Online Marketing Blog

Oftentimes marketers budget, plan and implement online marketing tactics in silos. When it comes to SEO, Social and Content Marketing – integration is the best practice and that means a tremendous competitive opportunity. Why Social Media and SEO for B2B? The intersection of social media and search engine optimization is a perfect match for B2B Marketer for several reasons:

Long B2B buying cycles have always involved engagement through content. The opportunity for coordinated Social SEO is in part inspired by buyer information discovery, consumption and sharing habits that have changed with the influence of social technology and search.

B2B marketers have always been in the business of “content marketing“ with white papers, case studies, webinars, demos, free consultations, ebooks and the like. Longer sales cycles due to more complex products and services and business purchasing processes often require more information. The content used to educate buyers of B2B products and services can be a very valuable asset when it comes to content optimization and acquiring leads via organic search.

When assessing B2B client resources for optimization, most marketers focus on web pages and increasingly, digital assets and social media content.  Web pages are more often directly linked to by other sites vs images or video, so it makes sense to start optimizing a B2B site’s web pages.  The operative word in that last sentence is “start”.

Working with a variety of companies large and small, local and international, B2B and B2C, on SEO projects over the past 12 years has revealed a variety of common obstacles to success.  For many reasons, B2B marketers often lag behind B2C in terms of tactics and adoption of new marketing technologies.  The customer acquisition and buying cycle are very different for business to business than consumer oriented products and services.

Since SEO presents the biggest opportunity to generate a high quantity and quality of B2B leads, more B2B marketers are speeding up their ability to test innovative search engine optimization programs. Unfortunately, there are a mix of common mistakes that persist.  Here are 5 common mistakes and how to avoid them.

1. Using Keywords More Important to You Than Your Customers

[Note from Lee: A few weeks ago, Michelle wrote a great post on Retail SEO tips and this week, I've asked her to tackle B2B SEO and general search marketing tips, since one-size SEO does not fit all programs. Enjoy!]

Search marketing should be a top priority for organizations in any industry. But B2B search marketing efforts take a slightly different form than the tactics used in consumer focused SEO and PPC programs . Typically, B2B markets are smaller, products and services are more complex, and sales cycles are longer. Therefore, B2B marketers must think a bit differently in terms of target keywords, online content and link building.

B2B Search sessions (both organic and paid) can be few and far between, so any time it exists I’m sure to plant myself in the front row.  The B2B Tactics session was moderated by Jeffrey Rohrs, VP, Agency & Search Marketing, ExactTarget

Speakers included:

Patricia Hursh, President and Founder, SmartSearch Marketing
Barbara C. Coll, CEO, WebMama.com Inc.
Adam Goldberg, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer, ClearSaleing
Karen Breen Vogel, President and CEO, ClearGauge

With B2B SEO being a sweet spot for the team at TopRank, hearing from other industry leaders about how they have effectively executed for such companies is certainly relevant.

With 64%of search engine users searching for business information, it’s surprising that B2B isn’t more widely covered.

Sometimes a Monday blog post deserves a good collection of links:

• The Fox on viral link building and listening to your audience
• Smackdown on Matt Cutts re: spanking SEO blogs
• Jeff Jarvis @TheGuardian and the social whirl driving the development of search
• eMarketer says B2B’s are buzzing over Marketing 2.0
• Vox on Video: Measuring engagement of user generated video
• SEO Lowdown on the LED: “You’re doing the SEM industry a dis-service by characterizing the level or complexity of SEO work according to the size of a company.”
• Grehan Clickz’s the SEO and Public Relations connection. Mike, what took you so long?
• Speaking of PR and Search, be sure to check out Himler, Bradfield, Miele and Odden @PRSA Webinar on PR and Social Media Feb 26