 Yeah, I know it's early. I've actually been up since four o'clock. So I'm kind of half halfway through the day already So I'm so excited to be here. I've been wanting to speak at this event for quite a few years This is actually my first speaking gig in the US as well. I've been speaking a lot in Europe and other places But this is my first US slot so Hopefully you can understand my accent. Okay. I'm actually Norwegian But I've lived in the UK for nearly 18 years which make my accent sound like a drunk Irish person And so I'm gonna be talking about how to get big links But first I need to just tell you a story in January 2015 My agency weren't wasn't doing too well. So I run an SEO agency SEO only and and The results that we were managing to receive especially in terms of link building were rapidly decreasing in Fact we were kind of staring down the barrel The amount of time that it took to get one piece of coverage and the quality of that coverage was reducing So I had a choice to make I could continue along the same way and hope for the best Or I could take a risk and restructure. I Think one of the big problems was that By then there had been so many algorithm changes particularly to do with link quality and The type of content that was coming out because by this time everyone was trying to do content marketing which I Think 80% of the time meant writing articles or very static infographics and such It was so much of that content out there. That's standing out became really quite difficult So I realized that if I continued creating one piece of content in the hope of getting one link That link would have to be really really good So I restructured the agency and The way the agency now looks is more like a creative agency So we have designers developers researchers copywriters Creatives and tech SEO But the biggest part is the outreach team So basically what I did was restructure in this way because I really believed that to survive We had to start thinking like 50s addicts and executing like geeks We have launched 12 and 66 campaigns in the last 12 months That's a lot of campaigns over several markets But of those 66 campaigns We came up with 350 ideas. In fact way over that What does that say about us? We're really good at coming up with street ideas. Oh Let me give you some examples So have you ever thought it would be really cool if you could print your tweets on a toast a toaster Yeah, that's not really great or it gets worse Have you ever thought how cool would it be or handy? Would it be if you could order a condom with your pizza? I really fear that this was one of my ideas as well The point is you have to come up with a lot of shit ideas in order to come up with great ideas And it's pretty much about not being afraid to fail I know it's a loss of pressure of being original coming up with content and when we think about creatives we think about people like Picasso or Edison or Steven Jobs, maybe and we don't really see ourselves like that and Then we panic and it kind of becomes a 404 of creativity not found The problem is that we don't really need to be thinking we need to be creative or a creative I think it's about being innovative and To me being innovative is simply to take something and make it better so When aliens was pitched into the Hollywood studios, it was actually pitched in as Jaws in space And if you think about it Grubhub is kind of like Uber for food Find something that nearly worked and make it better So in 1982 a Austrian named mind this name Deity's Master Shits That is definitely not how you pronounce it He visits Thailand and he came across a energy drink that was marketed to to truckers Really low-cost energy drink and as you can see he didn't really even bother changing the logo. This is now Red Bull One of the most successful drink stories, I think of the time So in 2013 business inside it this piece a call This piece about hundred deadliest films by on-screen deaths. This was definitely a data geek geeking out And it was an interesting piece, but it looked pretty terrible, right? And it shows you Basically the hundred top movies with and then according to how many on-screen deaths it was So we took this piece and realized we could make it better Visually, but also from the data point of view So we created what became directors cut, which is basically an updated version of this campaign Which you know, you'd be amazed at how much data you can find accessible. There was an entire forum Dedicated to counting on-screen deaths Amazing and so this is what I look like Very importantly the top movie was quite a big surprise guardian of the galaxy a PG-13 Was the deadliest movie of all time So I must admit that this campaign surprised me how well it did the first paper to pick it up Was the Guardian so the Guardian in the UK is one of the most respected newspapers and as soon as the Guardian covered it We had a tweet from James Gunn Which is the director of Guardians of the Galaxy going yay deadliest movie Not only did he tweet up He spent two hours Replying to tweet saying no, I think you will find this is correct data Because I bet you a few of you are now thinking surely Star Wars blowing up planets were more deaths This is the point of it if the results is surprising It's it creates discussion and creating discussion is the surefire thing of managing to get the coverage This got over 700 links and of the biggest majority of these links are seriously high authority Yahoo the Guardian enemy CBS It just got loads and loads and That's not the only thing you got. I think it's important to try to concentrate on getting coverage That also deserves more than just the link This became a Twitter moment shared over 48,000 times in 48 hours Social might not be an impact on rankings by sure as hell helps you get links Another campaign we did which was based on something that already exists is the Forbes billionaires list, which I'm sure You all would have seen at some point This is a list that's released every year by Forbes and it has several decades of data the interesting thing is that They have this list and they have like you can go back to the older versions But there's no way of seeing all of this data in one So we created the billionaires league where we could where we got all the data from Forbes But also added other additional research pieces more light-hearted angles and this basically allows you to To to go out and do outreach for loads of different angles like has the average age of billionaires gone up or down They also had had several people. Sorry. It also had female billionaires included in it and This got nine to seven links and over 850,000 views if your coverage can get that amount of views It is very unlikely that's going to be deemed as dodgy in any way from Google's point of view I had a bit of an order issue with a slide. Sorry. I Also would really recommend that you over invest in building formats that can be used again and Again going to be going back to movies for inspiration here Finding Nemo When they created that they had to create a new ray tracing technology to model the light dappling through the water That took an an extortionate amount of time for Pixar But this is something that Pixar is known for doing they've got something called a Pixar render man Which is basically a library of technology that once they've created this technology They can use it for the next movie and the next movie Obviously our head of production is not too pleased about this because sometimes it takes an awful lot of time To add a piece of new technology or or spend extra time in a campaign But this year We launched this campaign, which is the e-sports champions looking at all different data points about the e-sports industry And as you can see it's pretty much billionaire's league for e-sports So putting in that extra time on billionaire's league helped us create another campaign quite quickly This looks as things like top-earning women in the industry How much price money it literally have like at least 40 different entry points of data that you can look into the e-sports And it's like I think this is just a super interesting Kind of industry to look into and it's so hot and it's already had 198 Links and that is a quite recent campaign as well and 190,000 views picked up MSN business inside of Mashable. This campaign was done pan Nordic so all the Nordic countries Norway, Sweden Denmark Finland And he got a lot of coverage also in those countries, which is very very challenging because there are a lot of laws around Gambling sites and stuff and this was for a gambling client Another idea that's worked really well for us is and we quite like collaborating and again this takes a lot of time the first time around and In Sweden for Expedia, we worked with a castle called Malmö who's lot and where we created a Google Street view tour and of the castle with audio visual as well and Information about each area in the castle Now to be able to do this We had to create a new software that helps doing a street view over several floors It took us a lot of time We then allowed us to look at other venues that we could do similar things with this had 86 Links and 25,000 views obviously this is the in Sweden So Swedish market is a lot smaller in terms of the amount of sites and stuff And for Expedia being a travel company getting this is Sweden and the very specific travel related sites is very big So this year we launched the the prison which is basically a museum of a prison in Near Copenhagen in Denmark where we use the exact same technology again And we're able to create street view in this this prison This is a very recent campaign. It's already got 83 links and as you see again There's a lot of very travel related sites there like literally every tourist board local as well as the Danish tourist board the main one covered this piece So I'm not saying that that means the developers can then just chill out. You have to continuously work at this But it's not always a Data piece or programming where you need to invest in sometimes they can be really plain and really simple We launched this end of last year for Expedia in the UK, and it's a very simple a graphic campaign And it's a kind of travel posters created in a vintage style Including extinct animals from around the world like they were still alive so the dodo in Mauritius and the the Moa New Zealand and so on these are very very pretty But they also for a very good course way and this did amazingly well it got over 223 links including again some of the biggest sites out there This got a lot of us coverage as well this also picks up loads of social shares from all of those sites that featured her and It got covered in the observer on Sunday Observer is the second biggest Sunday newspaper in the UK So getting print coverage with your SEO campaign I think isn't the standard, but if it's good enough to be in the paper again, it is going to reduce the risk Going forward One of my favorite things about this campaign is that it was even made into a fan a fan made mod for the sims game So you can actually see the poster in the game There's some serious education. It must have really spoken to someone to take that time and I love that People started calling our office wanting to buy the posters and Lastly and most impressively I think is someone started petition thanking the managing director of Expedia UK for commissioning this work When was the last time you saw a petition where someone was thanking someone? It's crazy The main thing with this though is that doing creative campaigns for SEO to get links it's not good enough that you get one campaign and That does well you have to consistently get the coverage and When you get the consistent coverage That's when you get the results Because that is what you want to know, right? You're like, yeah, this is cool, but does it actually does it actually work? So we've worked with Expedia for four years and we only work with Expedia in Europe Just want to make that clear and In the last 12 months, we've had 46 percent increase in organic visibility for the Nordic countries So that's Norway Sweden Denmark and Finland and Expedia Sweden having the smallest that's 16 percent increase in organic visibility To put into the context Expedia Sweden has a higher visibility than IKEA in Sweden So getting any increase is pretty awesome Another client that we just started working with Lens Store, which is basically contact lenses online We've launched two campaigns and four months of outreach so far and the main hero term of contact lenses have already gone from position 11 to position 3 So it does definitely work so Being SEO's we really want to know how can we analyze this hit so that we can do exactly the same I could tell you that we have figured out a way of Analyzing what type of campaigns work best So we did that This is the last six months worth of campaigns Divided into different types like data games with data capture visual street view video and so on But before you go down thinking I'm gonna I'm gonna take a photo of this and I'm just gonna start doing data campaigns because they work best I Would like to tell you a story about some chickens I Thought that would get love. It's chickens. That's weird. Okay, so there was a study made at University of Texas at Austin and it is it is quite a funny study because the They had lots of participants to look at these pictures of a plump attractive chicken. I've never said that plump attractive chicken versus an unattractive chicken and skinny and Then this told the participants that the plump one was a natural chicken and the skinny one was the engineered chicken They then divided them in two groups and told group one that the natural chicken is healthy But not that tasty and the engineered chicken is tasty, but not the healthy Guess what the other group they told the opposite to What's interesting about the the findings of this study is that both groups preferred the natural chicken But neither group justified their choice based on how they felt In fact, what they did is that they used the opposite reason to justify the same decision We don't actually make these decisions based on these details. We make it how we feel That is the point This is called post-hoc rationalization and as marketers we do this all the time and I can hear myself doing it and I'm like, oh man. I'm doing this again The point is formats are just the vessel of the idea The creative is what connects with people. It's not whether it was a data piece Like if we do this if we if we kind of do all this data We could actually lose out on campaigns that do really well Just because we're trying to make something into a specific format. I'm just gonna get some water So, oh my god, it's not just you around I can't open it Okay, talk amongst yourselves, so But you know the creative Doesn't have much place If you don't do the outreach even the best campaign ever Won't get any coverage if you don't tell people about it So this is what I think we are the most well-known for in the UK is doing the outreach In fact at the verb in the verb team the outreach team is the biggest We have two TechSios. We're really good at TechSio But outreach is the really really big team because this is where most of the work is done This is where you get the results I'm going to tell you about what outreach is not about before I tell you what it is about So I get asked this a lot This is the first question people ask me when they know that we are doing really well in outreach In fact, Rand insisted that I needed to still include this slide So we use the same tools that most people use Gokana and Meltwater are both tools that you can find the contact for the journalist And and I think Gokana is amazing But in some of the more obscure countries Meltwater is a lot better And we use Bustream because it's awesome and he helps us make sure that we keep on track on it with everything And we use Basumo quite a lot for finding inspiration for campaigns or looking at content while it's already there But these are just tools you can't build a house by just holding a hammer and building These are just tools The second what I would like to say is that there is no optimum way of writing and outreach emails. I Get this a lot as well surely it's just to keep your outreach email short and snappy with really terrible jokes I'm going to show you an example. So James who I call JC because I have a tendency to hire a lot of people called James He's one of our most amazing outreach people now his style is quite interesting. So this is his outreach email to To people for the billionaire's league So he starts off obviously he's bolded a few things and stuff and you think oh, this looks quite long This is the next bit and the next bit and the next bit and That's it What there? That's like an essay right? Surely this doesn't work. This is like the look when I saw this outreach email I was like there is no way anyone's going to get back to you There's gone straight in the junk mail This is the reply from journalists at the mirror You got my attention with this brilliant release Wish all PRs send something like this. I've CC the money team because I think it might be something in there for them This is the coverage. This is the mirror one of the biggest papers in the UK It's not about how many emails that you send either Unfortunately, there's no pattern in that JC again see now. I'm not even calling him James. It's just JC This is an example of a month where JC sent Over 1,000 emails and it got 20 pieces of coverage Now this is Iris who sent 267 emails and got 23 pieces of content 23 links now Basically, they have totally different strategies of getting this exact same result which I think is Super interesting and I would like you to really think about that So going back to that year of January 2015 There was something very significant that also did in that year and That was the realization That outreach Is about people It's about the mindset that these people have and I wholeheartedly believe That outreach is about grit It's about passion and perseverance especially perseverance because if you want to be an outreach and if you want to get those links you cannot give up in March last year I into you this guy Alex and Alex had a CV that read pretty much like hundreds of other people wanting to get into this industry He'd been to University then done a year doing some writing Worked for a couple of newspapers and so on But as I was into him I realized that the thing that really lit him up was when I talked about his interest and he turns out There was a story there that he didn't even have on his CV and that was that Alex being a very very quite posh Schoolboy went to this school, which is a quite a well known school. It looks like Harry Potter school surely He is extremely passionate about American football like super passionate by American football in fact He was so frustrated that there were no literature about American football in the UK So when he was in a university, he decided to write his own book about American football He did this while he was at university set off time every day to write and at the end he didn't just leave it He went to publisher and said I want you to publish this book He even bypassed the agent which is like for anyone that work that knows anyone that's tried to publish anything That's like completely unheard of. He was super crooked. Just went like I'm just gonna go straight to the publisher And his book is sold at Amazon and in the news in bookstores in the UK Now that is great if I just looked at a CV and Judge him by his CV. I would have completely missed The talent because it's how they think That really changes how well they do so What I then changed is the way that I was asking questions to find these people so instead of asking the standard CV questions I started researching loads of different questions that would help me think help me figure out how they are thinking about things What they're likely to give up So there's a few ones that I use regularly and I'm going to share with you one of them is actually I read originals by Adam Grant who I love and and in his book There was Mention of a study where they tried to figure out what would make someone stay in a job and also perform in a job So they asked them like loads and loads of questions We're very frustrating. Although it had like 35,000 people that they asked they couldn't find any Correlation between like, you know the obvious things that you would think like a education Job hopping or anything like that The one thing that showed correlation was a question that they just added at the end, which was what browser do you use and He turns out the people that used Firefox or Chrome were like 17 percent more likely to stay in the job and Also perform better The reason for that is that if you use Chrome or Firefox you have not accepted the default on your computer You have gone out of your way to find something better and That is the measurement of grits that you can use Another question is pretty random, but trust me this one is also very useful. So you look at this picture It's a London on a ground on the platform. It's an elephant What would you do if you saw this elephant? So the interesting thing about this question is that you will immediately have thoughts The kind of like thinking that you will have is Interesting to me. So basically it's kind of divides into two very specific forks Like one big group and pretty much everyone in the outreach and creative team has answered I would take a picture of picture of a sit on a fly it because they think that's obviously true And Instagram a Facebook it and all those kind of things while the other group and pretty much all the tech SEOs developers Wait straight into risk assessment and oh hang on. How did it get there? We're gonna do about it Oh, I need to call the zoo one guy even went so far as saying hang on It's the truth that elephants are scared of mice and they lose some mice on the underground That's seriously kind of analytical The point of these kind of questions is not that they're right or wrong But it's a way of figuring out how people think and what I really want is people that can stretch people That have maybe already stretched themselves or have been stretched sometimes you stretch by Experiences and therefore you are you are more likely to be able to persevere because you have already been through stuff Or like Alex you made yourself go through something because you really wanted it and then when you have these people and I Know lose of you. We already have this grip the most important thing of getting successful outreach Is to encourage people to be more of who they are? Not to be someone else There's no one shape and no one way of doing things and we are really missing out on a lot of things when we are We are I think the world is so pro And extroverts It's like whoever shouts the loudest get heard but some of the best creative that's been created At verb has been by the quietest voice in the room and as managers as leaders as co-workers We need to really open up to listen differently depending on who we talk to one of our most successful campaigns to date and Idioms of the world and the campaign I shared with the vintage poster was created by a guy at work called Matt Who is really shy and really quiet? But when he comes to me and say I really want to do this. It's like someone else shouting it That's what I mean with listen differently And if you can encourage people to know that it's okay Whoever they are and that they can find their own way of doing it. That's what you really say see results That is really just our secret It is letting people find their own way of writing those emails We give them all the same tools, but everyone has their own way of doing it Some send loads of emails some said very few emails and they research everything They're just very very different We basically just need to find our own way and I cannot stress just how much of an impact This will make I'm just going to share one more story. So it's this paradox called the monkey ladder and paradox Which had five monkeys in a room and a ladder and some bananas on top of the ladder Every time a monkey tried to go and get the bananas the scientists will spray them with water and They would do this repeatedly until they stop going to the bananas Then they would change one monkey with a completely new monkey and As a new monkey went straight for the bananas the other monkeys tore it down It started beating it up because they didn't want to be sprayed with water Then they changed another monkey and now this is the interesting thing What happened was that the monkey that just been replaced just before who had never been sprayed with water Then help the others tear down the monkey and beat it up Eventually they had five new monkeys that had never been sprayed with water and they went nowhere near the bananas You are not a monkey You do not need to take on any of these beliefs. I think this is the the biggest Secret to most people's success is that it doesn't matter if everyone in here say that I can't do this If I think I can I will and if you can teach people how to do that and how to believe in themselves They will get the results The key to outreach is basically perseverance and being more of who you are whether you are Extrovert or introvert whether you take a long time doing or or you are very quick Basically as SEOs and content marketers. We need to be professional labyrinth walkers when we come to a dead end We find another way and That's how I managed to get from this To this Thank you