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REINCLUSION
AFTERLIFE
How a
champion was
reborn through
content strategy


michael King
Director of inbound marketing @ipullrank
                                           @iacquire
http://bit.ly/reinclusion-afterlife


                                      @iacquire
SHOUTOUT TO
@RHEA DRYSDALE




My online reputation
management coach
Rhea is an awesome friend and she let
me borrow her brain and experience
when I was trying to figure out the most
effective tactics for ORM.




                            @iPullRank
DEINDEXATION HAS NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN
ROUND I: THE STORY


                                          @iPullRank
IN THIS CORNER:   I PITY THE FOOL THAT
                  BUYS AND SELLS LINKS.




                                 @iPullRank
IN THIS CORNER:




                  @iPullRank
I LOVE A challenge
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED
I maybe love a challenge too much because I often put myself in
places where the challenge is insurmountable like my previous
position at Publicis Modem.
WE NEED HELP WITH
                                 A little BIT OF
                                 CLEANUP




Iacquire was among a number
of companies that aggressively
courted me
BUT IACQUIRE
WANTED MY
VISION
A lot of companies wanted my “talents”
but iacquire wanted my LEADERSHIP vision
After interviewing at a ton of places iAcquire sounded
like it’d be the place that offered me the most latitude
to truly take an agency forward, innovate and do
great work.




                                                           @iPullRank
This isn’t an excuse, it’s just me explaining
that I didn’t understand the magnitude of the
paid link building until I did the quantifying
outreach study which was literally days
before my official start date.
I was already scheduled to be in Australia,
Arizona, Indiana and Montreal during my
first 2 months at iAcquire so my goal was
to bring on more white hat clientele so we
could quickly transition out of paid links.
On may 21st, 2012 An April
fools joke came to life
before our very eyes
I officially started at iAcquire on April 3rd after I
returned from LinkLove London, but before I got
there Joe, Robb and I played this joke on Jay and
TR. Matt Cutts and Mike King = BFFS 4 EVER




                                    @iPullRank
IN Iacquire’s corner                                                                 @iPullRank




Joe Griffin            Jay swansson             John-paul barnych
Co-founder             Co-founder               Vice President of Revenue




Tom rusling            Cindy nieves             Jeffrey nappi
General Manager        Director of Operations   Director of Technology      @iPullRank
Our OLD
Process
We used to use money at this
point as a motivator to get links.
Protocol was not to talk about
money unless the webmaster
asks for it.




           @iPullRank
IN KANSAS
Reinclusion Afterlife
REJOICED
A lot of people came out of the woodwork to
dance on the grave of iAcquire including people
who are to this day actively selling links
themselves




                                                  @iPullRank
GOOGLE
Reinclusion Afterlife
Reinclusion Afterlife
The Actual Fortune Cookie Joe
Griffin Got the day of the
deindexation
Internally: I lost my shit
I wanted to respond right away with a very transparent explanation of
what happened. In fact I wrote it 3 times. The rest of the leadership
team felt differently.
Externally:
I was fairly nonchalant
Early on, it was pretty easy to not to lose it externally because I still
        had hope we would hash out a solid transparent response.



                                                                            @iPullRank
8 DAYS

My voice was missing from that conversation because I hated it, but
as a team player I lived with it
WE CHANGED OUR
BUSINESS MODEL
OVERNIGHT
We locked ourselves in a conference room for a few
days and voila just like that Content Marketing
became all that we did. There was no more link buying
at all.
An invite to speak at a SEMPO event
was rescinded
An invite to write for SearchEngineLand never
materialized
Hooray!
iacquire.com
There’s a lot more where
                                     this came from.


On behalf of the people on my team
that work hard everyday
iAcquire was never like these companies that are forever branded as a




                             B
                                 charlatans. I personally don’t know what happened to these guys, but I
                                 do know…



Aren’t we supposed to stay
down now?
Accolades

WAS
DEINDEXED
CIRCA 2002*
iCrossing went through a series of rebrandings
and ultimately has been regarded as one of the
best digital agencies by a variety publications
such as advertising age, forrester wave, omma
and ad week. There is life after deindexation.




            *According to Joe Griffin
                                                              @iPullRank
This is when I realized
reputation management is
JUST not about the serp



                           @iPullRank
How we trained to get back on top
EVER
It was an unfortunate byproduct
of the process
Many people on our outreach team were not prepared to
make the leap with us so we had to let them go.
We did keep the team member who contacted the Kansas
blogger, but ultimately the loyalty was not reciprocated.
we stopped building
links with money
We said it was over. It was over.



                                    @iPullRank
C Reativity
WE                                               R Esponsibility
DEFINED OUR
PRINCIPLES                                       A Cumen
                                                 F Ortitude
iAcquire had already mastered the WHAT and
the HOW, but we needed the WHY. We’d
already had CRAFT, I repurposed it and used it
to define what our brand stands for.




                                                 T ransparency     @iPullRank
We took the money from link
buying and invested it in hiring
creatives
We hired writers, graphic designers, an animator and project managers to improve
our processes through verticalization.




                                                                               @iPullRank
We invested in teaching
our people about
content strategy
We needed our people to feel confident in
servicing and selling the new approach so we had
workshops and book clubs around Content
Strategy.




                                                   @iPullRank
WE MOVED                                                                 Transition Plan

CLIENTS FROM
PAID LINKS TO
CONTENT-
BASED LINKS
Being that iAcquire is a business we couldn’t
just pull the plug on all of our links overnight, so
we set up transition plans for all clients and         (DRAMATIZATION)
gradually replaced the Paid links with content-
based links. Naturally, there were those who
chose to cancel rather than transition.




                                                                                           @iPullRank
It was incredibly important that
 we reconnect with our client base
to encourage them to remain confident in our abilities to
   transition from paid links to free content-based links.
We invested
Tom harari                Brittan Bright
                                                    in strong
Seo manager               DIR. Of client strategy
                                                    new talent
                                                    These people have helped us transition from
                                                    being a link vendor to a full SEO Agency


Megan Brown               Norris Rowley
Social media Strategist   MGR. Market Research


                                                                                       @iPullRank
SOME THINGS
DIDN’T NEED
TO CHANGE
We were always transparent. These are
screenshots from the client-facing reporting of
iRank that is available 24/7 on-demand.




                                                  @iPullRank
What exactly happened for us to get back in?
I met MATT CUTTS AT SMX ADVANCED
AND WE GOT REINDEXED
Sorry, but this is another example of Correlation !=
Causation. It didn’t make any difference, but we had a
pretty direct conversation about the iAcquire situation at
SMX Advanced in front of a bunch of people. Matt said        Matt Cutts + Mike King =
he felt sorry for me because he knew I had nothing to
do with it.                                                       BFFS 4 EVER
WE CHANGED
THROUGH AND
THROUGH
Initially there was a disconnect between
what was being communicated to clients
and what was being said publicly. Google
had a problem with this so we aligned
communication across the board.




                                           @iPullRank
WE REMOVED
  THIS POST
 Tom Rusling (with some editing help from me) wrote
     a post about how the Google Webmaster Tools
  messages weren’t something you needed to worry
   about and it was mentioned as a specific point of
        contention multiple times so we removed it.
WE
WROTE
THIS POST
As a part of our earnest effort to show that we were committed
to no longer offering paid links, joe griffin wrote a post about the
second wave of the google webmaster tools unnatural link
messages in support of google.


@iPullRank
WE KEPT TRYING
TO OPEN THE
DIALOG WITH
GOOGLE
THROUGHOUT
THE PROCESS.
We showed public commitment to change and kept
reaching out to Google in hopes that they would take
notice and ultimately on July 23rd, 2012 our pages
started to trickle back into the index.
What was the content strategy behind it all?
fixing the social contract
requires a focus on the why
The golden circle is what separates winning brands
from losing brands. Shoutout to @joannalord, and
Ian Lurie who talked about this yesterday.

 http://bit.ly/WqnsHF
                                                     @iPullRank
Chrysler turned it around by focusing
on the why
During the Superbowl Chrysler launched a highly-
effective commercial with Eminem, focusing on the why
of their brand and the city of Detroit.




 http://bit.ly/RB2z8m
                                                        @iPullRank
I PERSONIFY
OUR SOCIAL
CONTRACT
Transparency. Innovation. Brand humanization.
Brand positioning. New offering launch.
For iAcquire I am a walking reputation management
content strategy, simply because I am transparent,
innovative, authentic and I lead the expansion of our
offerings. Anything I do that is positive galvanizes
iAcquire in that direction.




                                                        @iPullRank
Introducing The “road
to reinclusion” content
strategy
I developed a content strategy called “The Road
To Reinclusion” wherein the core strategy was:

 “We will offer a transparent look at our transition
to a content marketing agency that is in full
compliance with Google’s Webmaster guidelines
with a focus on regaining the trust of the
community, clients and Google.”                        #R2R
                                                              @iPullRank
ROAD TO REINCLUSION PERSONAS




CLIENT CARLA   Grouchy Googler   Supporter Sam    Hater Harry
MAIN FOCUS     Secondary Focus   Tertiary FoCus   Not a FOCUS
TRANSPARENCY.
Share what you are doing exhaustively, people will respect your
efforts. and more far more prone to believe that you and your brand
has changed.




@iPullRank
INNOVATION.
We continue to invest in free marketing tools
such Broken Link Index and Authora with plans
to rebuild LinkDiagnosis from scratch.


COST: Authora / BLI- $10K




                                                @iPullRank
BRAND
HUMANIZATION
Getting our people involved in content efforts
allows us to introduce our audience to the
people behind the brand and understand the
iAcquire culture.

COST: Canon 7D and accessories: $3000




                                                 @iPullRank
Show off the creative
talents of the team
My MozCon talk wasn’t just about me showing
off my talents as an emcee, it was also about
showing off iAcquire’s Creative team. Kyle
Bastian did the kinetic typography video in a few
days and Robb Dorr designed the deck (and
this one).

                                                    Cost: 20 hours of internal
                                                            Creative
                                                                         @iPullRank
THE CRAFT
AWARDS
We wanted to celebrate the seo community
with a content marketing awards ceremony
We planned and spec’d out a CRAFT Content
Marketing Awards ceremony and party for SMX East
2012 which would have featured celebrity host, DJ and
musical act as well as the distribution of awards for the
best content developed by agencies.




                                                            @iPullRank
Knowem.com
Only 67 out of 300 profiles were indexed even after using a Bulk
ping tool. None of the profiles ever ranked for [iAcquire]. Links
from these sites support iacquiretweets.com




                                                                    @iPullRank
IACQUIRETWEETS.COM
We have nearly 100 people at iAcquire and
most of them use Twitter, so it was pretty easy
to make a microsite that just aggregates all the
tweets with the #IACQ hash tag.
COST: 10 hours of coding/design + $100
domain/hosting.




                                                   @iPullRank
SHAKESHACKCAMERA.COM
We launched a camera for the Shake Shack fast food
restaurant across the street from our office and placed
post-it art in my windows with a CTA for tweeting while you
wait in line.


4 days later Shake Shack called us and asked us to
take it down. COST: $500 + 20 hours of Creative




                                                              @iPullRank
HELPING
PEOPLE IS
FREE.
What scales the best is helping people out and
delivering something of value on a regular basis
as we do with Cliff Notes Tuesday, Live Site
Audits and Lunch Break.




                                                   @iPullRank
DOUBLE-
SERVED PAID
SEARCH ADS.
I was initially against doing these because it’s
obvious that they are for reputation
management, but gave in in interest of owning
everything above the fold. FYI – Double-serving
ads is against the Adwords rules.




                                                   @iPullRank
STREAMLINED
LINKEDIN JOB
DESCRIPTIONS
…and made sure every employee is following
the iAcquire company page .The iAcquire
LinkedIn profile consistently ranks in the top 5.




                                                    @iPullRank
POSTED JOBS
ON HIGH DA
JOB SITES
Careerbuilder, SimplyHired, Indeed. None of
them ever ranked.




                                              @iPullRank
CREATED
IACQUIRE
PHOTO
ALBUMS ON
FACEBOOK
Never ranked.




                @iPullRank
MADE A
BRANDED
IACQUIRE
SLIDESHARE
I put my MozCon and SMX Advanced Tools
decks on there. It consistently ranks in the
Top 20.




                                               @iPullRank
What else are we rolling out?
ROUND V: COMING ATTRACTIONS


                                @iPullRank
Reinclusion Afterlife
BRAND REFRESH &
NEW CO-BRANDED
CONTENT

@iPullRank
THE MAIN
FOCUS IS THE
WORK.
Above the fold on the site you have case
studies and the sliding hero that
showcases work we’ve done for our clients
followed by our USPs (our WHY).




          @iPullRank                        @iPullRank
MORE BRAND
HUMANIZATION
AS YOU GO
DOWN
The further down the homepage
the user goes the more you get to
know the actual people that work
at iAcquire.



        @iPullRank                  @iPullRank
EVERY PAGE
IS LINK
WORTHY &
SHAREWORTHY
Each page on the new site incorporates
some element that make it worth linking so
our site can be a shining example of what
we’d like our clients to be doing.




          @iPullRank                         @iPullRank
AIR-TIGHT
SEO
When we re-launch I will issue a challenge
to the world to poke holes in the SEO of
iacquire.com. If you can find something we
didn’t do well we’ll give you $530.




          @iPullRank                         @iPullRank
SOCIAL PROOF
ON ALL THE
THINGS!
These will act as our Twitter
testimonials similar to what
@mikecp talked about.



       @iPullRank               @iPullRank
USER
GENERATED
COMICS
The marketing team is the smallest team at
iAcquire and while our founders don’t want to
build a community around our brand I shouldn’t
be the only one having fun with Gary &
Cogswell.




            @iPullRank
BRANDING
REFRESH
Since we’ve made a substantial change from
link vendor to full-blown strategic SEO partner It
is important that we appear as though we have
changed. We’ve updated the brand style and
guidelines to reflect that.




            @iPullRank
Has any of it done anything yet?
ROUND VI: RESULTS


                                   @iPullRank
SENTIMENT
IMPROVED.
The conversation around iAcquire across the
various channels has improved by 18%. We
have effectively changed the conversation.




           @iPullRank
SERP
IMPROVED.
The number of positive results in the SERP has
improved 27% (including Paid Search)




           @iPullRank
THE
CONCERNED
NETIZEN
UPDATED HIS
POST
The author of our outing post updated that post
to give attention to the explanation of our new
business model.




            @iPullRank
More discovery calls, more overview
presentations and less cancellations
       Turns out there is life after reinclusion after all.
What can you learn from our mistakes?
ROUND VII: KEY TAKEAWAYS


                                        @iPullRank
No brand is completely immune to a meltdown. Always have a plan
for crisis content strategy ready to launch.
Check out this checklist to determine
your risk quotient


http://bit.ly/QivIGY
MONITOR
YOUR
REPUTATION.
Use Social Mention, Amplicate, Google
Alerts, turn the SERP into an RSS
feed: http://bit.ly/TTEn3R or use our
new Reputation Tracker:
http://bit.ly/SNPvxm




         @iPullRank
SIDEBAR:

The powers that be don’t see the
value in the tools I create
Please help me show that value by
signing up for the launch of Reputation
Tracker otherwise I can’t continue to
justify the creation of free tools.


Reputation Tracker:
http://bit.ly/SNPvxm
RESPOND
PROMPTLY.
Distilled and SEOmoz are great
examples of brands that respond
promptly and own the blame for
their mistakes.




         @iPullRank               @iPullRank
DON’T

Tie the hands of your spokesperson.
Choose your spokesperson wisely and then don’t hold
them back from getting the job done.
Your reputation is yours to fix. Don’t involve other brands until you have
recovered yourself. We made this mistake with Shake Shack.
I made the mistake of getting wrapped up in the sensation of the SEO
echo chamber rather than focusing on the content that made me popular.
It is very easy for people to tell when a fix just cosmetic. Fix things from the
             inside out and you are insulated from most negative responses.
MAKE NEWS
WITH THE
CHANGE.
Very few people are going to care about the positive
things you are doing. Be sure to position your positive
change as newsworthy.



@iPullRank
FOLLOW THE
ULTIMATE
GUIDE TO
ORM.
@MattMcGee was on to something…




       @iPullRank
An Actual Fortune Cookie Tom
Rusling Received
                               @iPullRank
Reinclusion Afterlife
wwww.iacquire.com




Thank You / Q&A
Michael king
Director of inbound marketing
@iPullRank
mike@iacquire.com

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Reinclusion Afterlife

  • 1. REINCLUSION AFTERLIFE How a champion was reborn through content strategy michael King Director of inbound marketing @ipullrank @iacquire
  • 3. SHOUTOUT TO @RHEA DRYSDALE My online reputation management coach Rhea is an awesome friend and she let me borrow her brain and experience when I was trying to figure out the most effective tactics for ORM. @iPullRank
  • 4. DEINDEXATION HAS NEVER BEEN SO MUCH FUN ROUND I: THE STORY @iPullRank
  • 5. IN THIS CORNER: I PITY THE FOOL THAT BUYS AND SELLS LINKS. @iPullRank
  • 6. IN THIS CORNER: @iPullRank
  • 7. I LOVE A challenge CHALLENGE ACCEPTED I maybe love a challenge too much because I often put myself in places where the challenge is insurmountable like my previous position at Publicis Modem.
  • 8. WE NEED HELP WITH A little BIT OF CLEANUP Iacquire was among a number of companies that aggressively courted me
  • 9. BUT IACQUIRE WANTED MY VISION A lot of companies wanted my “talents” but iacquire wanted my LEADERSHIP vision After interviewing at a ton of places iAcquire sounded like it’d be the place that offered me the most latitude to truly take an agency forward, innovate and do great work. @iPullRank
  • 10. This isn’t an excuse, it’s just me explaining that I didn’t understand the magnitude of the paid link building until I did the quantifying outreach study which was literally days before my official start date.
  • 11. I was already scheduled to be in Australia, Arizona, Indiana and Montreal during my first 2 months at iAcquire so my goal was to bring on more white hat clientele so we could quickly transition out of paid links.
  • 12. On may 21st, 2012 An April fools joke came to life before our very eyes I officially started at iAcquire on April 3rd after I returned from LinkLove London, but before I got there Joe, Robb and I played this joke on Jay and TR. Matt Cutts and Mike King = BFFS 4 EVER @iPullRank
  • 13. IN Iacquire’s corner @iPullRank Joe Griffin Jay swansson John-paul barnych Co-founder Co-founder Vice President of Revenue Tom rusling Cindy nieves Jeffrey nappi General Manager Director of Operations Director of Technology @iPullRank
  • 14. Our OLD Process We used to use money at this point as a motivator to get links. Protocol was not to talk about money unless the webmaster asks for it. @iPullRank
  • 17. REJOICED A lot of people came out of the woodwork to dance on the grave of iAcquire including people who are to this day actively selling links themselves @iPullRank
  • 21. The Actual Fortune Cookie Joe Griffin Got the day of the deindexation
  • 22. Internally: I lost my shit I wanted to respond right away with a very transparent explanation of what happened. In fact I wrote it 3 times. The rest of the leadership team felt differently.
  • 23. Externally: I was fairly nonchalant Early on, it was pretty easy to not to lose it externally because I still had hope we would hash out a solid transparent response. @iPullRank
  • 24. 8 DAYS My voice was missing from that conversation because I hated it, but as a team player I lived with it
  • 25. WE CHANGED OUR BUSINESS MODEL OVERNIGHT We locked ourselves in a conference room for a few days and voila just like that Content Marketing became all that we did. There was no more link buying at all.
  • 26. An invite to speak at a SEMPO event was rescinded An invite to write for SearchEngineLand never materialized
  • 28. There’s a lot more where this came from. On behalf of the people on my team that work hard everyday
  • 29. iAcquire was never like these companies that are forever branded as a B charlatans. I personally don’t know what happened to these guys, but I do know… Aren’t we supposed to stay down now?
  • 30. Accolades WAS DEINDEXED CIRCA 2002* iCrossing went through a series of rebrandings and ultimately has been regarded as one of the best digital agencies by a variety publications such as advertising age, forrester wave, omma and ad week. There is life after deindexation. *According to Joe Griffin @iPullRank
  • 31. This is when I realized reputation management is JUST not about the serp @iPullRank
  • 32. How we trained to get back on top
  • 33. EVER
  • 34. It was an unfortunate byproduct of the process Many people on our outreach team were not prepared to make the leap with us so we had to let them go. We did keep the team member who contacted the Kansas blogger, but ultimately the loyalty was not reciprocated.
  • 35. we stopped building links with money We said it was over. It was over. @iPullRank
  • 36. C Reativity WE R Esponsibility DEFINED OUR PRINCIPLES A Cumen F Ortitude iAcquire had already mastered the WHAT and the HOW, but we needed the WHY. We’d already had CRAFT, I repurposed it and used it to define what our brand stands for. T ransparency @iPullRank
  • 37. We took the money from link buying and invested it in hiring creatives We hired writers, graphic designers, an animator and project managers to improve our processes through verticalization. @iPullRank
  • 38. We invested in teaching our people about content strategy We needed our people to feel confident in servicing and selling the new approach so we had workshops and book clubs around Content Strategy. @iPullRank
  • 39. WE MOVED Transition Plan CLIENTS FROM PAID LINKS TO CONTENT- BASED LINKS Being that iAcquire is a business we couldn’t just pull the plug on all of our links overnight, so we set up transition plans for all clients and (DRAMATIZATION) gradually replaced the Paid links with content- based links. Naturally, there were those who chose to cancel rather than transition. @iPullRank
  • 40. It was incredibly important that we reconnect with our client base to encourage them to remain confident in our abilities to transition from paid links to free content-based links.
  • 41. We invested Tom harari Brittan Bright in strong Seo manager DIR. Of client strategy new talent These people have helped us transition from being a link vendor to a full SEO Agency Megan Brown Norris Rowley Social media Strategist MGR. Market Research @iPullRank
  • 42. SOME THINGS DIDN’T NEED TO CHANGE We were always transparent. These are screenshots from the client-facing reporting of iRank that is available 24/7 on-demand. @iPullRank
  • 43. What exactly happened for us to get back in?
  • 44. I met MATT CUTTS AT SMX ADVANCED AND WE GOT REINDEXED Sorry, but this is another example of Correlation != Causation. It didn’t make any difference, but we had a pretty direct conversation about the iAcquire situation at SMX Advanced in front of a bunch of people. Matt said Matt Cutts + Mike King = he felt sorry for me because he knew I had nothing to do with it. BFFS 4 EVER
  • 45. WE CHANGED THROUGH AND THROUGH Initially there was a disconnect between what was being communicated to clients and what was being said publicly. Google had a problem with this so we aligned communication across the board. @iPullRank
  • 46. WE REMOVED THIS POST Tom Rusling (with some editing help from me) wrote a post about how the Google Webmaster Tools messages weren’t something you needed to worry about and it was mentioned as a specific point of contention multiple times so we removed it.
  • 47. WE WROTE THIS POST As a part of our earnest effort to show that we were committed to no longer offering paid links, joe griffin wrote a post about the second wave of the google webmaster tools unnatural link messages in support of google. @iPullRank
  • 48. WE KEPT TRYING TO OPEN THE DIALOG WITH GOOGLE THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS. We showed public commitment to change and kept reaching out to Google in hopes that they would take notice and ultimately on July 23rd, 2012 our pages started to trickle back into the index.
  • 49. What was the content strategy behind it all?
  • 50. fixing the social contract requires a focus on the why The golden circle is what separates winning brands from losing brands. Shoutout to @joannalord, and Ian Lurie who talked about this yesterday. http://bit.ly/WqnsHF @iPullRank
  • 51. Chrysler turned it around by focusing on the why During the Superbowl Chrysler launched a highly- effective commercial with Eminem, focusing on the why of their brand and the city of Detroit. http://bit.ly/RB2z8m @iPullRank
  • 52. I PERSONIFY OUR SOCIAL CONTRACT Transparency. Innovation. Brand humanization. Brand positioning. New offering launch. For iAcquire I am a walking reputation management content strategy, simply because I am transparent, innovative, authentic and I lead the expansion of our offerings. Anything I do that is positive galvanizes iAcquire in that direction. @iPullRank
  • 53. Introducing The “road to reinclusion” content strategy I developed a content strategy called “The Road To Reinclusion” wherein the core strategy was: “We will offer a transparent look at our transition to a content marketing agency that is in full compliance with Google’s Webmaster guidelines with a focus on regaining the trust of the community, clients and Google.” #R2R @iPullRank
  • 54. ROAD TO REINCLUSION PERSONAS CLIENT CARLA Grouchy Googler Supporter Sam Hater Harry MAIN FOCUS Secondary Focus Tertiary FoCus Not a FOCUS
  • 55. TRANSPARENCY. Share what you are doing exhaustively, people will respect your efforts. and more far more prone to believe that you and your brand has changed. @iPullRank
  • 56. INNOVATION. We continue to invest in free marketing tools such Broken Link Index and Authora with plans to rebuild LinkDiagnosis from scratch. COST: Authora / BLI- $10K @iPullRank
  • 57. BRAND HUMANIZATION Getting our people involved in content efforts allows us to introduce our audience to the people behind the brand and understand the iAcquire culture. COST: Canon 7D and accessories: $3000 @iPullRank
  • 58. Show off the creative talents of the team My MozCon talk wasn’t just about me showing off my talents as an emcee, it was also about showing off iAcquire’s Creative team. Kyle Bastian did the kinetic typography video in a few days and Robb Dorr designed the deck (and this one). Cost: 20 hours of internal Creative @iPullRank
  • 59. THE CRAFT AWARDS We wanted to celebrate the seo community with a content marketing awards ceremony We planned and spec’d out a CRAFT Content Marketing Awards ceremony and party for SMX East 2012 which would have featured celebrity host, DJ and musical act as well as the distribution of awards for the best content developed by agencies. @iPullRank
  • 60. Knowem.com Only 67 out of 300 profiles were indexed even after using a Bulk ping tool. None of the profiles ever ranked for [iAcquire]. Links from these sites support iacquiretweets.com @iPullRank
  • 61. IACQUIRETWEETS.COM We have nearly 100 people at iAcquire and most of them use Twitter, so it was pretty easy to make a microsite that just aggregates all the tweets with the #IACQ hash tag. COST: 10 hours of coding/design + $100 domain/hosting. @iPullRank
  • 62. SHAKESHACKCAMERA.COM We launched a camera for the Shake Shack fast food restaurant across the street from our office and placed post-it art in my windows with a CTA for tweeting while you wait in line. 4 days later Shake Shack called us and asked us to take it down. COST: $500 + 20 hours of Creative @iPullRank
  • 63. HELPING PEOPLE IS FREE. What scales the best is helping people out and delivering something of value on a regular basis as we do with Cliff Notes Tuesday, Live Site Audits and Lunch Break. @iPullRank
  • 64. DOUBLE- SERVED PAID SEARCH ADS. I was initially against doing these because it’s obvious that they are for reputation management, but gave in in interest of owning everything above the fold. FYI – Double-serving ads is against the Adwords rules. @iPullRank
  • 65. STREAMLINED LINKEDIN JOB DESCRIPTIONS …and made sure every employee is following the iAcquire company page .The iAcquire LinkedIn profile consistently ranks in the top 5. @iPullRank
  • 66. POSTED JOBS ON HIGH DA JOB SITES Careerbuilder, SimplyHired, Indeed. None of them ever ranked. @iPullRank
  • 68. MADE A BRANDED IACQUIRE SLIDESHARE I put my MozCon and SMX Advanced Tools decks on there. It consistently ranks in the Top 20. @iPullRank
  • 69. What else are we rolling out? ROUND V: COMING ATTRACTIONS @iPullRank
  • 71. BRAND REFRESH & NEW CO-BRANDED CONTENT @iPullRank
  • 72. THE MAIN FOCUS IS THE WORK. Above the fold on the site you have case studies and the sliding hero that showcases work we’ve done for our clients followed by our USPs (our WHY). @iPullRank @iPullRank
  • 73. MORE BRAND HUMANIZATION AS YOU GO DOWN The further down the homepage the user goes the more you get to know the actual people that work at iAcquire. @iPullRank @iPullRank
  • 74. EVERY PAGE IS LINK WORTHY & SHAREWORTHY Each page on the new site incorporates some element that make it worth linking so our site can be a shining example of what we’d like our clients to be doing. @iPullRank @iPullRank
  • 75. AIR-TIGHT SEO When we re-launch I will issue a challenge to the world to poke holes in the SEO of iacquire.com. If you can find something we didn’t do well we’ll give you $530. @iPullRank @iPullRank
  • 76. SOCIAL PROOF ON ALL THE THINGS! These will act as our Twitter testimonials similar to what @mikecp talked about. @iPullRank @iPullRank
  • 77. USER GENERATED COMICS The marketing team is the smallest team at iAcquire and while our founders don’t want to build a community around our brand I shouldn’t be the only one having fun with Gary & Cogswell. @iPullRank
  • 78. BRANDING REFRESH Since we’ve made a substantial change from link vendor to full-blown strategic SEO partner It is important that we appear as though we have changed. We’ve updated the brand style and guidelines to reflect that. @iPullRank
  • 79. Has any of it done anything yet? ROUND VI: RESULTS @iPullRank
  • 80. SENTIMENT IMPROVED. The conversation around iAcquire across the various channels has improved by 18%. We have effectively changed the conversation. @iPullRank
  • 81. SERP IMPROVED. The number of positive results in the SERP has improved 27% (including Paid Search) @iPullRank
  • 82. THE CONCERNED NETIZEN UPDATED HIS POST The author of our outing post updated that post to give attention to the explanation of our new business model. @iPullRank
  • 83. More discovery calls, more overview presentations and less cancellations Turns out there is life after reinclusion after all.
  • 84. What can you learn from our mistakes? ROUND VII: KEY TAKEAWAYS @iPullRank
  • 85. No brand is completely immune to a meltdown. Always have a plan for crisis content strategy ready to launch.
  • 86. Check out this checklist to determine your risk quotient http://bit.ly/QivIGY
  • 87. MONITOR YOUR REPUTATION. Use Social Mention, Amplicate, Google Alerts, turn the SERP into an RSS feed: http://bit.ly/TTEn3R or use our new Reputation Tracker: http://bit.ly/SNPvxm @iPullRank
  • 88. SIDEBAR: The powers that be don’t see the value in the tools I create Please help me show that value by signing up for the launch of Reputation Tracker otherwise I can’t continue to justify the creation of free tools. Reputation Tracker: http://bit.ly/SNPvxm
  • 89. RESPOND PROMPTLY. Distilled and SEOmoz are great examples of brands that respond promptly and own the blame for their mistakes. @iPullRank @iPullRank
  • 90. DON’T Tie the hands of your spokesperson. Choose your spokesperson wisely and then don’t hold them back from getting the job done.
  • 91. Your reputation is yours to fix. Don’t involve other brands until you have recovered yourself. We made this mistake with Shake Shack.
  • 92. I made the mistake of getting wrapped up in the sensation of the SEO echo chamber rather than focusing on the content that made me popular.
  • 93. It is very easy for people to tell when a fix just cosmetic. Fix things from the inside out and you are insulated from most negative responses.
  • 94. MAKE NEWS WITH THE CHANGE. Very few people are going to care about the positive things you are doing. Be sure to position your positive change as newsworthy. @iPullRank
  • 95. FOLLOW THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO ORM. @MattMcGee was on to something… @iPullRank
  • 96. An Actual Fortune Cookie Tom Rusling Received @iPullRank
  • 98. wwww.iacquire.com Thank You / Q&A Michael king Director of inbound marketing @iPullRank mike@iacquire.com