Summary: <br> How to reach out to Rand Fishkin:<br> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a> <a href="https://twitter.com/randfish" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> </a> <a href="https://moz.com/rand/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"></a><br> The Wizard of Moz is here!<br> The man who founded <a href="https://moz.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SEO industry leader Moz</a> and built it to revenues of $29.3M. The man who began <a href="https://moz.com/blog">the blog on SEO</a>. The host of <a href="https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Whiteboard Fridays</a>. Yes, <a href="https://moz.com/rand/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Rand Fishkin</a> joins us on this week’s podcast.<br> As he gets ready to depart from <a href="https://moz.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Moz</a>, he gives us a sneak peek at his new venture (we can’t wait!), his new book, and, of course, his SEO strategies. He shares stories of SEO success and failures, his preferred marketing techniques, and how to make it easier to build links.<br> SILICON VALLEY ‘WISDOM’<br> Rand digs into Silicon Valley wisdom in his new book due out this year. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup/dp/0735213321/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1517384127&sr=1-4&refinements=p_27%3ARand+Fishkin" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Lost and Founder </a>divulges his journey of building Moz, being CEO, stepping down, and, as of later this month, departing the company, and those major learnings.<br> Each chapter analyzes startup world wisdom: from pivoting to products from services, SaaS metrics, funding, and more. Rand dissects the benefits and drawbacks of the accepted wisdom and dismantles the common perceptions.<br> LAUNCHING AN MVP<br> He shared a preview of his chapter on the minimum viable product (MVP).<br> MVPs are great, if:<br> <br> * You’re launching internally<br> * Nobody knows who you are<br> <br> He warns that MVPs are terrible if you are building on your reputation in a crowded marketplace. People remember the first view of the MVP, and that association is very, very difficult to change.<br> No one gives Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, a second chance. Even though it could be better than Google by now, “none of us know that because [Microsoft] launched an MVP.”<br> In crowded marketplaces, you have to be considerably better than the competition to even be considered.<br> RAND FISHKIN’S SEO STRATEGY<br> Rand takes a high-level approach to SEO strategy. He moves <a href="https://dev01.sureoak.com/link-building-strategy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">SEO link building</a> to the tactical level. Instead, his top-level strategy is to “get a large group of trustworthy, authoritative folks to know about what I’m doing, care about, pay attention and want to amplify it.”<br> To accomplish this, you need to ask 2 key questions:<br> <br> * Who will care enough to amplify your company/product/project?<br> * Why?<br> <br> To find your answer, your company should:<br> <br> * Have unique positioning,<br> * have your product/service in a space that it can get attention (“the air isn’t all sucked out of the room already”), and<br> * have solid knowledge of the people who cover this space (whether journalists, bloggers, industry groups or otherwise).<br> <br> Building out the answers usually gives you your best link builders now and for the next few years.<br> <br> SEO AND INFLUENCER MARKETING<br> Rand identifies this SEO strategy as influencer marketing in the broad definition. Influencer marketing has narrowed to mean reaching out to someone with lots of Instagram followers and pay them to amplify your product.<br> That’s not influencer marketing.<br>
