Archives for April 2010

B2B Search Engine Optimization: Focus on Content SEO

MarketingProfs B2B Forum is coming up quickly next week and I will be presenting about an hour of essential search engine optimization tips and insight specifically for B2B web sites along with Vocus Product Manager of PRWeb, Jiyan Wei.

There’s a tremendous opportunity for B2B marketers to leverage SEO to increase prospect acquisition and to facilitate after the sale support and upgrades. Most B2B marketers create a substantial amount of content to guide prospects through sales cycles that are much longer than companies selling consumer products/services.

B2B Search Engine Optimization: Focus on Content SEO

Add a Call To Action (CTA) Popup to WordPress

I know that popups are one of those words that bring chills to some people, but they can be an effective way of promoting a product or service your blog.

Now we’re not talking about old school popup browser windows, but rather a small CSS window that shows on top of your content. These types of popups often bring a higher conversion rate, as compared to a button or form in the sidebar, as they allow the visitor to easily focus on one thing.

Call to action (CTA) popups can be used to:

Announce a new product or service.
Advertise a sale.
Obtain more subscribers.
Promote an event.
Call out a white paper or case study.
Publicize company news.
… and many more.

More than likely, you’ve just seen ours.

Popup

Add a Call To Action (CTA) Popup to WordPress

Thought Leadership on Social Media Strategy

With more businesses realizing the power of digital channels to nurture relationships, rally fans and build customer affinity, opportunity abounds for savvy professionals.

But with execution all over the board how should those who are new get started?

To answer that question, we posted thoughts from a variety of marketing and web professionals on social media strategy before tactics.

It’s an ongoing debate, but the consensus among the marketing and PR crowd is clear: strategy before tactics is the logical approach for businesses to take when engaging in social media.

Sarah Evans provides a clever analogy:

Thought Leadership on Social Media Strategy

How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story?

While today’s online media are abuzz with the latest and greatest social media tactics and tools, for many of us that have been around a little while, it was blogging that started our social media careers.

It’s funny to think that in 2002 a type of site called “blog” came up on my radar as a possible marketing tool. At the time, many blogs were personal diaries posted anonymously or by people with a little tech savvy and plenty of opinion. Writing personal thoughts on a public web site was absolutely the last thing I would ever consider doing. However, it was a curious thing and I started a few blogs anonymously to see what it was like. Unfortunately, the excercise was so foreign, poorly executed and without feedback, that I deleted them.

How I Started Blogging. What’s Your Story?

Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

To know what the world is searching for must be amazing. Search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing are in that position but they’re not exactly sharing those insights. Well, except if you do a little guess work and leverage their keyword research or keyword suggest tools. For example, the suggest-as-you-type features that all the major search engines now offer can provide some interesting insight “on the fly” into what people are searching for.

For quick keyword research, Aaron Wall has a Google Suggest tool for keyword suggestions that adds more options and insight.

There’s some entertainment value to this as well. Start typing in “my girlfriend” or “my boyfriend” and you’ll see what I mean. Along those lines, let’s see some examples for each major search engine using the syntax, “Google is “:

Google is Skynet. Search Suggest Opinions

Reader Poll: Help Make Online Marketing Blog Even Better!

Thanks to readers like you, TopRank’s Online Marketing Blog has experienced a long and rich blogging life over the past 6+ years with 2,300+ posts, hundreds of thousands of unsolicited links from powerful industry web sites and content that has helped thousands of readers become smarter online marketers.

We watch what our readers say in comments on and off the site as well as looking at referring keywords in web analytics and site search keywords to get an idea of what our valued community is interested in. With over 30,000 RSS subscribers and well over 100,000 unique visitors, we appreciate your attention a great deal and want to do our best to be a helpful resource.

Reader Poll: Help Make Online Marketing Blog Even Better!

Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

I’ve been thinking about how entering the content marketing space is not for the faint of heart. It can be a signifcant undertaking both in terms of resources and a change in an organization’s approach to marketing and sales. Obviously, content marketing is better for some companies and industries than others. Outside help also makes a difference.

While increasing numbers of companies are realizing they must provide more than product information to satisfy customers, many of those same companies fail by implementing random tactics and missing out on benefits like better search visibility.

In order to take full advantage of the significant gains in search traffic that are available with a content focused marketing effort, it’s essential to answer some key questions:

Key Questions to Optimize Your Content Marketing Strategy

SEO with Feeds & XML

Much of the search engine optimization advice found online and at conferences centers around keywords and links. A lot of the spotlight on internet marketing has focused on content and social media. There’s no question that we’ve been a strong proponent of these tactics, sharing many, many posts on them.

Content and link based SEO relies on the search engine crawlers to find web pages and digital assets on their own. Search engines are far from perfect at this, so the opportunity to provide search engines with structured lists of content via feed, can provide some companies with a competitive advantage.

SEO with Feeds & XML