Virtually all marketers have realized that blogs can be a powerful part of an overall search marketing campaign. This is especially true in the B2C marketplace, but what about for B2B focused companies? What do successful B2B blogs have in common? In looking at hundreds of B2B blogs, eight common characteristics were apparent to me. Here are some tips for creating B2B blogs that drive loyalty (and links).
Virtually all marketers have realized that blogs can be a powerful part of an overall search marketing campaign. This is especially true in the B2C marketplace, but what about for B2B focused companies? What do successful B2B blogs have in common? In looking at hundreds of B2B blogs, eight common characteristics were apparent to me. Here are some tips for creating B2B blogs that drive loyalty (and links).
Last year in New York, Search Engine Land held its first SMX Social Media
Marketing conference. I’ve been organizing conferences for nearly 10 years now,
and this one was exceptional, if I say so myself. Every speaker blew me away
with great ideas on how to tap into social media to drive traffic and help with
search marketing efforts. Missed out?
SMX Social Media is coming
back, April 22 & 23, to Southern California. With our
early
registration price expiring this week on March 15, I wanted to give readers
thinking of attending the show a quick overview of what to expect, including a
new keynote discussion panel "Social Search: The Human Challengers," involving
Jason Calacanis of Mahalo, Jimmy Wales of
Wikia Search and Steven Marder of
Eurekster.
The day will kick off with SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin doing his
Social Media Marketing Essentials session. Rand has a wonderful overview
designed to help anyone get oriented to the world of social media. He’ll leave
you wanting to run out and start interacting online, believe me.
After Rand,
Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites has link baiting vets
Rebecca Kelley, Brent Csutoras and Cameron Olthius covering how to ensure your
content is going to be attractive to many social media sites. Steve Rubel and I
recently did a
round where he felt good content will just naturally get rewarded on social
sites. I argued that it is not so. How you craft your content can make it much
more acceptable. Magazines have long run Top 10 lists; newspaper articles are
written in inverted pyramid style. These formats have become established for
good reasons. Social media audiences can be — and should be — catered to as
well. Our link baiting panel covers how to do that effectively and in a way that
is acceptable to the sites.
Following the Linkbait session,
Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites covers one type of social media site,
places where people seek news, like Digg, Propeller, Reddit and Newsvine. Neil
Patel and Chris Winfield know this landscape the backs of their hands. Those
looking for success in these places — where success can mean huge traffic and
links to come — will learn tons from the panel.
Moving from news sites,
A Marketer’s Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging looks at social media
bookmarking services, such as Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. Guillaume Bouchard,
Michael Gray and Neil Patel will cover the importance of these sometimes
overlooked services. Many focus on Digg for traffic, but StumbleUpon can send as
much or more, just consistently over a long period of time. Del.icio.us can
produce both a traffic spike and warrants even further attention as Yahoo
tests integration of
Del.icio.us into Yahoo’s search results.
The first day will end with
Keynote - Social Search: The Human Challengers. As I mentioned, we’ve got
three services that are all looking to see if humans can make a difference in
how search results are generated. Jason Calacanis was first out of the gate with
last year’s efforts, with his Mahalo designed to
use human editors to hand-pick the best results for popular topics. Jimmy Wales
announced Wikia Search last year, then
launched it at the beginning of this year, an effort to see if human involvement
in rating results drawn from crawling the web can produce a better search
engine. Eurekster is the real vet in the
space, having tried various flavors of social search until settling on its
"Swicki" model that takes social search into specialized search topics. The
panel will do a short overview of each service, then it’s to the audience for
Q&A and discussion on whether any of these can revolutionize the space.
Effectively Leveraging Social Networking starts off day two, looking at
social media networking services like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter as
ways of driving traffic, building links and raising exposure. Cindy Krum on the
panel is one of those speakers where I whip out my notepad each time she talks,
trying to get as many gems down for later use. She’ll be joined by two other
panelists to be posted shortly.
Next comes
Evangelist - The Marketer’s Role in SMM, with David Berkowitz, Rob Key and
Adam Sherk looking at how you can be most successful as a company if you have
someone who really does know the various communities out there, rather than
shows up as a drive-by participant. It’s *social* media, and companies can
indeed be social — and successful when so.
Micro Communities follows with Rand Fishkin returning, joined by Li Evans
and looking at the many specialized social media communities that are out there.
Pick a subject — there’s a social site to match your content!
Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers & Answer Sharing comes next, with Lisa Broer,
Jonathan Hochman, Matt McGee, Jeff Muendel and Don Steele of Comedy Central
looking at how social answer sites — places where communities build answers —
are important ways to build traffic and visibility.
Wikipedia Clinic will end the day. Uncertain how to approach an issue with
the powerful Wikipedia site? The panel of experts will guide you to a correct
path.
That’s the preview! You can find more details at the
SMX Social Media Marketing
conference website. I look forward to seeing many readers out at the show.
Be sure to
register today!
by Stoney deGeyter
Since the “purchase” is the ultimate conversion, it is imperative that you remove as many obstacles from the customer’s research-to-buy cycle as possible. Providing your visitors the key ingredients in their shopping experience creates a smooth and worry-free transaction process. The easier it is to shop and buy the more customers will overcome the natural hesitations that many feel before they commit by hitting the final “complete order” button.
Search functionality
If possible, create an extremely robust and accurate search function for the website. A good search function should be able to provide visitors the information they are seeking even if products are misspelled in the search box or search products are not offered at all. Be careful, as anything less than a perfect search function only serves to frustrate rather than help visitors.
Navigation paths
Create clear navigation paths from the moment a product is added to the shopping cart. This path should allow them to continue shopping, continue through the purchase process or get additional questions answered as needed.
Calls to action
Informational and product pages must consistently use clear calls to action encouraging shoppers to buy now, save for later or post a review. This not only gives your visitors options but compels them to continue moving forward in the process.
Product presentation
Present your products in a way that allows the visitors to quickly glean the information they need. Use clean images, allowing multiple views and image enlargements to give the visitor a complete view of the product they are purchasing.
Product availability
Listing product availability his a helpful signal that shoppers can purchase this product now and expect to receive it quickly. At the very least be sure to tell your visitors if the product is out of stock or will be have any shipping delays due to availability.
Product comparison guides
It is extremely helpful to allow shoppers to compare product features and benefits side by side. If you don’t sell multiple products then create a comparison between your product and your competitors. Be honest, if your product lacks what a competitor’s has, document that appropriately.
Customer product reviews
If possible allow your shoppers to post reviews on your product pages. Don’t discriminate by removing unfavorable reviews, these can be helpful and show that your reviews can be trusted and that you stand behind your products despite the occasional negative comment.
Up-sell / cross-sell
Be sure you are using your up- and cross-sell opportunities to the fullest potential. Provide a list of related products that typically go along with any current items in a shopping cart or product being viewed. You can also show similar products that have different features that might be more to the shoppers liking.
Add-ons
If applicable, allow shoppers to purchase additional services such as product engraving, customization, gift wrapping, etc. These features can make a nice up-sell opportunity while giving the visitors that customization offer that they need for special purchases.
Representative contact
Some shoppers want the comfort of knowing that they can call and get assistance with their order. They may even rather place their order over the phone. Meet your visitor’s needs by providing an easy to find 1-800 contact number along with other contact information.
Billing options
Provide your shoppers with multiple options on how to pay for their purchase. Some shoppers are more comfortable with one form of payment over another and allowing their preferred option can be all it takes to get them to hit that “pay now” button.
It’s not your products but your shoppers that are most valuable to you as a business. Most likely, the same products you sell can be found elsewhere and at a cheaper cost. This means you need to make sure your shoppers are treated accordingly. Ensuring that your site meets and exceeds shoppers’ needs and expectations provides a comfortable and trustworthy environment that will make shopping and buying easier. This, in turn, will improve your conversions selling more products at a smaller expense.
Learn something from this post?
Come and experience Search Engine Guide style teaching in person! Join us for our first ever Small Business Marketing Unleashed Conference in Houston, Texas on April 21st and 22nd.
A Sphinn discussion thread led me to a post by Bill named Slow Down Nosy SEO’s and Snooping Competitors.
In short, he gives techniques to “slow down” a competitor from analyzing your SEO techniques and just copying what you have done to benefit themselves. Now, I do not personally vouch for these techniques, that is up to you - but here they are:
Again, I would not suggest all of these techniques. I am personally of the opinion to worry more about improving your own site as opposed to messing with your competitors minds - but that is up to you.
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
Ever wonder how some advanced Google AdSense publishers dig into their data? A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion on the topic of using Microsoft Excel to really analyze their AdSense data.
By generating reports on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis - you may pinpoint certain trends that you can replicate in the future. Publishers discuss using several statistical techniques such as moving averages when plotting their data. In addition, Excel’s Pivot Tables help them automate and streamline much of the data crunching.
Of course you can also use SQL databases and build your own reports. Using the Google AdSense API, you should be able to pull down data directly from Google in an automated fashion and set up dynamic reports to run as often as you like. Plus, I am sure there are many free tools that do the number crunching for you.
Have your own ideas and reporting techniques?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
How Google Earth Ate Our Town from Time Magazine highlights Nanaimo, a British Columbia town on Vancouver Island, also known as “Google Earth Town” or “the capital of Google Earth.”
Nanaimo has been plotting virtually all of their town’s data directly on Google Maps and Google Earth. From real-time firefighter calls on Google Maps to a wide array of Google Earth KLMs available at http://earth.nanaimo.ca/, there is no doubt in my mind why Nanaimo is dubbed the “Google Earth Town.”
Linking is still de rigueur when optimizing for Google and all major engines. Linking strategies have run the gauntlet, from simple link exchange requests to buying links. For a good review of current best practices in linking tactics, I refer you to The Link Spiel by Debra Mastaler and “11 Experts on Link Development Speak Out” from Sugarrae.
While linking is a critical component of your in-house SEO tactical plan, it is also important to be careful in selecting the sites you link to. If you link to a site that’s totally unrelated to your own, search engines will become confused about your link neighborhood.
Monday News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch seemed to say that he won’t be doing a deal with Yahoo, which argued that Yahoo had few options left in its bid to stay independent. However today, in an article in the NY Times, Time Warner Chief Jeffrey L. Bewkes said that he’s ready to make a deal and potentially spin off AOL. That could mean a Yahoo-AOL announcement of some sort in the coming weeks.
Google Webmaster Central has announced that they now will have webmaster communication messages waiting for webmasters even if they have not yet verified their site in Google Webmaster Tools.
Let me step back a bit and explain why this is incredibly important. In July 2007, Google released Message Center within Webmaster Tools. This gave Google a secure way to communicate accurate information and notifications to webmasters, in regards to their web site and how Google sees it. The only issue is that many webmasters did not bother registering with Google Webmaster Tools until after there was an issue with their sites. But Google did not, back then, have a message waiting for that webmaster - Google only provided future notifications to the webmaster.
I am not sure why there isn’t more discussion around this topic, but yesterday Google’s YouTube announced new APIs to allow you to add YouTube’s features, content and more to your own site.
So let’s say you wanted to create an SEO tips video site, pulling content dynamically from YouTube - well, now you can do that easily. Want to allow people to upload directly on your SEO only video site, but don’t want to host the file yourself? The YouTube API allows you to do that and host it for you, as if it is on your site.
The API allows you to:
The full API can be accessed at Google Code and they already have an extensive developers guide for you to experiment with.
Here is a video with more details:
In short, video is a great way to supplement your content. I am a strong believer in video these days and I have been putting a lot of effort into my recent Search Buzz Roundup Videos. In fact, my last video, RIP Ask.com, Google Sitewide Search & Siloing Debate received almost 200 views, which I think is a good amount of views for a late Friday video in the SEO world.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
I am not sure why there isn’t more discussion around this topic, but yesterday Google’s YouTube announced new APIs to allow you to add YouTube’s features, content and more to your own site.
So let’s say you wanted to create an SEO tips video site, pulling content dynamically from YouTube - well, now you can do that easily. Want to allow people to upload directly on your SEO only video site, but don’t want to host the file yourself? The YouTube API allows you to do that and host it for you, as if it is on your site.
The API allows you to:
The full API can be accessed at Google Code and they already have an extensive developers guide for you to experiment with.
Here is a video with more details:
In short, video is a great way to supplement your content. I am a strong believer in video these days and I have been putting a lot of effort into my recent Search Buzz Roundup Videos. In fact, my last video, RIP Ask.com, Google Sitewide Search & Siloing Debate received almost 200 views, which I think is a good amount of views for a late Friday video in the SEO world.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has a few users complaining that every time they login to Google Webmaster Tools, they are prompted with a security warning by their browser. The warning is similar to this:
Supposedly, it is not just Google Webmaster Tools. One member complains it has to do with AdSense’s console as well.
I can tell you that I rarely personally get this warning and it might just be the nature of the user’s browser. There is no official word from a Google representative on this matter, at the time I publish this piece.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
A WebmasterWorld thread has a few users complaining that every time they login to Google Webmaster Tools, they are prompted with a security warning by their browser. The warning is similar to this:
Supposedly, it is not just Google Webmaster Tools. One member complains it has to do with AdSense’s console as well.
I can tell you that I rarely personally get this warning and it might just be the nature of the user’s browser. There is no official word from a Google representative on this matter, at the time I publish this piece.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Google’s proposal to acquire DoubleClick received the EU’s approval yesterday and Google closed out the acquisition of DoubleClick yesterday. They now officially own DoubleClick and all that comes with it.
A WebmasterWorld thread has discussion about the acquisition. Most in the thread are of the feeling that this gives Google an unfair advantage. But the government backed groups in the States and Europe both decided it does not give Google that unfair advantage. Here are some quotes from the thread:
LMAO - good to see the eurocrats still have no idea…
They are spineless - yet another example of fat wages for a useless quasi-ruling ‘body’
So much for the Internet being independent.
Got to love forums and what people have to say in them.
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land feels Google should divest themselves of Performics, an SEM company owned by DoubleClick. Why? “Conflict of interest,” to the utmost.
But doesn’t Yahoo have internal SEO staff? What about Microsoft? Yes, they both do - but Yahoo and Microsoft are content companies with larger stake in publishing, e-commerce and other online business (including lead generation and affiliate marketing). In fact, both Yahoo and Microsoft had most of these businesses going prior to building out core web search teams. Google, well - they keep telling us they are a search company and nothing more. If so, yes, this is a conflict of interest.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Before investing time and effort in search rankings, and even before setting client expectations, it makes sense to gather whatever intelligence you can about the keywords you’d like to rank for. SEOs and webmasters have few reliable sources of information about the relationship between rankings and traffic. But Wikipedia’s traffic stats can help, offering some surprisingly detailed data.
Have you been searching for Jesus? On Google, Wikipedia ranks first for that search. How much is that first place ranking worth? According to Wikipedia’s public traffic stats, about 14k page views on a typical day, and 19.3k on Christmas. The redirect Jesus Christ, which points to the same page, gets about 25% as much traffic, and Christ adds another 10%.
Vertical health destination and search engine Healthline has teamed up with US health insurance carrier Aetna to offer what the company is calling Aetna SmartSource — customized health search. The service, powered by Healthline, will roll out on Aetna’s member self-service website and offer personalized search results based on individual health records and profiles. That means that two different Aetna customers searching for “diabetes type II” will see potentially different results based on their individual health histories.
“Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink,” laments a sailor adrift in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The poor guy needs water to say alive—and he’s surrounded by it— yet if he drinks it, the salt content will kill him.
As a search marketer, perhaps you can relate.
Much like our sailor friend, you’re surrounded by what you need—namely, content—which, of course, is great for your search presence. Yet too much of the same content can be… well, hazardous.
At long last, Google
owns DoubleClick. In doing so, the company has done something else that many
people would have never believed possible. Become an SEO. That’s right —
Google’s in the SEO business now, selling services through DoubleClick’s
Performics to people who want to rank
well on — um — Google. Conflict of interest? You bet. And worse from an image
perspective, the purchase puts Google in the paid inclusion business, something
it dissed as evil back in 2004, when it went public. Don’t get me wrong, I have
absolutely no problem with Performics as a company and have good friends that
work there. But Google shouldn’t own it. The Google
announcement yesterday should have said that Performics was being quickly
spun off. Larry, Sergey, Eric, Google! Please do the right thing and make this a
priority. Below, more on why this should be done, plus the official Google
stance, so far.