benefits… At an agency bill rate of $100/hr. you can save $297,000*/year. If a fully featured MacBook cost $2,900 each, you’ve just saved enough money in productivity to justify a new computer for each employee in your company.

*223 working days * 8 minutes a day = 1,783 additional minutes / 60 minutes = 29.73 hours * 100 employees = 2,973 hours * $100/hr = $297,000 in cost savings

There are two types of SEO’s in the world…

The first of the two types is a career SEO. A career SEO typically works in-house for a medium or large company/agency as a search specialist or manager. If in-house they are likely the only one that does SEO full time, or their time is split between SEO and SEM. If agency side they will likely be fully focused on a single discipline, but will have a dozen or so more accounts than they should. For them, it has been a year or two since the last industry conference. Their friends probably work retail, and the conversation is usually about sports. Weekends are a time for relaxation and fun. They are a 9-5 SEO.

The second type of SEO is a craft SEO. A craft SEO may work in-house or agency side, but they may also be a full time freelancer or consultant. Whatever their employment circumstance, craft SEO’s will always have side projects going on. From helping a buddy setup a new blog to managing the Internet marketing activities for a local business, the craft SEO can’t get enough of search. You can generally spot a craft SEO at a local meetup or mini-conference in the area. They will have all the standard industry memberships – SEMPO, SeoMOZ, SEO Book, SEO Dojo, you name it, they are a member. If not a social butterfly themselves, they will at least follow the celebs on Twitter and Facebook. Their brain is powered by iOS or Android. Their friends are geekier than them, with the conversation usually gravitating towards the tech space – which programming language is the best, hot startups, must-have apps, powerful advertising campaigns, latest algorithm updates,etc. Weekends and holidays are a time for working on projects. They are a 5-9 SEO.

Myself? I am neither a career SEO or a craft SEO. My days are spent solving problems that lie on the seam between business and SEO, and my nights are spent building social networking platforms and technologies. I really can’t call myself an SEO anymore. It is both a fantastic and dangerous place to be. It’s like a child who studies martial arts for 10 years only to graduate and open his own dojo. Sure, there is a new and exciting type of fulfillment that teaching brings, but there is always risk that over time your technique will get sloppy and your body or mind will start to lose their sharpness.

SEO’s optimize.  I rarely optimize these days. I’m ok with that. I don’t want to optimize based on yesterday’s best practices. I want to invent. I want to build the next Twitter or the next Google. I want to file a patent. I want to go IPO.  I want create something that others spend time reverse engineering so that they can optimize what I’ve built.

I have a great deal of respect for craft SEO’s. It’s a great industry to be in right now, but you have to be careful. SEO is like a great turtle that appears above sea level for a short time, then disappears. If you think SEO to still meta tags and keywords, you are in trouble. That turtle submerged years ago. If you think SEO is links and infographics, watch out. That turtle is almost gone as well. The rising turtle is social, mobile, semantic and video, but even those focuses will only last a short time. The real secret to this industry is to anticipate and embrace the next big thing. Even better is to create it.

Search marketing is an amazing industry to be in right now. Budgets are shifting online, companies are taking SEO seriously, and the engines are evolving and expending. Catalyst Online is a leader in the SEO industry, and we are growing. If you are looking to work for a fantastic agency, check out the following job openings.

Organic Search Manager – If you can move a website into the #1 spot in Google for a competitive keyword, get in touch.

Organic Search Director – If you’ve mastered SEO, and you’re capable of leading a team of experts, get in touch.

Social SEO Manager – If you understand how social signals impact organic rankings, get in touch.

Mobile SEO Manager – If you can’t live without your phone, and you know how Google treats mobile websites differently than traditional websites, get in touch.

Mobile App Manager – If you’ve successfully optimized a mobile app to rank #1 in the app store for a competitive term, get in touch.

Ecommerce manager – If you can take a product feed and rank those products in the Walmarts and Amazon’s of the world, get in touch.

Account Director – If you love clients and feel the need to help them succeed, get in touch.

Details:
These jobs are located in New York City and Boston. We are growing quickly, and need to staff up on the most talented folks in the industry.

If you or someone you know would be an excellent fit for one of these roles get in touch. If you get in touch and Catalyst offers you or your referral a job, you will receive a $1,000 finders fee after 6 months of employment.

Yesterday I held a very special webinar for our SEO group at Catalyst Search Marketing . The webinar was the first in a series entitled, “Patent Watch” where we dig deep into recently submitted patents from Google, Facebook and others. This particular patent was called, “Social Search Engine” and submitted by Google late last year. The patent talks about how Google is taking search beyond documents into the social space, therefore SEO must follow them there.

The Basic Idea

People used to ask Google all their questions. Now they are turning to their friends on Facebook and Twitter for advice. A question like, “Where can I get great sushi in New York” would likely be better answered by a friend in NY than a search engine, and this patent addresses that.
Google is really great at searching web documents, but web documents fail pretty hard with natural language queries seeking a subjective answer. People are best equipped to answer those types of questions, therefore Google needs to index people.

“Google needs to index people”?

That’s weird, right? Well, not really. Google already knows a lot about you; your searching habits, your contacts, what you blog about, etc. But what they don’t have is a fully-fledged social graph. You know, the thing we helped Facebook build by inviting all our friends on to their platform which they now make millions selling our data! *takes deep breath… slowly exhales*.  It is that social graph that Google wants, err, needs in order to find the best person to answer certain types of questions. Let me give an example.

I love listening to music.

When I find a good song I drop it on repeat and abuse it for several days until I’m sick of it. Then I find a new one. Needless to say, sometimes the music industry is crap, and I need to dig deep to find great new music.

Have you ever asked your friends on Facebook to recommend some new music for you? Yeah? And do you ask Google to recommend music for you, too? No? Me neither.  Why? Because we know that Google doesn’t really know what we like, but our friends do. Here is an example:

Obviously this is worthless. Now what if I asked this on Facebook? (*Note* I removed all personal information and friend connections from Facebook two years ago, because they Facebook is a bunch of pirates. So I’ve asked my collegue, Ryan Fortin, if he would ask his Facebook connections instead.)

The results on Facebook are better, but it took a half hour for two answer from one friend to come back. Not to mention, you probably don’t want your mom recommending music to you. You pretty much just wanted to hear from friends with similar music tastes. This is EXACTLY the problem Google is solving with this patent.

The Solution

Google has invented a system that helps you find the best people to answer your question. You type in a question like, “Any movies worth seeing this weekend?”, and Google analyzes your social graph to see who can best answer your question. It’s got to be someone you know, and they need to be online when you ask. If would be great if they like talking about movies, and for this particular question they should have a lot of the same cultural interests are you.

BAM!!!

Google found three of your friends who match that criteria. A little window pops up for your friends saying, “Hi Bob, Your friend, [name] would like to ask you a question about movies. Would you like to answer?” Bob is happy to bestow their latest movie going experience with you, and Google instantly returns the answers from several friends ranked by order of relevance and quality.

Google used to index documents to bring you answers. Now they are indexing people to bring you answers.

The Application

If you do traditional SEO for clients, you know they want their web pages to show up #1 whenever someone asks a question related to their business. When their site shows up on the top and the searcher clicks through, your clients have an opportunity to convert that user. The same holds true on social networks.

Users are asking tons of questions on social networks, and your client should want to be the one that gives an answer. In doing so they have an opportunity to convert the user, and just like traditional SEO, those who understand how the system works can optimize a client’s profile, relationships and actions to improve the likelihood that they will be selected to answer a question, and how high the response rankings. This isn’t social media optimization, it’s still search optimization just taking place on a social network. SEO is evolving in multiple directions and Social SEO is a major one you won’t want to ignore.

What is the first thing you do in the morning? Me, I check my email. And sitting in my inbox this morning was an email from Joseph, a UK based SEO.  It was a well written email asking if I would sell text links on my and @dino_dogan’s website, Triberr.

I haven’t responded to his email yet, but I’m going to decline. Even if he was paying top dollar, we’re not interested in showing ads to our members – especially text ads. That to me is the lowest form of advertising.

But I got to thinking… Is buying and selling text ads wrong? I’ve been doing SEO for almost 10 years, and I have always held a very low view of SEOs who work with paid links. Like they were somehow cheating the system. Now there is no doubt that buying and selling links is black hat. It violates Google’s quality guidelines and your site can, and probably at some point will, be penalized by Google. But is it morally wrong?

I’m a blogger (well, not much of one really, but this is a blog so that counts, right?), and if I want to monetize my blog I can. As long as I pay taxes on income, there isn’t anything wrong with me showing advertising to my visitors. I wrote the content, I registered the domain and if I want to sell ads space on the page, I’m entitled to do so.

S0… Time to ask the audience. Who is the unethical one?

The blogger who makes a quick buck selling text links they know will manipulate Google’s algorithm which creates a poor search experience for billions of people? Or Google, who takes people’s content, displays it on their own site, makes billions selling text ads and tells the content creators how they can and can’t advertise on their site?
What do you say?

—
Disclaimer: I don’t buy or sell paid links, not because I think its wrong, but I find paid links makes the site look cheap and is a poor experience for my visitors. Do I do it for work? Nope. We take a strict white hat approach to SEO. When you’re working with massive household brands, you can’t risk a JCPenny episode with clients. But I’m still entitled to my personal views on things, and this is exactly what this is. A personal view, not reflective of my company’s view.
—

I’ve been doing SEO for 9 years, so there isn’t much that catches me by surprise, but I can honestly say that tonights visit to my webmaster tools account made my jaw pretty loose.

Here is the deal. Without doing any SEO or link building for Triberr.com, I’ve secured well over 120,000 inbound links in 6 months. Now 91,000 of those are from Twitter, so let’s pretend they don’t exist. Still, I’m looking at over 20,000 links from sites like huffingtonpost.com, wordpress.com, yahoo.com, facebook.com, google.com and others. Too good to be true, right? Well, it kind of is and it kind of isn’t.

How did this happen?

Well, first you need to understand what Triberr.com is. It’s a social sharing website where bloggers group up to share each others blog posts on Twitter. Each blogger connects and RSS feed and Twitter account to Triberr and anytime someone in the group publishes a post, everyone else tweets it. They can tweet it automatically or manually.

How many tweets is Triberr tweeting?

Let’s just say that for the month of August, Triberr scheduled well over 1MM tweets.
Here is an example of such a tweet:

Now you see that “7 hours ago via Triberr” link at the bottom? Well that links to Triberr.com, and that explains the 91,000 links from Twitter, but what about the others?

Links from other sites

I didn’t think about this before, but Twitter syndicates tweets on A LOT of sites through various widgets. This widget is on the HuffingtonPost.com:

These links are from Twaiter.com

There are numerous other widgets that syndicate tweets containing a link to the app that tweeted it.

Lessons Learned

First off, these links are temporary. They may be “nofollowed” and they only contain a single anchor text to your homepage. HOWEVER… They are crawl-able links from unique root domains in different C-blocks. If nothing else, Google should recognize that whatever this “Triberr” website is, certainly people are talking and linking to them. Some will get devalued, but some won’t.

How can this help me or my client?

Consider giving your visitors the ability to Sign-In to your site with Twitter and tweet something from your site. Of course you’ll need to register a web app with Twitter, but that’s an easy process and you can put your keywords in the app name. The more users who use the tweet functionality from your site, the more of these Twitter Syndication links you’ll grab.

Those in the industry know this best… Great ideas will effortlessly outperform tiresome link building tactics.

I’m writing an article for Search Engine Journal about how to squeeze more traffic out of your #1 ranking. In the article I mostly talk about how to craft and test which title and description variation will get a higher click through rate. As I thought about the best title for the article, I figured, “Well, I might as well practice what I preach and run a test”.

So I’ve constructed an A/B split of two headlines:
Headline 1: SEO Test Results Prove You Can Indeed FORCE People to Click on Your Listing
Headline 2: As an SEO with 9 yrs of experience – Here is my most effective CTR Trick

I’ve tweeted these headlines, and I’ve added a bit.ly tracker to the tweets so I can see which headline receive a higher click through rate. Because you clicked on the tweet, you are now part of the test results – thank you for your unknowing participation

If you’d like to see which headline has performed the best, you can view the stats for headline 1 by clicking on this link: http://bit.ly/n5GC9Z+ and the stats for headline 2 by clicking on this link: http://bit.ly/ozL4HD+.

The difference between the two headlines is that with headline 1, I am trying to evoke a feeling of empowerment (FORCE People) mixed with a little bit of trust (Results Prove) and curiosity (I wonder what the test results say exactly). In headline 2 I go heavy on the trust factor (9 yrs of experience) mixed with a little bit of vice (CTR trick). In my article I actually talk about what all 7 triggers are, and how they can be used to entice people to click on your tweets, SERP listings or emails.

Thank you again for your participation. If you would like to help, you could do 1 thing for me…

Tweet this out to your followers so they can participate in the test as well. Before you tweet, all I ask is that you tweet both headlines right after each other. If someone just tweets headline 1 and not headline 2, or they tweet headline 1 now and headline 2 later, the A/B split won’t work.

Headline 1: Tweet

Headline 2: Tweet

Disclaimer – I’m writing this post mostly about myself, realizing the gaps in my own knowledge when comparing myself to true industry experts.

One major problem with SEOs, and even SMOs, right now is they think they are better than they actually are. This goes for freelancers, in-house and agency SEOs. Everyone thinks they are a superstar, and the truth is they are not that good. I mean, they are ok. They just don’t know what ”really good!” looks like.

A lack of standards within the industry:
Part of the problem here is that you can’t get a degree in SEO, the certifications are mostly a joke and the only universal standard of measurement , Google’s ranking algorithm, is in a constant state of change. Anyone who spends enough time on SEO forums and news sites can fake their way through an interview. Results, or lack thereof, can always been explained away and most managers still think of SEO as more of a black art than a science. It’s a perfect storm of mediocrity and complacency.

There are a few ways to remedy complacency.

Start evaluating SEOs against some sort of standard.
The industry needs to recognize some sort of certification or test that scores SEOs on their knowledge and experience.  Knowledge and experience alone don’t make a good SEO, but they are building blocks.

Expose SEOs to what best in class really is.
Have an outside expert, preferable a well known one, come in and run an advanced workshop. If you can’t afford a trainer to come on site, send your team to some advanced conferences. I’m not talking about SES, I’m talking SMX Advanced, MOZcon and SearchLove (Note: SES is a fine conference in many respects. It just isn’t geared towards the advanced crowd.  I’ve got nothing but respect for the speakers and organizers).

Encourage friendly competition. Hold an SEO contest. Especially effective for larger teams, choose a non-sense phase with low competition and see which SEO can rank a brand new site for that phase by a certain date. Make sure the prize is something everyone will want. Maybe an ipad, macbook or conference pass.

Encourage industry interaction.
SEOs should be constantly blogging about the industry. They should have their own blogs. They should be writing for your company blog. They should be guest posting for other industry blogs and publications. If your SEOs aren’t doing that yet, it’s because they don’t know enough about a topic to write about it in depth, or they haven’t built up their network/reputation. In either case, there is work that needs to be done.

Update your teams KPIs.
KPIs are almost always about campaign performance. However, client performance doesn’t necessarily reflect how well the SEO is at their job. There are dozens of outside factors that can affect rankings, from changes to the site to offline marketing campaigns.

Good KPIs should look at campaign performance, but they also need to measure professional growth. They need to answer the question, “Is [name] becoming better at what they do” apart from campaign performance, which we just said wasn’t the best measurement. These new KPIs should measure things like efficiency, effectiveness, depth of knowledge, confidence, thought leadership, etc.

What do you think?
Do the SEOs you know think they are best in class?