30 of the Best B2B Search Marketing Articles of 2009

The velocity with which B2B marketing has evolved over the past two years (let alone five years) is amazing. Frankly, it’s a challenge to keep up with it at times. I’m particularly grateful to all those who take the time to share their knowledge to help others. Here are more than 30 of my favorite B2B search-related posts over the last year, posts that either focus directly on search or on the issues that strongly impact search (e.g., content).

While I’ve tried to bookmark this content throughout the year, I’m sure I’ve missed some really good posts and other resources. Please add to this list via the comments.

• Google Will Force All B2B Companies To Tweet
  • Kipp Bodnar from Social Media B2B on the impact of Google’s real-time search
• 3 Tips to Ensure B2B Content Gets SEO-friendly Citations
  • Allison Halter of iProspect: If you are going to invest in developing interesting and engaging content for your website, be sure to leverage it as a means to generate external links via proper online citation.
• Benefits Of Geo-Targeting A National PPC Campaign
  • Doug Drees of SmartSearch Marketing: Geo-analysis just might be the key to more efficient media spend and improved results. It can also deliver a significant competitive advantage.
• Want More B2B Conversions? Reduce Your Visitor’s Anxiety
  • Todd Miechiels: In successfully relieving the anxiety of the visitor, we stack the deck in our favor, resulting in higher conversions and greater returns on our search marketing investments.
• Improve B2B Conversion Rates by Reducing Buyer Risk
  • Ben Hanna, VP Marketing of Business.com: If business buying is driven more by risk mitigation than rational optimization, what does this mean for landing page content and offers? How can B2B online marketers create the lowest-risk environment for prospects to increase registrations, quote requests or purchases?
• B2B Marketers: Setting Expectations For Your SEO Campaign
  • Julie Shumaker of Search Impressions Consulting: So what’s the magic formula for success? Setting realistic goals, measuring the right thing, and establishing a baseline will get you halfway there.
• Mapping Search Marketing to Reach the B2B Buyer
  • S. Ryan DeShazer of GYRO HSR: To succeed, you must: Recognize that business purchase consideration cycles aren’t always linear; Let micro B2B conversions show the way: Capitalize on navigational search; and Draw qualitative conclusions from quantitative data
• The Cardinal Sin of B2B Search Marketing
  • Ben Hanna, VP Marketing of Business.com on the the #1 sin in B2B search marketing: Focusing on “search” or “B2B” over “marketing”.
• 5 Must-Read Tips for B2B Search Marketing
  • Michelle Bowles: B2B marketers must think a bit differently in terms of target keywords, online content and link building.
• 85 Reasons Why Website Designers/Developers Keep SEOs in Business
  • Jill Whalen: As long as there are developers and designers who believe in any of these, there will always be a need for SEO consulting.
• 43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
  • Daniel Scocco: There are several lists of web design mistakes around the Internet. Most of them, however, are the “Most common” or “Top 10” mistakes. I decided to write down all the web design mistakes that would come into my head; within half an hour I had over thirty of them listed. Afterward I did some research around the web and the list grew to 43 points.
• How B2Bs can Improve SEO by Avoiding Duplicate Content
  • Maria Pergolino of Marketo on the best ways to deal with duplicate content.
• Involving your support team in your SEO efforts
  • Adam Blitzer, VP Marketing at Pardot: At the end of the day, however, what often separates good rankings from great rankings is the sheer amount of useful content that your organization can generate on a regular basis.
• 6 B2B Content Marketing Lessons From Mashable
  • Kipp Bodnar: How Mashable succeeds has a lot of application to B2B content marketing. When a site has an audience of this size, they must be doing something right.
• 50 Content Ideas that Create Buzz
  • Valeria Maltoni shares a long list of tips and insights to help with content ideation. If you’re getting stuck. This is a good place to start.
• 6 Steps To Building A Successful B2B Search Content Strategy
  • Andrew Wheeler of iProspect: Don’t drive traffic to their website without first having the right content in place.
• Organic SEO As Another Marketing Channel
  • Jill Whalen: SEO is confusing to many. It’s shrouded in mystery, often has a bad reputation and is not generally understood by traditional marketers. Heck, it’s not even understood by website developers nor some who sell SEO as a service. Yet SEO is nothing more or less than an additional marketing channel for your business.
• The B2B Content Equation
  • Andy Komack of KoMarketing Associates: The most common obstacles to content generation that B2B marketers express are time and money. The missing variable in the value equation is creativity.
• 5 Ways Interlinking Can Benefit B2B Websites
  • Jody Nimetz: There is a need for B2B site owners to build their link inventories but prior to doing that from external sources, something that is often overlooked by many B2B sites is the importance of interlinking within your own site and web properties.
• 5 Ways B2B Marketing Professionals Can Leverage Social Media
  • Jon Miller, VP Marketing at Marketo: The truth is most marketers are not leveraging social media to full potential to create a brand, reputation and authority for themselves or their companies.
• B2B Blogging for Beginners
  • Doug Kessler of Velocity: The B2B blogs that fail do so not so much because they don’t see the value in it (the SEO juice alone is surely worth the effort) but because they’re not sure how to go about it, and they fear they’ll do a bad job.
• 3 Lessons Learned From Successful Corporate Blogging
  • Three of my own learnings from a successful client case study in B2B blogging: How having multiple bloggers helps with SEO keyword strategy; How to motivate contributors to the blog; and The importance of organic landing pages.
• 7 Strategies for B2B Marketing during a Recession: The Definitive Guide
  • Jon Miller of Marketo: A downturn can also create opportunity for the companies that are more efficient at turning marketing investments into revenue, since there will be less competition overall.
• 5 B2B Online Marketing Lessons From Google
  • When it comes to online marketing Google has been a major success story for monetizing and marketing successfully on the web. Kipp Bodnar looks at some of the elements that has made Google so successful and discuss how they apply to B2B online marketing.
• The Usability Acid Test
  • Gord Hotchkiss: Usability is one of those things that falls into the common sense category, but very very few companies do it well. There are a lot of really horrible user experiences out there. Here are 5 usability acid tests to hold yourself to.
• 9 Ways to Find Your B2B Industry Influencers
  • Jeffrey L. Cohen: If you are operating in a larger arena, or you want to connect with others in the larger sector from where you operate, here are some ideas for doing that.
• Audit Your B2B Website for Engagement
  • Ardath Albee: Once you’ve audited a number of pages, it’s likely you’ll see a pattern for revisions. You’ll also discover new possibilities for creating an integrated experience for how your website visitors engage with your content.
• Twitter Search Tips For B2B Marketers
  • Finding relevant Twitter users to follow (and making it easy for them to find you) can be time consuming and sometimes frustrating—especially in the B2B space, where the industry lexicons are often very diverse. Here are a few of my own tips to help you in that process.
• 5 Tips To Boost B2B Lead Gen & Thought Leadership Efforts With Search
  • Danielle Sohn: Search can boost your thought leadership efforts by helping you be present at every stage of the buying cycle. Here are five tips to get you started.
• Your B2B Lead Generation Budget: Start by Cutting It Into Thirds
  • Mac McIntosh offers a simple and effective way to allocate your business-to-business lead generation budget.
• How to Turn a Blog into a B2B Lead Generation Machine
  • Mike Volpe, VP Marketing of HubSpot: Some B2B bloggers think a business blog is just about thought leadership. Yes, B2B blogging is great for thought leadership and brand building. By maximizing the lead generation potential of your B2B blog, you can have your cake (thought leadership) and eat it too (leads).