In the world of B2B marketing, the fourth quarter is like a wind-up toy slowly coming to a halt. The third quarter is when marketers are busy, priming the sales pipeline. If the deal’s not done by Thanksgiving, it’s probably not happening…unless your client suddenly needs to empty out their 2011 budget. There’s plenty of discussion about 2012 budgets in Q4, but it’s a rare company that can commit to start spending in January.

So, it was a pleasant surprise this past week to be super busy working on proposals and projects. I think some consistently positive economic news has generated a little confidence in the executive ranks, emboldening marketing folks to get going. Clients are now talking about branding and complete site redesigns, not just tweaks. That’s what we like to hear!

We always kick off the new year by looking at year-over-year stats for our clients, using Google Analytics to provide visual reinforcement for the gains of the past year. We’re really enjoying some of the bells and whistles in the new GA interface…one of the best is persistent dates and comparisons, which made these YOY comparisons a snap. (Googlers, please get busy on restoring email and PDF exports…our clients rely on getting these!)

Some of the new energy in the search marketing world is coming from Google+ and the emphasis on social search in their current direction. This should not have a significant impact on B2B marketers at present, but it’s a trend to watch. By all means, set up a Google+ page for your business, and learn about Circles, which is the clever organizational tool they’re using to help you filter your communications. Social marketing, whether it’s PR or your blog or now Google+, is creating links for your site in the biosphere of relationships and interconnectedness…your site needs to be an active part of the community
of your industry.

The continuing tweaks Google is making to the Panda release of their indexing shows more emphasis on freshness, on a positive user experience (especially page load times and engagement), and on quality. Sites with lots of ads at the top of the page are seeing their rankings go down. After all, a site visitor wants to see your content, not a bunch of AdWords ads. It’s always good when Google reinforces the message of quality…we’ve always been about quality content and thoughtful site architecture, so our clients’ rankings remain remarkably consistent, through change after change in the mighty Google algorithm.

The start of the year is a good time to revisit your web strategy. Have you opened up your site to mobile users? Are you migrating from Flash to HTML5, to the benefit of all those visitors using iPads or iPhones? How are you doing with your rankings? Are you missing opportunities because you’ve been complacent about reaching all the people searching? A fresh analysis of the Total Available Search Market™ right now can open up new possibilities for growth…and drive a brilliant 2012.

John Rasco

Now that all of the excitement has died down from the launch of Bing and the announcement of the Yahoo-Bing partnership, I would like to reiterate the words spoken by Gord Hotchkiss to all of Google’s competitors before all of this took place. Last December at the Search Insider Summit in Park City, Utah, he took Yahoo and Microsoft to task for not mounting a more significant challenge to Google’s dominance. In short, he said, “Do something amazing!”

We now know that Microsoft is spending $80 to $100 million on a branding and marketing campaign to promote Bing. This is great news as it seems that Microsoft has finally put some financial muscle behind their intention to be a major player for search. Bing should also be taken seriously because Microsoft has even deeper pockets to invest more money as part of their overall online strategy. Sorry Yahoo, but now that Microsoft seems to have the financial and strategic will to mount an attack against Google, this message is specifically for Bing: do something amazing!

Bing needs to do the small stuff well and create an excellent user experience, but it also needs to make some high profile investments like Google Earth, Google Street View and the Google Books Library Project to show that it means business. This means that Bing should invest early and invest a lot now that the sound of the buzz of Bing is still ringing in our ears. There was MSN, then there was Live, and if Microsoft cannot succeed with Bing, then this is strike three and you’re out.

See this TechCrunch article for more detail on Google and Twitter …If you stop and think about this, it just makes sense to some degree. Google dominates in the area of search. But they don’t do ‘real-time’ search of conversations and that’s where Twitter is strong. If you haven’t used the http://search.twitter.com — do so and you’ll see the power of this new era. Type a few keywords in and watch as it updates for you in real-time, listing the Twitter conversations going on with those keywords.

We’ll see… rumors are rumors.  But just because it makes sense to a bunch of bloggers doesn’t mean it will happen.  Personally, I’d like to see it occur provided Google doesn’t sit on Twitter like it did Blogger and slow the development of the platform.  But I have my doubts Google will make the leap because there is so much in flux right now. New developments in social media and social networking tools are happening almost weekly from startups and the majors.

For example, where does FriendFeed fit into the picture with their announcements this coming Monday (April 6th) for major changes?  I’m personally more interested in these developments because it’s a more powerful communication tool then Twitter.  And what will Facebook do?  My goodness; there are so many changes occurring in the social tools space that 2009 is an exciting year of unpredictable change for most of us. Hardly a new concept though considering the last few years, but that’s another more philosophic topic.

Robert Scoble seems to be leaning away from the idea that Google would buy Twitter. As you know, opinions are like noses, everyone has one. What do you think?  Kara Swisher is reporting that there is no Google deal under discussion to buy Twitter.

Tom
Reposted with permission from MarketsofConversation.com ©2009

While most readers of this blog do not work for local businesses, many of you know local ‘bricks and mortar’ business owners needing some guidance about advertising locally.  I am also assuming that most of you have a bulky yellow pages taking up room on a shelf in your home.  Mine has never been opened since it arrived at my front door, and it has stayed out of the recycle bin only because a day may come when my internet connection goes down.  So it was not surprising for me to read a recent article in SearchEngineLand.com that two thirds of people looking for information about local businesses are abandoning their print yellow pages for the internet.  A July 2008 study by TMP Directional Marketing shows that of the 90% of people looking for local business information, about a third use print yellow pages, a third use internet yellow pages and local search websites, and a third use search engines.  However, those using search engines are often directed to internet yellow pages and local search sites, making these directories very important for local businesses!  For example, of the top twenty organic results on Google for ‘austin tx party store,’ only two of these link to the websites of stores in Austin selling party supplies.  All the others comprise eleven different national yellow page directories, local search directories, and party specific directories.

So local businesses need to pay attention to directories – but which ones should they choose? It is important to do keyword research to know what terms people are using to find the products and services you offer.  If you then use these keywords to run searches through Google and Yahoo!, it will become clear which directories have visibility, and you should spend some time adding as much free information that is allowed on those directories. SearchEngineLand.com gives additional guidance here, showing the usefulness of Google Trends in determining the web search volume of particular sites. Google trends will also show regional distinctions between directories – Citysearch is by far the leader in Austin, but comes a distant third to Yellowpages.com and Superpages.com in Dallas. Google Analytics will also help businesses see how internet traffic is coming to their site.  A minimum amount of advertising can be done on a number of high ranking directories, and then the performance of those directories can be tracked over several months.  Directories in their ‘resurrected’ form can definitely help small businesses!

I’m always glad to see the gleam of positive news in the reams of economic doom, gloom and despair–and especially when it’s good news about our sector. This just in from the new Technical SEO Consultants blog:

While the world is experiencing an economic financial crisis, the SEO industry is experiencing a surprising increase in demand. From intensive training and SEO consultation to actual website changes and link building, the demand for expert SEO help is growing at an astonishing rate….But currently most established SEO professionals seem to have just the opposite need, they have too much business. Many established SEO professionals are declining to take on new clients because they just cannot accept any additional work load right now.

Google is releasing SEO guides, Microsoft and Yahoo! both have in-house SEO departments and the “SEO is BS” crowd have lost a little of their swagger and a lot of their arguments. No surprise – solid evidence trumps wishful thinking, especially when times are tough….

“Prospects are demanding more specific information related to their sites issues and detailed, actionable solutions are expected. Generic audits that look automated in any way are no longer welcome. Ex: Don’t just tell me I got a problem with my titles, but tell me exactly how are we going to fix them! That is the attitude of an average educated site owner looking for help. This will ultimately separate the amateurs from the experts.”
-Jose Nunez

We’ve seen a year-end push from new clients, and of course the normal inquiries related to setting 2009 budgets. December looks to be very busy, for which we are thankful. The good news is that clients are getting a lot smarter about both the value of SEO and how it works. In tough times, the SEO charlatans who promise a lot for a little are going to be hard-pressed to show results, and the clients who continue to improve their sites are going to gain market share. Those SEO agencies which do good work are going to ride out the storm as valuable team members of those successful companies.

It’s a happy day when you are bouncing from blog to blog and discover something both recent and extremely helpful. On the Google Webmaster Central blog, there’s a link to a new 22-page PDF with the authoritative title of “Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.” Instead of warning the innocent website owner of the SEO wolves lurking outside the door, Google has documented their (and our) best practices, and even added some good counsel on marketing your website. We’ll definitely have to add this to our list of free SEO tools.

Search Engine Marketing isn’t just for companies with substantial marketing budgets selling nationally and internationally.  ‘Bricks and mortar’ businesses in metropolitan areas are often shocked when they discover how much search exists for their products and services in their city. 

For example, there are approximately 3,500 (broad) Google searches per month on pet grooming services in Austin, TX (metro population approx. 1.5 million).  Strategic optimization with appropriate keywords like ‘Austin dog grooming’ and ‘mobile pet grooming Austin’ could drive a substantial amount of searches to the website over time, and a pay per click campaign starts at just a nickel per click on many of those keywords.

Even better, most businesses don’t know that the local search results—at the very top of the Google search results—are a FREE service. To sign up, click on the blue link at the top of the listings for your category, then go to the bottom of the page with listings. There’s a link for Information for Business Owners. From there, complete the forms on your business, and verify by phone or post card.

If you are a small business, more people are searching for your products in your city than you think - find out how small business SEO can work for you!

Yahoo and Google have worked out some paid search advertising deal, announced yesterday. They assure us that it’s not a monopoly or merger. I don’t know what it is, though. From the linked Search Engine Land post, it sounds an awful lot like everything will be run through AdWords, with Yahoo getting to keep a share of the profits. What I want to know about is what this will do as far as the Yahoo Search Submit services go. Are all of the Yahoo paid search services coming over to the Google side or just pay-per-click and contextual advertising?

Guess I shouldn’t get too far ahead of myself in what is sure to be a very gradual roll out that already has the anti-trust people in the Senate very, very interested…

We’ve talked about the algorithm change over at Google and how it demands actual high-quality content and links from sites if they want to be ranked well–that’s on top of the standard SEO practices and good site architecture. When talking about content, a lot of people want to know what we mean by that. What is good content, and where do you find it? And links?!

Well, you have to make it yourself. You have to think about it and put the work into it. No, it’s not some fifteen minute fix where you go to a site and click some buttons and voila! A really good place to start that gives you both content and links is writing and submitting articles on topics relevant to your business. You write an article and submit it to some of the article submissions sites–there’s probably a small fee–then newsletters and news outlets can pick it up and publish it. The article will link back to your site, giving you a link each time it’s used.

It’s pretty simple to do. What are the basic topics people ask about your industry or business? Can you do a short (under 10) list of things to ask or consider or know about whatever it is that you do? Can you de-mystify something briefly? Know something about the hot topics? Then write up an article and get it out there in the world. An hour or two well-spent doing this can get you a few dozen relevant links in a short period of time. If you put the article up on your site as well, you’ve added well-written, pertinent content to your site. A pretty good use of an afternoon if you ask me…