B2B SEO is a Different Animal

When you start to perform search engine marketing and optimization for your own business website you really have to figure out whether you are attempting to market a business to a B2B or B2C audience. A consumer audience could very well read their email at midnight and purchase something but not a business audience. Your SEO efforts are going to be quite different depending on which type of person you are trying to attract.

Here are some key elements to look out for B2B SEO:

SEO Demand Generation: For companies that are targeting other businesses in a niche industry, often times they need to target keywords naturally within their content and the rest of the on site optimziation for keywords that have little search volume. This is when there are industry specific terminology that may not have a high search volume yet. But sometimes it makes sense to target a mix of both keywords that people are searching for and keywords that are industry specific that will grow over time. And even sometimes a b2b focused campaign can leverage (and should) other sources of online and offline marketing to help build new keyword search volume (and build a demand) within a specific target marketplace.

Online PR Timing: Whether you are distributing some PR or attacking the social media front your timing is going to be critical. You can’t expect to target a B2B audience creating efforts at 10 o’clock at night can you? You know your audience best so try to anticipate when the best time for something to land in front of them is. You don’t want to be wasting your efforts if nobody is going to see what you are doing. Timing things wrong could lead to absolutely nothing occurring on your website. Remember to keep testing different approaches.

Content Verbiage: It is safe to say that different keywords are going to attract different people. The word “cheap” is going to pull in a different audience than “inexpensive” so it is up to you to figure this out before you begin optimizing your website or putting together an internet marketing campaign. Put a large emphasis on the types of keywords you want to incorporate into your site and your plan. The wrong keywords could pull in the wrong audience which could be disastrous.

Your B2B audience will appreciate a methodical approach to your search engine optimization. Remember that it is an audience that just wants to get the business part done. Many of the decision makers are going to be managers, department directors and some business owners so they just want to see the information, how you are going to solve the problem at hand and what the cost will be to do it. It is a different type of mind set than reaching out to a consumer based audience which is usually driven on emotion and branding to purchase what they want.

source: http://www.searchengineoptimizationjournal.com/2010/07/12/b2b-seo/

Build Links Through Social Media

For the first years when social media made it onto the playing field of marketing companies where not sure what to do with it, now if you avoid it you could face a serious downfall with your business. SEO and social media go hand-in-hand and has become a crucial ingredient to marketing any business. There are however distinct methods to the madness that can help your websites SEO over time.


Contests: One of the goals of social media will be to have your audience push your message out through their channels by the form of retweets, Facebook like buttons and blog posts. That is when your efforts will really start to pay off how they should. When you can get an audience member writing a blog post on your promotion those natural links are going to lead to great SEO.


Viral: A viral marketing campaign pushed through the social channels can lead to an amazing amount of links pointing to your website. A great example of viral marketing is the Blendtec iPhone video that has reached an astonishing 8.5 million views on YouTube and generated something in the ball park of 6-7 thousands one way links. This is an example of social media creating a fierce amount of publicity and links.


Kicking and Screaming: Are you upset about something in your industry? Let the world know because it might just create some really nice one way links pointing your blog or website. People like it when others are mad about something, as strange as that sounds they might just jump into the conversation and help out spreading your message. This could also lead to some really great one way links pointing to your website over time.


All it really takes is some creative outside the box thinking. If you have a team of employees don’t be scared to get everyone’s input. Have a brainstorming session and get everyone’s say about how to really kick things up on the social front to generate some nice one way links pointing to your website. Social media is not just about letting people know you just made your coffee too hot it is also about leveraging your voice and your message.


source: searchengineoptimizationjournal

How to Create Content Specifically For Your Affiliate Product

The Internet is sometimes called one big advertisement. It is true that, since the first web sites began to appear, web designers have realized the potential of web driven product sales. It may seem like an impossible task to join the fight to make online sales today. However, the door is still wide open for you if you can learn how to create content that is valuable to readers and how to create content specifically for your affiliate product. There are a few considerations that you must keep in mind.

Striking a Healthy Balance Between Promotion and Value

One of the worst things that you can do when creating content specifically for an affiliate product is to make the content one big sales pitch. Anyone that has spent even a little time hunting for products on the Internet knows exactly what such content looks like. It provides little information that is not opinionated and gives no real information. In fact, all it does is prop up a product or service as the best without giving a reason why.

Instead, use a writing technique called selective informational reviewing. This is the same technique that many documentary film makers and some news channels use to spin information. All that you need to do is write a review that gives solid information about the product without including a single opinionated statement. For example, compare the following statements. Both are intended to sell the product but only one is valuable:

Company Inc. is the best company out there for white bread.
Company Inc. bakes their white bread with all natural ingredients and old fashioned clay ovens.

Don’t Just Review – Reveal

One of the worst things that you can do on your web site is to just build an enormous review center. Generate content that not only promotes an affiliate product, but informs your readers about the product itself. For example, a reader might not know the benefit of choosing white bread made from all natural ingredients if they do not know the health benefits of doing so, the methods used to create such bread, the source of the ingredients, etc.

You might also consider creating some content about the history of bread baking to rank for the keyword bread (a challenge, yes) or inform your readers how much fresh bread can be when made like it was in the past. Pretend like your readers have no clue what your affiliate product is. The more information that you can include to increase the strength of your claims, the better.

If you are paying content writers to write your content for you, make sure that you are giving them the proper guidelines. If you expect a writer to just automatically know what to do then you are going to have a lot of issues with the content. If you want your content to be generated specifically for your affiliate product, then you need to let your writers know about that. Give them the details and goals that you have in mind.

source: niceblogger