Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for B-to-B

The Truth
Section One:
Executive Summary

Much has changed over the past several years in the world of Search Engine Marketing
(SEM), and well beyond the predictable stuff of continuously evolving search engine
algorithms. Of the two most significant, the first is that “Web 2.0” (aka social media/user-
generated content) has achieved near-mainstream status – even for B2Bs – with implications
for the conduct of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

The second and more challenging change is the complexity of SEO, as practiced in the real
world. In times past, one could simply sprinkle key pages with relevant keywords, reflect
those properly in page titles and meta tags, and voila! –fairly gratifying search rankings were
sure to follow. Not so, anymore.

In part, this is a result of the continuing growth of the Web; it’s simply harder to get just any
site to rise above the din. In still larger part, it’s due to evolving search engine algorithms
placing increasing relative emphasis on:
reputation, as measured by quality inbound links
content relevance and freshness
domain age

This has had a number of consequences. For one, it puts much more importance on two
tasks that many companies seem to lack the organizational discipline to actually do:
inbound link recruitment and ongoing content development. For another, the small sites
(relatively speaking) of small and midsize B2Bs are often times going up against large-
company websites often times with tens of thousands of incoming links and even tens of
thousands of pages on their websites.

So what’s a small or midsize company to do?

Throw your hands in the air and convince yourself that “Google doesn’t really matter that
much anyway”? Sure, if you couldn’t care less that 93.4% of B-to-B purchases involve a
search and that Google is the preferred search engine for 80% of B-to-B searchers. Or
if you’re one of those Marketers who still believes “well we’re the exception, despite the
statistics.”

Frankly, ignoring Google is simply not an option. Period.

It’s time to:

• Acknowledge that a Search Engine strategy is essential to your marketing plan
• Accept the truth, which may not be what you want to hear
• Focus on a results-based strategy
• Partner with an expert Search Engine Marketing firm
• Persist with a commitment to ongoing content development and link-building

1
 • Analyze the results on an ongoing basis
• Be flexible and prepared to modify tactics, considering the fluid nature of ranking
algorithms and changes in your competitive market

Pragmatic approach, realistic expectations.

The days of focusing on whether you’re positioned for Keyword A on Page 1 in Position 4
are over. SEO is not a precision game. Any Search Engine Marketer worth her salt will
focus on the results of a holistic strategy, not on the day-to-day granular rankings of individual
key phrases.

As a Search Engine Strategy is planned, the most difficult of paradigm shifts for most
companies (and likely yourself) is to focus on results, not rankings. For good measure,
we’d like to say this one more time. Your Search strategy should be entirely focused on
results.

Let’s illustrate this important results-focused paradigm shift:

Example of an SEO strategy of the old days:

• Ignore the importance of setting specific goals for increases in traffic and leads
• Optimize for the most obvious, broad, competitive key phrases
• Optimize only page content, title tags and meta tags
• On a regular basis, obsess over precise rankings, disappointed on a daily basis that
you’re not showing up on Page 1 for a phrase that appears on 1,430,000 websites in
line, ahead of you
• Set it and forget it. Expect that the optimization alone, without ongoing content
development, should work miracles and outsmart Google’s algorithm
• Determine that the effort was a failure because either (a) you had no goals to measure
your success against or (b) you just didn’t achieve the rankings you wanted,
regardless of how unrealistic the strategy may have been
• Give up on SEO… or find a new consultant who will tell you what you want to hear
again, only to waste another 6-12 months on a flawed strategy

So, now, on the next page, let’s look at (and compare to the old) a 2009, eMagine SEO
Strategy …

2
Example of a pragmatic SEO strategy of today:
• Analyze and determine the business goals (traffic, leads, sales, brand awareness,
etc.)
• Understand and analyze the various needs of multiple searcher types:
o Administrative searcher assigned to conduct research
o Technical buyer
o Manager
o C-level executive/decision-maker
o and more …

• Through comprehensive research and analysis, determine a set of search phrases

which (a) are being searched for, (b) are not so competitive as to represent no realistic
opportunity of climbing up in the rankings and (c) are highly relevant to your space, but
not others.
• Understand and include search phrases addressing each phase of the sales cycle:
o Awareness
Prospect learns they have a pain
o Research/Consideration
Data gathering, define requirements, vetting, option screening, short list of
candidates
o Negotiation/Vendor Finalization
Review offerings, make recommendations, negotiate best price
o Purchase
Approval of purchase, complete final paperwork

• Determine a content development plan addressing the selected key phrases … based
on the presence or void of essential content to optimize for those phrases
• Develop the required content today, with the expectation that additional content will be
needed on an ongoing basis.
• Submit your website to all of the major online directories
• Commit to some form of an ongoing effort to maximize incoming link opportunities.
(this will vary from company to company)
• Ensure that your website is designed to effectively convert search traffic. A conversion
can include anything from a newsletter signup or whitepaper download (for the less
“hot” prospect) to a “Contact Sales” form completion (from a ready-to-buy prospect) or
even a “Chat Live” interaction (with someone who literally wants to speak to you
WHILE he or she is on your website.)
• Ensure that the appropriate analytics and CRM technologies are in place for true
closed-loop ROI analysis. Again, the goals should be based on actual ROI results.
Simply monitoring rankings or even counting visitors will not truly determine how many
actual dollars were produced over time from your efforts.

3
 • Understand the tactical changes recommended by your consultant on an ongoing
basis and address the changes without delay. (new content development, new link
strategies, testing lead-generation offers, landing page layouts, etc.)
• Monitor progress and the achievement of goals
• Be prepared for ongoing changes in both strategy and tactics

Important Stats

Favorite Search Engines of B-to-B searchers:

When, in the buying cycle, do B-to-B buyers use Search (broken down by budget):

4
For purchases of more than $10,000 over 60% of buyers would begin researching more than
2 months before the purchase date.

B-to-B searchers are searching at different PLACES at different phases of the sales cycle.
(although the general search engines like Google come first through each phase)

Notice that, while searchers are visiting Google at a high rate through the sales cycle (blue),
B-to-B Vertical sites (purple) become more important as you move through the sales cycle
(especially in the negotiation phase).

5
So, when we say refer to B-to-B vertical sites, what do we mean? The following rates the
most popular by B-to-B users:

The B-to-B Verticals have become increasingly important. (again, especially further along in
the sales cycle). For that reason, eMagine recommends that most of our clients consider
being represented in some of the most relevant of these. (this will vary from company to
company)

So, once you’ve generated the traffic, what types of content will most intrigue a prospect and
result in a conversion? Of 100% of B-to-B buyers surveyed, the below shows what
percentage of them consume the content below on a regular basis.

white papers 71%

case studies 67%
product literature 64%
articles 63%
analyst information 61%
webinars 33%
blogs 20%
video 17%
podcasts 10%

6
Some additional tidbits:
• Complex searches dominate in B-to-B (3 or more words)
• Buyers go beyond first page on Google (3-5 pages)
• Buyers do view (53%) and click on (34%) paid ads
• Buyers do provide valid information when registering (except phone numbers)
• Personal e-mail addresses are often used for registration, so don’t disregard them
• White Papers are considered most worthy of registration
• Buyers prefer overview copy for white papers and other conversion offers
• Only 48% of data currently goes directly into a CRM system such as Salesforce.com
• Salespeople are not following up on web leads (23%)
• Buyers want timely and courteous follow-up

c/o

7
Section Two
Search Engine History:
Understanding How the Industry Has Evolved

Much of the Internet evolved out of Yahoo!, a search directory that categorized websites.
Users would browse Yahoo!, as opposed to the "search" function that followed. Businesses
used to be able to simply submit their company information and web address to the Yahoo!
directory and get listed, resulting in a lot of new traffic to their site. Soon search engines
began competing with the directory, allowing people to search for what they wanted from a
database instead. If your website was listed among the top of these search results, your
traffic level would spike. As the internet grew, the percentage of users "searching" for things
would eclipse the number of people "browsing" for things.

It became very important very quickly to attain a top position on the search engines. An entire
industry (Search Engine Optimization, or SEO) was born out of this quest to become the
number one ranked website listing for the keywords people were searching on. In the early
days, optimizers used techniques such as stuffing a page with keywords or hiding keywords
in the same color as the background of the page. As the search engines caught on, they
started improving their search logic so that these methods did not work anymore. They do
this because manipulating a page's code to get a top position was always contrary to the goal
of the search engines - which was and still is delivering the most relevant results.

Today's search engine uses a complex scientific algorithm to find the most relevant content.
The most popular search engine, Google, uses a formula that also takes into account the
number of incoming links that a site has -- rationalizing that a site that has a large number of
high-quality links must be a good resource, and thus should be ranked higher. Of course,
marketers were hip to this and started to manipulate the link counts to their sites through link
farms, free-for-all link pages, and even by buying link positions on other sites. Google
claims it can identify bought links, but how much it relies on “tattle tales” versus an actual
adjustment to its algorithm is anyone’s guess.

Search engines like Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves) accept natural language queries such as
"Who won the World Series in 1918?" and display matching results. Localization and
personalization are some of the industry buzzwords that crop up in the beta sites of Google
and Yahoo now.

Google also extends their search to your personal computer files, and allows you to send a
text message via your cell phone and receive a return text message with a matching
business name, location and phone#. Since going public, Google has been releasing a frenzy
of new products and services. Most of their money now is made via pay per click advertising
sales.

8
Section Three
Traditional Marketing vs. Search Engine Marketing
How They Differ and How They Complement Each Other

Traditional marketing encompasses print advertising, radio and television advertising, trade
shows, corporate identity, signage, and more. These forms of media are great at gaining
exposure at a broad level. Much of traditional marketing pricing models are based on the
number of eyeballs that view the campaign.

Search engine marketing has become such an essential part of the overall marketing plan
that it is even hard to consider it non-traditional at this point. Targeting your audience by
identifying the specific keywords they use in their search is a very focused and trackable
method of marketing. Search engine marketing pricing models range from service-based
monthly pricing to a pay-per-click model.

Not everyone loves it, but the pay-per-click format is very close to a true ROI-based model,
and certainly is better than some of the alternatives – such as banner advertising. Consider
using television as an example… imagine if Pepsi only had to pay when a couch potato
opened a can of Pepsi, instead of the $200,000+ rate they pay now just for running a 30-
second commercial on a popular television show. It would be as though Google charged you
simply to show your ad on their network, and charged you a base fee without regard for the
search term used or result obtained (though Google now does provide this type of
pricing/targeted model for advertisers, also).

Today many marketers are using their traditional marketing to drive traffic to their website as
well as get a message across. They are putting their URLs on billboards, business cards,
fleet trucks, ATM receipts and everywhere else they can think of. They want the eyeballs to
visit the website, because there the engagement is interactive and trackable from the point
they hit the home page.

Search engine marketing drives traffic to the website as well, but the major difference is that it
is measurable from the start, from before the visitor hits the home page. Take it a step further
and track conversions, and you’re on your way to continuous improvement of your web
marketing campaign.

9
Section Four
Current Search Engines

What is a search engine?

"Search Engines" allow you to enter a search keyword query, and then respond with results
that are (hopefully) relevant. Google is the most prominent. Their search engine database
currently feeds AOL and Netscape, among others. Countless other websites carry their
syndicated sponsored ads. They are constantly innovating with features such as wireless text
message queries to their database, localization, personalization, and even fraternization (on
social networking acquisition orkut.com). Other strong search engine players include Yahoo,
MSN and Ask.

Other types of web-based search tools that are mistaken for search engines are Directories
and Meta Crawlers. Directories are categorized lists of websites that you can browse. Meta
Crawlers act as aggregators by scraping and combining the results from multiple search
engines, and then rank the results based on a number of different factors.

Besides the free search engines, there are paid search listings provided by firms such as
Google, Yahoo and MSN, who own the majority of the paid market; and the secondary
players, FindWhat.com and Kanoodle.com.

Based on the definitions of what type of search sites are not pure search engines, you can
conclude that a true search engine is an online searchable database of indexed web pages.
A formal definition from webopedia.com reads: “A program that searches documents for
specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found.”

Section Five:
Current Directories

Directories differ from search engines in that they are categorized and edited by humans.
Getting your site listed in a high-quality directory is equivalent to obtaining a high-quality link:
search engines think very highly of directories such as the Yahoo! Directory (different from
the Yahoo! Search Engine) and the Open Directory.

Open Directory is about open source; listing is free, but nowadays it is nearly impossible to
get listed. Each category has an editor, and – depending on the mood of the editor – they
may include or reject your site. Since the organization is all-volunteer, there may not even be
an active editor in your category. Try to do it, just to say you did; but by no means hang your
hat on it.

There are free directories that are very important to submit to, including entireweb.com,
familyfriendlysites.com, gimpsy.com, illumirate.com, mavicanet.com, qango.com,

10
selectsurf.com and skaffe.com. Do not submit your site to the “free for all” link farms that
accept all link submissions and exist just to facilitate link exchanges.

Yahoo! Directory used to be free, but for the last few years they have been charging $300 for
an "express" review (7 days or less); it's non-refundable and becomes an annual charge if
they accept your site.

Other paid directories include Business.com, B2Byellowpages.com, Zeal.com, About.com,

Allestra.com, Goguides.org, MSN Small Business Directory, and countless others.

One of the main reasons you’ll want to hire a professional web firm to manage your online
marketing campaign is because you won’t have the time or the resources to discover all the
new directories that emerge. So much research goes into successful search engine
promotion that finding new, valid sites to submit to is almost worth the outsourced SEO
investment alone. And it’s not just the exercise of submitting; it needs to be done optimally.
Merely submitting your site to the directories without leveraging your important keyphrases
can waste you a considerable sum of money.

Section Six
Selecting Your Keywords:
The Most Important Step

Keywords are the most important part of the entire SEO process. They are what your
potential customers will use when searching for a new supplier on Google or Yahoo!.
Sometimes they will search with broad terms such as "metal detector"; but often they will also
search for specific brands such as "white's metal detectors", or they will look for a regional
supplier by entering words such as "Boston metal detectors".

In preparing to do keyword research, it is best to be broad at first and then to get more
precise with the results. Data to be considered include search volume, number of competing
sites and value to the company. Once the data is gathered for both the broad and the precise
keywords, it can easily be sorted to rank the keywords and select a targeted list.

Depending on how well-indexed your site is, or how many incoming links you have to your
site, you can choose a range of keywords to pursue. Some SEO companies use a metric
called the KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) that looks at both search volume and
competing sites. What you want to select are the keywords that have the highest search
volume and the lowest number of competing sites.

With the introduction of pay per click, you can also pursue the broader keywords using the
paid method – ensuring a top ranking for even the most competitive keyword phrases. Of
course, then you have to watch the bid amounts.

11
With a thorough keyword analysis, you will be on your way to an effective search engine
marketing campaign. Follow your traffic logs closely and look for keywords that show up - you
may see some you didn't plan on, and you may want to add them into your targeted list (and
optimization efforts, of course).

Section Seven
Optimizing Web Content for the Search Engines

Once you have selected the target keywords that you would like to be ranked on by the
search engines, the next step is to determine what content on your website should be
optimized.

What does "optimize" mean?

It means formatting your pages in a manner that the search engines will understand, and that
will enable them to index the pages in their databases. If a page is optimized properly, when
a search engine spiders the page it will pick up on the relevance of certain keywords (the
targeted keyword phrases that have already been carefully selected).

How can you make your pages more relevant, or more "optimal", from the start?
Make sure your site has the following:
• At least one content page for each targeted keyword phrase
• Shortened, non-dynamic URLs without “?”s in them. Many sites now use rewrite scripts; this
is done so the search engine spiders can assign a greater degree of relevance to them, thus
boosting your SEO efforts.

And then make sure your content pages have the following:
• a text headline that uses the exact keyword phrase
• at least three paragraphs of text, including variations of the keyword phrase
• additional keywords that are linked to other pages within the site
• a footer with a link to the sitemap

Good optimizing also includes:

• crafting well-written meta tags (title, keywords and descriptions)
• image descriptions
• keyphrase-rich link text, vs. simply “Click here for more”

The key to gaining search engine visibility is not in stuffing your pages with the same
keywords over and over, but providing your visitors with deep, compelling content and
making sure your target keywords are represented in that content.

12
Section Eight
Analyzing Your Site Content:
Content is king.

Older search engine optimization techniques are dead, and now the key to penetrating the
search engines is to have ample content that is relevant to your target keyword phrases.

If you have 100 keyword phrases in your target list, then you should make sure there are at
least 100 pages of content on your site. Pretty simple, actually – just one page of content for
each keyword phrase.

The content page should include two or three paragraphs that use the keyword phrase, and
should also include internal links to other content pages on your site.

An even more basic rule would be "the more content, the better".

For example, a site with minimal content, lots of images and a dizzying flash movie will rarely
– if ever – help the search engine spiders determine your pages’ or your site’s relevance, and
may have the same effect on prospects as well.
A site that is deep in content and easy to navigate will win fans and loyal visitors, and – you
guessed it – hungry search engine spiders will also come a-crawlin'.

Search engine spiders don't just like to read HTML files, though; they also devour PDF files,
Microsoft Word documents and anything else you link to from a site map. You can even
optimize your PDFs around your keywords as well, as Google and others can now read those
files.

The best time to write (or rewrite) your content is after you've completed some thorough
keyword research, which can then drive your content themes ...and eventually, your search
engine rankings.

Section Nine
Effective Site Design for Search Engine Performance

It's not that easy, everyone knows that. Web developers want to use all the latest code,
designers want to jazz up client sites with flash, and clients want their sites to appear both
professional and consistent.

Much of this is in stark contrast to what the search engines want to index, though, which is
content, content and more content.

Compromise is the key to any great relationship.

13
Achieve a good compromise here and you'll end up with a usable web site that is ranked well
organically by the search engines. Be stubborn and you'll get a showcase site that no one
visits or a highly-positioned site that no one will ever come back to.

Here are some key elements to make your new site effective on all fronts:
• create a usable layout and make it consistent throughout your site
• use familiar link names and layouts, so users are comfortable and navigate easily
• include a sitemap leading to every page of content on your site, and break it up into multiple
categorized sitemaps if you have a large site
• make sure you've done thorough keyword research before you write your content pages
• create a content page for each targeted keyword phrase
• make sure each page has a text headline that uses the exact keyword phrase
• make sure each page has at least two paragraphs of text, including variations of the
keyword phrase
• incorporate keyphrase-rich text links in each page’s content to other pages on your own site
• use HTML text menus in your navigation so the search engine spiders can follow the links
• use HTML text footer with a link to the sitemap and your address info (this will get picked up
by the search engines' localization features)

Section Ten
Considerations for Database and Flash Sites

So you’ve gone ahead and created a cutting edge flash site that will certainly dazzle your
prospects with a science fiction theme and stunning visual morphing. Only problem is, no one
is visiting the site and if they do, they don’t stick around. Is there hope?

Hopefully you also created an "HTML" or "Plain" or "Low Bandwidth" version of your award-
winning flash extravaganza; that is where you can implement some search engine
optimization.

If not, all is not lost. Google and the others are getting better and better at reading flash files
and long dynamic urls. If you use extremely unique text in your flash files, chances are they
could show up in the top pages of Google.

This is not Flash-bashing, by any means. Flash is a very powerful tool that, if used properly,
can demonstrate a process or a product better than html. That's a fact. Entertainment sites
should use flash. You'll notice that the ones that use it best embed their flash movies inside
an html shell; that way you can include text links and content that the search engines will
read.

Most e-commerce sites have very long URLs, with many dynamic variables in them (like
question marks); in the past, the search engines could not navigate through them and would
not index these pages. Google now allows for 6 dynamic variables in their URL strings. An

14
effective way of making these URLs search engine friendly is to implement a “mod_rewrite”
script that shortens the URL considerably and makes it static, as opposed to dynamic.

So you've made a flash site with database-driven content? You may want to rely mainly on
pay per click ads until the search engines are able to fully index your content.

Section Eleven
Metrics: Measuring Results

The only way to measure the success of your search engine marketing program is to use
comparative metrics at a regular frequency. Some of the metrics used may include:
• website traffic
• search engine rankings
• Google PageRank
• Alexa Rating
• # of incoming links
• Age of your domain name
• Site saturation – i.e., the number of pages of your website the search engines have
indexed on their server
• Pay per click click-through rate
• Pay per click conversions

Use these metrics to determine if your site is on track, or if there needs to be improvement.

Of course, the best metrics you can use are to track the number of inquiries or orders that
you receive each week resulting from your various campaigns; or perhaps you have other
significant milestones, such as a white paper download.

One of the most compelling benefits of working with an SEO company is that they will most
likely be able to pick up on search engine algorithm changes in their research a lot sooner
than if you were doing it in house; or they will notice changes in rankings among a cluster of
client reports. They can then re-optimize based on what is believed to have changed.

A web marketing company should be able to measure your site’s performance and deliver
continuous improvement.

15
Section Twelve
Continuous Performance Improvement

Two important questions you may have are "When I look at my metrics from month to month,
what can I expect?", and "What can be done to improve my current performance?"

A successful search engine marketing program would be one that does not just have a short
term strategy, but a long term plan for improving initial results and integrating new keywords
whenever needed.

Continuous Improvement is a popular catch phrase that began to be heard in manufacturing

circles in the 1980s, around the same time as the Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award was
initiated. There is no reason it can't be applied to a search engine marketing effort. Once a
metric is established and a baseline is recorded, it should be fairly easy to measure the
progress.

Of course, a process must be in place to analyze and respond to the metrics (and the search
engines themselves can throw a wrench into the plan as they modify their algorithms), and
your search engine marketing manager must be prepared to modify the plan at a moment's
notice and take action. As the search engines evolve, so should the continuous improvement
process.

As with any process, it's important to determine what the bottlenecks may be:
• lack of keyword-rich content
• long dynamic urls
• lack of incoming links
• site HTML errors
• changing search engine acceptance criteria
• infrequent content publishing

Once you know what your bottlenecks may be, and you have determined what your goal is,
then continuous improvement is possible.

For more about "The Goal", you can read a highly-recommended book of the same name by
Eliyahu Goldratt!

16
Section Thirteen
Pay-Per-Click Advantages

For years, some people wished that they did not have to play the SEO game – or in essence,
that they could just buy their way to the top. Advertisers had longed for a way to pay only for
visits to their site from true prospects.

Add to these wishes the items of conversion tracking and daily budgeting, and you have
perhaps the ultimate interactive advertising method. Throw out the click fraud, and you may
have the perfect prospect delivery mechanism.

With pay per click advertising (PPC), you select your keywords, set your daily budget, write a
compelling ad, and you're on your way. Faster than the organic listings, you’re going to
appear almost exactly where you want to be.

You can end up getting more traffic from your organic listings, and certainly it will be cheaper
traffic, so it is very important to optimize your site and ensure you are getting as much
organic traffic as possible – otherwise you may have to break the bank to buy your PPC
traffic. You can almost certainly dominate your landscape by showing up on the top of both
sides of the search page: the organic side and the paid side. You will almost guarantee
yourself the click ...and make it that much harder for your competition to get the click.

Any serious search engine marketer will be using PPC to his/her advantage, especially now
that SEO has become a less reliable endeavor. It has many advantages over other forms of
marketing:
• easy-to-implement conversion tracking
• instant setup and delivery of ads
• real-time ad performance statistics
• constant introduction of new tools
• measurable ROI

A smart search engine marketing campaign will contain both an organic strategy and a pay
per click campaign. You should be able to use both to maximize your website’s visibility and
meet your targeted traffic goals.

17
Section Fourteen
Google AdWords, Yahoo Sponsored Search

Pay per click advertising has fueled the current search engine wars since 2005, as MSN and
Yahoo jockey to keep up with Google's ever increasing number of innovations. Google has
good reason to keep innovating and coming up with different ways to search: the more
searches offered, the more places Google has to show their ads. Demand for ad space far
exceeds the available inventory, so expect your ads to start appearing in the (non-search)
"content" space, such as G-mail, Yellow Pages, News Groups, RSS feeds and more.

Advertising on Google and Yahoo has certain similarities, but the way the two position their
ads is extremely different. While Yahoo is a pure economic model, where the highest bidder
gets the highest position, Google takes other factors into consideration, such as click-through
rate (popularity of your ads), daily budget and maximum bid. Google will stop showing your
ad even if your bid is high, if not enough people are clicking on it. Google goes out of their
way to try to deliver the most popular ads in the top positions. Both services have an editorial
process that seems to get tougher all the time. Google has an automated ad optimization
feature that you can turn on to help your ads get maximum exposure.

Both services offer free conversion tracking. Basically, you copy a snippet of code and place
it on your confirmation (thank you) pages. The code can then track which keywords sent
people to your site who then completed an order/inquiry or call to action. This will tell you
which keywords to continue bidding on, where to increase bids and maintain position during a
bidding war, etc. That same conversion code will tell you which ad creative works best –
provided you are using two or more ads for your keywords.

If you've never tried pay per click advertising, it can be beneficial to outsource it to a
knowledgeable firm that will review your keywords/bids/ads/click-through rates/conversions
on a regular basis. Years of experience have taught the professionals how to optimize PPC
campaigns, ensuring you’re getting the most possible conversions for the lowest possible
cost.

Tip: Use the targeted keyword phrase as the headline of your ads. In Google's AdWords
program, there is a snippet of code that will automatically insert the phrase for you.

18
Section Fifteen
Reciprocal Link Strategies

Think of it as a simple exchange of business cards, or a friend of a friend; simple networking

can often yield huge results. The same holds true for your website. The more sites that point
to your site, the more your site is viewed as a valued resource.

Consider that a search engine spider visits, say, 1 million sites one day, and follows all the
links from these sites to find, or “index”, more sites. Of the million, 100 sites have a link back
to your site. The search engine will run into your site 100 times that day ...implying a very
good chance that your site will be indexed.

Now, of the 100 sites that link to you, let’s say 50 use your company name in the link text,
and 50 use a keyword phrase that you've targeted. So the search engine spiders run into 50
links to your site using the keyword phrase. That's pretty good, and the search engines will
pick up on this relevance.

Let's look at your competitor. They have 100 links as well, but none are for the keyword
phrase. The search engine spider doesn't pick up the relevance. Thus, when that search
engine is used for a search with that keyword phrase, your site comes up higher than your
competition.

Getting a large number of incoming links will help you. Getting a large number of keyword-
savvy incoming links will help you a great deal more. It’s even better if those incoming links
came from high quality sites that have a ton of content relevant to your keyword. A step
further... do those sites have a high number of quality incoming links?

A good place to start is with your own customers, vendors, partners, associations, trade
publications, etc.

Make sure you have a page on your site that facilitates link exchanges; but don’t use the
word “links” in your title or headlines or even filename; some search engines may mistake
your page for a link farm. Organize your links by topic, if possible. Be responsive to link
inquiries, and audit your link network often for mistakes or removals.

19
Section Sixteen
Paid Directories

It is extremely valuable to get incoming links from high-quality websites. Some of the best
links you can get are from the large, human-edited directories that followed in the footsteps of
the Yahoo! Directory.

These directories have very high Google PageRank; 7s, 8s and 9s abound. They know their
value, and have all begun charging fees for what used to be a standard free review and
inclusion.

Yahoo! led the way and began charging $300 for an express review. The $300 is non-
refundable and does not guarantee inclusion ...only a review. If your site is accepted, it
becomes an annual fee.

Other paid directories include Business.com, which for an annual fee of $300 (formerly $99!)
provides you with four keyword links to your site. These guys definitely get it. Their listings
often appear at the top of search engine results.

For about $39 each, you can get your site included in other paid directories that have a high
page rank; allestra.com and goguides.org are good examples of these.

If you start out your web visibility campaign by obtaining links in these directories, you'll have
seven or eight high-quality incoming links; and already you'll be ahead of the game.

Most web marketing companies will include these directories in their process, or will offer to
do the legwork for you at a premium. Again, it should be stressed that there is an optimal way
to submit to these directories, and there is an optimal time to do it. Submitting your site to the
paid directories upon launching your site won’t allow you to leverage the goldmine of
information in your web analytics to do this task optimally.

Section Seventeen
Publishing News Content to Increase Rankings

Another way to gain valuable links from external, high quality sites is to distribute your news
to the various online news outlets that will carry it ...and the accompanying optimized links
with them.

There are multiple ways to do this - publish your news on a page on your web site, to a Blog,
to an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, and as an electronic press release.

20
The search engines will find all of these news items, as they scour news sites daily. When
they read your news, they will follow your keyword links back to your site. The more news
stories you've distributed, the more potential links you've created.

Not only will you get link exposure for your site, but you may also get some traffic from people
who’ve read the news piece.

Once you have a news distribution strategy in place, you should use it at least every time you
re-optimize your web site, and more aggressive marketers will actually use this as often as
they can produce actual news.

Potential topics for news releases include:

• new product or service
• new process, technique or patent
• new market or geography
• product or service upgrades or changes
• quarterly/annual earnings report
• conference or tradeshow participation
• favorable analyst review
• charitable event
• new hiring
• new client
• new partner

Section Eighteen
Web 2.0 / Social Media

Web 2.0 is a bit of a catch-all term for a number of uses to which the Web has recently been
put, characterized more by collaboration and conversation than the one-way information
transmission model of traditional websites. They include...
• blogs – essentially an online newsletter allowing for reader comment to an author’s
posted articles
• forums – an open-ended online Q&A session, generally around a particular subject
domain
• social networks – most famously, Facebook and MySpace, but also including such
business-oriented sites as LinkedIn, Twitter and StumbleUpon

Any or all of these vehicles may be useful for a given B2B, depending on its business goals
and industry context. Each of them has its own considerable benefits and suggestions for
effective usage, all of which are well beyond the scope of this paper.

21
From the perspective of search engine marketing, however, what we really do want to point
out is that each of these “new media” (properly used, of course) has the potential of
improving your website’s search engine visibility, through two primary effects:
• they tend to result in the generation of large amounts of content, most of which is likely
to have a high degree of relevance to the content on your existing site; and
• they tend to operate in a viral fashion, propagating word of your products or services
(and domain url) to cyber-places you never thought of ...over time resulting in
numerous incoming links.

Of course, the twin dynamos of more relevant content and more inbound links can only have
a positive impact on how your website is perceived by the search engines ...which should be
reason enough to make one a Web 2.0 practitioner.

Section Nineteen
Industry Considerations

Manufacturing
SEO is a must for manufacturing companies. In a competitive environment where global
outsourcing has ignited price wars across many industrial categories, companies must fight
for their share of marketing visibility. Organic search traffic can be attained by targeting every
specialization and niche and combining those keywords with regional terms, if applicable.
Pay per click listings are also increasingly necessary to maintain an aggressive online
marketing program. PDFs, white papers and more can be additional sources of content to
support keywords.

Technology
Tech companies are expected to be in the top tiers of both the organic and paid listings. Paid
listings are a must, because they can allow a business to exhibit credibility. Organic search is
extremely competitive, which also drives the paid search bids up; so one needs to keep a
careful eye on pay per click campaign budgets. Conversions definitely need to be tracked,
whether it is a sales inquiry, a literature request, or a software download. Even though a top
listing is expected, many tech companies benefit even from lower-tier listings if they produce
visitors and conversions.

B2C/E-commerce
E-commerce sites need to be as visible as possible. Every click is a potential sale and every
competitor’s click is a lost sale. The ROI on each click is typically less than that of a
technology company or manufacturer’s site. Inversely, the pay per click bid rate may be
higher. Link campaigns are vital to an e-commerce site’s success; besides the SEO benefit,
many companies utilize affiliate programs that pay a commission on click referrals that result
in business.

22
Section Twenty
What's Next?

Will there be another acquisition?

Has the landscape settled on the big three - Google, Yahoo and MSN? Will one of them buy
Ask.com? Remember back to the day when search engine acquisitions and mergers were
commonplace? Remember when Excite.com was a player? MSN would be in a good position
to pick up Ask’s natural language query capability and its Teoma search technology and
Iwon.com consumer site. Just a possibility, of course. Some think Yahoo was foolish not to
take MSN’s bid. Hold the presses! ...now Yahoo and Google are in talks to provide Yahoo
users with Google’s ad serving.

What other content will be indexed?

Google is leading a frenzied effort to begin indexing every book published, including college
libraries. Their G-mail free email service indexes public email; Key-hole indexes satellite
imagery. Google's Desktop software indexes your personal computer, and has been followed
by desktop search apps from MSN, Yahoo and Ask. Now that YouTube is owned by Google,
you’re finding more videos in your Google search engine results.

PDFs, Flash, and other file formats are now easily indexed and retrieved from the web, as
are video and audio. Google can now even spider a dynamic url string with up to 6 variables.
Making this information easily classified, so that it can be retrieved with a simple keyword
search, is the goal of publishers, businesses and even search engine optimizers alike. It's
only just begun.

Will Pay Per Click completely replace organic listings?

Many believe the idea to be preposterous, while others already see the writing on the wall.
This doesn’t seem likely, as organic clicks still happen far more frequently than paid ones. As
long as you can still receive a highly targeted click from an organic – and free – search listing,
businesses will want to appear in these databases.

23