The research also showed that industrial professionals are still largely passive users of social media, preferring to read and watch content, versus creating and sharing content.

From a user perspective, B2B search engine marketers should take note of the following responses and percentages.

LinkedIn Usage Among Industrial Professions

• Participation on LinkedIn grew from 37 percent in 2010 to 55 percent in 2011. 86 percent of industrial professionals on LinkedIn belong to at least one group, with 38 percent belonging to four or more groups.

Work Related Activities On Facebook

• 19 percent of the content/friends on Facebook are work related with 60 percent “liking” a business within their industry and nearly 40 percent participating in work-related discussions and reading/researching content for their jobs.

• 54 percent of respondents have smartphones and 60 percent use their phones for work-related tasks such as checking e-mail.
• 29 percent of industrial professionals have already created accounts on Google+.
• While Twitter usage was up from 2010, that percentage was only 22 percent of total respondents.
• 67 percent of respondents used Google Reader and aggregated RSS feeds from blogs, news, and other sources.

• 67 percent of respondents were blocked from Facebook at work, 61 percent unable to visit Twitter, and 57 percent without access to YouTube.

This column combines recommendations found with in the survey document, with third party observations, and client experiences, to deliver key action items for B2B search engine marketers working in engineering, technical, manufacturing, and industrial sectors to consider.

1.  Industrial Marketers Want To See Thought Leadership

Because industrial marketers are more passive in their interaction with social media, the opportunity to establish a presence may be much easier than in other industry sectors.

There are several opportunities for B2B search engine marketers in this space to lead the effort.

• Video, graphics, and visualizations of complex industrial processes might perform well in blended search engine results as well as provide share-friendly assets in social media platforms.
• Blog posts published on even a weekly or bi-weekly basis (take a look at the social media frequency chart below) still have a good opportunity to be seen in the industrial marketer’s RSS reader.
• Blogs and publication contributions should also leverage the Google Authorship program in an attempt to gain enhanced brand visibility for key thought leaders in the organization.

While the first mover strategy presents risk, the benefits of easier visibility and establishing an initial footprint in the industry sector through the production of high quality content could outweigh that risk.

2.  Don’t Assume Traditional Office Hour Activity

Understanding that many B2B industrial marketers may have limited social media accessibility during the regular “9 to 5″, consider how social and search marketing strategies need to be customized as a result.

• Pay attention to Web traffic reports to confirm time of day visitors tend to land on the site.
• Test social media updates and their effectiveness during off hours and weekends.
• If PPC is part of your search marketing strategy, consider extended visibility of ad placements later in the evening and optimizing ads for mobile search.

3.  Build Easy To Consume Content

As realized in the chart above, B2B industrial marketers indicated that watching a video ranked the highest in terms of social media participation, while creating a video ranked the lowest. The point is that more passive participation in social sites is important to realize when marketing to the B2B industrial space.

To that extent, easily digestible content and well placed communication strategies need to be considered.

• Via Derek Singleton’s article on social media for manufacturers, “consider making video demonstrations of products and processes, a tour of your factory, or showcasing customer testimonials”.
• Succinct LinkedIn group participation, including link references, descriptive context, and distribution in profile updates (and possibly company-specific updates)
• Regularly published news content, highlighting industry trends and events

4.  Create Benchmarks That Tie To Real Business Value

Tying this all together, remember that customer acquisition and lead generation are the primary goals for B2B industrial marketers and have been the top two marketing goals for the past three years (source).

While the Globalspec’s social media usage survey does not provide a direct connection to lead generation success, the following metrics can be established for demonstrating effectiveness and productivity.

• Developing email marketing lists for B2B lead generation
• Link building opportunity development through the build out of quality social media networks
• Branded traffic growth, new visitor growth, and improved conversion rates across these segments

Final Thoughts

While setting a social media plan in motion should become a priority for B2B search engine marketers in these industry sectors, social media platform identification, resource allocation, and a push for aggressive but flexible benchmarks are important.

KPI measurement through traditional Web reporting tools and analytics resources provided within applicable the social platforms are important for assessing success (and failure) and making adjustments as appropriate.

The full research report, which contains recommendations and key action items for industrial marketers from GlobalSpec as well, can be downloaded from the Marketing Maven blog with limited form field requirements.

B2B Internet marketers need new content to enforce and build upon keyword strategies, acquire links, and attract attention in social media.

In my experience, effective SEO-centric content creation requires planning on both the long and short term impact, and a strict attention to detail. With a myriad of responsibilities on the B2B marketer’s plate, it certainly is not uncommon for details to be missed and corners to get cut.

Some of the SEO best practices I see get missed:

• Optimization of key page elements (HTML titles, meta descriptions, etc)
• Cross-links between relevant content assets
• Share-friendly icons and functionality
• Social media and traditional link building outreach

With a little assistance from Help a Reporter Out, here are four examples of B2B content marketing initiatives, that stand out because of their focus and adherence to SEO strategy as well.

Social Media Combined With SEO In Neolane’s Campaign Management Infographic

Digital marketing software vendor Neolane recently launched an infographic poking fun at a significant challenge campaign management providers face, the ability to overcome the onslaught of spam in online marketing communications. Running through the social media marketing initiative, here are examples of key SEO best practices merged into the process.

• Application of keyword strategy in traditional SEO page elements (HTML titles, Meta descriptions, body copy, etc).
• Social media buttons for popular social networking websites at the top and bottom of the post.
• A specifically “share-friendly” HTML page with social media buttons for similar social media websites (including Pinterest and StumbleUpon) that points users right to the infographic content. This page also contains keyword-specific cross-links to solutions pages and back to the company blog.

• Embed functionality for the infographic on the main blog post and a more share-friendly page.

Delivering Link Communication Through Social Media Assets In The Healthcare Space

Kaysha Kalkofen, co-founder of the St. Louis-based digital marketing agency tSunela, talked to me about their client, Christian Hospital. The hospital engaged tSunela for search engine optimization (SEO) and social media outreach.

In addition to core SEO best practices for keyword optimization and social media asset visibility, Christian Hospital actively maintains a communication to their network through popular social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and now Google+.

This communications includes announcements of hospital events, workshops and information, as well as content they feel their audience will find of value and hopefully share as well.

It appears to be working thus far. Here is an example of Ragan’s Healthcare Communication News picking up and publicly thanking the organization (linking to their Google+ account) for a valuable piece of content shared.

In addition to examples like this one, Christian Hospital has also experienced an increase in website activity since the beginning of their SEO efforts and a more immediate way to respond to patient care concerns through social media monitoring.

Content Marketing & SEO In Enterprise Technology Event Coverage

The Wikibon / SiliconANGLE team produce live video coverage of popular enterprise technology events like EMCWorld, Strata Conference, and Hadoop. The end result is a series of video, blog post, and research assets from contributing members of their team.

• Blog posts contain cross-links back to video and event coverage.
• Video assets contain social media sharing elements and embed functionality
• Assets written and produced are consolidated in one curated content page (below), which can more easily be distributed for outreach to bloggers and site owners.
• The screenshot below represents a nice win from a link building perspective: a link on a highly visible page within an HP product site.

Vocus: Maximizing The Value Of A Content Marketing Asset

The team at Vocus did their part to wrap tactical SEO initiatives around the launch of their Expert Guide to Online Content Marketing white paper. While the PDF itself is not a great example of a content format optimized for search, careful application of SEO strategy was applied to help ensure organic search engine visibility.

• First, Vocus created an SEO friendly landing page which incorporated clear conversion action, social media sharing functionality, a summary of key information for the user.
• The team published blog posts in 3 phases to make it more digestible, and created associated video to support the guide, and linking to the full PDF in each posting. Assets were distributed through applicable social media assets as well.

From Stacey Acevero and Scott Benson of Vocus, with respect to using direct PDF links in blog posts, “we’re tracking each click on the PDF link as an ‘event’ in Google Analytics and also counting this as a traditional “PDF download” – much like a lead generation lead, but without the user information. It was a basis for measuring the posts success, not a true lead.”

From the social media perspective, “not only are people sharing our post socially, but this piece is directly responsible for as many as 79 new Twitter followers and 101 Facebook Likes – each of these “goals” has [a defined] value to our company.”

Final Thoughts

The above examples are meant to provide tactical tie-ins between SEO best practices and specific B2B content marketing initiatives. This is not an evaluation of any of these organizations’ overall B2B SEO strategy. While these examples provide B2B marketers with a short list of factors in the content creation process that help enhance SEO, make sure to adapt those used as reference to your own organizations needs and priorities.

Good luck in your content creation and marketing efforts and make sure that SEO remains a key focal point in all of these endeavors as well.

However, all of the recent hype and scrambling to start marketing on Google+ should not come at the expense of equally critical B2B search engine marketing responsibilities. Balance short and long-term B2B initiatives carefully.

While we’re certainly jumping into Google+ Pages for Business and building our base of knowledge on this social network, here are five indirectly related but completely separate B2B SEO initiatives to remain in focus with, as 2012 rolls along.

Benchmark Not-Provided Keyword Referral Metrics

In my opinion, the biggest short term impact of Google+ Pages, for B2B marketers, will be the potential for rapidly increasing percentages of blocked keyword data, as encrypted search becomes more prevalent.

Here is a snapshot of the average percentages for “not provided” search traffic in our client base, spread out over the first five weeks of launch, and then the full months of December and January.

This not only impacts web traffic reports, but will make retargeting and marketing automation analysis more complicated (by not providing specific keyword metrics).

B2B marketers need to set appropriate benchmarks now and ongoing, specifically calculating trends in branded, non-branded, and not provided keyword information. Here are some resources and recommendations for establishing these benchmarks.

• Smarter Data Analysis of Google’s https (not provided) change: 5 Steps
• How to Understand Your Google “Not Provided” Traffic
• How to Analyze Google Analytics (not provided) Data

Nurture Your Best Third Party Referral Sources

The best links send traffic, leads, and also have a positive impact on SEO strategy. Evaluate third party referral reports to identify the communities, social networks, and publishers that send traffic and quality visitors.

• Know the people behind your best inbound links

Document referral sources and make attempts to secure contact information from these sources, for further link development and potential business opportunities as well.

Commercial solutions like RavenTools provide a nice interface for documenting contact information from link sources, but spreadsheets can also be a nice, free alternative.

Screenshot of RavenTools Link Contact Information

Quality Content Marketing Works, Regardless of Social Networking Platform

Content development becomes too complicated when marketers focus on how to satisfy requirements for specific, individual platforms.

Instead, focus on creating quality content marketing assets for any user within appropriate target markets and make sure to make these assets as “share friendly” as possible, regardless of platform.

Share-friendly content marketing techniques to consider:

• Social sharing buttons from popular social media platforms
• Multiple widths and downloadable information to fit various site dimensions more easily
• HTML code for embedding images, graphics, and media files
• Shorter, more memorable web addresses

Create More Permanent Communication Strategies With Site Visitors

Even though social networks like Google+ provide new opportunities for communicating to target audiences, don’t forget to attempt to ascertain more in-depth contact information once they get on the company website as well.

Conversion metrics should range from initial lead nurturing efforts to more in-depth sales-ready lead opportunities. At all times, make an attempt to collect email address information, name, and potentially ongoing communication preferences.

• Also, build professional networks, within and outside of Google+ Page management.

The element of social media I find most attractive is the ability to network with other professionals in the industry. While Google+ provides another opportunity to bridge these connections, don’t sacrifice successes already made in other social networks just to jump on a new bandwagon.

Benchmark Your Customers’ Interest in Mobile

As I eluded to in a column at the end of last year, don’t forget mobile. While your customers may not be directly asking for it, the pace of Internet use via mobile device simply cannot be ignored.

My recommendation is to start querying your customer base on mobile device preferences, functionality, and what types of content they would like to see from your organization.

This can be done in “drip format” through newsletters, social media, and traditional surveys. Over time, you will have feedback from your audience to move forward in the right direction with your mobile strategy.

Final Thoughts

We are recommending and helping our clients develop Google+ Pages. While it certainly can be cumbersome juggling multiple profiles, platforms, and responsibilities, there seems to be much stronger likelihood that this social network becomes relevant. Google certainly has the resources and reach to support this social network and drive growth (even if their other social experiments have failed in the past).

But what if Google is making a major business mistake and B2B search marketers are getting taken along for the ride? Worse, what if we’re seeing the slow decline as a result of Google’s inability to adjust business models in time to catch the latest competition?

2012 could be a pivotal year for Google, in terms of audience development and influence. What will be key for B2B search engine marketers is to focus on growing their own organizations audience and networks, regardless of specific social networking platform, in an effort to tackle short and long term business objectives.

With budgets still in review and benchmarks being set, focusing on site enhancements first could help maximize the benefits of all ongoing SEO initiatives, that are realized over the course of the year.

Marketingsherpa just released its 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report and two points helped shape this column. First, B2B marketers experienced severe declines in the tactical effectiveness of two top initiatives, website strategy and SEO.

Second, while the B2B marketing role has not really changed, leading “cutting edge” initiatives and creating buzz continue to grow in priority, along with lead generation initiatives as a whole.

This column provides recommendations for four new site enhancements to consider, which are designed to increase search referrals, improve conversions, and help promote social sharing and link building.

Author Information Tagging

In many cases, part of the B2B marketing strategy is establishing industry thought leadership through content initiatives such as bylines, article development, and blogging.

Enabling the rel=author element on site-specific content provides an excellent opportunity make content stand out in search results, and help establish long-term credibility.

Example via Google Post of author information in search results:

While Google will not guarantee authorship information to appear in search results for the content you create, developing the opportunity to be found is fairly simple.

Via the Google Webmaster Help article, the following steps are required:

• Create a Google Profile.
• Link your content to your Google Profile by way of adding a Google+ icon or manual link from web page
• Link to your content from your profile through the “Contributor To” section

As a new alternative, you can also add your name and email to your content, which Google recommends for sites with content by multiple authors.

Chief among a host of reasons to start developing author ownership is the rapid growth of the Google+ social platform.

With Google merging opportunities to search traditionally and through one’s social networks in one experience, standing out in the crowd with this type of authorship could become a necessity long-term.

Visualizations & Graphics

We’re hearing a similar comment regarding content marketing from clients, “we want more content, but less text”. In other words, messaging strategies that have a greater impact with fewer words and detail.

In some respects, I completely agree and here is why:

• B2B solutions often have a more complex integration. Visualizations help explain process and impact quicker and more effectively.
• We often find image search results for B2B keywords; particularly for more general concepts and methodologies. (Examples here, here, and here)
• Images and graphics can be easier to share via social media, and good visualizations will often get embedded in blog posts and articles from other industry sources.

Example of first page search results for “cloud computing”

It almost seems like a complete “about face” for SEO, however visualizations in conjunction with context can often support keyword strategy and provide opportunities for organic link growth over time.

Social Registrations

Just the other week, Marketingsherpa highlighted a Social Identity study from Janrain, a social Web user management platform provider, in coordination with research conducted by Blue Research.

Among the studies findings, a few key percentages stuck out to me.

• 86% of respondents reported being bothered by the need to create new accounts at websites
• 90% admitted to leaving a website if they couldn’t remember their login details rather than taking the time to recover their login information. This figure is up from 45% in 2010
• 77% responded that social login is “a good solution that should be offered,” with 41% preferring social login over creating a new user account or using a guest account.

In the same way search marketers might argue developing social media assets to be in all the places an organizations customers are active, it also makes sense to offer registration opportunities leveraging the same social media platform credentials.

Even though B2B marketers may be hesitant at losing control of some of the registration information they can obtain, comparable increases in conversion rates and volume need to be considered as well.

According to the Janrain website, many of their customers using their social login solution have experienced 15-50% increase in registration and conversion rates.

Microformats

In the middle of 2011, all three major search engines announced support of Schema.org, which is meant to “support a common vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages”.

While it is debatable whether full blown re-architecture is wise for mature website infrastructure, site owners considering changes should also take into account the adoption of relevant microformat structure.

A recent article from Search Engine Journal highlighted a series of microformats B2B corporate sites could consider. Among some of the great recommendations to consider:

• Site Header Information for corporate logo, global navigation, company name and phone number.
• Site Footer Information for addresses, phone numbers, footer links, navigation and general contact forms.
• Company Leadership Teams can be marked up for identifying titles, descriptions (bios), and bio photographs

Finally, Don’t Forget The B2B SEO Basics

Columns could be rewritten every year refreshing B2B marketers of some of the basics of on-page SEO strategy. In summary, here are some of my top-of-mind tactics.

• Keyword Strategy Development – Every new asset presents an opportunity to be found in search; don’t forget to apply a keyword target.
• Social Sharing Elements – Keep social sharing top of mind by adding relevant social media sharing buttons and link references.
• Landing Page Development – create SEO landing pages for less search friendly marketing assets but that will still provide opportunities for links and keyword visibility.
• Form Submissions and Lead Tracking – create opportunities for lead generation initiatives through short forms when appropriate. Don’t forget to set the goals and conversion tracking as well.

While site optimization alone won’t drive the results B2B marketing campaigns require, they help augment and provide better opportunities for success over the long haul. As B2B search engine marketers get ready to kick off this years initiatives, hopefully these recommendations (and others) help lead to success with B2B SEO in 2012.

Here are five resolutions top of mind on my list for 2012, and recommended for other B2B search engine marketers as the new year begins.

Track More Leads

2012 is the year to stop working with blinders when dealing with Web traffic reports and evaluating the effectiveness digital marketing channels.

• Replace email addresses with contact forms
• Create lead generation forms and landing page summaries for value-added content initiatives
• Consider layering in call-tracking solutions, particularly when a larger percentage of business development inquiries will ultimately come through offline means
• Layer in conversion tracking from Web reporting and marketing automation solutions

It doesn’t surprise me when what seem to be even the most successful B2B organizations still have not fully integrated conversion metrics into their digital marketing strategy.

In many cases, the value of information gleaned from this conversion data, has just not been fully realized. 2012 is the year to change that.

Integrate Lead Management

Complex B2B sales are won face-to-face, after rigorous planning or multiple levels of decision making. This is another reason lead tracking online is not implemented. Because sales-ready leads may not often be found immediately online, conversion tracking becomes less of a priority.

Lead management is essential in realizing the potential of online lead generation and placing them in the right position within the sales funnel. Ed Hadley, Senior Marketing Manager of Neolane characterizes lead management as a four-step process:

• Capture: when someone arrives at a landing page via search and completes a form to download a whitepaper.
• Scoring: assign points to prospects, so sales focuses only on highly qualified prospects who are ready to buy.
• Routing: ensure that the sales team is pursuing only winnable opportunities.
• Nurturing: Leads that aren’t sales ready are funneled into nurture programs, a series of automated communications that help educate prospects and move them down the funnel.

Building a list of lead opportunities and laying the groundwork for ongoing marketing communication efforts can be just as critical to the long-term business development strategy of an organization as well finding sales-ready prospects.

Invest In Content Marketing

Content marketing continues to be a critical component of the B2B search marketing mix. Via the CMI and MarketingProfs 2012 B2B Content Marketing Report, B2B marketers employ on average, eight different content marketing tactics to achieve their goals. Marketers spend over a quarter of their marketing budget on content marketing.

But having a content marketing strategy alone will not solve your leads, traffic, and search visibility challenges. I found it interesting that according to the study, 62% of B2B marketers use a mix of insourced and outsourced content. The reality is that content generation that delivers marketing results must happen at a significant level.

For our most successful clients, our organization has led or been a part of the creation of several hundred content assets (per client) in 2011.

Bridge Organizational Departments

For larger organizations in particular, advocate SEO across departments, in an effort to scale SEO initiatives and incorporate keyword development and link building consideration from the start.

Here are some suggestions:

• Strategic Marketing: Showcase keyword research, website report metrics, and tie as much of as possible to bottom-line business value.
• Web Development: Get the IT team on your side by providing potential benchmarks for SEO-centric site initiatives before submitting change requests and support tickets.
• Marketing Communications: Link building requires outbound communication. Who better to interface with than the team traditionally responsible with this communication initiatives?

SEO (B2B or B2C) simply cannot be done in a vacuum. Make it a priority to bring the entire organization into the mix when it comes to fulfilling both short and long-term SEO goals and objectives.

Start Taking Mobile Seriously

While I do realize marketers made the prediction mobile would take off in 2011, it sort of did but sort of did not. While there should be no question that mobile device usage is on the rise and will continue to grow in 2012, the impact for B2B marketers, in terms of website user behavior, probably was not felt as much this year.

For the most part, the B2B marketing customer base was not demanding mobile offerings from their solution providers.

But the numbers from web traffic reports don’t lie. Check out these percentages of mobile browser usage across a select group of our clients’ Web traffic reports, comparing the last two six month periods.

Not only did the use of mobile devices increase as a percentage of overall traffic to these sites between time periods, but the actual growth in mobile browser behavior was over 80% period to period. We highly suspect this percentage and growth period to period will continue to increase in 2012.

What Is On Your List Of B2B SEO Resolutions For 2012?

Hopefully this list will help jumpstart more effective B2B search engine marketing initiatives in the new year, but I am sure I have not hit everything out there.

From social media to Google secure search to overall Web reporting, the list of resolutions and priorities will always shift between organizations. I would love to read your thoughts and perspectives via comments below.

For many of us, B2B SEO now includes some component of social media marketing. Even though social media was only the tenth most effective B2B marketing tactic in the chart above, 66% of organizations with a formal SEO process were integrating social media into their overall SEO strategy (see chart below).

While most will agree that social media delivers value outside of SEO, it is up to B2B marketers to demonstrate that value to executive teams, particularly when budgets are proposed in the new year.

As you’re planning for 2012 marketing initiatives, here are four ways to make sure that social media strategy, which helps improve SEO and beyond, stays on the budget in the new year.

Conversion Metrics For B2B Social Media

At least one of the benchmarks used when evaluating social media campaigns must be in relation to lead acquisition. The chart below shows an example of a clients Google Analytics report, highlighting a select group of conversion rates, based on third party referrals where social media campaigns were initiated.

What is not noted in this data, but should be considered is the level of sales-readiness in a lead being sent via social media. We are working with many of our clients more on developing specific benchmarks highlighting the type of leads, and their place in the sales funnel.

For example, white paper requests or embeds of an infographic are much different conversions than webinar registrations or demo requests, as it pertains to the ability of a sales professional to initiate contact and potentially close a deal.

The point is that while leads via social media initiatives might not lead to immediate ROI, there is value in building an ever expanding contact list, which may convert (or help support) more sales-specific content marketing initiatives down the road.

Link Building Acquisition

The ability to acquire links through social media initiatives should certainly be a priority, and a benchmark that can help support the value of social media moving forward.

Networking connections built in Twitter and LinkedIn, as well as social bookmarking sites such as Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg, can open the door to site owners or marketers for various online publications.

Simply noting links acquired via social media outreach or networking initiatives is a first step. Below is a screenshot from RavenTools Link Manager tool, but even notation in Excel would suffice.

As the year draws to a close, re-evaluate the sources of inbound links, to determine whether social media marketing played a part in link acquisition.

Brand Based Keyword Searches

While ranking well for the brand may not be an important KPI for general B2B SEO success, growth in brand based keyword search referrals might make sense for social media.

Why? Generally speaking, brand based keyword referrals should have higher conversion rates and traffic performance metrics.

Take a look at a comparison between branded and non-branded keyword referral traffic and conversion rates for one client (year to date metrics):

• Conversion Rate on All Organic Search Traffic: 4.05%
• Branded Keywords: 9.52%
• Non-Branded Keywords: 1.75%
• “Not Provided” Keywords: 3.70%

Building brand awareness over time through social media, by way of a consistent growth in keyword traffic, makes sense when evaluated in combination with site conversion goals.

The chart below highlights how we have grown this same client’s overall branded search referral traffic, in part through social media initiatives.

New Visitor Traffic

Finally, new visitor traffic plays a role in benchmarking social media campaign performance. As long as visitor performance metrics, such as bounce rate, time on site, etc. are consistent with other channels, the percentage of new visitors to a website, via social media campaigns, is something worth noting.

Growth in quality new visitor traffic through social media initiatives infers that your campaigns are opening up doors and new areas of visibility for the organizations overall Web presence. The hope is that this traffic in turn can be developed into more qualified returning visitors and lead nurturing opportunities.

Hopefully, these recommendations prove to be valuable, but I would love to read your thoughts and perspective via comments below as well. How are you benchmarking social media performance this year and into 2012?

Take a look at the top priorities for CMOs in the B2B space via MarketingSherpa’s 2011 B2B Benchmark Survey:

Arguably five of the top ten priorities for CMO will be impacted in some capacity by this search engine change.

Will this make B2B SEO irrelevant?

That certainly will not be the case. At least for our clients (and hopefully for yours or your organization), organic search engine traffic represents a significant percentage of traffic that contributes quality leads for respective organizations.

But what makes organic search traffic valuable?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are critical for measuring B2B SEO success. B2B search engine marketers need to consider how they are currently measuring performance and its impact in the marketing mix.

This article seeks to provide recommendations for B2B search engine marketers looking to redefine KPIs for their initiatives, in the wake of enhancements to Google search behavior.

First Things First: Set Proper Benchmarks

The first step is tracking “not provided” metrics to get an idea of the percentage of organic search traffic actually impacted by this change. Google has indicated that this shift will impact less than ten percent of searches, but keep in mind the following:

• In February 2010, it was projected Google was processing more than 80 billion searches per month.
• We know Google is proactively encouraging more searchers to try Google+. Assuming adoption grows, so will users interested in encrypted search.

Bottom line: Get an understanding of how encrypted search is impacting organic search engine traffic immediately. Seek to educate management ahead of time on the change and what is being done in adjustment.

Year Over Year Traffic Metrics

Build a stronger case for the evaluation of annual trends and improvements. Some of the measurements we evaluate year over year include:

• Overall organic search engine traffic
• Branded versus non-branded keyword referrals
• Leads via organic search (branded and non-branded where possible)
• Keyword visibility (IE, rankings and keyword referral traffic)

Year over year, metrics help set the stage for annual growth goals in traffic, keyword visibility and lead generation from organic search. They also help better explain or support seasonal changes specific to the industry.

Example Excel chart from one of our clients

Keyword Referral Data

Keyword information will always be important; it just gets a bit cloudier with and when more users adopt encrypted search. Keyword metrics we follow for the typical SEO client:

• Traffic and leads from primary keyword targets and competitive keyword themes
• Traffic and leads via branded versus non-branded keywords
• Keyword ranking for primary keyword targets

Your metrics for keyword reporting remain the same, but my recommendation is to clearly identify specific benchmarks that were impacted by encrypted search, where appropriate.

For many of our clients, we now measure individual keyword performance and the overall impact a keyword phrase might have for a client’s website. This is especially important when targeting very broad terminology, which takes a much longer period of time to show significant results for the individual keyword phrase.

Third Party Referral Traffic

SEO’s know that quality links bring more impact to the overall internet marketing strategy, not just search engine optimization. Focusing more on the measurement of third party traffic referral and lead data if possible, as a KPI for SEO, is another way to demonstrate value.

Examples where this would be important for SEO’s to assume impact:

• Links acquired via competitive analysis and/or link reclamation techniques
• Link acquisition in coordination with marketing communication tactics (examples might be byline, guest blog outreach or promotional efforts)
• Viral content promotion via social media platforms

In addition to immediate value, this type of benchmark can help solidify relationships with other departments in the organization, improving the overall significance of the B2B SEO program.

Visitor Performance Metrics

SEO value does not always come from traffic increases or top keyword rankings. B2B search engine marketers should seek to improve the quality of traffic coming to the site through organic search engines as well.

Benchmarks to consider:

• Organic search engine traffic bounce rate
• Pages per visit via organic search
• Percentage of new visits via organic search

Examples of onsite initiatives B2B search engine marketers can review to improve these benchmarks include:

• Evaluation of search engine results in coordination with keyword strategies, to better define search intent.
• Review of titles, headings, meta descriptions, copy and cross-links between related web pages.

As illustrated in the top chart, these types of benchmarks can play very well in the B2B organization’s overall marketing strategy. Visitor performance metrics aid in the gathering of customer and prospect insight as it pertains to the quality of content on the website.

Final Thoughts

While Google’s enhancements to encrypted search make the B2B SEO’s job more problematic, steps need to be taken to proactively address this change and evaluate KPIs in place.

Keyword and traffic benchmarks will still be present, but B2B SEOs should also consider emphasizing their value with third-party referral traffic and visitor performance metrics.

In the same manner, search marketers educated clients with respect to blended search and personalized search, SEOs need to be ahead of the game with this change as well.

More importantly, while brand awareness (the only priority outside of the lead generation process) was an important priority, its fourth place rank in importance narrowly beat out the challenge B2B marketers face developing lead nurturing initiatives.

Effective content marketing can become a central component of lead generation initiatives. Content marketing goes beyond copy and represents all of the content assets that take an online user from casual visitor to prospective buyer. Eloqua’s Content Marketing Grid provides a great example of how this can work, across a range of content marketing assets.

But as over 30% of the world’s population now has access to the Internet and 133+ million domains are accessible, the challenge of being found in itself seems to grow by the minute. While superb content marketing might organically find its way to the masses, it is also very easy to get drowned out in the noise.

To raise awareness to content marketing initiatives, here are five recommendations B2B marketers should consider (aside from online advertising).

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is arguably the most underrated tactic for generating traffic and awareness to content marketing initiatives. You are (hopefully) doing two things by writing good blog comments:

• Adding value to the blogger’s post and discussion.
• Establishing positive visibility for yourself and your website to the blogger and visitors of the post.

A blog commenting and outreach initiative launched two months ago for one of our clients has already gathered several guest blog post opportunities, both on the client’s blog and for the client’s thought leaders to guest post elsewhere.

Twitter

Need another positive reason to establish your B2B brand on Twitter? Twitter helps bridge the gap between strictly professional and more personal social networking platforms by offering a medium that provides enough distance between users in terms of the depth of updates and personal information.

Here are a few simple suggestions to get started in specifically getting noticed:

• Retweet your favorite bloggers and site publishers but try to add a few words of additional perspective as well. Here is a recent example.
• Instead of (or in addition to) adding your site link in blog comment fields, add or login to a blog comment form with your Twitter profile as well.
• Content curation tools like Paper.li not only showcase your favorite content, but provide an opportunity to credit and mention applicable Twitter profiles too.

LinkedIn Groups

In order to be effective with LinkedIn Groups, participation must go beyond random link dropping and to actually developing a history and credibility within target groups and audiences.

One client has developed the following informal process:

• Daily login and review of updates and network information.
• Regular research in discovering LinkedIn groups applicable to target markets.
• Weekly review of discussions and group updates primarily through LinkedIn email distributions.
• Careful review and messaging illustrating the benefit of a linked resource (don’t worry, active groups will let you know pretty quickly when something is not appropriate!)

Over the past two months, this client has doubled the number of form submissions for white papers and webinars that they received in the entire first half of 2011.

For B2B marketers working in applicable industry sectors (technology, internet, marketing as examples), LinkedIn Today also creates an opportunity for traffic acquisition and content marketing awareness.

Real World Networking

While meeting your online network face to face (through networking events, conferences, etc) may be daunting, it might also be the most rewarding of all ideas in this article.

It is also worth noting that in some respects, the more effective the B2B marketer is with the three previous initiatives, the easier real world networking may become. The conversations and history are already there; social media helps bridge the gap.

In my experience, site owners, social media practitioners, and fellow marketers end up being receptive to a “content marketing pitch”, whether that be through social networking sites or traditional email, when they have met the sender in real life.

Final Thoughts

It is important to note that as great as content marketing can be for the B2B organization, realize it becomes part of the marketing voice, but is not the sole solution that explicitly keeps customers.

How has your organization found success in getting greater visibility to content marketing initiatives? I would love to read your thoughts and perspective via the comments below.

As we went through the checklist of SEO best practices for launch, a question arose on the visibility of content marketing assets being created.

Where would the value-added material our client was developing, get placed for targeting our SEO keyword strategies?

Our client had not really thought about this.

There was no argument to the logic that keyword strategies required content, and content needed to be accessible to search engines.

The organization had just gone under the assumption that these content assets would be better suited post-registration. That would end up meaning that barely any of their content assets would be accessible for our SEO strategy.

This certainly would be an issue.

B2B SEO’s face this issue, or similar situations, often. Because of the need to satisfy lead generation goals, B2B marketing strategies often encourage content behind registration forms. This article takes a look at how search engine marketers can balance SEO and lead generation initiatives, in an effort to create a win-win for the B2B organization.

Evaluating Content Marketing Assets

For the situation above, the first step in resolving the SEO issue was in the identification of the types of content marketing assets the organization would have available. Once organized, we could collectively decide whether they should be accessible pre or post-login.

Examples of content assets for consideration included:

• Articles & Tutorials
• Blog Posts
• Videos & Video Transcripts
• Product Support, FAQ’s, and Traditional Utility Resources

While the SEO might appreciate and recommend all content assets be placed before registration, it is a worthwhile exercise for stakeholders to have input on the balance between search visibility and lead generation value. Opinions almost always differ.

Some of the questions B2B SEO’s should consider in making determinations on the accessibility of content marketing assets:

• Does my content expose trade secrets or premium intellectual property?
• Will registration provide the additional value my competitors are missing (IE, it is unique enough to stand on its own)?
• What are the opportunities for keyword targeting that a particular piece of content represents?

We were fortunate to get buy-in for making all of  the content types listed above accessible before registration, however it ended up making sense to keep specific marketing collateral with deeper technical information away from immediate public consumption.

Creative Suggestions For Achieving SEO Visibility

Sometimes we’re not so lucky, or it just does not make sense to sacrifice immediate conversion opportunities. In that case, it is up to B2B SEO’s to find alternative ways to leverage content assets for SEO strategy. Here are some ideas and suggestions to consider:

Content Asset Snippets

Pull summary information from white papers, strategic research, or detailed content assets to develop shorter articles that can be used on the website or perhaps for third party article submissions. Develop landing pages that maximize the value of content assets through summary copy while still attempting to achieve lead generation goals.

Social Media Friendly Summary Assets

Even if your budget won’t allow for compelling infographics like those seen from organizations like Eloqua and Marketo, there are lower cost social media assets to consider.

The simplest being a well done PowerPoint presentation, which in turn could be placed in Slideshare. Once in Slideshare, use LinkedIn and Facebook applications to further embed the presentation in popular social networks and create landing pages with high level summary information.

Blog Post Summaries & Previews

Blog posts provide a perfect opportunity to highlight deeper, more lead generation-specific content assets. One of the best examples of an organization implementing this type of strategy effectively is Marketingsherpa. Marketingsherpa blog posts almost always use research or upcoming events and workshops for the basis of blog content development.

Keyword Prioritization

Lastly, make certain keyword research is applied to every content marketing asset, and fight hardest to get visibility for the content that will best support overall SEO strategy.

If your organization demands content assets stay behind a registration form, suggest one or two of the most keyword rich assets remain publicly accessible as a way to demonstrate company expertise and potentially be leveraged for link building outreach.

Final Thoughts

Balancing short and long-term marketing goals for the B2B organization is a challenging proposition. Since SEO strategy takes time and patience in development, immediate lead generation requirements create potential conflict. B2B SEO’s need to lead the effort in maximizing content marketing efforts for search engine optimization and finding creative ways to provide keyword visibility in the face of lead generation pressure.

Lead Management Optimization

In part, this refers to the increased collaboration between marketing and sales to provide quality leads and improve overall sales conversion rates. B2B search engine marketers need to be attuned to this concept, developing tactical SEO initiatives with the impact on overall marketing and sales strategy in mind. This article explores how B2B SEO’s provide value to the lead management process, before and after conversions from organic search traffic take place.

Optimizing The Top Of The Funnel

Arguably the easiest place to fit SEO is in new customer acquisition strategy; filling the top of the sales funnel with lead nurturing opportunities. What’s lead nurturing? Via Marketo, it’s the process of building a relationship with your qualified prospects in hopes of turning them into sales.

Consider how these tactical SEO steps fit into the process:

• Focus on the basic elements of SEO for all content assets developed:
  • Keyword focus in HTML titles, meta descriptions, page headings, body copy
  • Use of canonical and meta robots tags where appropriate
  • Cross-link related content assets and pages with related keyword targets.

  B2B SEO’s want to be involved in the optimization of articles, blog posts, new product pages, etc.

• Integrate SEO-friendly landing pages for downloadable and multimedia assets.

Individual white papers, video content, presentations, etc, should get wrapped around a traditional web page, which explains basic information about the asset, key takeaways, and potential conversion actions as well. These pages become ideal locations for more long-tail keyword strategies, designed to drive forum submissions or download requests.

• Establish an “SEO Roadmap” of keyword opportunities that can be incorporated into new content strategies going forward.

In other words, keyword research done at the start of any SEO project should become a working resource for content ideas moving forward. B2B SEO’s should build organized lists of keyword targets, broken down by strategic themes or business unit objectives.

The more content opportunities B2B SEO’s can be involved with, the greater the likelihood an organization’s content assets will be found in search results.

It takes time to develop, but the broad results speak volumes over time. Here is one client example, in which a primary SEO tactic is in the ongoing optimization of content developed on a monthly basis.

Evaluating Keyword Themes That Close Business

While the ongoing optimization of content is essential for lead nurturing, search engine marketers working with B2B organizations need to take SEO one step further. The slide below is my attempt at illustrating how B2B SEO’s must look to uncover specific keyword strategies that end up driving sales conversations as well as overall lead nurturing opportunities.

Via Wikipedia, marketing automation helps streamlines sales and marketing organizations by replacing high-touch, repetitive manual processes with automated solutions. This includes a deeper look into marketing channels to determine the sources of traffic that sent leads.

In coordination with a CRM tool, marketers can pinpoint the sources and touch points associated to high quality leads.

Specific points B2B search engine marketers need to be concerned with, and proactively evaluating, in coordination with marketing management include:

• Keywords used in search referrals, for prospects that made it into the sales pipeline.
• Content marketing assets viewed, from prospects that made it into the sales pipeline.
• Comparison of keywords used in search referrals, where no action or sales opportunity was found.

Armed with this information, B2B search engine marketers can make informed decisions on where to place keyword priority in relation to content strategy, and the types of assets prospects find valuable. This in turn helps marketers help sales, to obtain better leads going forward.

Final Thoughts

You will note that I did not focus on closed deals in the keyword evaluation process. That is because the B2B sales cycle often contains many more touch points and phases and while SEO improves the overall process, rarely is it the primary factor in a closed deal.

The ability of SEO to increase the volume of opportunities in the lead nurturing stage, and leverage marketing reporting tools to uncover patterns in keywords and content that lead to sales opportunity, is the priority. However the more aligned B2B SEO is with overall marketing strategy, the more valuable SEO becomes to the entire B2B organization.