Posts in B2B Search Engine Optimization

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…)

By now, you’ve probably either noticed or read in various SEO blog posts and trade articles that title tags in search engine results appear to be a little shorter as of mid-March. Google increased the font size to 18 pixels without increasing space, resulting in fewer characters displayed before truncating titles.

While title tag best practices long held 70 characters in length to be the threshold before titles were truncated, the larger font size now reduces that count to the 55- to 60-character range. But it’s not quite that simple. Google actually uses pixels, not character count in truncation. In fact, that didn’t change. Google also uses Arial, a font with thin and wide characters. Wider characters, capitalization and bold text will consume more title space than thin characters, thus the range. While you probably don’t bold text in title tags, Google does in results for content keywords and search query exact matches. So now, much of what you’ll read suggests limiting title tag width to fewer than 512 pixels—which translates into 55 to 60 viewable characters including spaces. (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 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…)

Recently, Google enhanced several features of its Local Business Center and rebranded it Google Places. Among the new features is an ability to specify the regions a business serves. But will the new changes help B2B marketers serving a larger region get found? (more…)

A dragon is a good thing to have. Everyone knows dragons have magical powers. They are wise, although sometimes also vain. Dragons can be fierce protectors, too. The magic of the content marketing dragon is lead generation, lead nurturing, and SEO (especially if your dragon has a long tail.) But if you’re going to own a dragon, you have to feed it. Otherwise, no more fire. No more magic.

Here are a few tips on the proper care and feeding of your dragon: (more…)

The question of where B2B marketers should place the corporate blog is a critical one. It has implications in terms of B2B SEO, positioning, and your ability to later successfully transfer the trust and authority you build up in the eyes of search engines. This post addresses some of the options and their implications. (more…)