What Rand Fishkin Wants You to Know About Content Creation and SEO
Searching for content inspiration? Then look no further than Rand Fishkin, Moz co-founder and the man behind SparkToro.
Whether you’re new to content creation and digital marketing or more advanced, you can learn something from this entrepreneur.
Rand Fishkin often takes a different view regarding content creation, publishing, and SEO, and it certainly works for him.
If you’re unfamiliar with Fishkin and his impact on the digital marketing industry, now’s your chance to learn more.
About Rand Fishkin
Rand Fishkin made his name as the co-founder of the software company Moz and soon became one of the leading voices in the SEO world. Along with his work at Moz, he’s co-founded the now-defunct Inbound.org, a social community for marketers, and co-written several books, including The Art of SEO and Lost and Founder.
His entrepreneurial journey started in the early 2000s when he worked alongside his mother and Moz co-founder, Gillian Muessig.
During this time, Fishkin realized the importance of search engines and SEO and began to pursue his passion for helping websites gain better visibility in the SERPs.
At Moz, Rand Fishkin, or the “Wizard of Moz,” contributed regular articles to the blog.
Rand Fishkin soon became a thought leader in his sector and a sought-after speaker. He’s given many presentations on his findings in SEO and the lessons he’s learned in marketing. He’s regularly invited to share his insights on blogs and podcasts, too.
His impact on the industry has led to CoSchedule calling Fishkin a “powerhouse in the content marketing and SEO world.”
Rand Fishkin and Moz
In 2004, Rand Fishkin launched SEOmoz. Initially, it was a blog and online community where SEOs shared their expertise. It took inspiration for its name from the likes of DMOZ, Mozilla, and ChefMoz, and later became Moz.
Moz’s transformation into one of the most popular SEO tools began with the launch of the “Beginner’s Guide to SEO” and the first “Search Ranking Factors” study. The collective expertise involved allowed the creation of a small consulting firm, which led to the development of Moz’s first SEO tools.
Fast forward to 2007, and Moz shifted from consulting to software creation, raising funding to develop new software. By 2009, Moz had 5,000 subscribers, started producing bitesize content to demystify SEO, and began Whiteboard Fridays.
Series B funding followed, and Moz also acquired two tools: A Twitter (X) analytics tool called Followerwonk, and a local SEO tool, GetListed, which later became Moz Local.
In 2013, SEOmoz rebranded to Moz and launched Moz Analytics.
The search engine optimization tool software in the digital marketing niche, and Fishkin gets credit for his significant role in this.
With Fishkin at the helm, Moz developed various resources that increase website visibility, like Moz Pro.
In 2021, Moz announced the launch of the MozGroup and the acquisition of iContact. The Moz Group focuses on “resources for investment in our products and continued innovation of best-in-class SEO software and development of educational resources.”
Rand Fishkin stepped down in 2018 to begin work on SparkToro.
Rand Fishkin and SparkToro
Rand Fishkin co-founded SparkToro with former MOZ colleague Casey Henry in 2018.
SparkToro is a market research tool offering audience intelligence. This enables businesses to understand their target audience better and make informed marketing decisions.
SparkToro has data from 70+ million unique profiles. It can search for any audience and deliver volumes of accurate data, including:
Frequently used hashtags
Social accounts they follow and websites they visit
Common words and phrases in bios
Podcasts they listen to
Rand Fishkin states that he co-founded SparkToro to solve the problem of “How to discover the publications & people that influence any group of people online.”
Specifically, SparkToro is for:
Content marketers and PR professionals searching for sources to cover their pitches.
Social media marketers who want to amplify their message to reach their target audiences.
Ad buyers looking for partnerships, sponsorships, etc.
Entrepreneurs and product builders looking to “tap into the zeitgeist of a field as they build for their customers.”
The Sparktoro audience intelligence tool gets positive reviews for accuracy and scores 4.5 out of 5 on G2.
SEO & Content Tips from Rand Fishkin
You know enough about Rand Fishkin and his background. Now, it’s time to look at some of his perspectives on SEO, content, and publishing.
Your Content Must Quickly Deliver Answers
Rand Fishkin introduced the term pogo-sticking.
This is where a person types a search query, clicks on a result, hits the back button, chooses a different site, and stays there. This signals to search engines that you didn’t provide an answer or delivered a bad experience. Too many of these, and you’ll move farther down the search rankings.
Bottom line: Don’t let your site be a victim of pogo-sticking. Create excellent content on a clean, well-designed site. Anything that flashes in front of a user (i.e., pop-ups, survey questionnaires, etc) and causes visitors to bounce is a problem and may negatively affect your rankings.
Backlinks From Spammy Sites Are Your Problem
No one wants spammy sites linking to them. Yes, you want backlinks, but not from sites that don’t do anything for your reputation.
I’ve got a free backlink checker; use it to get a list of backlinks, competitive analysis, and advanced filtering.
If you find links you feel are doing more harm than good, disavow (remove harmful links) from them.
Google has a tool you can use for disavowing spammy links from low-quality, irrelevant sites.
Also, if Google took a manual action against your site, meaning a human reviewer feels your pages don’t comply with Google’s spam policies, consider filing a reconsideration request.
Great SEO Is Not Just Links, Keywords, Rankings, and Crawling
SEO used to be pretty simple. Create a website, get links to it, follow Google’s quality guidelines, and cross your fingers that you’ll rank well. Today, more factors are in play for SEO, like AI, Google’s helpful content update, and the emphasis on search intent.
What is Rand Fishkin’s position?
Fishkin feels your content strategy should be business-goal-centric rather than search-centric. In practice, that means you need to ask:
Who are your customers?
How can you reach them?
What can you create or co-create to get in front of this audience?
From there, you can decide on the type of content to create, like blog posts, whitepapers, or even webinars.
At the end of the day, he is a big proponent of creating content that is created with the user in mind first, and search engines second.
Do Keyword Research to Find What People Are Searching For
According to Rand Fishkin, Google Ads hide a tremendous amount of keyword data. He prefers to rely on Google’s autocomplete feature. His favorite tool for doing keyword suggest research is keywordtool.io. You can type any keyword into the tool, and it’ll scrape Google for you.
Rand Fishkin also notes there are four types of keyword research to concentrate on:
SEO/PPC
Social media marketing
Content creation
Market audience research
Additionally, the blog post suggests a list of resources you can use, such as Wordtracker, Ahrefs, and Google Trends.
Of course, you could also try Ubersuggest.
Rules for Content Creation
Have you heard the phrase 10x content? It refers to creating content ten times better or more valuable than the current best content on a specific topic. And we’ve got Rand Fishkin to thank for the term.
According to Fishkin, 10x content looks like this:
It gives readers a unique, positive user experience using various elements, like visuals, layouts, fonts, user interface, etc.
It’s high-quality, useful, engaging, and trustworthy; find a way to make it remarkable, too.
It’s markedly different from other content on similar subjects.
It loads quickly and is accessible on any device/browser.
It gives readers an emotional response, like joy, anticipation, or admiration.
It gets impressive amplification via social media/links, etc.
It answers questions or offers a solution because of its comprehensive, accurate, and exceptional information.
If you want to know what 10x content looks like when it’s published, Rand Fishkin highlights “The Fall Foliage Prediction Map”, and “An Interactive Guide to the Fourier Transform,” among 100 plus more examples in his “121 examples of 10 content” article.
Build Relationships to Earn Links
Years ago, Rand Fishkin said, “Don’t build links. Build relationships.”
The quote obviously resonated with plenty of folks because all these years on, it still gets shares.
Here’s one example courtesy of Pinterest.
How do you approach building these relationships, then?
Well, according to Moz, you should start by asking, “How can we build a program where, over time, our links will build themselves?”
Next, you look at building relationships with the people who link and share your content. Typically, that means using social media and other community-building efforts and asking yourself how to turn your published content into links.
Moz naturally suggests you use its social listening tools to see how the content you share affects people’s actions. For instance, could you change messaging or content? Or make minor changes that make people more likely to share your links?
Then, there’s the more traditional approach. Send the people you want a link from an email and start building a relationship. For example, message them and say how much you liked some recent content. Just find a way to start a conversion and eventually ask if they’re open to guest posts.
Finally, share other people’s links and interact with them; there’s a good chance they’ll do the same for you.
Over time, there is a high correlation between the relationships you build and the links you earn. The more people you know in your personal and business life, the more likely they will link to your work.
There’s No Prize For Hitting Publish
How many times a week should you publish content? Every day? Three times a week? On a scheduled day every week?
That’s the problem.
Too many content marketers keep a rigid schedule. They demand that they post a certain number of times per week, no matter the circumstance.
Rand Fishkin takes a different approach. He believes content marketers should only publish content if they have something great.
He lays out these rules for content investments:
If you’re looking for ideas, Fishkin recommends checking out Buzzsumo. You can search for a particular topic, see which articles have the most social shares, and create similar content.
He also states you should go by your audience metrics. Let your metrics guide the way. If publishing more content moves the dial, awesome. If one article a week drives the most traffic, do that.
Another approach Rand Fishkin discusses is episodic content, like the “Whiteboard Fridays,” where he breaks down SEO topics into simple, super-short explainer videos. People are likely to watch (or read, if you’re blogging) if they know when to expect new content.
Don’t neglect the research side, either, which is where all great content starts. That means asking:
Where does your audience hang out?
What do they like?
What publications do they read?
Finally, Rand Fishkin recommends publishing content beyond your website, as the incentives for doing so are declining. As he puts it:
“Conduct and publish amazing research on your own site. Crickets.
Publish it as a tweet thread, a native LinkedIn article, a big graphic of text on Facebook, and a photo series on Instagram. Likes, shares, visibility, and the dopamine hit of social validation are yours.”
For More…
To find out more about Rand Fishkin:
Follow him on X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Instagram, Mastodon, Facebook, and find him on YouTube.
Lost and Founder
Inbound Marketing and SEO Insights from the Moz Blog
The Art of SEO
Read his blogs:
Or listen to these podcasts:
The Marketing Hero Rand Fishkin episode
LeadPages guest blog
Conclusion
It’s always good to get fresh perspectives on content marketing, and other areas of digital marketing such as domain authority, and tweaking your organic search traffic techniques.
Ever since the launch of Moz, Rand Fishkin has demonstrated his passion for online marketing and helping businesses gain improved visibility online.
There’s plenty that you can learn from him, including researching your audience, not publishing content for the sake of publishing content, and avoiding spammy links.
Following these tips makes your ideal audience more likely to find your content on their preferred platforms, as well as understand their specific pain points.
What is your favorite Rand Fishkin SEO tip? Share it below.
About the Author: Zach Bulygo X (Twitter) likes marketing, finance, and learning about different businesses.
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