Original Post: Inside the Mind of the Search 5 Years Later - courtesy of Marketing Jive

It has been a little over five years since we at Enquiro, released our first white paper, Inside the Mind of the Searcher. The paper has been recognized as ground breaking research by many industry experts, including Danny Sullivan Search Engine Land and Anne Holland, founder of MarketingSherpa. The 30 page report discovered some startling findings about the way consumers search.

Some of the items that we concluded from our research was that it became clear that searchers have mentally divided the search engine results page into distinct sections, and many searchers will skip some of these sections completely. In general, organic listings are more likely to be seen by a greater percentage of users than sponsored listings. It also emerged that many Google users have become preconditioned to visually ignore sponsored listings on the page. While this may have changed slightly in the past five years as searchers become more savvy, these habits still hold true for many. In fact, when looking at the search results page, most users look for a number of specific items, at least one of which must be present to capture a click through. These items include the key phrase in the title or description, product information and trusted brand names and vendors. This appears to hold true for both digital natives and digital immigrants.

Download Inside the Mind of the Searcher

Organic vs. Paid

One of the things that I remember most about this white paper was the fact that in observing how users interacted with the search results pages, we noticed distinct trends. Almost 80% initially skipped over all sponsored listings and went straight to the top organic results. In most cases, their eyes never came back to the sponsored listings. We also found that the search process was a circular one, not necessarily a linear process. A typical search is a circular and complex process, with multiple interactions with sites and search engine results pages.

I happen to specialize in Organic Search. So in essence my job is to help my clients gain visibility in the natural (organic) listings of the search results pages. Over the years, I have been very successful with this. I can appreciate that organic results still generate the majority of clicks. In 2009, five years after our original study, industry folks predict that 70-75% of clicks are organic with 20-25% being sponsored. Yet we still see the majority of search budgets being given to sponsored, which I can also appreciate as organic and sponsored do in fact need to work together for ultimate online success. However, it is worth mentioning the fact that the need for organic search should not be overlooked. The companies that “get it” know and understand this, and they continue to realize the importance of SEO/organic search. They also understand the importance of social marketing and the need to continue to reinvent their brands.

Inside the Mind of the Searcher 2009

In the five years since the release if “Inside the Mind of the Searcher”, we have seen some tremendous shifts in online marketing and in marketing in general. We have also seen some changes with the Search Engines and with the results they return. In 2004, there was no Universal or Blended Search. There were no images or videos or blogs or news articles being mixed in with the 10 blue links that we were accustomed to seeing. Sounds like we need to again delve deep into the mind of the searcher and see how they have changed with their digital habits in 2009 and going into the next decade. It will be interesting to see how searchers:

* Interact with a Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft (Bing) SERP now vs. in 2004
* Respond to blended results – Are there preferences for news results over videos?
* Do males and females react differently to Blended Search?
* How do keyword queries change along the buying funnel?
* How has social impacted the mind of the searcher?
* How has the interaction between organic and sponsored listing on a SERP changed?

Capturing the Click

In our original paper we discussed what captured the click. Relevancy is the key here and still holds true today. SEO 101 is important as optimized titles and descriptions were identified as top items that helped entice users to click a given result over another.

If searchers were looking for a site to make a purchase from, the importance of what appeared in the title and listing text changed a little. (Listed in order of importance):

* The exact query in the Title and Description
* Offer product information: features, comparisons, reviews and prices
* Trusted brand names and vendors
* Promises of added value: discounts, free shipping, etc
* Ability to buy online
* Trusted URL’s

Maybe some things just never change, but it sounds to me like we need to perform some updated research and examine the mind of the Searcher five years later. I can see it now, Inside the Mind of the Searcher 2010. Oh and for the record, Enquiro was using Zappos examples (see page 25 of the white paper) even back in 2004 before it was fashionable to do so.

I am a big advocate of SEO 101.  A lot of people these days are all about Web 2.0 or Web 3.0 and it shows.  Have you seen some of the "crap" that is on the Web these days?  Sure it might be flashy and fancy… from a design point of view, but quite often, it sure does not help with the user experience or with the ability to find relevant results in a given search engine.  I guess by title, I am an organic search strategist.  I focus on SEO initiatives to help my clients intercept their target audience.  I help them provide content that is useful, informative and relevant to their audience. 

I do happen to work with some of the world’s most well known brands which happen to have large commerce sites.  As a result, I evaluate their competition’s web presence as well.  In 2009, I am amazed to see just how much fundamental organic optimization these large e-commerce sites lack.  Even worse is the fact that some (many?) in the Search industry also overlook the fundamentals of SEO.  So while this may be a refresher for many of you, I do know that there are some out there who will find the following SEO reminders useful.

SEO Reminders for e-Commerce Sites

1. Site Architecture is important for SEO success - guess what?  If you cannot map out a search friendly architecture and layout of your site, you are simply not going to do well in the search results of the engines.  Some key points to remember:
    
   • Structure your site in a logical manner
   • Avoid burying important content 4 or more folders deep in the hierarchy
   • Create search engine friendly URLs 
   • Use canonical URLs
   • Use the canonical tag to address duplicate content concerns
   • Keep it clean!
      

      

2. Create Unique Content on your Product Pages - add to the vendor supplied product description copy that you are given.  Every other site that sells the same product will also feature this content.  The engines are looking to index useful, informative and unique content.  Help them out by continuing to publish fresh and informative content.  You will also receive the benefits of link value from other site and blogs that link to this content.
    
    
3. Use an SEO friendly CMS (Content Management System) - ensure that your CMS system allows you to populate unique title and meta tags and that you are able to add content as required.
    
    
4. Avoid Using Java Script in Navigation - while the engines are getting better at reading JS, they are still not there just yet.  Make sure that the search engines can follow your links and avoid placing your main navigation (top nav, side nav, footer nav) in JS.  Consider using CSS and include files as a way to create your site navigation.  Again this is just SEO 101 best practice type of stuff.
    
    
5. Create and Update Your HTML Sitemaps – as you push out new content to the web make sure that you add it to your HTML sitemap
    
    
6. Create and Update XML Sitemaps – e-commerce sites tend to be very large.  One way to ensure that your content is being crawled and indexed efficiently is to create and submit XML sitemaps.  Using these sitemaps you can actually set the priority of which pages you consider to be the most important as related to other pages on your site.  Communicate this to the search engines to ensure efficient indexing of your site.
    
7. Avoid hiding your content from the search engines – things like Flash, JS and frames might be useful from a design perspective but really they can wreak havoc from an SEO perspective.  Help the engines find your content and make it easier for them to crawl and index. 

 I understand that to some of you this may be elementary SEO, but why oh why are so many sites neglecting these fundamental practices.  If you are an e-commerce site and are currently having difficulty in gaining visibility in the major search engines, start with the basics.  Trust me, if you have failed to address the fundamentals you will be limited in your ability to place well in the results.  The longer your wait to address these issues the harder it is to overcome them.  In case you have not yet noticed the Web is a hyper-competitive environment.  Failure to address the fundamentals can most definitely have an impact on the bottom line that you generate from your online marketing efforts.  Why restrict yourself?  The need for fundamental SEO should be the first place you start when trying to optimize your web properties. 

The canonical tag has a lot of applications, and one of them is helping to simplify duplicate content issues. One of these situations frequently occurs with long pieces of content which have been broken out over several pages to improve usability. This is common for content publishers such as newpapers, but also happens with other types of sites. It’s common to use pagination links such as these ones (from Lester Chan’s WP-Pagenavi plugin) to help users and engines find the rest of your article. 

One great B2B content development strategy can be publishing transcripts of webinars, podcasts or conference calls. These transcripts can easily run into thousands of words, and pagination can be a good choice for readability, however it quickly becomes a duplicate content issue. One client recently had a webinar transcribed which ran into 14 pages. To start with, that potentially creates 14 sets of Meta Data to be written, and 14 different places where people could link. While the content is broken into pages around the themes within the webinar, it’s all around a topic which is quite niche to begin with.

This is a classic case where existing best practices would have tried to focus the authority on the first page, and attempted to reduce the duplicate potential of the other pages by using a combination of links, 301 redirects and the Robots Exclusion Protocol. Now we can use a much more straightforward solution in the canonical link tag.

In the example I mentioned before, you would implement the tag across all 14 pages. The tag has the effect of telling the search engines "this is the preferred version, and the one we like the most". It also transfers signals like PageRank to the canonical (preferred) URL. The tag would look like this:

 <link rel="canonical" href="http://www.example.com/first-page.html" />

This will help focus link juice and authority, as well as help deal with possible duplicate content issues.

Original Post: http://www.marketing-jive.com/2009/05/importance-of-on-page-optimization.html

Well this is something that sometimes online marketers tend to overlook.  On-Page optimization.  I have written about this on a number of occasions, but thought that the time was right to re-explore this topic.  We tend to receive a number of questions about on-page optimization, so it definitely needs further clarification.  We have received questions such as:

• Would you know, or be able to find out, approximately how much lift in conversion/page views is usually experienced from optimizing <insert page type here>  pages? and
• Do you have any high level data to share regarding the optimization of page content?
• Is on-page optimization more important than off page optimization?

All are great questions.  However, it is difficult to answer as SEO and on-page optimization are simply not as easy to measure as is a sponsored ad where you know what you put in and you can see "what you get out" (of the paid ad). In addition, to it becomes difficult to isolate on-page optimization factors.  Furthermore, there are a number of items that work hand in hand when in comes to optimization of your website.  On-Page optimization is just one piece of the puzzle to factor in.  There are off page factors and items such as building your external link inventories that will contribute to the success that you have in the online world.

Here’s what we do know:

Fact:  On-Page Optimization is necessary to gain visibility in the Search Engine Results. 

Without optimized title tags, meta data, URLs and page copy, you are not going to be found in the search results.

Fact:  Search Engine crawling and indexing is all about finding relevant content.

Without on-page optimization and promotion of relevant content that speaks to your target audience, your web property will have a difficult time in being treated as an authority for a given topic.  Without being an authority, chances are you will lack that online visibility. Without visibility you will miss out on traffic and thus page views.

Fact:  Without an optimized "SEO landing page" being found in the Search results, the chances of a conversion are virtually nil.

You simply will not be found in the prime real estate of the Search results without on-page optimization.  If no one (i.e. the Searcher) cannot find your page in the first place, the chance of a conversion happening disappears.

Fact:  Search Engines (and searchers) are looking for unique & relevant content.

Part of on-page optimization means creating and communicating content that is relevant and useful.  Google is not just a place to "spit a webpage" of copy out.  The engineers at Google and the other major Search Engines work hard to try and return the best results that they can given the search query.  Content is the key to your online success.

Just What is On-Page Optimization?

On-page optimization is the process by which various elements on an individual web page are established and structured so that the page can be found by the search engines for a given keyword or key phrase.  The part of SEO that deals with page level creation to help inform search engines about the topic of a page.

While on-page optimization will not guarantee top billing within a search engine result, it does have a direct impact on what is shown in the results pages and can entice click through via title and meta description.  Based on my experience in Organic Search, on-page optimization will always get you farther than the lack thereof. On-page optimization is a critical component of SEO and although some may feel that it contributes very little to online success (especially when it comes to conversions), the reality is that without on-page optimization you are going to have an uphill battle trying to reach your target audience.  I have previously discussed the difference between B2C and B2B SEO, where I touched on the importance of on-page optimization.  One of the items I touched on was that as a fundamental component of SEO, on-page optimization is often overlooked by large business.  For whatever reason big businesses understand SEO and the importance of on-page optimization yet they fail to leverage it.  The question is why?  Why are so many companies and web sites overlooking on-page optimization as part of their search strategy?  Perhaps it’s the shiny new object syndrome where the fascination is with items such as Twitter or widgets or other technologies.  Perhaps it’s because these sites use proprietary content management systems they are limited to what they can do in terms of on-page optimization.  Whatever the case may be, on-page optimization needs to be addressed and should be addressed prior to all other organic marketing efforts.

With the client that I have worked with, the ones that have had the greatest success are the ones that have addressed the fundamentals and have taken care of on-page optimization issues.  For example back in 2005 we helped a client re-optimize their website.  We worked with them to create unique and relevant title tags, meta tags and consulted with them on page URLs as well as page copy.  The result?  Within a matter of months, the number of pages indexed in Google (and other major search engines) increased and items such as page views increased by 125% from when we started working with the client to current. At the peak pageviews increased by 191%.  With this particular client, organic search engine traffic is up by 1200%.  This is due in no small part to the on-page optimization efforts.

With another client,we spent the better part of a year consulting with them on their pending website redesign.  Part of the focus was to address lingering on-page optimization issues. Three months post redesign, where part of the focus was on on-page optimization, the client saw an increase in pages views of 7.3% as well as an increase in revenue generated from search by about 36% when compared to the previous year (and this is a down economy).  While not all of the this can be entirely attributed to on-page optimization, there is a definite boost from optimizing their site pages to ensure that titles, meta data, page copy and interlinking were addressed.

So what does it take to address on-page optimization issues?  Well there are no secrets here.  There are really five or six items that need to be addressed.

Components of On-Page Optimization

At the very least there are six main components of on-page optimization that should be addressed to assist you with gaining visibility in the search results of the engines.  Until the search engines make algorithm changes that may affect these items, the following should be considered when optimizing your web pages.

1. Title Tags - A site’s title tag is by far one of the most important on-page optimization element.  Titles should be around 60-70 characters (although Google has been known to index around 1,100) and feature important key phrases near the beginning with a branded element at the end.  Ideally you want the title to read well and be differentiated from the competitors as this may help entice the click from a search results page where the title is currently shown.
    
2. Meta Tag Optimization - meta data is simply data about data.  It lets the search engines know about what your information is about.  Meta data helps communicate what the topic of your page is about.   You may remember that the search engines when crawling your web pages look for mini themes to help determine what your site is an authority on.  A descriptive meta description can help inform the engines as to what the page is about. 
    
3. On-Page Headings - ideally each web page that you have should be about a single topic.  As a result this topic can be highlighted in the main heading of the page.  Some keys to success include placing relevant keywords in the heading and having the heading in an <h1> tag as these tags carry the most weight with the search engines.  The heading tag should also be placed higher up within the page coding to help the search engines crawlers access this content.
    
4. Page Copy - I’m not sure how many times we can emphasize the importance of page copy.  This is why people come to your site.  They are looking for information as are the search engine crawlers.  Providing well optimized copy that is keyword rich, somewhat unique and informative will help your site gain visibility in the search engines.  You want to become an authority on a given topic?  Create content about it.  The cool thing about page copy is that is can take different forms.  HTML text is still preferred for search engine optimization, but this can come in the form of blog content, user generated content, articles and news releases.  In addition you can have images and videos to provide a richer content experience on your site.  When writing actual page copy try to include your important key phrases two to three time ideally as high up on the page as possible to help the search engines determine the topic /theme of the page.  It is important that the content is unique and not just re-purposed from another site or from some vendor material that you were presented.  As a general rule of thumb try to feature at least 150-200 words of unique content on your site pages.  In some case 400-600 words will do even better.  Page copy allows to to ensure that you have adequate keyword density for important phrases again helping communicate the theme of the page to the search engines.
    
5. Page URLs - This is key, even more so as of late.  Having a relevant search engine friendly URL can go a long way in terms of on-page optimization.  Having relevant keywords in the URLs doesn’t hurt and keeping the URL short and memorable is beneficial as well.  Try to limit the number of dynamic parameters in your URLs and if you have the ability to re-write your URLs into clean ones, do it.  While the engines will index dynamic strings, short static URLs will resonate better with the user.
    
6. Anchor Text - ahh linking the lifeblood of the Internet.  As part of successful on-page optimization you need to get into the habit of using keyword rich anchor text to interlink your site pages.  This is a key factor used by the algorithms to determine the Inbound Liking Quality of links.  This is one of the key factors used when by the engines when ranking web pages.  Well interlinked pages can help increase page views of the site as users can easily navigate the site to find the information that they are looking for.  When measuring site stickiness, things like page views per session can let you know how many pages users are viewing.

We could get into greater detail in each of these areas, but we have done this previously and there are also some existing resources that provide additional insight including:

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/on-page-optimization-a-complete-walkthrough/6746/
http://www.searchengineguide.com/stoney-degeyter/the-best-damn-o.php
http://www.seo-theory.com/2007/12/05/an-on-page-optimization-seo-checklist/
http://www.widerfunnel.com/landing-page-optimization/the-six-landing-page-conversion-rate-factors
http://www.searchengineguide.com/scott-allen/conversion-optimization-part-of-internet-marketing.php

So if you are asking yourself why is on-page optimization important just remember that On-Page Optimization has a direct impact on Search Engine activity.  From search engine crawlers to indexing of pages to the ranking of results, on-page optimization will impact where you show up and how users engage with the content that they are presented with.

My previous post on "What is a Canonical URL?", mentioned the use of the recently released (February 2009) canonical tag. The tag itself is pretty easy to use, but we thought that we would share some additional pointers on using the canonical tag.

1. The canonical tag is applied to the duplicate content URLs.  It is to be placed in the <head> tag of the duplicate pages.  You are simply adding the preferred version of the URL.  You are instructing the engines that these URLs should direct to the preferred URL.
    
2. Google (and the other major search engines) will understand that the duplicates (with the canonical tag) all refer to the canonical URL (the URL that you want to be the authority that visitors will see.)
    
3. Page Rank will be transferred as well (according to Google)
    
4. You can use relative links in the canonical tag.  For example, product.php?item=12345 as opposed to http://www.your-site.com/product.php?item=12345
    
5. You can specify a URL that redirects as a canonical URL
    
6. You cannot use the canonical tag to suggest a canonical tag on a completey different domain.
    
7. Google does take canonical suggestions into account across sub-domains.

Remembering these seven items can help ensure that you are leverging the canonical tag properly and that you are letting the engines know what URL it is that you want to be communicated.

Lots of discussion about canonicalization and canonical URLs lately.  I’ve discussed URLs and URL structure a few times in the past.  We thought that we would help illustrate the idea of canonical URLs.  From an SEO point of view here is the definition of a canonical URL:

Canonical URL: the search engine friendly URL that you want the search engines to treat as authoritative.  In other words, a canonical URL is the URL that you want visitors to see.

Quite often canonical URLs were used to describe the homepage.  The typical example used is that most people treat the following URLs as the same:

www.example.com
example.com
www.example.com/index.html
example.com/home.asp

The fact is that these are all different URLs.  From a search engine perspective, this can cause a bit of an issue.  Hence the idea of canonicalization.  Canonicalization is the process of picking the best URL (to present to the search engines) when there are multiple choices available.  Typically a search engine, such as Google will attempt to pick the best URL that they feel is the authority for that page.  However, sometimes they may in fact select the wrong one.  Now let’s suggest that you have product pages that depending on how the user navigated to the pager returns a different URL… same page but different URL, now we have a duplicate content issue.  Not to mention the nightmare for interlinking and external link inventories. 

The easiest way to avoid this is to let the Search engines and the users know which is your "preferred URL" a.k.a canonical URL.  One suggestion is to redirect all of the variations to your canonical URL (the URL that you want to be the authority).  In February, the major search engines announced another solution with the canonical tag.  This tag gives you control of the content that you want the engines (and users) to see.

Matt Cutts of Google fame has discussed duplicate content and canonical tags a number of times.  One of the questions that he was asked included:

Q: So when you say www vs. non-www, you’re talking about a type of canonicalization. Are there other ways that urls get canonicalized?
A: Yes, there can be a lot, but most people never notice (or need to notice) them. Search engines can do things like keeping or removing trailing slashes, trying to convert urls with upper case to lower case, or removing session IDs from bulletin board or other software (many bulletin board software packages will work fine if you omit the session ID).

We have seen sites that have upwards of 15 versions of the same page but with different URLs.  The simplest solution is to have one final destination URL.  An easy way to do this is through the canonical tag or by redirecting all of these pages to one authoritative page.  The canonical tag is imple to use, all you need to do is add this tag to specify your preferred version of a URL inside the (head) section of the duplicate content URLs.

Canonical simply means relating to or belonging.  It also means reduced to the simplest and most significant form.  Just remember that a canonical URL is the simplest and most significant (authoritative) version of the URL that you want to be seen.

Since May 2007, we have been hearing about Universal Search and Blended Search.  Google was the first of the major Search Engines to unveil blended results as part of their main search results in May 2007 with Universal Search.  ASK was second in June of 2007, followed by MSN in July 2007 and Yahoo in October 2007.  Yet here we are two years later and the discussions have died down a little.  When’s the last time you heard someone in your office discuss blended search?  Of course there are exceptions and early adopters, but in discussions that I have with many, they are not yet leveraging blended search optimization.  How is blended search affecting B2B websites?  Should B2B sites be optimizing for blended search?

What is Blended Search Optimization?

Blended Search optimization is simply the process of developing relevant content in a format other than a typical web page so that it appears as part of the different types of search results within the major search engines.  There are numerous types of blended search results that are now being featured as part of a search engines main results.  Types of blended search results include videos, shopping results, images, news results etc.

Why is Blended Search Important?

The short answer is that searchers (i.e.. users of Search Engines) are expecting richer experiences.  They are looking to find relevant information that answers their questions and their need for timely, relevant information.  In the past, this need was satisfied by newspapers, print, radio and television.  With the digital age and with the emergence of digital natives (More on Digital Natives here) and millennials, people are looking for dynamic types of content.  Not just a blue link with a somewhat relevant description.  Hence the need for blended results.  Some users relate better to articles and press releases, others to podcasts, images or videos.  The fact of the matter is, depending on the nature of the searcher’s query, the type of results that they are looking for will vary.  This is why blended search is important.  Someone looking for a new CMS solution may be more tuned in with a video demo as opposed to a webpage that describes what a CMS is.  Blended Search results provide a richer experience and search landscape for the user.  Searchers are looking for this.  They are no longer satisfied with ten blue links on a results page.

Does Blended Search Work for B2B?

The short answer is that yes blended search optimization can work for business to business websites.  It depends on your blended search strategy.  For example, we know that unlike a B2C site that may feature a large variety of products, for B2B sites things such as optimizing shopping feeds to improve visibility with shopping results may not be the best avenue to pursue (for the simple facts that a typical B2B site may not have a series of  "products" to submit).  However, things such as video optimization, news release optimization, image and blog optimization can all help increase the visibility of a B2B site on a search results page.  From an SEO perspective, blended search optimization can work well for B2B sites.

The SERP landscape has become hyper-competitive over the past three or four years.  Being found in Google, Yahoo, Live Search or even other vertical search engines is becoming increasingly difficult.  While it is not necessarily about the rankings, it is about the visibility and about the click.  A 2008 study on blended search from iProspect outlines, the continued importance for marketers to ensure that their digital assets are found within the first three pages, if not the first page, of search results. Blended Search provides an opportunity to accomplish this and in some cases effective blended search optimization can allow an organization to dominate the real estate of the Search.  We have clients who actually represent 30-60% of a Google SERP for a given key phrase as a result of strong blended search optimization.

The secret with blended search optimization for B2B sites is that there is no secret.  You simply need to understand your audience and the type of content that they prefer to engage with.  For B2B sites, this means testing the type of content that you feature on your site.  Do users engage with videos better than PDFs?  Or is your audience looking for news updates and articles describing your service/product offering?  Perhaps they are looking for content that is updated frequently such as blog posts or maybe they are simply looking for user reviews and testimonials about your brand.  This is where a social network result such as Facebook or Twitter may prove beneficial.  While technically not a blended search result, social network results for your brand are a different type of result that elicit a specific response (participating in a community setting) from the searcher which is why we classify social network results as a "type of blended result".  The fact is, the searcher may be looking for a different type of result when searching for your brand or related key phrase.

Our own search research dating back to 2004 shows that typically users will not look past the third page of search results, in fact many might not even click through to the second page of results.  As a B2B site, having the ability to "own" multiple results (and multiple types of results) on page one of Google or Yahoo for a non-branded key phrase can provide a great return in terms of intercepting your audience.  This is what blended search optimization can do for a site.  You can have a traditional website result as well as a video result or perhaps a news result to intercept these clicks and gain this traffic.

Three Types of Blended Results That B2B Sites Should Focus On

While the following is not specific to B2B sites, here are three types of blended search optimization that B2B sites should focus on:

1. News/PR Optimization – optimizing articles and press releases is a great way to find your site within the blended results of Google, Yahoo or MSN.  The Engines (and searchers) tend to treat news results as more relevant due to the timely information that is within them.  Launching a new version of your software or a new strategic partnership can provide useful information to your target demographic.  As a result a well optimized press release can show up in Google News and in the blended search results displayed by Google.  Not to mention that in Google, News results tend to appear above the top organic results of the SERP or after the first one or two organic results meaning that they often occupy prime real estate within the results page.  Furthermore, deeper analysis from the above mentioned iProspect study indicates that search engine users click "news" results more than twice as much (36%) within blended search results as they do when they use the vertical "news search" (17%).
    
2. Video Optimization – for whatever reason video results seem to appear more often than other types of blended results such as image results, book results etc.  All B2B sites should feature some video content on their site and/or on a video aggregator site such as YouTube that demos a product, explains their service, communicates their unique competitive advantage etc.  Video may resonate better with certain demographics and as a result create more engagement with your brand from the SERP.  The messaging in the video can be more targeted than say the information that a user receives once they click through the "blue link" result from the results page.  Perform a search in Google for "supply chain management".  Depending on the data center that you hit you should be returned with a couple of video results (as well as a couple of image results) in addition to the typical blue link text results that would normally appear.
    
3. Blog Optimization -blogs, love them or hate them are garnering more trust as a resource than typical web results.  Optimizing your blog posts and posting regularly can be a great way to tap into the blended results for a topic specific keyword query.  Blogs that feature relevant and informative posts about a specific topic have been known to show up in the main search results of Google.  The thing with blog results are that they can appear "blended" in within the normal results, meaning that they look like a typical result, or they can be labeled as a "Blog Result" indicating that they are in fact a blended result.  A search for "online marketing" or "Susan Boyle’ in Google returns both.

Blended Search is all about content and the type of content that you optimize for your audience.  Does it apply to B2B?  Yes of course it does, for blended search optimization is simply another way to gain visibility in the organic/natural search results of a search engine.  So while rankings may be dead, visibility is not.  Blended Search allows you to optimize content and different types of content in order to intercept your audience to begin or build a relationship between the searcher and your brand.  So while they may not convert on this initial visit, they will at least engage with your brand and become more aware of what your organization has to offer.

One of my favorite posts on linking comes from every SEO’s favorite Googler, Matt Cutts. It tells you how to use Google Webmaster Tools (WMT) to identify 404 pages with incoming links. A link to a page that doesn’t exist is just wasted link juice, and Webmaster Tools is a great way to find broken pages and redirect them to the right page. It’ a great way to do more with what you already have.

Today’s linking tip also comes to us thanks to Google WMT. When you have a page or post on your site which manages to attract some quality links, that’s going to help that page rank well for whatever you’ve written about (and what the folks who have linked to you said). The next step is to revisit whatever you’ve written, take a closer look at what links are on the page and make sure you’re sending link love to the pages where it makes the most sense.

Click on Links and then on Pages With External Links

I find it easiest to download all external links into Excel (or the spreadsheet program of your choice).
 
 
 

Subtotal the links (at each change in page, count) Sort the list by external links in descending order.
 

 

Skip your homepage (that’s another discussion) and work your way down the list and take a closer look at those pages with many incoming links. When there’s a chance to help the user by linking to another relevant page on your site – preferably a high value page that you want to rank well organically – drop in another link.

Doing more with the links you already have is one of the easiest linking strategies you’ll ever find. This is one very handy tactic to help improve the link structure of your website.
 

Here in North America, I’ve been waiting for the big mobile boom, that has happened in other parts of the world.  It seems like other areas of the world including countries like Japan and China seem to be more mobile savvy that we are in North America.  The Mobile Internet is still young which may explain why many businesses have not tapped into it as a marketing channel.  Of course there are some businesses that have been early adopters of mobile marketing but there are many who have not started to leverage the Mobile Internet… and what about B2B?

So is there a benefit for B2B marketers with regards to advertising in the mobile universe?  Well that depends on what you are trying to accomplish.  Is it simply to promote your brand, or is it to provide some additional information to your potential audience?  More importantly who will you be reaching should you choose to leverage the Mobile Web?  Is mobile the best medium for B2B marketers?  At this time I would suggest that as business-to-business marketers look to promote their organizations via new media such as Search that they do take a look at the mobile arena, but not necessarily spend all of their time there.  This will change however with the advent of smart phones and innovative technologies.

ComScore recently released some interesting data as to the fastest growing categories for daily mobile web access in North America.  What is interesting about this data is that it shows the type of information that people are accessing on a daily basis.  In the digital world, we all know how important creating useful, unique and informative content is.  The Mobile Web is no exception.

Based on this data from ComScore, there are three areas that B2B marketers may want to consider spending some time investigating:

1. Optimizing News and Press Releases for you company – not just for the Internet but for mobile as well. People search because they are looking for information.  So whether they search via online or via mobile, ensuring that your news stories and articles show up in popular news aggregators is important.
    
2. Optimize your blog for Mobile - Ensure that your blog displays appropriately on a mobile device.  Consider how your blog looks when it’s rendered in a little inches mobile phone web browser.  One way to do this is to make a mobile friendly version of your blog with Google Reader.
    
3. Optimize for Finance Search - specifically Google Finanace or Yahoo Finance.  If your company is publically traded, your site will be featured in Google or Yahoo Finance.  People may use information from these resources to make investing decisions.  Based on the ComScore data above, financial data is the third largest growing type of information being accessed on a daily basis from mobile devices.  Ensuring that your financial data is up-to-date on your site, your blogs and related directories can help your target audiene find the financial information that they are looking for pertaining to your organization.
    
4. Leverage Mobile Tagging - work to create applications aimed at mobile phone users that improves their user experience via a mobile device.  In fact, Microsoft recently announced the "Microsoft Tag" which transforms physical media (print advertising, product packages, or even video images)—into live links for accessing information online.  http://www.microsoft.com/tag/.  Mobile tagging is relatively new (developed in 2003) and can be used for brand management and brand protection.

So while mobile Search and mobile marketing are becoming more mainstream in North America, is there benefit for B2B marketers to leverage this innovative medium?  The answer is yes, even if it is simply for brand awareness.   We have all heard of the hype about Mobile Search and the Mobile Web, preparing for it is no longer an option.  Optimizing your web properties for mobile will allow B2B marketers to intercept their target audience in areas that were never before accessible… the mobile environment.

I’ve been asked a couple of times about how B2B SEO differs from B2C SEO.  Is there a difference?  Well there is a difference and it depends on how you look at SEO.  If you are looking at SEO as strictly a tactical tool, B2B SEO can be quite similar to B2C SEO.  From a strategic perspective, B2B SEO can be quite a bit different than normal B2C SEO.  There are a number of B2B challenges that B2B marketers are faced with in the online word.  The fact is that when someone is ready to purchase a cell phone that person moves through the buying funnel fairly quickly.  There is limited research conducted, there is quick consideration and then the purchase is made.  Sometimes there is post purchase remorse or questions, but all in all the consumer walks through the buying funnel fairly quickly.  Now consider a business looking to purchase CRM software.  For one, there is probably more than one person making the ultimate purchase decision.  In fact there is most likely a committee that will make the purchase decision.  Secondly there are users and there are buyers.  These are two entirely different audiences.  The end result is a longer buying funnel that is nowhere near as linear as the B2C process.

So how does this affect SEO efforts?  Well we know that, quite often B2B transactions take longer.  Therefore, Search will be used at different stages of the buying funnel, especially during the research phase.  In addition, search may be used at different intervals by various people contributing to the ultimate purchase of a solution:

• Searching to identify consideration sets
• Searching to research additional information about potential vendors
• Searching to find case studies and testimonials
• Searching to find solution comparisons
• Searching to find demos and pricing

What this means from an SEO perspective is that you have to understand your target audience.  You need to know who will be searching for your solution.  You need to speak their language not yours and you need to help them find the information that they are looking for in a quick and efficient manner.

How Different is B2B SEO from B2C SEO?

The fact that B2B SEO is devoted to business to business search engine optimization and B2C SEO focuses on the consumer is one of the more obvious differences between B2B and B2C SEO.  At the heart of everything the SEO fundamentals are not that different in B2B SEO and B2C SEO.  In order to understand the difference between the two, let’s look at a couple of fundamental SEO areas.

• Keyword Research
• On-Page Optimization
• Content
• Inbound Linking

Keyword Research for B2B SEO

At the heart of any SEO campaign is keyword activity.  The difference between B2B SEO and B2C SEO when it comes to keyword research is that keyword selection in B2B needs to cover a longer buying funnel and as a result needs to be more diverse than with a B2C keyword basket.  Keyword strategies then become more robust. Identifying the proper head, torso and long-tail keywords that will engage the searcher at the longer stages of the buying funnel.  Keyword research is a more repeatable process with B2B.  Remember we’re talking about SEO, so the identification and selection of keywords needs to adapt to the language of your target audience.  At different stages of the buying funnel, you will have different types of searchers looking for your information (users vs purchasers).  With B2B SEO, an effective keyword strategy can be even more critical than what we would find in a typical B2C keyword strategy. The main difference is in scalability of the keywords and the ability to select and optimize keywords for multiple audiences at multiple touch points.

On-Page Optimization for B2B SEO

The fact of the matter is that when you compare on-page optimization options for B2B SEO and B2C SEO, there is not a whole lot of difference.  After all there is only so many ways that you can optimize meta data, page titles, page headings, your URLs and your page copy.  As a fundamental component of SEO, on-page optimization is often overlooked by large business.  Addressing on-page optimization for B2C vs. B2B sites does not differ greatly if at all. The difference is really in the page copy that you provide on your web properties.  For all intensive purposes on-page optimization is pretty much the same for a B2B site and a B2C site.

Content Development for B2B SEO

Content is the key to your online success.  It’s not about the look of your site (although that may help) and contrary to popular belief it’s not about the number of links that you get for your web properties (although that will help too), without content that speaks to your target audience you are not going to do well in the algorithmic results of the search engines.  While B2C sites feature content focusing on a product or series of products, content on B2B sites has an entirely different purpose.  A B2C site may in fact have conversion triggers to guide the user to making an actual purchase.  Conversions on a B2B site are more in the vein of building a relationship with the users and will consist of items such as case studies, demos, newsletter signups and the like.  As a result content on B2B sites may need to be in different formats (think video demos vs. traditional web pages, downloadable case study PDFs vs podcasts etc.).  Remember, the majority of B2B purchases are not quick decisions.  It can take months before a purchase decision is made.  Information is being gathered and decisions are being made, so providing the right type of content and making it available at the right time is key.

The content that you feature on your site needs to help you build a relationship with your audience.  You need to earn their trust by providing them will all of the information that they seek.  Especially knowing that competition may be fierce and the purchase decision may be months away.

Inbound Linking for B2B SEO

Yes, still in 2009 links are still important.  Building  your inbound link inventory does not differ for B2B SEO that it does for B2C SEO.  If you produce unique and informative content on your site, you are going to build your link inventory. No question.  This is not unlike what you would do for B2C SEO.  Should you choose to purchase links (while we do not recommend this) this is no different than what many in the B2C arena are currently doing.  In this respect, inbound linking does not vary for B2B SEO vs. B2C SEO.

So how different is B2B SEO from B2C SEO?  Well at the fundamental level, there does not appear to be a lot of major differences.  Yet with SEO aspects such as keyword research and content development there are great differences between B2B and B2C SEO.  We might argue that the stakes are a little higher in the B2B arena and that B2B SEO is not just an option, but a mandatory piece of your overall marketing pie.