James Crowe – Page 9 – SEO Liverpool

Advanced Business to Business Marketing

This week at SEO Liverpool we’ve had a discussion this about how best to leverage b2b marketing. Have a look at our tips.

10 Tips for business-2-business marketing

1. Reach prospects early in the buying cycle
2. Advertise in “the tail”
3. Include non banded keywords
4. Pre qualify clickers
5. Focus and align ad copy
6. Create very specific landing pages and microsites
7. Test pages continuously
8. Offer multiple action options
9. Simplify registration forms
10. Turn web inquiries into sales leads

Advertising in the tail

Example is software: the tail would go to software…. enterprise software… business enterprise software and so on

Include non banded keywords

Use adcopy to pre-qualify clickers
Address your specific target audience

Pre qualify clickers

Align ad copy with search query
Modify copy across buying cycle
laptop computer -> laptop information -> laptop user reviews -> ibm laptop models -> ibm thinkpad t61

Microsite

Typically between 3-10 pages.
Focused on a solution or client type.
It eliminates the political stuff that comes with changing a corporate website

Test page elements – landing page testing

Run a/b or multivariate constantly on microsites.
Pick items to test.
Page layout.
Action triggers.
Images.

Registration form placement.

Names and descriptions of downloadable assets
Registration form fields

Track & improve results

Get some decent metrics into a chart of 60 days

Secondary actions

Allow for more than just one action
Registration forms

*Scour the internet and look for great examples of these*

For more information contact SEO Liverpool

Some Excellent Search Marketing Advice

Some quick tips for budding SEO company or in-house SEO’s

Strategy deployment and competition

Check your competition… simply try and have more content rich pages than them. Assuming you have the same amount of content and same amount of links. Treat it like a head to head race. Then improve your navigation and architecture to get the edge.

Assume we all have healthy marketing budgets to allocate towards these strategies. What do we do? We allocate a % towards each strategy. Because we know it works, and have demonstrated this. That’s what the bigger firms do. Implement as many strategies you can within that budget. Choose the ones based on looking at your competition. Not hard to find out the strategies they’ve deployed already. If you conduct good research, you won’t need to deploy all these strategies. Implement as many as you can afford and make sure you have conversion processes.

A bit about conversion.

Create a measurable goal for each page. Lots of pages have great filler and content, but don’t compel readers to take action. Capture an email, lead, sale, etc. Have a clear call to action at the end of the page to get to the next step. Put an phone number on there, or a simple a link that advances the process. Don’t make users search for the call to action.

When collecting personal info, make people feel secure about it. Get a security certificate. Some laws require it. Make the contact page have multiple mechanisms of communication. This is your opportunity to increase conversion rate.

Your ideal SEO team:

Designer
Web Developer
Content Writer
Marketing Manager
Wiz Technical Manager
Expert SEO Specialist
Expert Strategist that’s done it more than once

SEO Liverpool would appreciate your feedback

7 Proven Tips That Will Get You To Number 1

Some SEO tips from the offices of SEO Liverpool company Summit Online Marketing.

Now everyone has heard that content is king. It’s really all about the text, video, images in a keyword rich environment.

* Tip 1: Get good copy to support the keyword research. If it’s an appliance part – find images and text to support it. Video too.

* Tip 2: Navigation and architecture. Ability to choose structure that the engines can index. Be careful of certain types of Javascript and other non-indexable navigation.

* Tip 3: Blogs. Another form of content. Pictures, text, images served in a slightly different manner. It’s a strategy. You don’t need to use all these strategies to dominate, but in a competitive arena, you need to deploy more and more to compete.

* Tip 4: Quality and keyword rich inbound links. Utilise keywords in link text – avoid using your company name. Helpful resources at Google Webmaster Central, and on the Thinkprofits website. Yahoo! Site Explorer is a great tool to measure inbound links. The bottom line is you want links from other websites to your own.

* Tip 5: The database you install is important. Make sure the engines can index the content in your database. It’s well worth the investment to get the right database in place.

* Tip 6: Electronic press releases. There is so much we can do with PR to get sites on Google often within 24 hours.

* Tip 7: Domain name strategy. We do find many people are missing out on this. When the opportunity arises to purchase a keyword rich domain, although not always possible, if the opportunity is there – set it as primary domain. Get extra points for that e.g. LuxuryYachtCharters.com will help rank. Register your domain for a long term, because it may give you more points. Another idea is to register your keyword rich domain, and forward it to your primary site. Also assist in getting more traffic by address bar navigators.

Hope you enjoy these quick search engine optimisation tips

Thanks for your patience… SEO Liverpool are blogging again.

Thank you for your patience

Good news…. We’re starting to blog again.

Over the past year, unfortunately we’ve been unable to contribute to this blog. I’d like to tell you that this will all change. Extra investment into summit online marketing will enabled us to update the blog daily from Monday the 20th of September 2010.

Please feel free to contact us with any post ideas or contributions

Regards

The SEO Liverpool Team

The Secret to Getting Projects (Even Big Ones) Done Fast Part 2

Professional Copywriters Never Get Stuck!

Sure — of course, everyone can have writer’s block, even a professional copywriter that is being paid £500 to write a hard-punching salesletter. But the professional copywriter won’t get stuck long!

You see, most Professional copywriters that write web copy and salesletters for a living will reach into their SWIPE file (a stash of old salesletters and headlines that were kept and filed away by the copywriter). Once the copywriter pulls out the stash of winning headlines and sales copy that had been filed away, it’s just a matter of time to review the material that will spark NEW ideas and bring the clarity of the project into focus.

The Secret to Getting Projects (Even Big Ones) Done Fast Part 1

Here at SEO Liverpool we know that Starting a project, especially a big one, is probably one of the toughest things for people to do, including me! Sometimes all that is needed are some ideas to get your brain started in the right direction and overcome procrastination. But often times, entrepreneurs sit quietly in their desperation waiting for the stroke of genius to come to them… something that will start their project off on the right foot. I’ve been there myself struggling, literally pulling my hair out and I can tell you outright – there is NO reason for any of this madness.

Having been in the Legal field as an office manager and legal assistant for over in a previous career, I had the chance to deal with many legal forms and processes over and over again. This form here. That process there. After a number of years doing this, I began to notice a pattern. Everything had a form, a process, a structure. Even the solicitors I worked for — whenever they would see a legal paper that they really liked and admired the format, they would ask for a copy of it to put in their FORMS file to refer back to at a later time. Many solicitors operate on the premise of working from a FORM rather than having to re-create a whole entire document from scratch. And it makes sense because it’s a time saver!

Duplicate Content Filters… Myth or Reality?

Here at SEO Liverpool I’ve spent a lot of the day chatting with various people about duplicate content filters… do they exist or not? Well, the answer seems to be yes. BUT, as far as I can tell, there are no penalties for using duplicate content. The only problem is that the page with the best PageRank, will be the one to appear at the top of the search engine results, for a search matching a phrase, which is found on multiple pages. When you think about it, it makes sense. Effectively it means, “sure, go ahead, use duplicate content, but be aware that unless you have the best PageRank for a particular page, that content isn’t going to do you any good.” … which effectively stops people who are slapping up sites with the same content everyone uses, but doing very little to promote their sites, from getting top search engine placement. … and also explains why an original article, when submitted to a high PageRank article directory, results in the article directory being listed at the top of the search engine results for a matching phrase, above your original page containing “your” article.

So… you have several options…

1: Use freely available content, and know that your site is unlikely to get good search engine rankings, unless you heavily promote your pages and get them good PageRank.
2: Use freely available content and re-write it extensively.
3: Write your own, original, content for every page.
4: Use articles that very few other people will be using… from sources such as Article Underground (http://www.scamfree.com/articles/) as I’ve been recommending. If each page you create has 20 similar pages out there on the web, do some promotion, use the Article Underground blogs as announcement services, get your page to PR3 or 4, and your page will be the one at the top of those 20 pages in the search engine results.

Wikipedia (A good value link)

At SEO Liverpool we always try and help clients find ways gaining leverage in Google. About two years ago Wikipedia certainly was… it’s popularity as an SEO tool seems to have diminished in the past year (or maybe i’m wrong)

Why?

Ever notice – when you search for a person on Google – that Wikipedia entries often come up in the top 10 search results? Have you ever wondered how you’d benefit from such a listing, and the traffic it would bring? Herein lies the conundrum.Wikipedia links are a no follow but the benefits of a wikipedia page are really worth the SEO effort.

Now you’re not supposed to write about yourself, or your company, or edit the entries about you. So how do you get in? Why not get a friend to interview you and do it for each other. Better yet get five friends and make it a team effort. Provide your buddies with a complete bio and life history. Decide on a team captain to start the entries. Then each one of your team can enter additional info. Just remember that it’s online encyclopedia, not a social bookmarking site. Read their “What Wikipedia Is” and “What Wikipedia Isn’t” pages, to stay within their TOS and abide by all their guidelines. Try to remain objective, unbiased and maintain a neutral point of view. Be sure all info is verifiable and based in fact, not editorial opinion. And don’t go crazy with links and references.

Give it a shot… If you’ve done anything significant, like won a national award, written ebooks, spoken at seminars, are a CEO, or have done anything noticeable, or remarkable, ask a friend to make a Wiki entry for you. Then, if you’re lucky, and they accept your entry, maybe your name will start appearing at the top of the Google search results.

This is a quick win!

Successful SEO with B2B part 2

This is the next part in my collective sessions on SEO and Site Architecture. I’ve be discussing creating a successful SEO campaign with a B2B site and this post is going to elaborate on keyword research.

2. Determine relative popularity

Once you’ve created a full list of potential keywords, you need to determine the relative popularity of those search terms. Often paid search keyword research tools (such as Google’s Traffic Estimator) won’t have data because traffic for these terms is low. In some cases, there will be data, but it will show very low activity. That’s okay. Don’t pay too much attention to that. Rather, use tools like Keyword Discovery to determine relative historical popularity of your keywords. This will give you some idea of which search terms are used more often than others on your list. The actual raw number of searches for a given search term really doesn’t matter much.

When you’re doing this work, remember to enter the starter keyword(s) or starter keyphrase, letting your research tool return permutations and long-tail options. Not only will this give you a larger list to consider, but the results will often lead you down a path you hadn’t previously considered.

At SEO Liverpool we use Worktracker as our Keyword discovery tool. It’s an excellent resource with the ability to dig around keywords, save campaigns and most importantly you can revisit and add to your projects. This is paramount in keeping your campaign viable and responsive to change.

When I’m looking for some quick data you can’t beat the Adwords keyword tool. It’s great for checking the value of core keywords. We use this data when meeting with clients to make them aware of potential clients numbers looking for there products or services.

Stick around for the next instalment.

Successful SEO and site Architecture with B2B

I’ve seen recently some very common mistakes here at SEO Liverpool with B2B marketing websites. They usually make mistakes with organic search and inadequate site architecture-the fact that many B2B sites don’t have sufficient content to respond to desired search terms.

The common solution is to adding more content and trust me many do… proper site architecture is also critical.

Here is the first of many key points that will help your B2B site.

1. Identify potential keywords

Keyword strategy in B2B SEO is downright difficult. As numerous blog posts will tell you this is very step in your SEO Campaign poor keyword data can debilitate your strategy before it’s even got going. Your goal in this first step is not to make keyword choices or judgements, but rather to create the gross list, being as inclusive as possible of the potential terms actual prospects might use.

Focus on generic keywords; don’t get caught up in proprietary brand terms. Think of the types of products and services you sell. What do customers and prospects call things? Will their search string express the product/service sought, the problem they’re experiencing, or the type of company potentially offering solutions? Does geography play a role in the search string? Geo-specifics are quick wins.

keep reading for more tips.