Search Marketing Archives - B2B Marketing Blog

What 5 Recent Search Marketing Changes Mean For B2B Marketers

Lane Ellis on Aug 4th, 2021
B2B Marketing, Google, Microsoft Bing, Search Marketing

How can B2B marketers adapt to the latest changes in search engine marketing?

Google, Bing, and other search engines have continued to refine their services, bringing changes that B2B marketers need to be aware of.

Holding the dual roles of the world’s most popular search engine and its biggest search advertising provider, Google and its parent company Alphabet saw an especially strong 70 percent increase in advertising revenue during the second quarter of 2021, the firms recently disclosed. That equates to some $560 million is advertising revenue per day during the quarter, and a year-over-year increase of 62 percent, rebounding from the firm’s only revenue decline a year ago due to the global health crisis.

What 5 Recent Search Marketing Changes Mean For B2B Marketers

Best Of B2B Search Marketing: Optimize Your 2021 With Our Top 10 SEO Posts

Lane Ellis on Dec 23rd, 2020
Search Marketing, SEO

Search marketing has matured in many ways throughout this pandemic year of 2020. At each shift and change along the journey, we’ve done our best to not only cover each twist and turn thoroughly, but to also offer insight and research-based strategy to help savvy B2B marketers meet the challenges this year has placed in front of us.

We’re lucky to have a wealth of talented B2B marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank Marketing blog — which will celebrate its 18th year in 2021 — including our CEO Lee Odden, Joshua Nite, Elizabeth Williams, Anne Leuman, Nick Nelson, Debbie Friez, Birdie Zepeda, the author of this post, and Alexis Hall, among others.

Best Of B2B Search Marketing: Optimize Your 2021 With Our Top 10 SEO Posts

12 Top B2B SEO Trends & Predictions for 2021

Lane Ellis on Dec 2nd, 2020
B2B Marketing, Search Marketing, SEO

What will search marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) look like in 2021, and where will it take B2B marketers and brands when a post-pandemic world eventually arrives?

To help answer these questions and more we’ve gathered 12 top B2B search marketing insights from both industry experts and our own team, and present our annual look at SEO predictions and search trends for 2021.

When I first went online in 1984 operating a 300-baud bulletin board system, it would be six years before Archie’s FTP site search arrived in 1990, followed three years later by Excite and the other early web search engine innovators, and if there’s one aspect of search that has remained constant throughout the ensuing decades, it’s been unending change.

12 Top B2B SEO Trends & Predictions for 2021

14 Search Marketing Influencers at Top B2B & B2C Brands

Lane Ellis on Mar 11th, 2020
B2B Marketing, Search Marketing, SEO

Search marketing strategy is undoubtedly vital for most B2B brands today, yet there are several elements that play important roles in its ultimate success that may surprise you.

Leading the search engine optimization (SEO) program for a major brand is a vital role that’s only taken on greater importance over the years, as even the rise of social media marketing hasn’t eliminated the need for B2B marketers to have a strong search marketing strategy.

With search marketing influencers at top brands facing a nearly constant barrage of new SEO challenges, how do smart search industry leaders build successful campaigns?

Non-paid organic search efforts have some of the lowest website visitor traffic bounce rates for B2B and B2C campaigns alike, which is why SEO practitioners at major firms continue to play such an important role in successful marketing efforts.

14 Search Marketing Influencers at Top B2B & B2C Brands

Our Top 10 Search Marketing Posts of 2019

Lane Ellis on Dec 31st, 2019
Search Marketing

Search marketing has matured in many ways throughout 2019. At each twist and turn along the journey, we’ve done our best to not only cover each change thoroughly, but to also offer insight and research-based strategy to help savvy digital marketers along the way.

We’re fortunate to have a stellar group of digital marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank Marketing Blog, with our CEO Lee Odden, Associate Director of Search & Analytics Tiffani Allen, Vice President of Client Accounts Alexis Hall, Content Strategist Anne Leuman, and others, each contributing valuable and actionable search marketing insights, tips, and tactics this past year.

To help our blog community grow its search marketing knowledge, we’re thrilled to offer this list of our most popular search marketing posts of 2019.

Our Top 10 Search Marketing Posts of 2019

10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers

Lane Ellis on Jun 4th, 2019
Search Marketing

Getting to the heart of the questions most important to your potential audience is an unbeatable path to providing best-answer solutions.

Let’s look also at why question research is such an important facet in marketing, and some of the primary ways to uncover precisely what people are using search engines and other search technology to ask and learn more about.

In 2017 our Senior Content Marketing Manager Caitlin Burgess looked at this topic, in “Beyond Google Keyword Planner: 7 Easy-to-Use SEO Research Tools for Generating Content Ideas,” and in the interim new tools have become available, and new features have been added to several.

Let’s look at 10 smart tools and tactics to help uncover the questions your audience is asking.

10 Smart Question Research Tools for B2B Marketers

How B2B Marketers Can Win at Search with Best Answer Content

Nick Nelson on Feb 21st, 2019
B2B Marketing, Search Marketing, SEO

Marketers are engaged in a continuous battle to gain an edge when it comes to SEO, seeking those crucial advantages provided by top visibility where customers are looking. Multiple disciplines from technical SEO to creative content can be leveraged to win the search marketing game. At TopRank Marketing, we believe the best answer to this quandary is… well, to be the Best Answer.

To simplify and clarify, it might be helpful to take a step back.

In October of 2000, Larry Page laid out his ambitious vision for Google, a company he’d founded along with Sergey Brin just two years earlier.

Page foresaw his creation as “the ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the Web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing.”

How B2B Marketers Can Win at Search with Best Answer Content

Our Top 10 Search Marketing Posts of 2018

Lane Ellis on Dec 31st, 2018
Search Marketing

Search marketing has continued to mature throughout 2018. At each twist and turn along the way, we’ve done our best to not only cover each change, but also offer insight and research-based strategy to help savvy digital marketers along the way.

We’re fortunate to have a fantastic group of digital marketing professionals contributing to the TopRank Marketing Blog, with our CEO Lee Odden, Associate Director of Search & Analytics Tiffani Allen, Vice President of Client Accounts Alexis Hall, Content Strategist Anne Leuman, and others, each contributing search marketing insights, tips, and tricks this past year.

To help our blog community grow its search marketing knowledge, we’re happy to offer this list of our most popular search marketing posts of 2018.

Our Top 10 Search Marketing Posts of 2018

Google Game Changers: 5 Recent Updates and How They Affect Marketers

Anne Leuman
Google, Search Marketing, SEO

Since the inception and rise of digital marketing, marketers have been keeping a watchful eye on Google — the ruler of the kingdom of search.

From research project to technology giant, over the last two decades Google has cemented itself as the dominating force in internet search. And while there are other rising contenders in the space, as of June 2018, Google owned 72.21% of all desktop searches. And the domination continues if you look at mobile, with Google owning a whopping 90.20% of searches.

Of course, Google’s market (and marketing) domination isn’t because of their speed to market in the late 90s, but rather the company’s dedication and investment in evolving the platform. And some of the latest evolutionary tweaks and new features are hitting soon — or have just recently arrived.

Google Game Changers: 5 Recent Updates and How They Affect Marketers

5 Powerful Types (And Examples) of Link-Worthy Content

Anne Leuman
Content Marketing, Link Building, Search Marketing, SEO

Since the inception of the search engine, marketers have spent an obscene amount of time optimizing their content and strategy for search. And while the old days of keyword stuffing and other black-hat SEO tactics are behind (most marketers), there’s two constants that remain the same for driving organic search results: The importance of good content and getting credible links to that good content.

In fact, Google’s former Search Quality Senior Strategist and current Partner Development Manager, Andre Lippattsev, made it official in a recent interview stating that content and backlinks were the top two ranking factors in Google’s elusive algorithm.

As a result, there’s little doubt that we marketers must create something irresistible for searchers and search engines if we want to score good results.

5 Powerful Types (And Examples) of Link-Worthy Content

SEO + Paid Search: An Aristotelian Lesson in Search Marketing Integration

Anne Leuman
Digital Advertising, Search Marketing, SEO

The first search engine was created in 1990, over two millennia from when Aristotle, the famed Greek philosopher, walked the earth. Having never lived in a world that included a search engine, let alone paper, you might be wondering what advice Aristotle could possibly offer when it comes to search marketing, but one of his most famous quotes offers an invaluable lesson:

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

Even in ~330 BC, Aristotle understood that combining two tactics together results in powerful outcomes that are greater than their individual parts.

Adopting this classic teaching to your modern paid search and SEO tactics, means getting more bang for your buck in search marketing. For starters, integrating paid and organic search has been found to increase conversions by 200%, according to Search Engine Watch. If you want to maximize your potential return on your search marketing efforts, they need to work together.

SEO + Paid Search: An Aristotelian Lesson in Search Marketing Integration

What You Need to Know About Optimizing Content for Voice Search

Kevin Cotch
Search Engines, Search Marketing, SEO

Thanks to the emergence of technologies such as mobile personal assistants, Amazon Echo, Google Home, Cortana, and others, there’s no doubt that voice search is on the rise. These days, consumers can send text messages while driving or use a mobile personal assistant to complete simple actions. In fact, Gartner predicts that about 30% of searches will be conducted without a screen by 2020. In addition, another study from ComScore, states that voice searches will account for nearly 50% of searches, too.

That means we marketers need to start thinking how we can get our content in front of our audience via voice search channels. While optimizing content for voice search can seem daunting, there are a few easy tips that can help you start gaining more visibility for those types of queries.

What You Need to Know About Optimizing Content for Voice Search