Business to Business Marketing on Search Engines � A Largely Untapped Marketing Tool

I ran across an article that provided some interesting insights about how B2B marketing differed from most of the discussion that I hear about ecommerce in general.

The first idea that struck me was this:

"When it comes to business to business, marketing is crucial. In a world where prices are rarely listed online, a B2B company almost always has the opportunity to differentiate itself on its own terms after the initial contact is made. With the right marketing tool, such as SEO, a B2B company can easily stand out from the crowd."

What this says to me is that B2B sites are different in that they do not have the same pressure to emphasize price as a decision factor. Now, it is true that price is not the only differentiator for retail sites. It may not even be the most important differentiator. We have discussed research findings that indicate there are lots of other reasons why searchers are attracted to and willing to do business with a particular site. Primary among these is trust, and a certain comfort level that derives from trust. Searchers will not respond to a site that they do not trust, even if the price is lower than other competitive sites.

This article points out that B2B sites are different in how they can convey that message that establishes trust, and that price is almost something that does not enter into the equation.

The second idea that I found particularly interesting is this one:

Using SEO as a Key Marketing Tool
E-commerce companies are more readily embracing SEO as a business to business marketing tool because they are technologically savvy and because their businesses already depend on the Internet to survive. However, e-commerce companies only make up a small fraction of the number of companies that are actually out there. There are many B2B industries where there is currently little or no competition on the search engines, and the ones to move first and use SEO as a key marketing tool will reap the highest rewards."

I have often said that evaluating a business's ability to create a presence on the Internet is always relative to how intense the competition is in the specific arena the business competes in. That may seem obvious, but I am often surprised when investigating the competition for a new client prospect at how ineffective I believe the competition to be. There are still many business niches where the main competitors have just not gotten the SEO message. There is no doubt that this will change, and is changing all the time, but it does mean that there is still lots of opportunity on the Internet for businesses of many different types to step in and establish themselves effectively over the web.

Your FAQ Page - A Sales Tool? You Bet!

Here is a great little article explaining how to make better use of your FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page on your web site.

This is a good article because it not only tells you what you should do to improve your page, it provides examples that illustrate the principle! This is the kind of detailed help that is most beneficial to web developers who are struggling to learn how to apply sound marketing principles to their own web sites. I definitely recommend treading this article!

The sole additional comment that I might make here is that it would be good practice to insert a link in the answers to another relevant page on your web site. I did not see that suggestion in the article. This kind of linking can add additional strength to your answer if there is more detail available elsewhere on your site, and will also add linking value to your pages, further helping to boost your page rank on important concepts. Remember in doing so that the anchor text for the link is adding ranking significnce to the page the link is pointing to!

"The FAQ page... a standard addition to almost any site. It usually lists questions customers ask on a regular basis, and the answers to those questions. But what befuddles me is that hardly any sites I've visited use this page as a sales tool.

Did you think of that? If not, you're losing out on the use of some valuable real estate! FAQ pages are generally well-trafficked areas of your site. With just a few adjustments, your FAQ page could become one of your leading sources for sales conversions."

Optimized Pageload Time Increased CTR & Income

Here is a post describing an improvement in site performance related to speeding up load times for the site pages. In this posting, the speed increase is related to moving to a different server, but other comments in the thread refer to page size. Our recommendation in the clinic has always been to keep your total page sizes below the 65k limit, but holding your size below that can pay benefits. A later post in this thread refers to page sizes as low as 10k! This places a real premium on keeping pages clear of unnecessary graphics and other "appearance-enhancing" effects! Also, any graphics that are used should be analyzed for what they contribute to the page message, and optimized effectively before posting to the page. (Viewing this thread will require login to Webmaster World,a free registration.)

"I've been around Adsense, and here long enough to know that fluctuations in clicks, ctr etc can be caused by almost anything, and jumping to conclusions is a pointless excercise.
However, I have made one change to my website that seems to have made a difference to all of the above, and a subsequent rise in income.
Most of my site visitors are in the US, but as I'm located in the UK so was my web hosting. I figured it didn't really matter where the host was. I have recently moved hosting to the US for a variety of reasons including the fact that most of my visitors are there, and it just might give them a faster load time to the pages. I guess that the pages load faster in the US now - they are certainly loading faster here.
Interestingly enough, the effect was immediate once the domain had transferred. ctr and clicks went up. I've always kept the pages minimalist so as to provide faster loading times - especially the main index page. If the assumptions are correct, then it would appear that the load times are pretty crucial to if a visitor stays, and if they click or not! "

MSN Rolls out new search interface / algorithm

Here is a little insight from a forum post regarding what is happening with the MSN search ranking algorithm. This reading is consistent with the approach that we constantly emphasize in our weekly clinic, which is, "content is king!" Do your pages properly to be useful to the reader first, then pay attention to the parameters that search engines pay attention to, and you will do well in the rankings over the longer term!

"While MSN has been a little volatile lately, for the past year or so they have been the SE where I've seen the most consistency with maintaining my results. From what I've tracked, here is where I focus my efforts to maintain and improve rankings:
1. Title tags - MSN is bigger on titles than any other SE imho. The order of your keyword phrases matters.
2. Content - FYI: They are pretty swift to drop your rankings for dup. content
3. Affiliate Links - MSN seems to be going the way of DMOZ regarding affiliate sites. If they see too many OBAL's it will definitely hold you back a bit. For instance, I have an affiliate site that from the get go was doing very well in MSN right from the get-go. I noticed about a week into it that my affiliate tracking links were wrong. Once I fixed the links, my site was not only dropped from the first page, but out of their index altogether. (I can show an example for those that PM me) I'm not saying you can't get ranked with them if you have an affiliate site, as I have many others that are doing alright, but it seems to me they are tinkering with something resembling an affiliate site penalty. Again, just my opinion from my own experience.
4. Meta Data - Unlike the other 'majors', MSN seems to still be placing some importance on this. Meta Description tends to attract the most attention on my sites.

I hope that helped a bit. The main thing for MSN (and most other SE's) is to have your site appear as 'natural' or 'non-optimized' as possible - of course that is the key to good SEO anyway, imo"

Search Engines Have More Than Twice the Conversion Rate of Other Acquisition Sources, According to WebSideStory

A new report confirms the importance of creating your community for your web site. This article cites a conversion rate of 2.3 percent for sites found through search engines, compared to a rate of 0.96 percent for othersources such as banner ads, affiliate marketing links, shopping search engines and other referring links.

However, direct navigation achieves a conversion rate of 4.23 percent. Direct navigation basically means boookmarks, which reflects good old fashioned branding and customer loyalty.

See our materials from our clinic for more thoughts on community management and what it can do for your business.