Posts by Galen De Young

Often, we’ll ask a prospective B2B client, “How long has it been since your last SEO audit?”

While some will answer that they’ve never commissioned a site audit, the ones that have previously had an organic search audit of their site, may say, “Yeah, we did that about five years ago.” That’s simply too long. Likely, too much has changed in those years, not only in terms of the site, but also in the people who care for and feed it.

So, how often should you commission an SEO audit? (more…)

More and more B2B buyers are using mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, to do purchase research. A Demand Gen Report found that while 99% of B2B buyers use desktop devices to access content, 82% of those B2B buyers also using smartphones to access content. Fifty-six percent of them are using tablets. Those are large percentages. If those B2B buyers are accessing content using mobile devices, they’re certainly using mobile devices for B2B organic search.

Your domain’s top organic result for a given query can be different for mobile searchers.

Research by BrightEdge found that 35% of the time the top organic search result for a given query will return a different ranking for desktop users than it does for mobile searchers for a given domain.

Okay, what does that mean? (more…)

Including hashtags in your tweets is a powerful way to extend the reach of your activity on Twitter. While people can follow other Twitter users, they can also follow hashtags. Tools like TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, and HootSuite are great for monitoring hashtag streams.

When you include a hashtag in your tweet, your tweet will get seen not only by those who follow you, but also by those who follow the hashtag you include.

But which hashtags should you use? What’s your hashtag strategy? Do you have one? (more…)

Thanks to all the B2B marketing and sales experts who continually blog, sharing your insights and adding to the collective knowledge or the broader B2B community.

Since we originally posted the list on our site, we’ve continued to update it periodically. Now, we’ve completed a comprehensive revision to The List of Top B2B Blogs. (more…)

There are a number of shared platforms for B2B marketers that promise increased traffic and search visibility for their members. Before you subscribe to a shared platform, be sure you understand whether it will really help you and how to best use it to drive increased visibility in the search results. This article looks at an example of one of those platforms and how to best use it. You can use the information to evaluate other shared platforms relevant to your business. (more…)

Analytics are great. They provide us with loads of good information. The danger is what we do with that information and in the assumptions we make.

Here are three faulty assumptions I see regularly. Please share yours, too.

(more…)

In today’s economy, no one wants to turn away business. But smart marketers are positioning themselves to do just that.

Most companies fall into the trap of positioning the company as broadly as possible, trying to be relevant to the broadest number of potential purchasers. That way, any lead or inquiry has opportunity. But this approach creates a broad range of lead quality and makes you chase nearly every lead, eating up large amounts of time and money. And as you try to close that business, you’ll be competing as a generalist. You’ll fight hard to get on the short list; you’ll be competing with other generalists and with specialists. (more…)

In early May, I led the Hot Seat Lab on Better Blogging for Business at MarketingProfs’ B2B Forum in Boston. In it, three brave B2B marketers volunteered to have their corporate blogs critiqued in front of a room full of peers. While the blogs obviously differed in design and content, their shortcomings from an SEO standpoint were surprisingly similar—and substantial. Here’s a summary of the problems they shared and what to do about them. (more…)

Live Blogging from MarketingProfs B2B Forum.

A series of posts covering selected sessions at this year’s conference in Boston.

Speakers:
Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
Jiyan Wei, Product Manager, Vocus, PRWeb.com

At the start of the presentation, Lee cited several stats:
60% of marketers plan to take money away from traditional marketing and spend it on interactive instead, and 59% of that interactive spend will go towards SE and PPC (Forrester Search Engine Marketing Model, 4/09 US)

48% of senior marketing executives considered the most effective online marketing tactic for Generating Conversions (Forbes 2009 Ad Effectiveness Survey)

62% of B2B Marketers plan to increase SEM budgets in 2010. (more…)

Live Blogging from MarketingProfs B2B Forum.

A series of posts covering selected sessions at this year’s conference in Boston.

Moderator:
Christina “CK” Kerley, B2B Marketing Specialist, CKb2b Marketing
Panelists:
Deirdre Walsh, Community & Social Media Manager, National Instruments
Mike Travis, President, Equation Research
Ron Casalotti, Social Media PR, Bloomberg LP
Kirsten Watson, Dir. Corporate Marketing, Kinaxis

Key Takeaways from the Session:
Be tolerant and accepting of users’ desire to discuss or point to other content that may be from competing sources or issues. People are going to have those conversations somewhere anyway; it’s a question of whether you want to part of those conversations.

Not every social media ROI metric is going to be a hard, financial one; you need to identify what concrete metrics matter for your particular situation. (more…)