Archive of B2B SEO Posts

Many marketers understand how Google handles SEO – it has a specific algorithm and it makes it clear what its crawlers prefer and don't prefer – and content creators alter their actions accordingly.

But what about Bing?

"To many site owners, Bing is a mystery and is considered an afterthought in a search engine marketing campaign," the Elevate blog explains. The news source notes that Google makes up approximately 65 percent of global search engine queries, where as Bing and competitor Yahoo account of around 30 percent – a significant chunk that shouldn't be ignored.  ... Read the full post

Each year, Google implements approximately 500 improvements/changes to its search algorithm, Brand Dignity reports. This creates challenges for marketers trying to maintain a streamlined SEO philosophy, since they must constantly adapt to changes.

Much of these changes revolve around aesthetics and the way search results are displayed, while others are meant to help eliminate spam or enhance user experience.

Regardless, there are some universal actions to avoid when working on SEO that Google – no matter how often it changes it algorithm – will frown upon.  ... Read the full post

According to a recent study from eMarketer, nearly 80 percent of U.S. online advert spending will be allocated toward search, banners and advertising, BtoB Online reports. In all, online ad spending is expected to reach $40 billion by the end of 2012.

Specifically, 49.4 percent of expenses will be toward search marketing, 23.4 percent will go toward banners and 9.8 percent to video ads.

Researchers concluded that these proportions will remain relatively stable for the next four years, with video ads expected to make a push to around 15 percent during that time frame.  ... Read the full post

Traditional SEO is dead. Or at least, its hit its peak, according to the Savannah Morning News. The news source suggests in a recent article that Google search volumes are as high as they'll ever be, and businesses are now looking for alternative ways to be featured atop Google's coveted search engine results.

One possibility is app discovery. When a company develops a mobile app and submits it to the app store for the operating system (or systems) it plans to be available to, it gets "lumped into the market with the other hundreds of thousands of apps," the media outlet explains, and may not be visible to searchers looking for that app's assistance or capabilities.

App discovery would make it easier for a user to find a company's app versus a competitor's with a similar product.

Bing's blog reports that the search engine launched its iPhone mobile app discovery in June of last year, a sign of mainstream acceptance.

When using an Apple device to conduct a search, for say, a movie, apps for the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) or Fandango now automatically appear along with standard web results, while a search for "new apps" will populate mobile search engine pages with a plethora of related applications. 

B2B marketing companies that use SEO strategies to gain traffic may need to switch their focus to social media in lieu of Google's recent search results modification.

Google's Search plus Your World integrates Google Plus into search results, allowing people to "search against both the broader web and (your) own Google Plus social graph," Mashable reports.

What this means is, packing headlines and stories full of keywords will have a greatly reduced impact. If a client is signed into Google's social network and does a search for a topic, the top few links will likely be a mix of both traditional and social results.

This affects B2B companies, according to Poynter, because now social media optimization is more important than ever to spread content and gain referrals.

Google is also hoping to add Twitter and Facebook into the mix as well, further diluting traditional SEO-based results in favor of social sharing.

According to a May 2011 study from iTracks, 89 percent of U.S. B2B companies were using social media marketing. That other 11 percent? They risk being left in the dust. 

According to a recent infographic from Onward Search, New York is the top ranked metro area when it comes to hiring SEO professionals, Mashable reports.

Using the number of SEO-related positions posted on popular job board SimplyHired.com, researchers were able to determine that Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston joined New York as the top five cities most likely to have SEO openings.

Furthermore, the report ranked the most popular SEO job titles, with SEO manager, SEO specialist/analyst and SEO marketing director the top three positions. Copywriter, keyword strategist and link builder were also mentioned.

In terms of salary, researchers provided a range for each opening in correlation to which city applicants applied in. For example, an SEO director in New York would receive anywhere from $84,000 to $148,000 depending on experience, while the same position in Minneapolis, Minnesota (No. 12 in SEO job volume) would net a prospect between $63,000 and $110,000.

BusinessInsider recommends that in order to get the most out of an SEO agency, both sides must communicate effectively. For example, setting up regularly meetings to address questions can be more effective than playing email tag that may lead to confusion.

Large and up-and-coming businesses aren't blogging at a respectable rate, compared to charities and universities, according to an annual study from the Center for Marketing and Research at the University of Massachusetts.

Blogging is considered an integral part of search engine optimization and acts as a way for companies to not only keep consumers engaged, but be viewed as authorities in their fields by other businesses.

However, researchers found that only 21 percent of Fortune 500 companies are blogging. This, compared to the 50 percent of Inc. 500 companies that blog and the more than 60 percent of charities and universities that do the same, may indicate that there is a slowdown in the business adoption of SEO.  ... Read the full post

Marketers have always wondered how much that top spot on the search engine results page is worth. Now, a report from Slingshot SEO answers that question.

According to the study, the first organic position on the search engine results page grabs 18.2 percent of clicks. Subsequent sites drop off considerably large margins – the second spot garners 10.1 percent of clicks, the third gets 7.2 percent and the fourth garners 4.8 percent.

After the fold, no site gets more than 3 percent of the clicks, highlighting the importance of maintaining one of the first few positions on the search engine results page.  ... Read the full post

Search giant Google may be adding a static search bar to its portal, thereby making it easier to quickly conduct new queries, Ampercent reports.

The fixed-position query field would remain at the top of users' screens, even as they scroll up and down through the search results page. This ensures that if consumers feel the need to modify their queries, they can do so without having to scroll all the way back to the top.  ... Read the full post

Google is looking to build further support for its +1 feature through a standalone button that can be implemented into websites and blogs, the company recently announced.

The +1 button is a way to directly indicate whether a website is relevant to the terms that were searched and may have a pronounced effect on B2B SEO, if it takes off among Google users. For example, if consumers search for a piece of software and the top two websites are both optimized for that term, but the second website has a more diverse software library, then searchers will be more likely to give that site their nod of approval.  ... Read the full post