B2B Search Marketing Tips

@annstanley

How B2B companies should really use search

byAnn Stanley

July 2012

@annstanley

@annstanley

Understanding the search results

Ads - PPC

Display options

Organic or natural results

Universal results – maps, news, shopping etc....

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Google – local businesses

Ads - PPC

Display options

Organic or natural results

Universal results – maps, news, shopping etc....

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Searching for products

Ads - PPC

Display options

Organic or natural results

Universal results – maps, news, shopping etc....

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Quick Wins!

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Google Plus Page

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Local listings

@annstanleyBing Map – listing through My118 Information

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Listings dynamicallyordered bybid price & relevancy

2

User submitssearch

1

Pay Per Click in Action

User clicks on paid link, triggering payment to Google

3

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Ad Extensions, Local Listings (map) and new Product Listing ads

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Summary of different shopping results in Google

Keywords =Samsonite luggage

Organic shopping results

(Merchant Centre)

AdWords Products ad extension Product Listing ads Map

and Places listings

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Remarketing in AdWords (aka stalking)

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Remarketing results

Client 1

Client 2

Client 3

Client 4

CampaignConv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)

Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)Conv. (1-per-click)

View-through

Conv.

Conv. rate (1-

per-click)TOTAL 445 84 1.7% 2833 220 2.57% 559 118 2.44% 862 1716 1.06%Brand 39 0 6.7% 413 0 8.99% 433 0 5.13% - - - Remarketing 9 84 2.3% 54 215 3.11% 15 118 1.34% 179 1716 3.06%Competitors - - - 216 0 2.01% - - - 184 0 1.88%

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Managing PPC – what’s important• Granular set-up of the account to increase relevancy – 100-1000’s of

keyphrases in discrete ad groups (with a matching ad and landing page) • Quality Score is Google’s measure of relevancy – it affects your position

and how much you pay (e.g. QS of 8/10 will pay half as much as a QS of 4/10 to achieve the same position)

• Click through rate – pause phrases and ads with a CTR below 1%, otherwise this drags down your QS

• Position and bidding – you may have to bid lower (cost per click) and settle for position 3-6 to avoid the bidding war of position 1-3, where the CPC will be too high!

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) – most sites have a typical conversion rate of 1%. Your cost per sale or lead will be 100 x your cost per click – can you afford this?

• Conversion and revenue optimisation – invest in what works (keyphrases and ads) and pause what doesn’t!

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Long term investment!Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

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A search engine is made of three basic components:

A Spider or RobotAn automated browser, it searches the web for new websites and changes to websites then views the web pages and strips out the text content

A Storage System or DatabaseA record of all the pages viewed by the Spider

A Matching Process or Relevancy AlgorithmThe rules that tell the search engine how to determine what would be relevant to your search

How Search Engines Work

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Check that your site is indexed?

Do you have keyphrases in your url, title and description?

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Google keyword research tool

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Determine the level of competition

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Page plan with levels of monthly searches vs competition (results in Google)

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Optimise your content

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• Title Tag• Meta Description Tag• Content• Header Tag (H1)• Frequency of phrases (how many times they are

mentioned)• Use of semantic phrases (not just heavily focussed

on one target keyword)• Density of phrases (proportion of the text)• Internal Link structure with anchor text• Image optimisation (file names, Alt tags)• Avoid Spam techniques and over-optimising• Create new ongoing content on your site e.g. a

blog

On-page factors

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Steps to optimise your website• Carryout keyphrase research (where possible use PPC data)• Prioritise your keyphrase by high search volume and low competition

(does the keyphrase convert?)• Produce a topic and a page plan (ie which pages are to be optimised

with which phrases)• Write new optimised content on existing and new pages, (URL, title,

description, headers, keyphrase density, anchor text, image optimisation)

• Upload your content through your CMS and add new links from the homepage for new pages e.g. in the footer (you may need to get your developer to do this)

• Add new optimised content every week via a blog • Review results using Webmaster Tools and Analytics

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• Domain age• Domain name• Filename/full URL• Directory listings• External Link Structure• Anchor text of inbound links• Page quality of inbound links• Social bookmarks• Reviews and testimonials• Social indicators especially Google +1 and Facebook

“Shares”

Off-page factors

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• Content that people will want to link to• Free stuff• Blog posts• Useful documents/articles• Online tools• Video and audio• Funny or entertaining content

• Your content on other sites• Guest blogging• Online PR• Relevant directories• Third party blogging platforms

Getting Links

@annstanleyBlogging – Fresh Content, SEO, link bait and sharing

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Importance of social• Direct traffic - e.g. Brand pages (Facebook,

Google Plus, Twitter) • Community, loyalty and word of mouth -

(Facebook Likes, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Delicious)

• SEO benefit - Referrals, links and social indicators (Google Plus, Facebook Shares, social bookmarking)

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Social networking for businesses (personal vs company profiles)

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Google Plus (again!)

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What’s new in Google?

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Google’s “Search, Plus Your World”(Google.com)

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Local results – “Venice” update

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Panda?

LSI – Latent semantic indexinghttp://searchenginewatch.com/article/2104571/Google-Panda-6-Months-Out-Still-Has-People-Baffled

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Optimise for the user – not search engines

• Making sure a site is optimised to provide a rich, relevant and rewarding experience for visitors is the best way to avoid Panda penalties, which means:– No duplicate content– All pages to have unique, relevant and useful content

(even the 1000s of product pages on ecommerce sites!)

– Good levels of interaction on site (low bounce rates, inbound links to ‘deep’ pages, social mentions etc…)

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Penguin• Google Algorithm change to “penalise” sites with:

– Unnatural and poor quality links (very high numbers, high proportion of “exact match anchor text”, links on every page of a website, poor quality source of links)

– Search spam – keyword stuffing• P-Day = 24th April – if you had a significant drop in

traffic then you were affected by Penguin update• You may have received an “unnatural links” warning

in your Webmaster tools• Clean your site up, remove bad links (on other sites)

and put in a “reconsideration request”• Bing has introduced a “disavow” feature in Bing

webmaster tools. Google expected to follow.

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What next?• More change, more innovation and more surprises!• Google Plus will become the “New Google” (ie. integration

of many features in one platform/interface)• More emphasis on content and quality, so an excellent

opportunity for marketers to exploit copy writing skills and the knowledge base within the company

• Social will become more important to search and will also become the “new spam”

• Device responsive design, so you have one Universal website that works on all devices

@annstanley

Thank You

Ann Stanley@annstanley

ann@anicca-solutions.com

www.anicca-solutions.com