#i also have like 20 different email addresses for different aliases and pen names and shit but maybe that's just me

[chaoslynx]

Hey, Im glad ur okay and safe! I just wanted to ask if u have any tips on getting beta readers to go over your work?

Hey! I wasn't sure if there's anything specific you were looking for, so I tried to cover everything I've learned about from working with beta readers, including whether you need one, how to find one, and how to work with them once you do. Sorry this got kinda (really?) long.

How-To: Beta Readers!

Do you need a beta reader?

Short answer: No. But it can be helpful and fun!

I'm gonna start by saying that none of my oneshots (with maybe one or two exceptions?) are beta read, and it's definitely not something that you need in fanfiction, imo. (Traditional publishing is a completely different story.) Don't think of it as a big milestone that you have to reach or anything like that, and if you do get a beta reader, don't get stuck thinking that you have to have one forever now. Most of my favorite fanfic authors don't work with beta readers at all.

How do you even get a beta reader?

Good question.

Honestly, the first beta reader I worked with was on my first multi-chapter fic, and she reached out to me first. I had expressed in the author's notes of a oneshot that I was considering writing a multi-chapter fic but was super nervous about it, and she commented offering to beta if I needed extra reassurance. I went through a whole existential crisis of sorts where I had no idea if I wanted to accept or not. She actually ended up working with me on both Feelings and Water!

All of the other beta readers I've had have also been people that I met through the fandom. If you're looking for a beta reader, you could try asking in the author's notes of a fic you post on ao3, or making a Tumblr post. If you have IRL friends who are familiar with the media you're writing for, you could ask them!

Okay, I have my beta reader ... now what?

If you do want to work with a beta reader, and you're able to find someone who you think you'll work well with, here are some tips for how to actually do the thing!

Talk about content warnings. Are there any specific triggers your beta will want to avoid completely? Anything they need to be warned about in advance?

Tell them if there's anything specific you want them to look out for. What are you struggling with? Characterization, dialogue, description, grammar, plot? What's your weak point? Why do you want a beta reader?

Make sure you're both comfortable with you rejecting any of their suggestions. On the beta's end it can be hard to see your suggestion shot down, and on the author's side it can be difficult to trust your own judgement, but usually the final call should be up to the author.

Also, make sure you're both aware that either of you can end the agreement with no hard feelings at any time. There could be a million reasons why it might not work out: real life obligations, scheduling/deadline issues, creative differences, or maybe one of you just decides that you'd rather work on your own. Please do not feel like you're stuck with your beta reader (or that you're stuck with your author) if anything comes up.

Talk about if any issues come up! Would it help your confidence more if they left positive comments, or does it feel like they're not actually helping if they compliment your writing too much? Are they paying too much attention to grammar when you only really wanted help on characterization? And on the beta reader's side, do you prefer if the author replies to your comments? Do you want it to be a back-and-forth communication, or do you want to be Done once you've finished a chapter/fic? Make sure you're in communication about this stuff.

How do we get the info back and forth?

Ah, of course, the actual technical aspect of it. I use Google Drive (for all my writing, not just for beta reading purposes), so I just make the document sharable (turn on "anyone with the link can comment"), send the link to the beta reader over Tumblr messages/Discord/whatever, and then ask them to let me know when they're done looking at a chapter. You can also use Google Drive to share directly with someone's email address and choose whether they can comment, edit, or just view. (I give beta readers comment access, but not edit.)

In the trad pub world, I've mostly seen critique partners use the Track Changes option on Microsoft Word. (I think the option is also compatible with OpenOffice so you don't have to buy MS Office).

You could also just tell each other your thoughts over messages, or whatever works best for you! I'm sure there are a million ways to do it.

For safety reasons (and deadname reasons lmao), please keep in mind what display name your Google Drive or MS Word account is going to show to your critique partner. This goes for both parties.

[bfxenon]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[drummcarpentry]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[lakelandseo]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[epackingvietnam]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

#túi_giấy_epacking_việt_nam #túi_giấy_epacking #in_túi_giấy_giá_rẻ #in_túi_giấy #epackingvietnam #tuigiayepacking

[nutrifami]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[xaydungtruonggia]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[ductrungnguyen87]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[camerasieunhovn]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[gamebazu]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

https://ift.tt/37VLpzX

[kjt-lawyers]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[noithatotoaz]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[thanhtuandoan89]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

[gamebazu]

The Link Building Webslog

Posted by rjonesx.

This is not the link building article you — or really anyone — were probably hoping for. It isn't a step-by-step guide to getting the best backlinks, it isn't some list of hot tips or new opportunities, and it isn't the announcement of some great tool. What it is, unashamedly, is a window into the brutal slog that is outreach-based link building. 

What can you expect?

1. YELLING IN CAPSLOCK.

2. Some tips and tricks.

3. Weeping and gnashing of teeth



Courtesy Some Ecards

All kidding aside, one of the few aphorisms I’ve come to believe is that sharing how we do things as SEOs is almost never a problem, because 99% of people don't have the follow-through and resources to make it happen. I would love to be proven wrong by the readers on Moz.

My goal here is to give a realistic understanding of the monotonous slog that is white-hat, outreach-based link building. I happen to think that link building is a perfect counterexample to the "Pareto Principle". Unlike the Pareto Principle, which states that 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the cause, I find that unless you put in 60-80% of the effort, you won't see more than 20% of the potential effect. The payoff comes when you have outworked your competitors, and I promise you they are putting in more than 20%.

Courtesy Quotiss

The goal of this "Webslog" is to document the weeks and months that go into a link building campaign, at least as far as how I go about the process.

Courtesy Aaron Burden

Also, look at that gorgeous fountain pen. I frickin' love fountain pens.

I will try and update this document every week or so with progress reports, my motivation level, the tips and tricks I’ve employed over the last few days, the headaches, wins, and losses. By the end of this, I hope to have accomplished something along the lines of a link building journal. It won’t be a blueprint for link building success, but hopefully it will mark on the map of your link building journey the things to avoid, the best way to get through certain jams, and when you’re just going to have to tough it out.

Journal Entry Day One

Day one is almost always the best day. It’s a preparation day. It's the day you buy the gym membership, purchase a veritable ton of whey protein and protein shaker bottles, weigh yourself — in all reality you accomplish nothing, but feel like you have done so much. Day one is important because it can provide momentum and clear a path to success, but it also presents the problem of motivation being incredibly disproportionate to success. It's likely that your first day will be the most discordant with respect to motivation and results. 

Rand does a great job explaining the relationship between ROI and Effort:

However, I think the third component here is motivation. While it does largely track the chart Rand provides, I think there are some notable differences, the first of which is that, in the first few days, your motivation will be high despite not having any results. Your motivation will probably dip very quickly and become parallel with the remainder of the "effort" line on the graph, but you get the point.



Courtesy Drew Beamer

It's essential to keep your motivation up over the course of the "slog", and the trick is to disconnect your motivation from your ROI and attach it instead to attainable goals which lead to ROI. It's a terribly difficult thing to do. 

Alright, so, Day One prep.

Project description

For this project, I'll be employing a unique form of broken link building (Part 2). If you've seen any of my link building presentations in the last 2-3 years, you may have caught a glimpse of some of the techniques in the process. Nevertheless, the link building method really isn't important for the sake of this project. All that matters for the sake of our discussion in the method is:

Outreach Based (requires contacting other webmasters).

Neutral with regard to Black/White hat (it could be done either way).

Requires Prospecting.

Ultimately brings Return on Investment through either advertising or an exit.

In addition, I won't be using any aliases in this project. For once, I'm building something respectable enough that I don't mind my name being associated with it. I do still need to be careful (avoid negative SEO, for example) as this is a YMYL industry (health related). The site is already in existence, but with almost no links.

So, what are the returns on investment (or effort) that I'll be tracking and, importantly, won't be tracking?

Courtesy financereference.com

1. Emails sent to links placed relative to:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

2. Contact forms filled to links placed:

Subject line

Pitch email

Target broken link

3. Anchor text used in links placed

4. Not tracking:

Deliverability

Open rate

Reply rate

Domain Authority of source

I know #4 will sound like a cardinal sin to many of the professional link builders reading this, but I'm really just not interested in bothering a recipient who chooses to overlook the email. I'm certain that the speed of emails sent will not impact deliverability, so the other statistics just seem like continuing to ring the doorbell at someone's house until they are forced to answer. Sure, it might work, but it also might get you reported.

Preparation

There are a couple of steps I take every time I begin a project like this.

1. Set up email, obviously. I typically set up russ@, info@, contact@, media@ and a catch all. I don't use Google. It just seems, well, wrong. I have had success with Zoho before, although honestly I just need the email so I often go with a CPANEL host and then add the MX records to Cloudflare.

2. Set up a phone number for voice mail. I like Grasshopper, personally. This is not to improve rankings (although I do put it on the site), it's to improve conversion rates. Email messages with a real phone number and real email address from a real person, with the same domain promoted as the domain in the email, just seem to do better when your project is truly above-board.

3. Set up SPF and DKIM records for better deliverability.

4. Set up a number of Google Docs sheets which will help with some of the prospecting and mail sending.

5. Set up my emailer. I know this is vague, but one of the things I try to do is create stumbling blocks to cheating. There are some awesome tools out there Pitchbox, BuzzStream, LinkProspector and more, but I find each very tempting to take shortcuts. I want to make sure I pull the trigger personally on every email that goes out. Efficient, no. Effective, not really. Safe, yeah.

Honestly, this is about as much as I can do in one day. I look forward to updating this regularly, make sure you follow @moz or @rjonesx on Twitter to get notified when we update this journal.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!