Interested in reaching China's growing middle-class population? Unlike elsewhere, the search engines aren't the main arbiters of what people see -- you'll also need to master the Great Firewall, aka the Golden Shield.
Branded PPC campaigns are a difficult concept to swallow for many marketers. Why would someone pay for a branded term they already (and will always) rank first for in organic search? In the B2B world, paying for terms surrounding your brand can yield numerous benefits. Here are the top 13 reasons you should consider building […]
When it comes to conversion rate optimization (CRO) for B2B sites, A/B testing is a great place to start — but it’s only one tactic in what should be a site-wide strategy. B2C and e-commerce sites are largely focus on improving their product pages to boost transactions. However, as I mentioned in my previous article about […]
Database-driven websites are very common in the B2B sector. This is because many companies want to have a catalog of products available on their site for distributors, but it would not be cost-effective to manually build out those pages as they are meant to generate leads, not revenue. Optimizing database-driven B2B sites follows the same […]
Baidu is the most popular search engine in China, which makes it a very powerful channel for B2B marketers in the global market. As of November 2013, Baidu held 63.55% of the search engine market share in China. The other two big players in the market are 360 with 21.84% of the market and Sogou […]
The mobile takeover of web surfing activities is growing rapidly each year, so it’s imperative for B2B businesses to conform to the trend. Yet, a large number of B2B sites are still not doing anything for tablet or mobile device users. At the same time, traffic from mobile and tablet tends to be much lower […]
A B2B website that does not drive traffic, promote the brand, deliver company messaging or convert users into customers represents a waste of online marketing investments. A good B2B website should help build a strong brand while educating relevant users on industry topics and promoting products and services. Fully integrating all SEM tactics with website […]
The new Hummingbird algorithm will revolutionize the way B2B companies market their sites in search. Many larger B2B companies tend to invest marketing dollars in more traditional forms of marketing rather than SEM because the B2B space is usually not very competitive in an online atmosphere. The old idea of paying a few grand to […]
Not every company sees the value of SEM in the B2B space. Companies that only do two or three deals per year based solely on lead nurturing will have no need to rank for keywords or for building site traffic. Selling any website services outside of design to these high-ticket companies may seem impossible because […]
Over the last few years, I’ve watched the search marketing industry grow from being traffic-growth focused to being conversion- and usability-oriented. In the coming years, I expect to see an even stronger focus on usability and conversion. One thing that makes the B2B sector different from B2C is the fact that users rarely convert on […]
Given the ample warning and increased transparency Google provided in advance of Penguin 2.0, it surprises me that B2B search marketers still blew up the forums about being penalized for link spam after it hit. There’s no reason webmasters should not have cleaned up their act before the rollout (the exception being a recently acquired […]
One of the most prevalent design flaws in B2B websites is the use of carousels (or sliders) on the homepage. Carousels are an ineffective way to target user personas, which ends up hurting the site’s SEO and usability. In fact, at the recent Conversion Conference in Chicago, about 25% of the speakers mentioned carousels — […]
Those who work in the B2B sector have probably seen non-descriptive labeling used on just about every site they’ve worked on. Such labels may include title tags, URLs, H1 tags or navigation labels. Aside from irritating users, poor labeling practices will also hurt your site’s SEO. The concept of “context auditing” should be part of every search […]