Google says it so simply:

“In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.”

It sounds so easy, but trust me, it’s not.

And the folks behind PageRank (“PR”) have no shortage of guidelines for webmasters so they can best find, index and rank your site.  With Google commanding 80% +/- of search, PR is inarguably a pillar of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

So how do you get started?  Begin by tracking your PR on a monthly basis with a free tool like this one.  Heck, there are even smartphone apps for PR checking, like MultiPR which currently resides on my iPhone.

Net net, the more sites you have linking to your site, the higher your PR will be.  And, the higher the PR of a site linking to your site, the better– e.g., if you get a site with a PR of 8 linking to your site, it is FAR better than a site with a PR of 2 linking in.

The trick to getting high quality links, of course, is to be link-worthy.  What benefit does another site derive from giving up some of its precious real estate, and creating an on-ramp for its users over to hop over to your website?

Consider the following “give/gets” as part of a campaign to get sites to link to your site:

1. Make a dynamic tile that gives always-fresh information.  Here’s one of the most famous examples in web history from weather.com.
2. Make it part of an Affiliate program, where you share a slice of the revenue from referrer traffic.  Amazon does this remarkably well.
3. Design a Landing Page on your side that reflects the referrer’s brand, so a user departing their site finds the move less jarring.  For example, if you sell Flexible Packaging Film and you get a Machinery Vendor to link to your relevant film page because the film moves through his equipment, create a page that BOTH explains your film and has a photo and verbiage about the partner’s machine.
4. Have an incredibly useful, current and compelling site– I see that www.freepatentsonline.com gets linked-to from all over cyberspace, probably because it is an easy-to-navigate collection of all the patents in US history that puts the unwieldy, difficult-to-use government site to shame.
5. Reciprocate– create a Partners page or the equivalent where you cross-link to the very players who link to you.

Do you have a strategy for driving your PR, or are you happy with what you’ve got?  Let us know by commenting below….

First, a definition of PageRank (“PR”) from Google’s own Technology Overview page:

“When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data.”

Basically PageRank (which was also named after Google co-founder Larry Page…cute huh?) assigns a score to every webpage in its index, based on the number of websites linking to it and the relative quality of these links.  PageRank scores are reported on a 0-10 scale, with PR-0 being the lowest indexed rank and PR-10 being the highest.

If you have a new website your PR will typically be N/A until a PR update happens.

For you computational types, PR is likely a version of the following formula:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d(PR(t1)/C(t1) + … + PR(tn)/C(tn))

The key point is that links coming from a PR-3 site with 5 outbound links would be more valuable than links coming from a PR-5 site with 1,000 outbound links.

The other thing to note about PR is that it operates on a logarithmic scale. This means that the difference between a PR-0 ranking and a PR-1 isn’t the same as the difference between a PR-7 site and a PR-8 site. This image below by Elliance will help:

When PR was first launched, it was one of a couple dozen factors that were considered by Google’s ranking algorithm. Today, however, the algorithm assesses 200+ different variables!

Still, the fact is that on any given search word or phrase, your content appears higher in organic results as a function of context (content fit to the word or phrase) AND your PageRank.  So if you and your competitor both describe a Filling & Sealing Machine in more or less the same prose, the site with the greater PR sees the higher results… and is more likely to garner searchers’ clicks.

Next week we’ll talk about how to discover and track your PR, and improve it.

What’s your experience with your site and PageRank? Comment and let us know.

E-commerce is booming in B2B.  According to a recent study performed by BtoB Magazine,  only about 35% of Business-to-Business marketers are involved in some way with selling directly online, but a whopping 58% of companies have an increasing commitment to the channel.

Given that consumer e-commerce is completely mainstream, it’s not surprising that B2B also is going “e-tail.”

Of course, part of what is moving B2B players to adding clicks to bricks when it comes to selling is the prevalence of simple, low-cost “online store platforms” such as Shopify and Spree Commerce.The conventional wisdom has been that e-commerce is too “impersonal” to move complex, big-ticket items.  However, companies like Willow Grove, PA-based Manncorp Inc., which sells robotic equipment for making circuit boards, are true believers in BtoB e-commerce.

Manncorp’s products range in cost from $50K to $200K, and are sold only online.  The firm, which was founded in 1968, has technical sales people readily available via phone and email, but amazingly, has NO outside sales people.

Tracking E-commerce Performance

If you’re considering e-commerce, a key metric to understand is  ”shopping cart abandonment,” whereby a user fills a cart with one or more items, but then does not conclude the buying process.  Some imagine that all abandoned carts are bad news, but the fact is a high percentage of users will “game their purchase” in your online store, then call, email, or enter into Live Chat, to close the deal.

It’s the need for new sales opportunities that’s driving Packaging, Plastics and other industrial companies toward greater involvement in B2B e-commerce.

Referring back to the  survey,  34% of the BtoB Magazine respondents indicated new sales as their key motivation, and 24% said they’re compelled by the expectations of their customers that some form of online purchasing be available.

B2B transactions are much more complex than B2C transactions, and often require the involvement of multiple decision makers.  The survey’s results support this notion, citing that 73% of respondents reported having to deal with an average of more than three individual decision-makers during an e-commerce transaction, and 28% reported five decision-makers are typically engaged in the process.

To support this additional complexity, B2B online stores need to deliver the following:

• Volume Pricing Discounts
• Custom Quotes
• Credit cards as well as traditional purchase orders and perhaps even lines of credit
• Easy access to support personnel via phone, email and live chat and with extended hours beyond 8 am – 5 pm Monday through Friday.  LivePerson is an example of a leading chat platform provider
• Resellers as needed, perhaps with a quasi e-commerce process, whereby the final transaction is handed off to a channel partner, or the partner is compensated for online transactions that originate in their geographic area.

This increased complexity causes much longer sales cycles, 82% of  the survey respondents said the e-commerce transaction period averages “weeks or months.”  So while e-commerce in B2B is not as swift and simple (one decision-maker) as in B2C, it is still well worth pursuing.

Comment below if you agree, or disagree, based on what you’re seeing in your market.

Here are the 5 keys to success–

Start Warm:  You must be acquiring names/emails somehow, e.g,. a newsletter.  Make sure to send welcome emails to new subscribers, so you can start earning trust and filling the reservoir of goodwill from the first moment.

Stay above the fold, too; shorter emails are better especially early on.

Qualify, Qualify, Qualify: Make sure you can see WHO who reads the emails and then visits your site; analytics are essential.  Find out precisely how your potential new customers are interacting with your email missives.

Marathon Not Sprint: Some prospects– perhaps the majority– will need to get comfortable with your company and products well before buying.  Cultivate these folks with a steady drumbeat of product info, webinar invites, case studies and links to short-form video.

Segment Your Target Audience: Remember BANT (Budget / Authority / Need / Timeframe) with every email you send.  Make sure you match the message to the role.   What appeals to the CFO could be radically different than what appeals to the Director of Operations.

Make a Crisp/Clear Offer: When BANT is aligned, or coming into alignment, it’s essential to make a discrete offer that is crystal-clear.  Said another way, remember to Ask for the Order.

Don’t just write emails, craft them. Make sure messaging and targeting are harmonized.  And please comment below with what has been working for you and your company.

Companies these days don’t just need to build great products … they also need great content (and distribution!) to raise awareness of these products.

According to the Maria Pergolino, Senior Director of Marketing at Marketo (a company that offers a  hosted platform for Revenue Performance Management), marketing and other supporting content should be shared across all platforms such as blogs, white papers, videos, widgets, tweets, email and direct email, email or snail mail to support an organizations products and offerings.

Per Ms. Pergolino:  “Content also helps build trust and consistency for your brand. When your sales team’s messages match your other content you become a reliable, trusted source of information.”

Once you create contextual, current and compelling content (three Cs), what do you do with it?  The quick, and often too simple answer is post it on your website and share it via Twitter et al.  It’s a good start, but there are many other ways to gain free distribution.

Do the research to identify precisely where your prospective buyers go on the web. Say that buyers in your world go to the website associated with a traditional trade magazine, a content-based platform such as Informous, and a traditional directory  site.

Check out www.compete.com and type in the URLs of your target sites to see just how many visitors each one attracts. You can then prioritize the resulting list based on unique monthly visitors. Down the road, you can further refine your list based upon which segments convert to customers at the highest rates.

But don’t just trust YOUR view of where your prospects go on the web– ask them, you may be surprised.  Given the decline of most B2B print magazines, the key sources of information on the web have shifted significantly in the last 24 months. In fact, most B2B purchasing research now begins on the web.

So creating and adding lots of content to your site is great for horizontal search as Google will spider your content and index it.   But also seriously consider Vertical Search as prospects are increasingly using very specific ‘narrowcast’ sites to make their search for products far more efficient, and to easily go from being in a research mindset to purchase mode.

How are you using content to generate business? Comment and let us know.

The MarketingSherpa B2B Summit this year had some fascinating information  about optimizing the marketing funnel (graphic above as a PDF is here).

1. First, the most effective leadgen tactic is… your own website, followed closely by Search Engine Optimization/Organic Search.  Next is Email Marketing and Content Marketing (think:  syndicating your product brochures, case studies et al to vertical search sites), and finally, at #5 is tradeshows.

 

2. The Top Tactic for creating engaging, effective content is:  Using a Multichannel Messaging Strategy.  This means hitting your targets across various mediums so the “touches per contact” reaches the magical 3 to 7 times.  In the old word this was Web and Email– now it’s also Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and even Mobile.

 

3. The percentage of B2B organizations that  VERIFY a business lead before it’s passed on to Sales is 56%.  Our guess is that the 44% are missing out, because not only is the verification step a chance to ensure Sales gets a REAL lead (so they know to move f-a-s-t), but it’s a chance to sweeten the lead with 3rd party information, e.g. How big a company is the prospect in terms of revenue?

 

Sure, there’s a Sales Funnel– but it’s fronted by a Marketing Funnel where the lead is created off of various and multiple touchpoints, and there’s an all-important chance for further qualifying it.  Smart marketers work their funnel, to ensure sales people can better work THEIR resulting funnels.

How are you managing your marketing funnel? Comment below and let us know.

LinkedIn Company pages have dramatically increased the opportunities for small-to-medium sized businesses to level the playing field with the larger, better-capitalized firms.

LinkedIn has about 100 million registered users worldwide, and is still rapidly growing– see it here.

Creating your LinkedIn Company page is FREE and can really drive visibility of your business.

Begin by determining if you’re creating a page for your Company from scratch– or one already exists.  Search here.

And here’s the information you’ll need to complete to make your firm standout on the #1 business networking platform–

Company Name
Make sure the Company name listing matches the exact name you and other employees use in your personal profiles.

Admins
Two choices: either all employees with a valid email address registered to your domain or you can designate certain users to be Admins.

Logos
Logos can be uploaded as a standard logo as well as a square logo that will be used for network updates; this is very important to make your Company page pop.

Company Description
Describe your firm’s offerings and who you sell to.  You can even add tabs reflecting discrete Products & Services.

Specialties
Include keywords that describe what you do in this section; remember LinkedIn is a search-centric content platform. LinkedIn only gives you 256 characters to describe your Company’s specialties, so be succinct.  Two or three word descriptions are acceptable, too.

Twitter & Company Blog
LinkedIn will automatically add your Twitter updates and blog feeds so your Company page stays current.

News Module
This optional module displays search results that shares news about your Company, however, it may ALSO show stories that don’t relate to your Company, except in search terms.  If your Company is not making a ton of news, it’s best to pick “don’t show news about my Company.”

Company Type, Size, URL
Under Company type and Company size, you’ll select from options.

Industry, Operating Status, Year Founded
Main Company industry means you choose from the LinkedIn categories.  Then select Company operating status and the year founded.

Locations
The last step is physical locations:  You can add up to five different “bricks & mortar” addresses.

Careers
JOBS is one of the biggest growth areas for LinkedIn– you can post a job on your Company’s careers page with ease.

Here’s the Informous Company page; naturally it talks about our Plastics and our Packaging websites.  And of course, we’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn, I am here.

QR stands for Quick Response; that is, they can be read quickly by a cell phone.  They are popping up everywhere, from traditional magazine pages to business cards to… packaging.

A QR code looks like this:

Once a QR code is scanned by your cell phone, it may give you details about that business or product line, play a video, or give you a coupon.

They’re far more useful than a standard barcode because they can store– and digitally present– much more data, including web links, geo coordinates, and text.  And you don’t need a big hand-held scanner to read them, just your typical smart phone with a free app.

You can easily generate a QR code of your own using a free site like Kaywa.com, or QRstuff.com.

Using  QR codes in B2B
Marketing to consumers or businesses starts with engagement; you can’t get a message across unless someone is listening.  QR codes entice the curious to pull out their omnipresent smartphone and point it at YOUR QR code.  This quick action could yield them:

1. An upsale message.
2. A coupon for a future order.
3. A request to fill out a quick online survey.
4. Pretty much anything else you can think of!

If you’re in Plastics or Packaging, what you sell tends to move down the food chain to end-users.  Perhaps what would serve you best, after you’re using QR codes yourself, is to help your customers use QR codes with THEIR customers.  After all, if engagement is good between you and YOUR customer, it’s also good to facilitate QR codes and engagement between your customer and your customer’s customer.

Are you using QR codes?  What’s been your experience?  Please add a comment below.

The first, best, and least expensive way is to make sure that you identify and use the right keywords within your site so that the search engines can understand what your site is all about.  Many  good looking B2B websites are masterfully designed to maximize user experience and emphasize the right prose. Nonetheless, digital marketers still find they rank too low on search engine results and end up missing a large volume of potential visitors.  When this happens, it’s time for Keyword Research.

Keyword research should always be where you begin in any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) project.  It’s best done before you redesign a website, but you can also do it later by going back and updating any poorly performing web pages. Building a high quality keyword library may seem like an overwhelming task, but there are actually hundreds of free online tools that remove a huge portion of the time and effort from the process.  One tool, a personal favorite of mine, is www.wordtracker.com. It has a free level as well as a premium level (thus “Freemium), and is arguably the industry’s leading keyword research tool with a giant database containing over 300 million search terms.

With a few clicks on freekeywords.wordtracker.com you can discover:

 
1. The related words you should consider when designing your site
2. Long Tail versions of the word or phrase you type in (70% of searches are Long Tail, or 3+ words)
3. The number of searches per day across the top search engines notably, Google and Bing

Wordtracker and similar tools charge around $50/month for their premium offerings. Subscribers to these premium services can typically utilize a Thesaurus to find related phrases and synonyms, then click on interesting words and easily add them to a “basket.”  Also, one of the most valuable keyword tools offered allows you to  find out precisely what keywords your competitors are using, giving you an opportunity to evaluate their tactics, while tailoring your competitive strategy.

So however you play the Search game –  Organic or Pay-Per-Click, words matter. Find the right words, and build them into the content on your site.  Have any other tools you find useful? Comment away below….

Figure 1

Vertical Search is a crucial marketing tactic for both B2C and B2B, given that Google returns a vast sea of results that is time-consuming for people to filter and difficult to use to compare products or services.

From Wikipedia (itself a Vertical Search Engine)–

A vertical search engine, as distinct from a general web search engine, focuses on a specific segment of online content. The vertical content area may be based on topicality, media type, or genre of content. Common verticals include shopping, the automotive industry, legal information, medical information, and travel. In contrast to general Web search engines, which attempt to index large portions of the World Wide Web using a web crawler, vertical search engines typically use a focused crawler that attempts to index only Web pages that are relevant to a pre-defined topic or set of topics.

But here’s the rub– to make a Vertical Search Engine useful to promote your brand and drive incremental revenue for your firm, it needs to drive Direct Response.  It must enable visitors to commit a tangible action.

Take OpenTable, a noteworthy pillar in B2C Vertical Search.  Of course you can find your local bistro via geographic search and/or cuisine (e.g., Baltimore and Italian)– this is about RELEVANCE.  But most notably by using OpenTable, you can… make a reservation!

Per Figure 2, a user goes from Awareness through the funnel [Interest -> Desire) to Action (reserved restaurant seats on a given date).  Better, this Action results in a discrete LEAD for the restaurant– even if you don’t show up at the appointed day/time, the restaurant now knows who you are (name/email) and your interest, and they can market to you for future visits.

In B2B, the best Vertical Search Engines allows users to create leads, either specific to a vendor or general to an area of interest.  These leads are then matched and sent to vendors who can follow up on the prospect.

The smart digital marketers of today don’t just manage and maintain their own websites, but fish where the fish are - Vertical Search engines that aggregate interested prospects.  Action Item: Identify the Vertical Search Engines that your target prospects visit most to find RELEVANCE and commit Actions, making sure that your most compelling content is deployed on these sites.

What Vertical Search Engine is high on your list? Comment below and let us know.