Recently an article came out on wolf-howl.com regarding the use of outbound links on your website. The articles author, Greg Niland, makes several assertions as to why outbound linking might benefit your website:

1. It encourages others to link back to you
   1. The author talks about linking reciprocity and how it benefits your website as a whole.
2. It improves user experience
   1.  Explains that once the user uses your site to find other valuable web content it makes them more likely to return
3. Why else do search engine patents talk about it?
   1. Search engine patents outline rewarding sites for creating and maintaining outbound links.  Why wouldn’t it be a part of the search engine ranking algorithm then?
4. Little risk, big reward
   1. At this point, why not? Niland describes that adding one link away from your webpage that is already flourishing with links back to your own website only represents a small percentage of the total ‘link juice’.

We’re not afraid to say that we learn something new every day about this Search Engine Optimization, and we hope you find this information valuable. This was definitely an article that challenges conventional wisdom about outbound links. Here is a link to the original article:

http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/outbound-linking-rankings/

Outbound Links & SEO is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

Q – B2B Magazine: With regards to SEO, briefly why would a B2B marketer be interested in optimizing their web site to bring in organic traffic? What do you say to companies that say, “Yeah, but we don’t sell stuff online, so it sounds like a lot of expense for not much gain.”

Mercury Leads Plvan: Over 93% of B2B buyers go online as much as 6 months prior to the actual acquisition of a product or service.  With this in mind, B2B marketers must admit that the website is the marquee for their business and SEO plays a pivotal role in your future.  This is even more important for B2B companies with long sales cycles and high ticket products or services, as the lead nurturing part of the equation becomes even more critical to overall marketing and sales success.  Search Engine Optimization is only part of the equation however, like a good direct response ad or direct mail package website marketers must focus on the WIFM” equation or what’s in it for me with their prospects?  If your prospective buyer comes to your website, after all of your hard work to push your rankings to the top, you’d better be able to convert them.  The core tenets of good Direct Marketing have a lot of crossover to search engine marketing with a less patient audience.  Statistically it’s been proven that website marketers have 8 seconds and 2.3 clicks to garner a conversion.  You need to be razor-sharp in your content creation while adhering to the complicated algorithms developed by today’s search engine requirements.

Q – B2B Magazine: What are some of the methods you recommend to gain rankings and own keywords?

Mercury Leads Plvan: First of all, extensive keyword research and competitive research should be conducted to make absolute certain that you are optimizing for the correct (keyword(s) phrases) you endeavor to be ranked and found by.  Secondly, adhering to the most current algorithm is critical.  This is a complex set of criteria which must be followed to the letter in order to gain search prominence.  As a way to “own keywords” and the associated phrases, marketers must view the SEO process as an ongoing investment in their future.  For high ticket sales, and undiscovered customers or segments, this investment is easily paid for.  Increasingly, fresh and informative content in the form of the blogging, landing or response pages, articles, white papers, virtual events, online PR, and pushing through the right social media outlets will serve to keep your content fresh and relevant in the eyes of the search engines, and this keeps you at the top.

Q – B2B Magazine: How should a company “think” of SEO, if it’s not used to operating like a web publisher?

Mercury Leads Plvan: Our experience has proven that all B2B companies have much to gain from good SEO, and that SEO should be viewed from more than just a customer acquisition perspective.  Future investors, strategic alliances, channel partners, international expansion, even acquiring key personnel are examples of other groups that can would be positively affected by great SEO.

Q – B2B Magazine: What kind of metrics do you recommend companies use when tracking SEO efforts?

Mercury Leads Plvan: At the base level, tracking unique visitors, page views, popular keywords, length of visit, and repeat visitors statistics can all be tracked easily with publicly available free tools.  Google Analytics as for example.  Many hosting facilities will offer an abundance of web metrics so factor this in your evaluation.   There are literally thousands of low cost tools that can leverage your knowledge about how successful your SEO is.  More importantly, our experience has shown that studying “the company you keep” and how you rank against competitors is equally important.  Again there are many tools available allowing you to track how you perform against these competing companies.  As the saying goes “offense wins games, defense wins championships”, by knowing what (keyword(s) phrases) your competition is using in both paid and unpaid search you can tilt the scale in your favor.

Q – B2B Magazine: Once a marketer successfully attracts a visitor to its website, what kinds of issues should they be thinking about vis a vis that person’s behavior? With all the options out there—email newsletters, blogs, content assets, opt-in promotional campaigns, contact forms, requests for calls—what kinds of questions should a company ask itself to maximize its Web traffic?

Mercury Leads Plvan: Two words are important here, “lead nurturing“!  As most of us know, today’s B2B marketers need to look beyond the “one-hit wonder”.  The C-Suite is particularly guilty of this as they are tied directly to company performance and are acutely aware of this.  Your goal, particularly in the event of a complex sales process is to gain share, and to keep top of mind with your prospect.  This is only done through multiple touch points with the prospect.  Too often, marketers place lengthy forms on their website, like anybody has time (see 8 seconds and 2.3 clicks above) to dedicate to this process. An alternative approach is to collect small bites of information and then formulate acquisition strategies which include many impressions over time nurturing the prospect.

Q – B2B Magazine: Ultimately, what is the most successful measure of an SEO effort?

Mercury Leads Plvan: For most companies, it comes down to sales but this shouldn’t be the only measure.  Referencing, my answers above however, the purpose of SEO can vary by stakeholder all of which can positively affect your organization by being at the top of search.  So why wouldn’t you prioritize SEO/SEM. You have everything to gain.

Contributing Journalist:

Jon VanZile – Freelance Writer B2B Magazine

jvzile@aol.com

Phone: (954) 788-4775

Fax: (954) 943-7092

My Website

Editing for Authors

LinkedIn Profile

My About.com Website

Mercury Leads Principal Interviewed by B2B Magazine is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!

One of Bob Dylan’s most famously quoted lyrics is, “For the times they are a-changin’” Never has that been more prevalent than in the world of internet marketing. Just a few years ago getting number one rankings on Google was relatively easy. We as internet marketing specialists can only look back at those times and think of the good old days of “low hanging fruit”. When Google started in 1998 the company indexed 26 million pages of content, by 2000 that number had reached 1 billion pages of content. As of 2008 there were well over 1 Trillion pages of indexed content on Google! That’s a lot of information to keep track of; more importantly a lot more competition for those marketing online.

With all of these additional pages, Google as well as other search engines, are constantly updating their algorithms to make searches more relevant and targeted to the user. Social search outlets as well as  semantic web software (improvements in the working relationship between computer and man) are some of the new trends with search engines and search marketing companies alike.

THE ERA OF SMART SEARCH ENGINES

Microsoft recently unveiled the new search engine Bing which works as a “decision search engine”. New features of Bing include video and image preview within the search results, local information that is personalized in the organic rankings (traffic, business listings, maps, reviews etc…) and instant answers. For example, current information will be displayed first in the organic listings for sports scores, finance, airline flight status’, celebrity news, new products/services and many other search terms. Bing, in essence, is making search results based more upon geotracking, recent search history, account/profile settings and currently published articles. Believe it or not Google keeps track a lot of what you search for. Other search engines like Yahoo, as well as industry specific vertical search engines are quickly adopting these new methods of indexing.  Internet marketing just got more complicated!

So what does this revolution in search engine indexing mean for businesses looking to get number one rankings? It means that a website can no longer solely focus on proper keyword text optimization. The term ‘Digital Asset Optimization’ has been thrown around some in the past years as a term to describe the practice of taking all of a company’s digital assets and promoting them through relevant marketing channels in addition to developing appropriate keyword and linking strategies. Digital Assets refers to various types of interactive media (video, image, audio, blog, podcast, ebook, webinar, RSS feed, news/pr, product/service, social media and networking sites). As of a few years ago only a few innovative search engine marketing firms adopted the use of Digital Asset Optimization, but in today’s economy more and more search marketing firms are jumping on board to stay ahead of the curve.

BROADENING SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION STRATEGIES

According to a Marketing Experiments Inc. estimate, in the future 90% of B2B buying communication will be through video. Tools are already on the market for consumers to create professional looking videos with ease. Today’s consumer wants to be entertained while quickly absorbing information to make smarter purchase decisions. It is up to us as SEO and SEM marketers to incorporate search engine optimization strategy into interactive media. The same rules do not apply to interactive media as they do with traditional SEO or SEM. A common rule of thumb in search marketing is to create and publish a lot of content. Creating a lot of quality rich content will not only gain a prospects trust but also look first-rate in the eyes of search engine spiders. Marketing online is not simply about creating content but building an online presence that extends to hundreds or thousands places on the web. Your content should be considered a brand extension of your company.

No matter what trends may come and go one thing will always remain constant: Content is King. The internet is no longer a digital storefront for an organization but rather a venue for a company to engage and interact with its customers. SEO Marketers need to be aware of the challenges of creating, branding, promoting and optimizing new forms of rich interactive content for their clients. For those search engine marketing agencies willing to take SEO and SEM to the next level the long-term rewards will be numerous.

Yours in Selling,

Paul J. Plvan
Principal
http://www.mercuryleads.com

The Future of Search Engine Optimization is a post from: Lead Generation Strategies: No Longer A One-Hit Wonder!