• Design is the New Marketing
• Value is the Currency
• Agents Broker Brand Relationships
• People are the Regulators

Citing additional Forrester research, Mullen indicates that more than half of US online adults are already annoyed by the amount of advertising they see, and 37% would rather not be contacted by brands at all.

Think about what that means in B2B buying cycles, where multiple individuals are impacting the decision making process.

If only two individuals are responsible, at least one is already annoyed. If there are more than two, there is a good chance the majority are already skeptical at the start.

Mullen’s four new marketing fundamentals offer some important takeaways for B2B search engine marketers. Here are some of the biggest ones I realized, organized by new marketing fundamental.

Design is the New Marketing

Executing the B2B marketing message is more complex than ever before. This is in part due to the sheer volume of data and information created coupled with the rapid development of technology across a range of platforms and devices. B2B SEO professionals need to be ever aware of how design and usability play a part in the prospective buyer’s desire to consume information accessed and presented.

We have already seen this discussion take center stage here and in resources like Copyblogger, Search Engine Land, and B2B Marketing Insider. Sharp design and good usability are important components of a good digital content strategy.

Key considerations B2B SEO professionals:

• Design & Layout: Visual appearance and readability are critical factors in getting potential buyers to take the time to review content marketing assets. Optimization goes beyond keywords and broader design implications.
• Search Results: Take note of how Google (and Yahoo/Bing) shift design and layout, and integration, of search engine results for important keyword phrases, to uncover new content opportunities and tactics for visibility.
• Conversion Optimization: Test location and presentation of conversion actions to improve conversion rates, even if those actions are closer to top of funnel lead generation initiatives.

Value is the Currency

As discussed in a recent Search Engine Watch column highlighting the B2B content marketing process, I worry whether B2B marketers are more concerned with pumping out enough content versus developing the kind of content that their potential audience truly finds of value.

Consider immediate engagement metrics as well as long term goals, for purposes of defining quality in content marketing development. Engagement metrics provide guidance to how well are message is resonating with an audience in short term, and whether your content efforts are being accepted in social media circles. This MarketingSherpa 2013 Marketing Analytics Benchmark Report chart outlines key social media metrics routinely tracked.

However as discussed in recent BtoB Research Insights piece, “Defining the Modern Marketer“, key metrics in the evaluation of overall marketing performance must end up focusing most heavily around sales performance and enablement. We need to keep revenue goals in mind at all times.

Key considerations B2B SEO professionals:

• Role of Engagement Metrics: Popular social sharing metrics are a great start but B2B SEO’s need to understand how those metrics play a part in a larger marketing strategy designed to generate leads. Social shares mean your content is getting accepted. Tie-ins to the lead funnel need to be established.
• Prospect / Customer Reports: Visitor reporting data commonly associated with marketing automation systems present a clear path for B2B SEO’s to demonstrate value in content marketing assets and keyword strategies. It is critical for B2B SEO professionals to gain access to this information, in addition to more traditional website reporting tools.
• Marketing Communication / PR: Associate social media shares to specific profiles of influence and make sure to pass this information to and from marketing communication groups. Give your PR team knowledge to help win the big pitch. Conversely, gain insight on where PR focus is so that you’re keeping track of the right influencers in social media / third party outreach.

Agents Broker Brand Relationships

B2B marketers need to understand that agents (in the form of hardware, software, and technology) play a part in delivering the brand experience and they can’t be afraid of new platforms. For example, I have experienced a fair amount of doubt from B2B marketers on the urgency in adopting Google+. With tight budgets and limited resources, it is tempting to justify limited to no involvement.

But we also must understand the extent to which Google+ represents a shift in search engine results technology, and the integral nature it will play in SEO moving forward.

The real point is that regardless of how powerful a brand might be, it is unlikely that direct traffic is the only channel sending customers (new and existing), even if that channel is of the highest quality. B2B marketers need to embrace the idea that their customers use multiple platforms, access points, and devices to find information.

Key considerations B2B SEO professionals:

• Owned Media: Even though agents deliver B2B information the business should still own their intellectual property. Tactical adoption of third party platforms is specific to communication and outreach. Strategy and content still need to center around owned media assets.
• Technology Innovation: Pay attention to emerging consumer channels, since their rapid adoption can lead to new marketing platforms for B2B organizations seeking the attention of buyers.
• Website Reporting: In web analytics, third party referral reports, and audience reports such as device usage and location, provide important entry points for understanding strengths and opportunities for SEO / social media communication development.

People Are The Regulators

Finally, everything comes back to understanding the buyer. Be it related to design, value, or designated platform. As SEO professionals, we’ve learned that well thought out keyword research provides the foundation for effective SEO results. As B2B marketer professionals, SEO’s need to align themselves closer to buyer personal development, in an effort to truly understand what buyers are looking for (and how they are looking) when evaluating complex B2B solutions.

Key considerations B2B SEO professionals:

• Sales Integration: Build keyword research into buyer persona development by asking sales personnel what keywords often come up in the sales discussions. Provide specific triggers (based on preliminary keyword research) for sales personnel to identify more detailed phrases and terminology. Quora is a great resource for mining situational questions to be aware of in the process.
• Customer Service: Evaluate customer service data to understand common problems and challenges with products and solutions. For example, bug / support requests provide hints for content marketing development.
• Website Reporting: Web analytics again plays a key role in this process. Long tail keyword queries and third party referral reports provide insight for new content development and uncovering key link partners and social media networking opportunities.

Final Thoughts

The B2B organization needs to realize how significantly the buyer’s ability to receive and process information is changing, through technology innovation and access. At a strategic level, understanding customers and buyers involves further exploration into the platform, device, and industry influences, and keyword strategy.

At the tactical level, for B2B SEO to be effective, assets need to optimized for design and layout, as well as keyword opportunity. Value is established through short term and long term metrics and benchmarks.

How has the shift in marketing mindset impacting your B2B internet marketing strategies? I would love to read your perspective and feedback via comments below.

The same thing applies to SEO. Each team (website) is working relentlessly to win a championship (the top position of the search results). It’s not easy and we too have to deal with injuries (look out for penguins & pandas), trades (people leaving), salary-caps (budgets), and other teams (competitors) trying to knock us off.

It can be a tough road and a long season but let’s go through the steps it takes to win the SEO Super Bowl:

Off-Season

The off-season usually falls at the end of the year when you evaluate the past year’s efforts and start thinking about marketing budgets and goals for the next year. As you get your team together, consider the following:

Company Focus & Goals

What are the big company initiatives for the upcoming year and how will they change your current SEO efforts?

• Are there any new keyword targets?
• Are you current keyword targets still relevant?
• Do you have new conversion goals?
• What are your big PR campaigns for the year?

Your SEO efforts should align with your overall company goals. By thinking about your company initiatives ahead of time, your SEO team can plan ahead, focus on the right strategy, and give you a leg up on the competition.

Personnel Changes

With budgets opening up and goals being set, the off-season is a great time to make personnel adjustments and bring on new talent. A few things to consider:

• Did your current SEO team hit their goals? If not, what were the roadblocks and how can you fix them? If they didn’t succeed and you can’t identify the reasons why, maybe it’s time to bring in a new offensive coordinator.
• Are you going to need additional staff to hit your upcoming goals? For example, if you’re trying to increase whitepaper downloads and you only have two whitepapers, you’ll probably need to create additional whitepapers. That may mean hiring a copywriter.

Next Season’s Strategy

Once you know your goals and have your personnel in place, it’s time to start planning for the upcoming season. A few things to think about:

• Research any new keyword topics.
• Start creating your editorial calendar.
• Establish an outreach strategy.
• Make sure your site is technically sound.

With your goals established, personnel in place, and strategy down, it’s on to pre-season.

Pre-Season

The pre-season is a short but important part of the year. It’s the time when you have your initial goals set, ideas for next year in place, and can start trying out some new offenses.

Team Meetings

Set up a meeting that includes the entire marketing team: PR, SEO, content, paid, etc. With everyone in the same room (or more likely, on the same call), it’s much easier to coordinate efforts and figure out how each team can collaborate to reach your overall goals.

• PR & SEO teams should coordinate outreach efforts.
• SEO & PPC teams should evaluate analytics & campaign performance to drive down costs and identify new keywords/phrases.
• Content teams should work to create blog posts for search, articles for the PR team, landing pages for the PPC team, etc.

Competitor Evaluation

Pre-season also gives you a first glance at your competition. What new things are they doing this year? Take a look at the following:

• Announcements (Partnerships, product launches, funding, etc.)
• Marketing efforts (Where are they spending their money?)
• Search results (Are they out-ranking you? Why? How can you get ahead?)

With your teams working together and your competitors scouted, you’re ready to kick off the regular season.

Regular Season

During the regular season, strategies are in place and everyone’s working at full capacity to reach goals identified in the off- and pre-seasons. The content team is busy writing, campaigns are being launched, landing pages are being tested, and you’re starting to generate buzz in various social networks.

The regular season is long though so you need to constantly be re-evaluating and adjusting.

Status meetings

Throughout the regular season it’s important you have regular status meetings to keep everyone on track, discuss successes and failures, plan for upcoming campaigns, and make necessary changes to current strategies.

Look at your goals. Are you heading in the right direction? If not, what needs to change?

Content

As new content is created, take a look to see what’s working and what’s not. Which pieces work best on each social network? Which pieces are driving traffic for your top keywords? Create more of those!

Ensure that all content going up has optimized URLs, proper title tags, and meta descriptions, and that you’re including calls to action on your pages.

Analytics & WMT

Analytics and Webmaster Tools (WMT) give you an inside look at how your site is performing. In other words, they can tell you where you’re performing well and where you’re lacking.

Be sure to check WMT for errors or any major changes. Dig into analytics to generate new content ideas, identify guest post locations, see campaign performance metrics, and locate any areas where you can improve conversions.

Always remember to update your strategies based on what you find.

If you don’t keep working, improving, and adjusting to the ever-changing landscape, you won’t be make it to the post season.

Playoffs

Congratulations! You’re all over the first page search results and on your way to the championship. It’s now just you and a few competitors. Time to put forth that extra effort and make a big splash.

Here are a few ideas:

Go beyond blogging. You’ve been working hard on building your blog and you’re seeing the results. For that extra push, you need to go beyond a standard blog post. Try an infographic, a dynamic infographic, or a video tailored to your audience.

Create new partnerships. They’re essential for reaching new customers, they’re exciting for everyone involved, and they also make for great links.

Get customers talking. Your customers are your best assets. Do something that gets them talking about you, and, more importantly, gets them sharing your content and site across the web. Check out some cool ideas over at the WOM blog.

Super Bowl

You’re finally here! It’s been a hard road with a lot of work from your team, but it was worth it.

Now, I’m going to assume that with all of the work, analysis, evaluation, and adjustments, you not only made it to the Super Bowl but are in fact the champion. Go ahead, do the discount double check. Landing in that top spot will result in a ton of traffic and, more importantly, more conversions.

Don’t get complacent. You may be the champion now, but your place in that top spot can be taken away in a matter of minutes. While you’ve been getting through the post-season, many of your competitors have been reworking strategies that may leave them right on your heels.

Always be evaluating, adjusting, and thinking ahead.

Getting to the SEO Super Bowl isn’t easy, winning is hard (as the 90’s Bills can tell you) and repeating as champions is even harder. But if you put in the hard work, you can get there.

Follow the steps above. Get your SEO strategy in place, get your teams together, and work your way through the season. Pretty soon you’ll be on your way to a championship.

*Note: If you can’t tell, I’m a jaded Bills fan. I also feel it’s important for you to know I don’t really own elastic-waist jeans.

With over 50 sessions a day along with non-stop networking events, Pubcon can be pretty overwhelming. However with an on-going stream of tweets and great recaps being posted across the web, you can get a lot of information even on the sessions you missed.

Instead of recapping all of the sessions I attended, I thought I’d highlight the top tips, tools & trends I came across.

Top Tips from Pubcon 2012

Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of the bestselling book “Influence: Science & Practice” gave the opening keynote and offered some great tips on the universal principles of social influence. Two of the main takeaways:

Use Your About Us Section Better
People like those who like them. Your about us section gives you the ability to connect with potential customers. Give them something about you they can connect with. What kind of hobbies do you have? Where do you live?

Give Customers Something
Did you know that if there’s a mint on the check tray for each diner, tips go up 3.3%? People are eager to give back and will say yes to those they owe. Give your customers something without expecting anything in return.

Pinterest. Pinterest. Pinterest. There was a lot of talk about the intent Pinterest users have versus other social networks. Krista Neher of BootCamp Digital noted that Pinterest traffic converts at 10% higher than other social traffic. Matt Siltala also mentioned Pinterest traffic for BuildDirect as having an average time on-page of ~10 minutes. Create content your Pinterest users want, as they are apparently a very valuable audience.

Target the Timeline & Act Like a Local. Facebook now gives you the ability to target your timeline to specific users. Have an offer that’s only valid in NYC? Make sure it only shows to them. You can also break it down by gender, relationship status, interests and age. – Alison Zarella

Mobile Keywords are Different. Michael Dorausch had a great point about mobile traffic when he said, “not every search is suited for mobile”. Often times, we just assume that we should optimize for the same keywords we are optimizing for on desktop but that may not be the case. His other point, when a search query originates from mobile, the best quality site may lose to the best location. Sometimes, we just want what’s close.

Make the Most of Your Content. Tim Ash was on the conversions in a social world session and one piece of advice he offered was to get more out what you’re doing. It’s easy to put out a piece of content but what happens after? Tim used a webinar as the example. After you have the webinar, there is more you can do. Put the video online. Create a transcript. Write a Blog Post. Encourage people to share it. Take the content and make an ebook. The point is, to do more with what you have.

Top Tools from Pubcon 2012

Going into Pubcon, I thought I was hip to most of the tools out there. Turns out, that’s not the case. There are a lot of very cool tools out there ready to give you some killer information. Here are a few worth checking out:

Open Graph Helper – Aaron Friedman and Mike King developed this tool to help you see what your Open Graph tags will actually look like out in the wild.

WebPageTest.org – Lets you test your load speed, caching, load times and even suggests improvements.

BoardReader.com – Looking for something in a forum? This tool is probably the best public form crawler and can help you find info on a specific brand or topic.

CompeteMonkey.com – Alerts you when a competitor starts using a new service on their site.

PinAlerts – Currently in Beta, this tool alerts you anytime someone pins something from your site.

Repinly – Helps you find the most popular pins, boards and pinners by category.

MajesticSEO – Along with it’s backlink finding capabilities, the tool with show you your IP neighbors, helping you identify any ‘bad neighborhoods’ you might be close to.

Note: The majority of these tools came from the Competitive Intelligence session with Chris Winfield, Matt Siltala & Kristy Bolsinger, which was probably my favorite. Find the session write-up here.

Top Trends from Pubcon 2012

Links are Soooo 2011. While links are still going to matter for quite some time, how they influence search engines is already changing. Ryan Jones had a good quote at his Sustainable SEO session when he said, “It doesn’t matter how many links you have if people come to your site and think it’s crap”. How people interact with your site and how actual people are connected to your site is what’s going to matter.

More Changes More Often. Eric Enge gave a great presentation on the Google algorithms and one thing he mentioned was that while we used to see these big algorithmic updates, what we are now seeing is more updates more often as the search engines improve their capabilities.

Bing. I had to mention Bing because it always amazes me how often they come up at conferences. Duane Forrester does a tremendous job of connecting with the search community, talking about the company, what they are doing and how they are improving. On top of that, the social stuff they are involved in, including their Facebook integration is very cool. It also seems Bing is trying to do big things in the mobile space.

Social, Google+ & Connections. I put these together simply because they all involve the idea of relationships. Not just building them, but maintaining them, utilizing them and most importantly, not faking them! Social networks have given us the ability to connect with people we know, people who like the same things we do, and people who like us. Businesses and people need to be figuring out how to use that for their advantage. It’s already playing a role in the buying process and will continue to play a larger role in the search process.

Overall…

Pubcon was amazing and I highly recommend that anyone involved in the search or social industry put it on his or her list of things to do. The information that came out of each session was useful and actionable and worth the cost.

About a week ago, Matt Cutts addressed the issue of guest blogging for links in a Webmaster Tools Video. While Cutts acknowledged the value in building out a search presence through guest blogging, he stressed that this can also be taken to extremes. Marketers who look to do the “bare minimum” for writing requirements, or who simply outsource post creation, will not find similar value in terms of search engine presence.

The growth in guest blogging outreach and the notion that guest blogging alone will benefit SEO illustrates the evolution of marketing tactics meant to deliver short term value.

We’ve seen these tactical SEO initiatives before, in other manifestations like:

• General Web Directories
• Article Spinning and Article Directories
• Link Exchanges/Reciprocal Linking
• Blog Commenting
• Splogs
• Thin Content Sites

The problem with all of these examples is in the subjectivity of what makes these tactical initiatives valuable. I can find quality exceptions in all six of the examples listed above.

One guiding principle comes to mind when evaluating whether or not an SEO tactic will work for our organization or our clients. Will this SEO tactic work within the marketing strategy of the organizations involved?

SEO and (B2B) Marketing Strategy

A common rhetorical question in SEO is whether or not a proposed tactic will impact SEO AND user. While this can make sense, what’s more important is how an SEO tactic can impact or be a part of the overall marketing strategy.

To address this in context of the six examples above:

• Does the web directory have business/industry relevance? Is there an opportunity to generate quality leads through directory inclusion?
• Does the website accepting articles have its own (successful) marketing strategy and plan for building out its business?
• Is there a business or industry relationship that makes an exchange of links valuable? Examples might include strategic partnerships, sponsorship, or organizational affiliation.
• Are you/your organization creating blog comments that add value to the specific blog post discussion or just posting for potential link reference?
• Does your blog have its own blogging strategy and are you building a reputation within the industry with such a strategy?
• If you’re using microsites, do they have a specific tie-in to strategic marketing initiatives (i.e., lead generation, product marketing, or specific marketing segment)?

Think Through the SEO Tactic as It Relates to Marketing Strategy

When faced with a new (or newly proposed) SEO tactic, my recommendation is to think through how this tactic can benefit overall marketing strategy. Don’t focus solely on the tactic. Instead, focus on how you can integrate SEO into overarching marketing initiatives.

Some examples or considerations:

• If you’re targeting links, how can SEO support or benefit company communications and public relations?
• How will content generation tie into branding and product marketing initiatives?
• How will IT improvements and recommendations benefit the business, in terms of tangible business goals?

Tactical SEO initiatives need to be executed to improve traffic and keyword visibility. But these tactics might ring false if the search engine marketer is not tying them to overarching marketing strategy.

Final Thoughts About Guest Blogging

As Cutts indicated in the Webmaster Tools video, guest bloggers with significant expertise, or those writers with demonstrated credentials looking to build their authority by getting published in relevant third-party sites, can contribute greatly to SEO initiatives link acquisition.

Some of the things I would evaluate when reviewing a guest blogger:

• Evaluate the individual’s social media presence, particularly LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+.
• Check out the person’s writing history in other sites and blogs.
• Evaluate the organization the blogger represents for industry relevance.

Bottom line: Guest blogging on another site, or accepting a guest blog on your site, should have meaningful impact for your organization as well as the other blogger’s. If done correctly, with appropriate marketing strategy in mind, guest blogging can be a win-win for both organizations as well as the individuals involved in the process.

Session summary

“For many B2B companies, creating new content and thinking about link building can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a product people love to talk about. While this can make SEO challenging, the good news is there’s actually a lot your business can be doing.

This webinar will cover some tips & tricks on creating great content that your customers want, driving link building campaigns using assets you already have, and will show real examples of other companies out there making it happen.

Find out new ways to make your SEO campaign fun, even if you are in a boring world.”

Registration Info

• Title: Making SEO Fun in a “Boring” B2B World
• Date/Time: Tuesday October 16th, 3pm EST
• Register: http://www.brighttalk.com/r/tqb

Connect with Casie ahead of time on Twitter or Google+. Hope to see you there!

The fact is, for many B2B companies, keeping up a corporate blog can be difficult. Resources can be scarce, ideas may not come easily, and other projects can get in the way. But, like anything else, what you put in is what you get out, so it’s up to you to keep your blog up to snuff.

To make your blog the best it can be, consider these few tips:

Embrace the Sales Cycle

Just because visitors landed on your site doesn’t mean they’re ready to fill out a form, purchase your product, or be your best friend. Depending on where they are in the sales cycle, they may just be starting the process; maybe they need questions answered or maybe they’re just trying to get to know your business.

A blog is great place to engage readers with your content, but it’s also a great place to help address the needs of your customers throughout the buying cycle. When thinking about what to write, consider the following:

• What are the most frequently asked questions your support team gets?
• What are people asking about on social networks?
• What are common questions your sales team hears?
• What features are most important to your customers?

You can also use Google to see which questions need to be answered:

• Google instant can show you search phrases.
• PPC search query reports can show you long tail phrases or questions people used to get to your site.
• Google analytics can offer the same thing for the organic side.

Bonus: Posts that start with “What is“, “Did you know,” or “How do I” immediately show people you’re answering their questions. This type of content also tends to do pretty well in search results, allowing you to get in front of potential customers at the right time.

Help Your Customers Succeed

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post, “Making SEO fun in Boring B2B World,” and one of the suggestions it offered was to write for your market as opposed to writing about your product or service.

In other words, since you can only write so many interesting things about your product, start targeting the topics your audience wants to read about. You need to consider:

• WHO is your target market and WHAT are the issues they face?
• What kinds of things can you write about that would help them?

Your blog should go beyond just your company, product, or service; it should be the place where customers and non-customers come because you’re helping them and they like what you have to say. Check out this post from SEOMoz to see real examples of companies currently doing this.

Show Your Human Side

With so many people using social networks and the increasing call for transparency, companies need to show that there are real people behind their businesses and that those real people care about their customers. Let’s be honest: Aside from the “About Us” page, most companies don’t do a lot to showcase their human sides. This is where your blog comes in:

• Feature employees (on the blog is nice but here’s a really clever way to do it on Pinterest as well).
• Provide product updates.
• Talk about where you’ll be (events, conferences, meetups) and don’t forget to follow-up with recaps.

Bonus: When creating posts, make sure each one has an actual author. Even better, provide a photo and short bio of the author at the end of the post.

Need more ideas? See what these “10 Leaders Who Aren’t Afraid to Be Transparent” are doing to show the human side of their companies.

Don’t Forget About Conversions

A blog can be a huge traffic driver, but with people coming in through social networks and only reading an individual post, blogs tend to have a high bounce rate. It’s your job to figure out how to keep these visitors on your site and drive the right customers to take an action. Here’s how you can do that:

• Offer related posts at the end of each post encouraging readers to visit other blog posts. You can do this manually, you can use a WP plugin or you can try Zemanta.
• Use Hello Bar to drive people to visit your main site (Rejoiner).
• Place a call to action at the end of post (37Signals).
• Get information from your right hand column (see the toolkit offer on ConversionRateExperts.com).

Regardless of which tactic you use, remember that you’ve already done the hardest part: getting people to your site. Now you need to guide them to take the next step.

Use It to Create Goodwill

To foster goodwill with customers, make sure to show them you care about them. If you’ve followed the above tips, you’re already providing your customers with good information and making their lives easier; now it’s time to show them you appreciate them.

Why? Because it adds to the human element and shows them that you care, which results in loyal customers who will sing your praises. (It’s also a really easy way to create content and get links.)

• Run a monthly customer spotlight. Let people submit their story through a form or through social networks, giving you another method of engagement.
• Offer guest posts.
• Run interviews with customers, other businesses, etc.
• Create lists featuring people in your industry.

The best part about these last few ideas is they are tied to many of the above goals. By putting the spotlight on your customers, you can let prospects see who is using your product/service and, in doing so, obtain testimonials that may attract additional customers.  By promoting your customers on your blog, you’re ultimately helping them succeed in their respective business endeavors.  And, by incorporating the human element into your blog, you’re letting your customers know that you’re more than just a business: You’re a business that cares about its customers.

Running a blog can be hard but there’s a lot of opportunity to make yours the best it can be. So why not get started?

In December, Will Reynolds of Seer Interactive put out a video, “Link Building in Boring Industries.”  Last month, there was a great article from SEOMoz, “Companies in Boring Niches Creating Great Content.” And, during my SMX Advanced presentation in May, I noted that, even if you have a boring product, you can still make marketing and link building fun.

The fact is that for many B2B companies, your product might not be the most amazing thing to talk about. The good news is you have other options. Let’s take a look at a few:

Market vs Product

If your product isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, then start thinking about what is exciting. Who are your customers? What do they like? What types of things can you offer them that are related to your business and are interesting?

You don’t need to spend all of your time writing and talking about the product when you can (and should) be talking about the things your target market cares about.

Example 1: FreshBooks

Freshbooks is an accounting software, which could initially be labeled as “boring.” But the company has made their brand cool by creating content and doing fun things around small business. Their blog offers content around networking, entrepreneurship, taxes, etc, which are some of the issues small businesses want to know about. They also do things like hold business card contests that get people engaged and are fun to be a part of. It’s worth noting they also have something like 80,000 links because of efforts such as these.

Example 2: Herman Miller

While office furniture can indeed look nice, it can’t possibly be exhilarating to write about all of the time. So on the Herman Miller blog, instead of writing about just office furniture, they write about ergonomics (a huge industry), exercising at work, and office design. They also ran a contest in May encouraging students to design chairs. It’s a creative way to get a few links and promote something other than just office furniture.

Admittedly, Herman Miller is a well known brand but it’s a good example of a company with “boring” products finding innovative ways to engage their customers.

* Takeaway *

Create share-friendly content and campaigns that will interest your audience. Because, let’s be honest, you can still figure out how to get a couple of those valuable keywords into more compelling content.

Real Partnerships

It’s easy to form a partnership with people, add them to your partners page, and then forget about them. So why not form partnerships with companies whose products can actually help your customers?

Partnerships are a different way to give your customers help beyond your product or service, they make for great content and you may get a few links.

Example 1: Build-a-Business Competition

Shopify recently teamed up with Fast Company for their 3rd annual Build a Business competition.  Shopify is an ecommerce building platform, certainly not the most exciting product ever, and Fast Company is well, Fast Company, a magazine/website geared toward businesses. What makes this a great partnership, is that it truly benefits both companies and their respective audiences. Shopify gets support from a large media outlet like Fast Company and Fast Company gets to help entrepreneurs, the people they market to, achieve their dream.

Example 2: BarCamp Tour

If you aren’t familiar with BarCamps, they are global “unconferences” where people get together and essentially teach one another about various tech topics. Fast forward to BarCamp Tour, described as an “entrepreneurial adventure of four brands to help BarCamps across the country be as great as they can be.”

Basically, four B2B companies including MailChimp and BatchBlue, which target a similar market, teamed up and are now traveling around the country, sponsoring BarCamps and helping entrepreneurs and small business folks get together and learn. It’s a partnership that really does benefit each company and their respective audiences.

* Takeaway *

Find companies you believe in that target a similar audience. Once you have a couple of companies in mind, locate the appropriate persons and approach with a partnership idea ready. People won’t often turn down free marketing opportunities.

Something to Talk About

Word-of-mouth has become hip over the last few years as social network usage increases. These days, asking for trusted opinions has become as simple as typing 140 characters.

What this means for businesses is there’s a tremendous opportunity to let your customers do the work for you. Let them write about you, build links for you, and get you new customers. But in order for them to want to do this, you need to give them a reason.

Example 1: Grasshopper

It’s easy for me to use Grasshopper as example because I worked there and saw first-hand what pros they are at giving their customers something to talk about. Grasshopper is a virtual phone system and they know that at the end of the day, their customers just want the product to work. They don’t really care about the company much beyond that. However, knowing that, they go out of their way to make their customers care.

They send handwritten notes to customers with bags of candy and Starbucks gift cards, they give away books, and they create fun videos their market likes and wants to talk about.

Example 2: 37Signals

37Signals is most widely known for BaseCamp, which is a project management tool. But they also know how much their customers like them. Their site actually has a Happy Customers page. If I were a customer and saw myself and my business listed on this page, you bet I’d be telling other people about it. They also have a “happiness report” that’s based on their last 100 ratings. This shows they care about their customers but it also gives people something to talk about.

* Takeaway *

Once you have an idea or campaign in mind, start planning how you can get the biggest bang for your buck. Find customers who have blogs or use social media and are likely to talk about it and share. Start with the people you have the best relationships with and go from there. It’s an easy way to get some content written about you and links back to your site.

Get Going!

The bottom line is that even if you think your niche is boring or your company can’t be doing cool things around SEO and online marketing, you can. You just have to figure out fun and innovative ways to do it.

I’m not going to link to the article; you can find it pretty easily on Forbes if interested. I tend to ignore articles writing the epitaph of SEO but this one struck a chord with me. Maybe it was the fact that reading the article cut into a fantastic summer weekend in New England. Maybe it was because it was on Forbes and I’m sure it caught a handful of clients’ eyes as well. Maybe it was that many of the conclusions drawn in the article are simply inaccurate. Either way, I can’t help feeling frustrated by how SEO continues to get portrayed.

The Definition of SEO

SEO gets a bad rap in many circles. From Forbes to the N.Y.Times to Dilbert, there is an inference that SEO is only about gaming a system (in most cases, a Google algorithm), often sacrificing quality and the experience of “real” visitors online. Here are a few definitions from respected industry publications that speak a bit differently about what SEO means.

Via SEOmoz: Search Engine Optimization isn’t just about “engines.” It’s about making your site better for people too. At SEOmoz we believe these principals go hand in hand.

Via Search Engine Watch: Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers.

And a 3 minute video via Search Engine Land:

Perhaps a lack of consensus from SEO professionals is to blame, but good SEO has always been about providing an experience that blends user experience with keyword strategy. Will SEO professionals push boundaries? Probably. But experimentation and educated testing should be part of every marketer’s strategic tactics.

Bottom-line: Good SEO is not about gaming the system.

Why You’re Doing It Wrong

Google’s growth post IPO helped fuel an industry (SEO) and an opportunity for prospective business owners to build successful online enterprises through search. However, in such a frenzy of rapid technological innovation and growth, business owners not entrenched in search engine optimization, or hit with algorithm updates early adopters felt, were easy to manipulate by snake oil SEO salesmen and “SEO professionals” leveraging questionable tactics.

Search Engine Watch’s Jonathan Allen has a powerful article outlining the significance misinformation and a lack of understanding of search engine optimization had on a small business. Jill Whalen’s article on the lies shady SEO companies tell further emphasizes the divide between good SEO and the practices that lead to SEO death sentences on publications like Forbes.

Generating low valued content with the objective of placement in sites meant solely to add weight to potential (or former) search engine ranking factors is a tactic getting hammered by Google’s most recent update (Penguin). But that does not mean every site ranking well for competitive keyword opportunities is leveraging “villainous” tactics meant to “game the system.”

By Google’s own admission, this algorithm update affected “about 3.1% of queries in English to a degree that a regular user might notice.”

The vast majority of websites were not adversely affected by this update. If you are “doing it right,” there is a good chance your site came out well ahead. By the way (shameless plug for KoMarketing), none of our clients felt pain from the Google Penguin update.

The Social Media Myth

The conclusion I have seen more than a few journalists take with the most recent Google update is that social media has taken the place of SEO link building. That is simply not true.  While social media would ideally provide a better opportunity for marketers to reach site owners and their target markets for traffic and visibility, part of that reach is to acquire links as well.

Matt Cutts (Google Director of Web Spam) has already gone on record to indicate that backlinks are still an important and significant driver for the ranking algorithm. Will social media have an impact? Certainly. But it’s far too early to predict how social media alone will dictate search engine visibility.

It’s Simply Too Hard to Fake Social Media

The notion that social media cannot be faked (or gamed) as SEO strategies were manipulated is naive. About a year ago a Popular Mechanics article highlighted a PeekYou report on fake, or “dummy,” accounts set up by an agency hired to boost follower numbers for Newt Gingrich. Their analysis was that only 8 percent of Gingrich’s 1.3 million followers were real human beings.

According to a ZDNet article citing Facebook itself, as many as 50 million profiles (6% of all accounts at its IPO filing) are fake. Will the algorithm eventually change and focus much more on social networking? Perhaps. But there is something scary about that as well.

The Evolution of Search and Social

SEO can benefit greatly from a good social media strategy. However, a social network is only one aspect of the way people want to search. In a recent TechCrunch interview, Altimeter analyst Jeremiah Owyang provided perspective on the idea that the social graph is one aspect of search, but so is user behavior, history, location, etc.

Search Evolves—and So Do Search Engine Marketing Strategies

I will give the Forbes contributor credit for one key point: One good SEO tactic is “writing, designing, recording, or videoing real and relevant content that benefits those who search.” What he fails to acknowledge is that content cannot sit on an island waiting to be found. Keyword strategy needs to be defined. Target audiences need to be identified and their needs (for content) understood and executed effectively.

Relationships need to be built and attention acquired and those variables are connected via links, social media sharing, etc. In my opinion, there has always been little doubt that ill-advised SEO shortcuts will get caught (they should) and building links may take as much energy as building real relationships (they should).

Good SEOs are and will continue to make good returns on their tactical strategies. That is why SEO has evolved into search engine marketing. Successful search engine marketers learn and adjust as the algorithm dictates and seek to better understand the needs of  the marketplace in relation to the demands of the searcher. Instead of relying on the low valued tactics hit by updates like Google Penguin, search engine marketers are working on “what’s next” to maintain a successful SEM program.

Social media certainly will have a place in search but Forbes has it wrong and is making critical errors in conclusions about SEO and its place in an internet marketing strategy.

Note: The contributor for Forbes made adjustments to their article since originally published and also made final comments in a blog post found here. There are still arguments for consideration but he’s right to acknowledge that there always is a point of diminishing returns in any discussion.

If you aren’t familiar, WordCamps are described as “informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.”

My session, SEO & WP: Killing in 2012 covered what’s happening right now in the SEO world and the various plugins you can use to optimize your WordPress site. Here are some of the highlights:

Best Practices are still best practices.

It’s important you make sure your site is structured properly – Accessible navigation, properly structured URLs, no duplicate content, robots, site maps, etc.

Plugins:

• Yoast SEO
• Smush.it (image compression for a faster site)
• W3 Total Cache (For site speed optimization)

Search = Relationships

With personalization, Google+ and the stiff link penalties being handed out, search is becoming more and more about relationships. It’s important that people are able to share your content and you are doing what you can to connect.

Plugins:

• Sharebar or Shareaholic
• Facebook Comments
• AuthorSure (A rel=author plugin)

Analytics

With Google taking information away from us it’s important we try to get as much other information as we can from the analytics tools available.

Plugins:

• Google Analytics Plugin (An easy way to get extra info)
• Social Media Detection (Learn which social media networks are your users logged into)

Check out the slides:

Factors B2B search engine marketers should seek to understand about their competition include keyword and content strategy, inbound link information, and social media presence. Here are seven SEO tools we recommend using for evaluating the competition.

Screaming Frog

• SEO Objective: Obtain the file information and SEO properties per page of the competitive website.

Screaming Frog lets SEO professionals crawl entire domains, pulling SEO relevant page details like HTML titles, Meta Descriptions, Keywords, Headings, etc. With this information in hand, an SEO professional can work more diligently in evaluating the competitor’s keyword strategy, key phrase usage across the site, and depth of material within the domain.

The free version crawls up to 500 URL’s, which may be ideal for small sites, but larger organizations should invest in the commercial version which carries a £99 per annum licensing fee. I run reports from Screaming Frog daily, so the investment has certainly been well worth it.

Open Site Explorer

• SEO Objective: Obtain key inbound link information of the competitive website.

Inbound link review is a critical component for competitive SEO analysis and Open Site Explorer, part of the SEOmoz suite of SEO tools, is one of the best resources available. The free version of Open Site Explorer provides high level link metrics such as inbound links to the domain, overall site, and a proprietary scoring system designed to emulate in part the Google PageRank algorithm.

The commercial version provides more in-depth analysis, such as sorting by the level of importance of each link and site linking, anchor text details, and comparison reports. SEOmoz is a bit more expensive than other tools ($99-$499 per year), so consideration should be made into leveraging their entire SEO suite, in addition to Open Site Explorer.

Majestic SEO

• SEO Objective: Provide a secondary or alternative source of inbound link information.

The free version of Majestic SEO provides a nice alternative to Open Site Explorer. SEO professionals can obtain detailed information for their own sites through a simple verification process, and can also access general link information on competitors as well. The commercial version provides more in-depth details on competitive sites and there are multiple pricing options.

In my opinion, it is advantageous to have more than one link reporting tool, since no single resource has the same volume of link information as Google. Comparative benchmarks across tools like Open Site Explorer and Majestic SEO provide for greater coverage and analysis. But a key difference between Majestic SEO and Open Site Explorer is focus. Majestic is almost solely focused on link analysis and pricing options are reflective of that.

Spyfu

• SEO Objective: Learn more about the competitive keyword strategies and keyword costs.

Spyfu provides in-depth reports on the keyword phrases a competitor is bidding on in PPC, and the estimated costs associated to them. Broken out by date found, CPC, and estimated search volumes among other data points, SEO professionals can get a better understanding of the search marketing budgets and competitiveness of organizations vying for target phrases.

Report data can be exported in Excel and csv, for easy manipulation and formatting. Need to sell your search engine marketing program to an executive? There is almost nothing better than illustrating the approximate costs of a competitors bidding strategy and the depth of competition involved.

RavenTools

• SEO Objective: Understand keyword positioning (keyword rank) of competitive websites.

RavenTools provides a simple interface for adding competitors and keyword phrases for ranking comparison. Rankings can only be tracked over time for the main site, and we export competitive data on a regular basis (because it is not tracked historically).

Like SEOmoz, RavenTools is a bit more expensive than other SEO tools. As a result, evaluation of the entire suite of RavenTools functionality should be made, to justify and support the investment.

FollowerWonk

• SEO Objective: Understand the impact of the Twitter network associated with key profiles of the competitive website.

Assuming your competition is using Twitter, FollowerWonk is one of the few free tools available that provide analysis of a target profile’s Twitter network. Information which can be gathered includes locations, network size (number of followers/following), and influence. We use the influence scores in an attempt to find key profiles in various markets and industries, and attempt to learn who and what influences them through ongoing monitoring and analysis.

Quantcast

• SEO Objective: Provide a high level demographic and management view of the competitive website

In my opinion, Quantcast provides the best high level traffic data for competitive websites, with the corresponding breakdown of audience demographics. While we have seen inaccuracies in visitor counts, Quantcast in coordination with sites like Alexa and Compete, can provide a reasonable method for establishing traffic benchmarks across the competition.

Final Thoughts and Considerations

Greater access and ability to gather competitive information puts the B2B SEO at a distinct advantage. We hope sharing these tools will help start the process but to truly succeed, one must take the information gathered and make actionable recommendations and plans. Data will only get the SEO professional so far.

For more tools and information, check out my recent column 40+ SEO Tools of the Trade. What SEO tools do you find important for competitive analysis? Are there alternative SEO tools out there that satisfy a majority of the needs listed above? We would enjoy reading your feedback and perspective via the comments below.