Tumblr is a superb platform for publishing a blog.

However, it’s had something of a reputation for encouraging content to be very poorly optimised; as a result, Tumblr blogs don’t tend to receive as much organic search traffic as they could do.

This post will aim to change that, and demonstrate how you can use Tumblr to set up a new blog really easily, and with pretty good on-page SEO.

Download the Themes

These themes are free to download, use and modify. (You can visit the original designers from the links at the end of this post.)

Download A Brand New Day theme Download Brain Itches theme

Live Demos: I’ve set up Tumblr blogs to show off the optimized themes here:

• Big Night In (things to do on a night in)
• Rob Ousbey (set it up at Xmas to test the platform.)

Mixed reviews about Tumblr

If I had to identify a few of the main features that make Tumblr so great, they’d be:

• it is painfully easy to create new posts;
• they have great (and of course, easy) reblogging / ‘i-like-this‘ features that turn a bunch of disparate streams into a community;
• creating themes for the site is within the grasp of any html/css developer, so there is a good collection of styles and themes available;
• you can use your own domain name for your Tumblr blog.

However, it’s been discussed quite widely that Tumblr is bad at SEO. I’m going to propose a way of using Tumblr from a best practice SEO viewpoint that will mean:

• your Tumblr blog should now receive more visitors (from the search engines)

or

• if you want to set up a blog to attract links, and need something really easy to post to (imagine your CEO is going to be contributing content!) then Tumblr could now be the right answer.

Best Practice SEO

The rest of this post looks at how to customize any Tumblr theme to be optimised for SEO.

We have to begin with a bunch of ‘Best Practice SEO’ hard truths:

• each post should have be available at a unique location
• each page should have a <title> and <h1> that contains the most important information / keywords relevant to that page
• the keywords should also be available in the URL if possible
• each post should be linked to, so that Google can find it, index it, and display it in search results (a benefit of properly linking to each post is that regular users who want to share a post are more likely to link directly to that post, rather than just linking to your front page)
• you should link to each post using the most important keywords – this will probably be the title, so use that to link to the post
• if you link to a page twice from the same page, Google only takes notice of the first link – so make sure that’s the one with keywords in (rather than ‘permalink’ or ‘3 comments’ etc)
• the meta description is often used by google as the snippet it displays in the search results. If there’s no meta description, it will take the most appropriate part of the page
• the content of each page should be unique, and the title and meta description of each page should also be different
• your HTML should be as semantic as possible.

Also, from an broader internet marketing perspective, links to submit / vote for a post on Social Media sites will help your content be seen more widely.

The Science Bit

This section covers the rules-of-engagement & code snippets to make a Tumblr theme more SEO friendly. (I’ve got some fully optimised theme examples later in the post.)

Settings & Coding

Under the ‘Advanced Settings’ menu, turn on the ‘Use Descriptive URLs’ option, to allow you to include some keywords in your permalink URL. Make sure you add a few words (such as the post title) in this field when creating each post.

Further down on that menu, double check that the ‘Allow search engines to index your tumblelog’ and ‘Ping the Blogosphere’ options are both ticked.

From the ’semantic HTML’ point of view: make sure your theme uses real HTML elements: <p>, <div>, <span>, <h1>, <h2>, <em>, <strong> etc. (One of my favourite themes uses <n1> and <n2> as headers, and uses <i> and <b> when <em> and <strong> should be used in preference.)

Head Section

In the <head> section of your theme, make sure that the <title> tag contains the post title, if one exists:

<title>{block:PostTitle}{PostTitle} - {/block:PostTitle}{Title}</title>

Still in the <head> section, there’s no great way to provide separate text for the meta description, so if one exists in the theme: remove it. You’ll get better snippets in the search results this way, I promise.

The tag you’re looking to remove will look something like this:

<meta name="description" content="My blog is great." />

You should also register your blog with Google Webmaster Central. To verify your blog, you’ll be given a snippet of HTML to paste in the head section of the page.

HTML Body

On the front page of your blog, the name of the blog is the most important thing there, so you’ll want to put that in an H1 tag. When viewing other page on the site, there will be other more important text (the post title, typically) so you’ll want the blog name to be an <h2> on other pages. This code does that for you:

{block:IndexPage}<h1 class="blogtitle"><a class="default" href="/">{Title}</a></h1>{/block:IndexPage}
{block:PermalinkPage}<h2 class="blogtitle"><a class="default" href="/">{Title}</a></h2>{/block:PermalinkPage}

Now you just need to update your CSS to display h1.blogtitle and h2.blogtitle in the same way.

NB: I’ve made sure that the title links back to the front page of the blog. You should also try to create themes so that this heading is the first link to the front page. This will make sure that the anchor text being passed to the blog’s main page it the blog title, rather than some navigational term, such as ‘Home’.

You’ll want to do a similar thing on text post pages. You, or the blog maintainer, should make sure to always add a title when you create text posts. Here, the post title should be <h2> when it appears on an index page, <h1> when it’s on a permalink page:

{block:Title}
    {block:IndexPage}<h2><a href="{Permalink}">{Title}</a></h2>{/block:IndexPage}
    {block:PermalinkPage}<h1>{Title}</h1>{/block:PermalinkPage
{/block:Title}

Notice that I’ve also made the index page’s post title a link to the post. Again, you’ll now want to style these headings to appear in a similar, appropriate way.

Most of the other post types (photo, quote, link, audio, video) don’t offer the option of adding a title to the page. Not cool, Tumblr. For this reason, I’d have to advice not to use any of the post types except text.

This will come as a bit of a shock, particularly to seasoned Tumblr users. If you want to post a video just grab the embed code from Youtube (or wherever the video is hosted) and paste that into your post content. For images, just upload them to Imgur.com and it will automatically give you an HTML snippet that can be pasted into the post.

I appreciate that this breaks some of Tumblr’s nice features (automatic image sizes, video thumbnails), but while Tumblr don’t offer optional titles for these posts, then I can’t recommend using them.

If you absolutely have to use video/image posts (for instance: you have an account that already has lots of them) then you should create a fake title for the post. This solution isn’t great, as there’s no opportunity to include keywords in the title.

For example:

{block:IndexPage}
    <h2><a href="{Permalink}">Photo: {DayOfMonth}<sup>{DayOfMonthSuffix}</sup> {ShortMonth} '{ShortYear}</a></h2>
    <div class="imageHolder"><a href="{Permalink}"><img src="{PhotoURL-500}" alt="{PhotoAlt}" /></a></div>
{/block:IndexPage}
{block:PermalinkPage}
    <h1>Photo: {DayOfMonth}<sup>{DayOfMonthSuffix}</sup> {ShortMonth} '{ShortYear}</h1>
    <div class="imageHolder">{LinkOpenTag}<img src="{PhotoURL-500}" alt="{PhotoAlt}" />{LinkCloseTag}</div>
{/block:PermalinkPage}

This will create a title based on the date the photo was taken and use the approprate H tag. It will also make the image on the index page a link through to the permalink page.

You should do a similar thing with video posts.

Finally, I’m going to use the Social Bookmaking tool from AddThis.com. You should include the following at the end of the ‘posts’ section:

<div class="sharethis">
    <a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php" onmouseover="return addthis_open(this, '', '{Permalink}', '{block:Title}{Title}{/block:Title}')" onmouseout="addthis_close()" onclick="return addthis_sendto()"><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/lg-share-en.gif" width="125" height="16" alt="Bookmark and Share" style="border:0"/></a>
    <script type="text/javascript">var addthis_options = 'email, favorites, twitter, facebook, delicious, digg, reddit, stumbleupon, tumblr, more';</script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://s7.addthis.com/js/250/addthis_widget.js"></script>
</div>

The ShareThis Customisation Help pages will show you how to customise the button further.

Thanks

The themes that have been optimised for this post are the original work of:

• Bright New Day theme: by Roy David Farber and Hunson
• Brain Itches theme: Adam Holwerda.

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We have an internal all-hands weekly email here at Distilled summarising what each department has been up to. It was while writing up a bit about what had happened on a marketing / networking front that I realised the variety of things I’ve been involved with recently. I thought I’d do a quick write up.

It’s a little light on technical advice – more a catch-up and a sorry for not writing more recently (keep your eyes open for some fun stuff coming soon). Skip to the end for the celebrity spotting!

So, I wanted to talk about three things:

1. NESTA – Distilled chosen as a ‘top creative business’ (of tomorrow)

NESTA – the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts – is running a mentoring scheme for creative businesses. They selected us to be one of the companies mentored under the scheme.

We are working with John Varney (who used to be CTO at the BBC). John is now an investor and advisor to a number of start-up and early stage technology companies – many in the valley. We are working with him mainly on strategy (so far – I’m sure he’ll be getting involved with some details too!).

The program is running as a pilot – an attempt by NESTA to understand how mentoring schemes should be run and to experiment with a variety of techniques. Although this means that there is a fair degree of form-filling and administration to the whole thing, the introspection does seem to be useful. In particular, I attended a full-day event recently with all the mentors and mentees which served a joint purpose of giving a lot of feedback to NESTA and being pretty valuable to us mentees. Not only did I get to learn some things about how others are getting value from their mentors, but also got to meet some mentees running some exciting small businesses as well as some experienced mentors.

I particularly enjoyed a session at the end of the day where we discussed a number of general questions in small groups rotating around the room to meet a range of mentors. I got some good bits of advice from some pretty high-powered people. I hope that the program offers more opportunities to mingle in this way.

In the meantime, however, we are focussing on getting value from John (in the nicest possible way!). He has already been pretty influential in getting Duncan and I to separate the strategy and management elements of our roles and now that we have spent some time together working on medium-term strategy, we feel pretty excited about what we are going to get to work on next. (That strategy is being talked about internally at a company meeting next week, by the way – some bits will no doubt take a while to become public, but we’ll talk about them as soon as we can).

2. Courvoisier – I am now an ‘ambassador’

You may remember that Tom and I have both been named to the Courvoisier Future 500 network as ‘ones to watch’ (I never really know where to link when I write about this, how about here). I don’t know whether the next step is someone else from Distilled being nominated or another Critchlow

Anyway, through my involvement with the network (which seeks to connect the ‘ones to watch’ in networking situations after all the PR hubbub has died down) – including hosting a networking breakfast – I have been named one of 10 ‘ambassadors’. I’m not 100% sure what this is going to involve, but I have already been doing some judging for the next network announcement and early next week we’re being jetted off to see Courvoisier in Jarnac, France. I’m still not quite sure if that counts as a work trip or not.

The other ambassadors include some people we already knew:

• Walid Al Saqqaf of Trusted Places
• Andy Gibson of School of Everything and Mind Apples
• Diana Bird of Wedge Card
• Cyndi Rhoades of Worn Again

and some new friends:

• Marchella De Angelis
• Sam Bompas (whose company might be the coolest thing ever – want a custom jelly?)
• Jo Jackson of Beyond the Valley
• Will Beckett of Underdog Group
• Justin Marciano of Revolver Entertainment

The cool thing about being an ambassador from Distilled’s point of view (beyond me getting trips places) is that we get the guys at Focus putting some thought into getting us all some coverage and also Courvoisier providing some pretty awesome drinks at all kinds of events.

3. Badabing – learning about the new Microsoft search engine, bing.com

Last Friday Mel Carson (twitter) kindly invited me to join him at #badabing (that was the twitter hashtag for the day). It was great to be there with clients and prospects as well as a bunch of industry friends – Dave Naylor, Dixon Jones, Andrew Girdwood and others. We had a lot of fun learning about some of the cool stuff that bing can do (in the US! – even though I understand the reasons, I am frustrated that bing being in ‘beta’ in the UK means that it is essentially a rebranded live search at the moment and we have to wait until late 2009 / early 2010 for the US-style features).

I think there are a few things that could shake up elements like keyphrase research if it gets a decent market share – with the segmented search making it natural for searchers to refine their searchers in well-defined ways. By making these refinements feel more like a navigation menu than typical filter links, I think they will encourage widespread use.

That relies on getting market share, however. I think this comes from two main initiatives:

1. the extra effort they are putting into vertical search with the help of acquisitions such as farecast in the US. I hope we get to see this kind of thing working well in the UK (though I have to admit that the current Ciao and Multimap integrations don’t give me a lot of faith that this will be true!)
2. their stated goal of being the best UK search engine. With Google’s current UK index on an apparent downwards quality slope, this may be achievable (with their focus on local engineering resource apparently) and a true high-quality UK index would certainly be welcomed from many quarters

Then I guess it is mainly about getting people to try it – but that’s what the huge marketing budget’s for, right?

When the original invitation came through it asked if I wanted to go for dinner as well. I’d said yes – thinking it would be a pretty understated geekfest somewhere local. I was nicely surprised by what Mel had planned for us – not only did we get handed a goodie bag on the way out of the door (copy of Windows 7, Microsoft ‘Arc’ mouse that I love, Microsoft advertising t-shirt that my wife hates, miniature ‘bing pong’ set etc.) but we were also whisked across town to Fortnum and Mason for dinner. I didn’t even know F&M had a restaurant, but they do and it’s a good’un. Mel admitted after a few beers that he chose the menu based entirely on what he wanted to eat but that was fine, because I wanted pork belly with scallops too

The biggest surprise though came in the form of Mel’s new twitter buddy, Will Carling who came along to do the after dinner speech. I was lucky enough to be seated ‘on high’ next to Mel and we enjoyed hearing stories all evening about the Welsh on tour from Will. We also met the tech guy, Dave Tosh who is behind Will’s rugby social networking site rucku. As DaveN wrote, it was good to hear about the celebrity benefits of twitter whereby guys like Will Carling can speak directly to the public without a publicist in the way.

I wanted to end by saying thanks to Mel – it was a great day and I got a lot out of it work-wise as well as having a lot of fun. Mel, Will Carling and I at Fortnum and Mason:

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Customer feedback is really important in the improvement of your website. Conversion Rate Experts wisely advise that, before you test with the “Let’s-Throw-Stuff-At-The-Wall-And-See-What-Sticks Approach“, you take some time to find out what needs to be tested. One of the ways to do this is to ask your users. At the end of the post, I’ve reviewed a few of the most popular tools that will help you do this.

There are 3 ways you can get feedback from your users- via a survey, a feedback form or with livechat. There’s a full (if slightly biased) definition of these on the Kampyle blog, but here are my one line (ahem) definitions:

Survey- ask your users a set of questions. Can be as varied as you like (depending on limitations of the tool that you use), and can be either closed either/or, multiple choice questions or open ended text replies.

Feedback form- this is more of an invitation to users to offer feedback. Your typical feedback form will be evident on each page of your site and, although you can prompt users to contribute, this approach is more about users talking about whatever they want to talk about.

Livechat- can either be an option to IM chat with staff (either for support or feedback), or an open forum in which ideas, feedback, bugs and complaints are shared amongst staff and users alike.

Before you begin looking into one of these options, I recommend you have a think about a few things to make sure you’re going down the right route for your website. (I’ve used ‘feedback’ as a general term to cover all three broad definitions above).

Why are trying to get feedback from your users?

• why are you doing this? Do you want to increase conversion rates, improve user experience, capture more information about your users?
• are you going to implement changes as a result of this feedback? If not, why are you doing it?

Who are the results going to?

There’s no point collecting some feedback just to flatter the CEO. Make sure that the person receiving the results will understand the data and have some ideas about what to do with it.

What are your limitations?

There are loads of factors that may limit your feedback (although not all of them may necessarily be negative). Before you start to put your actual questions together, consider the following:

• how many questions are your users willing to answer?
• how similar are your users? If they’re from too wide a demographic, then you might need to target different groups with your form.
• how long will it take to collect the data? You probably want a certain amount of feedback before you decide to action any findings, so think about how long it might take for your site to have enough users to meet that target. Be realistic.

Make sure you ask the right questions

A lot of this advice boils down to the simple fact that you need to make sure you’re asking the right questions. There’s a limit to the number of questions that your users will answer so make sure they’re good ones. The beauty of an online feedback form is that it’s not limited to a simple 1,2,3 questionnaire- there’s loads of ways to squeeze much more information out of your users. There are a few tools that will help you no end when it comes to this part of the process. I’ve done a quick roundup of what seem to be the best four (or, at least, the most talked about) on the web.

Survey Monkey

Summary- Survey Monkey is probably the most popular straightforward survey tool freely available online. It’s very easy to set up and there are loads of different kinds of questions it can ask, from open-ended text box to closed multiple choices. This tool falls into the ‘Survey’ category above.

Pros- Very flexible. If you know exactly what you want your survey to look like then this tool probably gives you the most space in which to do it.

Cons- There’s a limit of 10 questions and 100 responses for the free package.

4Q

Summary- This is a nifty little tool that asks users for feedback when they’re exiting the site. It comes highly recommended by the don of Analytics, Avinash Kaushik, and, as far as I can tell, differs mainly from Survey Monkey by the fact that it guides you towards the questions you should be asking your users. Again, it falls into the ’survey’ category.

Pros- Recommended by Avinash . Apart from that, it’s very easy to set up (took me a trial 2 minutes) and looks like it has some really nice data processing stuff going on. If you want to find out more about it, watch this little video and then, as Avinash encourages, go and do a little dance.

Cons- Some of the lists that you have to choose from in the setup are quite long and veer between highly specific descriptions to really broad ones. But, to be honest, I’m just being picky: as long as you agree with the ‘4 most important user questions’ then this is a great tool.

Kampyle

Summary- Kampyle’s hot. Once you know what it looks like, you’ll see it ALL over the place. You basically stick an icon on every page on your site and that allows users to give feedback on a range of subjects whenever they want to. The tool can be used to steer users towards giving useful feedback. As an added bonus, the tool can be integrated with your Analytics as well. If you haven’t already guessed, Kampyle falls into the ‘feedback form’ category.

Pros- Again, very easy to set up and it’s really a case of plug-in and play. We used it for a while on our site and found the feedback that we did get very useful.

Cons- When we used it, we didn’t get that many responses- perhaps because the form is quite so unobtrusive?

Uservoice

Summary- Uservoice allows you to build a community around your brand. Feedback is organised around a forum, with voting systems and a chance for you to communicate directly with your customers. I haven’t actually played with this yet so I won’t do the pros and cons, but the site is very pretty and has lots of testimonials from some big brands. The tool falls into the final category of ‘livechat’.

I hope you’ve found this post useful. I’m learning lots about this at the moment and would really appreciate any feedback!

(Photo via Planned Parenthood)

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We recently had a spike in traffic for one of our clients that we couldn’t explain. The spike appeared in organic traffic when we excluded their main keyword but we couldn’t find out what the source of this traffic was. As we couldn’t quite get to the bottom of it, we decided that we might as well go to Google and get the benefit of their wisdom on the subject. Although they never did explain our spike it threw up an interesting change in the way that Google treats untagged traffic.

While asking Google about our strange traffic, we mentioned that we suspected that it might be untagged traffic. They countered by ignoring the main question and saying that if it were untagged traffic then it would appear as direct traffic. We had understood that untagged traffic would appear as organic traffic, hence our original theory about the cause of this activity, so this was surprising.

Google then clarified the situation saying that

“untagged PPC traffic will now also be appearing as “Direct”, whereas prior to the changes at the end of March, this traffic would have been considered “Organic”.”

So now we have two questions

1) Why make this change? Personally I would rather that if tagging goes missing that the traffic is still at least reported as being from a search engine rather than direct. 2) Why do we have a big, unexplained spike in organic traffic?

Has anyone else noticed this? If anyone has any answers or theories as to why Google have made this move then we’d love to hear them.

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Rand recently wrote his 2007 self a letter and asked me and a bunch of other people to do the same.

I was struck, reading Rand’s letter, by the degree to which his advice to himself is useful and actionable right now (for himself – and, to a lesser degree, for me and others). I am hoping to re-read my advice to myself in that frame of mind afterwards. For now though, I am thinking purely in terms of advice I wish I could have imparted to myself two years ago.

When I read Rand’s invitation to contribute, I initially wasn’t sure what kind of advice I could give. I was bolstered, however, by an experience recently where I met up with a friend just striking out on her own into a new business venture. I realised that I have learnt a lot amount in the 4 years that Distilled has been going (possibly indicating how little I knew to start off with!).

It feels as though there are two main sources of advice from people who have “been there and done that”:

1. there is a natural selection element- simply by still being here, running a business that employs people, I get to impart some bits of advice in the form of “here is what we did – seemed to work for us”
2. more powerfully, there are some areas where you have tried working in more than one mode and discovered that one works significantly better. While this is still biased by our direct experience, it at least represents some element of what you might call ‘experience’ rather than just “well, it worked for us when we did it this way”

Anyway, without further ado, onto the letter.

June 2009

Dear 2007 Will,

I am writing from the future. When you get to this point and look back, you will be astounded by how much some things have changed and and simultaneously amazed by the degree to which some things remain the same.

Be that as it may, I now have a couple more years’ experience and, while I know there is a limited(!!?!) chance of you reading this, if you do, I hope you will have the humility to take the right bits to heart:

1. Embrace “Getting Things Done” more and sooner

I know you have already read the book, but I also know it will be a good 18 months before you realise the true power of “inbox to zero”. Remember that even if you don’t do any more as a result of being better organised (though you will) simply having the right systems in place will free your mind up to work on the right things much more of the time.

2. Hire smart people fast(er)

If we could take a joint trip back to 2005, I think this would be the single biggest thing we’d want to say to our 2005 self. You know all that time you spent slogging along with just you and Duncan? Imagine if you could have added some of the smart people you know now to the mix a couple of years sooner. That applies now. It may turn out, in the long-run that the single thing you are best at is delegating to smart people

3. Define your role better

Again, you have read the e-myth by this point, but you have still only paid it lip-service. Think in terms of a business with 15-20 people in it (and the next level on from that) and define the roles you and Duncan will need to fill (and only then work out what hats you are each wearing now). Take ownership and responsibility. Butt out of each other’s space, but ask for help when you need it. [For more on where we are up to with this now, those of you reading this in 2009 can read Duncan's recent post on his job role - it's a while since both founders wrote a post in the same week so I should probably link to it!].

4. Get good at mobile email

You can still upgrade to the 3G iphone later, but first stop being scared that being ‘always connected’ means ‘always doing email’. It means you can do email when you’ve got nothing better to do and have to do email much less when you do have better things to do.

5. Get a great bank manager

You’ll work this one out for yourself, but still, you might as well get going asap. You don’t have to deal with a call centre.

6. Start doing PR

Most of your business over the coming years will come either from existing customers / referrals or from people who “get to know” you and Distilled. This “getting to know” part isn’t actually rocket science – it’s all part of PR in its broadest sense. Raise your profile and seek amplifiers – the mechanisms, individuals and publications that can help you become better known.

7. Related to #6: Write more

Your clients like to read what you write and it both brings in new prospects and helps people get more comfortable with hiring you.

8. Raise your prices

You’re not charging enough. Seriously. (And connected to this, start thinking bigger – you are mainly constrained by your own beliefs).

9. Remember the flywheel

You have no idea what I’m talking about. First read ‘Good to Great’. Then remember the flywheel concept. Pick your battles and then focus on them consistently and repeatedly. Success breeds success so amplify what you can.

10. Sell your flat in late 2007

Trust me.

11. Don’t take all this too seriously and remember to have fun…

Having written that all down, it feels a little tactical. All of the things above will help you, but I think that above all remember the people – someone (I have now forgotten who it was unfortunately) who I thought couldn’t possibly have time for me – not only replied to something I wrote to them, but signed off their email with a genuine “let me know if I can do anything for you”. Try asking people that more often. It can be enlightening.

Love, 2009 Will

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We recently noticed that when searching on Yahoo for Distilled a sponsored advert was appearing. The strange thing about this is that we do not run any PPC adverts on Yahoo. We do run some PPC adverts on Google but they are not targeted at branded searches and none of our adverts contain the ad content we can see here. Curious.

Was the ad triggered by an advanced match keyword linking Distilled with reputation management? Possibly, a non-branded search for ‘reputation management does again produce an advert for Distilled.

They also have Distilled sponsored adverts at the bottom of the page at the same time so that is two adverts and no charge.

But why are ads appearing there in the first place?

We thought about how it could be a hangover from the experiment to run Google ads on Yahoo but that wouldn’t explain the new ad content which isn’t anywhere in our AdWords account. Are Yahoo trying to pad out their search offering to make the advertising space look more appealing? Trying to stimulate a herd mentality and give the impression that this is a place worth being seen in?

If someone out there thinks they know why these ads are appearing, perhaps you are the kindly soul trying to drive traffic towards the distilled website, then we’d love to hear your theories (or confessions)!

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This post has turned into a bit of a lengthy post, but should give you some insight into some changes going on at Distilled.

Over the last 4 years Will and I have had the challenge and the pleasure of growing Distilled from just the two of us working out of my front room, to where we are today. We deliberately decided not to take any funding, and have bootstrapped our way through 5 offices to our current situation with 15 staff and our fantastic new offices.

Today I’m going to talk about some of the challenges of growing a small company, and give a bit of an insight into where we are going from here.

Setting up and running a company has been a dream for Will and I pretty much ever since we met all those years ago (17 for those of you who are counting). In March 2005 we finally decided to swap the (relative) comfort of our (relatively) secure, (relatively) well paid jobs for the thrill of starting a company. In the early days our goal was survival. Could we make enough money to pay the rent and buy food for the month? Luckily the answer was yes, and we were on our way. Life in the first few year or so was all about survival. Our goal was simply to still have a business.

The next two years the goal switched from survival to growth. The business was still young, and the growth was somewhat haphazard. It was growth in the sense of “see what sticks” rather than growth as part of any defined strategy. Will and I are incredibly ambitious, and we found that we simply couldn’t stick to a strategy. We often found ourselves creating a 6 month strategy, only for 2 month later to have done something slightly different that was much more effective. When you are a small and growing business it is very easy to change course to fit with the market, and to follow what feels right at the time. We became very good at subtle changes to make the most out of the situation in front of us.

Will and I were reminiscing about this just the other day. The first three years can be summed up as massive growth whilst “flying by the seats of our pants”. This is what we, as entrepreneurs thrive on, the uncertainty and the ability to change course and follow a different path. It’s exciting, exhilarating, but it’s a nightmare to even start to put into a strategy.

Where are we going, what’s the exit strategy?

Over the years we have spoken to a number of business advisers in various guises. Will and I have never been afraid of taking advice from people who know better. In fact I’m certain that our biggest success to date is in hiring people that are better at their jobs than Will and I ever could be.

Photo by splorp

Of all the business advisers we have ever spoken to not one has failed to ask us about our exit strategy. Up until now the flying by the seat of your pants feeling, and our ever changing business has meant planning, and more importantly sticking to a strategy has never been possible. Not to mention the fact that at the moment, we are enjoying the ride, and want to take Distilled as far as we can go. In my mind, thinking about our exit feels like it goes completely against what we have spent the past 4 years building.

Changes at the coal face.

The last year or so at Distilled has seen subtle changes from the previous three. It simply isn’t possible for 15 people to thrive as we have in an overly entrepreneurial environment. 15 people going from day to day and seeing what challenges are thrown their way doesn’t lead to the incredible results we have achieved for our clients. The change has come in creating processes around our day to day tasks to ensure that our work is consistent. We have a fantastic team at Distilled and it has been a struggle getting the balance right between ensuring that we have consistent and repeatable processes and giving enough freedom for people to get on with what they do so well.

Despite trying to formalise more of what we get up to, we are keen not to lose all of the entrepreneurial spirit that exists in so many small businesses. The challenge is to keep that feeling, and to allow everyone at Distilled to express their creativity, whilst ensuring that we continue to strengthen and grow our business. Despite managing to triple our revenue last year, and move into our new offices we can’t help feel that something was missing. Will and I are outrageously competitive, and despite doing really well last year somehow it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it perhaps should. A lot of the entrepreneurial feeling is based around constantly being challenged and more often than not coming out on top. Even the subtle constraints that the processes put in place are enough to lose that feeling of being challenged, and without challenges it’s very easy to lose the winning feeling. This feeling of slight disappointment is what drives us forward and is a big part of what makes Distilled so successful. It’s that feeling that will drive everyone next year to bigger and better things.

When we were a small company, we tried new things, and were able to see what worked. As any company grows it’s natural that they lose some of that ability to try things. We have built a company that is incredibly good at what it does, but a bit of the fun of running or working in a small business is the ability to try new things. There are a lot of challenges facing Will and I but ensuring that Distilled remains at the top of the game, whilst encouraging creativity amongst our staff is one of the greatest.

After a long introduction it’s time to announce the changes that are happening at Distilled. Will and I are going to ensure that we take at least half a day out of the office each month talking about the long term strategy. We have had a handful of these meetings in the past and have found each and every meeting energises us and gives numerous ideas for the future. Where we have struggled in the past is to take these ideas from the early stage into something that will help our business.

For this reason my role is now CEO. This is to ensure that there is one person accountable for driving our strategy and ideas into changes for the business. Historically our day jobs got in the way of the non urgent but important changes that came out of our strategy meetings.

Those of you who know me will know that I’m not the most outgoing of people – I’m firmly in the introverted techy camp. The reason Will and I work well together is that he isn’t quite so techy at heart and is firmly in the extrovert camp. This split has always worked well and the split will remain. Will’s roles will continue to be looking after the public facing roles of a traditional CEO. This means evangelising Distilled, and continuing to build our network.

To help this more strategic focus Sarah, our COO will be taking on even more of the day to day tactical management challenges.

Getting to where we want to be.

The competitive nature of Will and I means we are never satisfied with the way things are. We are always looking for ways to improve and better ourselves. Historically, with our lack of strategic focus we have been restricted to making incremental improvements to our business. The next challenge, and my major role as CEO is to look at where we want to get to, and implement any changes necessary to get there. This should result in Distilled getting further, and ending up stronger than if we continue to incrementally better ourselves. Given how proud we are of where we are at the moment, this is exciting times indeed. This subtle change, and the fact that we are giving ourselves the permission and the structure necessary to get to where we want to be, means that once again Distilled feels exciting. For Will and I it feels like (once again) we are setting up a new company. The entrepreneurial feeling is back, the excitement of thinking where we can push ourselves is once again getting the competitive juices flowing.

Stay tuned to watch where we can get to. For those of you not already subscribed, now would be a good to sign up. You don’t want to miss out on something good.

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If you’ve been reading up on the latest fashion, you’ll know that the 90’s are back. I’m sure you’ve seen more than a few people sporting Wayfarers or liberal amounts of neon lately. Keep your fingers crossed for the return of Hypercolor t-shirts and slap bracelets.

While there are plenty of techniques that have emerged even within the past few months, let alone 10 years, there is one SEO practice that remains tried and true. Link building via directories is still a valuable part of any linkbuilding campaign, as long as it used in combination with other methods.. After all, search engines were built on directories.

I’ve become pretty familiar with site listings here at Distilled, and would like to offer you my top ten tips. Enjoy!

1. Come up with a comprehensive list of directories.

Some helpful resources are:

• http://www.seomoz.org/directories
• http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
• http://www.web-directories.ws/sitemap.php
• http://www.web-directories.ws/Directories_of_Directories/Directories/
• http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/top-web-directories.html

Go through the lists to check each directory’s Page Rank, Domain MozRank, Google crawl rate, pricing, and niche value. Weed out the good from the bad, and note down any relevant information for each site (such as whether or not the directory allows anchor text in the title).

2. Keep track of your previous directory work.

Note which directories approve your links right away and which ones do not. If they haven’t been approved within a week or two, chances are they will never go live. Also make a note of the specific URL of your link. These have a tendency to get buried as time passes, so revisit the directory from time to time to ensure your link is still somewhere.

3. Ask your client for an employee name and email address.

As most directories require a name and email on the listing, it would be much more legitimate if it came directly from your client’s domain. Suggest they add a new email address that is slightly different to one of an existing employee (such as Emily.smith@company.com, or esmith@company.com). Just make sure that employee doesn’t mind having his/her name being used on such sites.

4. Be careful with your Paypal account.

Paypal is the payment method of choice for most sites and it doesn’t take kindly to multiple charges in a row to unrecognised email addresses for around the same amounts. Paid directory submissions should be approached with caution and moderation.

5. Reciprocal links = avoid.

Don’t bother with sites that require backlinks. There are plenty of good directories out there that allow free submissions with no ‘catch’. Many of these reciprocal link directories live in a little place we like to call Spam Town and will damage your site’s reputation.

6. Niche directories are super neat.

This almost goes without saying, but a more targeted directory to your client’s niche will benefit your link building campaign greatly. While some may require a fee for inclusion (and it’s usually pretty steep) there are plenty of free sites out there. Work your search magic to find just what you’re looking for, and try out SEOmoz’s Juicy Link Finder. Additionally, niche directories can include sites that the client has ‘earned’ entry into, such as ethical or city-based directories. The implicit exclusivity can lead to directory strength in these cases.

7. Use the correct category.

I’ve come across so many sites that have been listed under a category within a directory that was just wrong. Make sure you understand exactly what your client does! While some directories have editors who will switch your site to a different category if they feel it belongs elsewhere, it’s always better to get it right the first time. This will prevent a delay or even a rejection in your site submission.

8. Submitting deeplinks isn’t always easy.

Not every directory allows you to submit a deeplink from your site; most require a link at domain level only. Referring back to tip no. 1, make sure you do your research on what each directory will and won’t do.

9. Put the description section to good use.

99.9% of directories require a site description of around 250 words. This is a great place to work a little SEO magic, incorporating more keyphrases than the title section will allow. Usually, the text for this can be copied directly from your site’s meta description; failing that, a few sentences on the company with targeted keywords can be easily fudged written.

10. Don’t take their word for it.

Have you ever submitted a site to a directory, only for them to email you with recommendations for other directories to try? Don’t bother. They will have a very low Page Rank and almost no worth. Be choosy and select quality over quantity.

All link building campaigns can benefit from directory submissions, but this is only one aspect. The most success comes from a well-rounded approach with links coming from a wide variety of sources and sites.

Have any more tips on directory link building? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

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