Category Archives: SEO / Search Engine Optimization

SEO: Google Sitelinks Enhancements

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In the ongoing evolution of search engine marketing, the game keeps getting more interesting. The latest development to catch my attention was today’s update of how sitelinks appear on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

Sitelinks: What Are They?

For those of you unfamiliar with sitelinks, these are the list of links that appear just under the meta description on SERPs. Sitelinks point directly to various pages of your website and are meant to help searchers access the exact information they need as quickly as possible. Typical pages you will see included are Careers/Jobs, About Us, Contact Us, and product overview pages, among others.

Google’s New Sitelink Structure

In the past, sitelinks included much less detail. Back in 2008, sitelinks appeared as a simple of list of the pages that tend to be the most popular on a typical web site (see list above). Aside from simple routine layout changes, the first major update to sitelinks in a long time just happened today.

Here is a screenshot of the sitelinks that appear when I search for Anue Systems, the network monitoring switch vendor in Austin, TX.

New Google Sitelinks - Anue Systems Example
New Google Sitelinks – Anue Systems Example

As you can see, the new approach allots much more real estate to the sitelinks than before. Since sitelinks are for quickly routing searchers to the most relevant content, this enhancement is a great change for all involved.

First, by providing the links with more information displayed (meta description and URL path), SEO landing pages begin to permeate throughout the site. These days, the primary purpose of the home page is to say “Welcome, how can I most quickly route you to the content you desire?” If you have already adopted that approach, this helps you send them straight to it without having to pass through the home page first. Remember, the more clicks they have to make, the more likely they are to bounce right off the site onto the next task.

Second, this provides significant value-add for search engine optimization efforts. Meta description becomes even more important to earning clicks. Why? It is your chance to “pitch” why the reader should view the page.  If you include keywords as well as “what’s in it for me” in the meta description, the deep linking will serve you well for spreading the SEO “juice” out more across your website.

Managing Your Sitelinks

Of course, this feature is mostly automated, so you need to keep tabs on what is included in your sitelinks. I have read case studies about all sorts of unwanted pages showing up. In fact, one case study from 2009 showed a page with a vulgar page title (complete with the F-word) appearing right above the executive leadership link. I’d imagine someone on the web team found themselves sending out resumes in short order.

Regardless, particularly if you have user generated content on your website, Google offers a tool to demote a sitelink from the SERPs. Here is a quick excerpt on how to do it from the Webmaster Tools – Sitelinks page:

To demote a sitelink URL:

On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
Under Site configuration, click Sitelinks.
In the For this search result box, compete the URL for which you don’t want a specific sitelink URL to appear.
In the Demote this sitelink URL box, complete the URL of the sitelink you want to demote.

Once you’ve demoted or undemoted a sitelink, it can take some time for search results to reflect your changes.

You can demote up to 100 URLs, and demotions are effective for 90 days from your most recent visit to the Sitelinks page in Webmaster Tools.

What do you think about the new sitelink appearance? What will you do differently from an SEO perspective to take advantage of it?

Read more posts from Return On Now about Search Engine Optimization.

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SEO: Best Blogs about Search Engine Optimization

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In my ongoing networking with various marketing colleagues, it has become apparent that the general level of understanding about SEO is rather low. Most marketing folks really do understand that SEO is important, so they have at least read up on the “why” and some basic on-page items you can do to optimize for search engines.

Now, with the rather massive changes that Google has rolled out with the initial Panda / Farmer update and more recent update to PageRank, the knowledge gap has expanded for most of us. Just this week I was chatting with a couple of SEO folks here in Austin, and they had completely missed when Google updated its PageRank formula not once, but twice in the past two months. [Read more about the PageRank update and other recent Google changes on WebProNews, one of our recommended blogs in the list below.]

The most common question I get is, “What are your favorite online resources for me to learn more about SEO?” Typically, I rattle off a couple of my favorites, but it is due time that I take a moment to share a more thorough list here on Return On Now.

The following list is meant to be a starting point. I did not take the time to rank them, as each of these blogs offers solid content that has proven useful to me in one area or another. And of course, I start with the SEO king of Google himself…

Top Blogs Covering Search Engine Optimization

  1. Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
  2. The Daily SEO Blog (SEOmoz)
  3. SEO Blog (SEO Book)
  4. Search Engine Land
  5. Search Engine Watch: SEO Category
  6. Search Engine Journal: SEO Category
  7. Graywolf’s SEO Blog (by Michael Gray)
  8. Search Engine Roundtable
  9. Search Engine Guide
  10. TopRank Online Marketing Blog (Lee Odden)
  11. WebProNews
  12. SEOptimise
  13. SEO Scientist (possibly a best kept secret in the SEO industry)
  14. Search Engine Optimization Journal
  15. Website Magazine (tag=SEO)
  16. GoogleCache (SEO Research and Ramblings)
  17. Search Marketing Wisdom
  18. SEO 2.0 SEO Blog

There you have it, my list of the top resources I turn to when looking for industry news and analysis about search engine optimization.

What did I miss?

Please recommend any other great resources that I may have overlooked below in the comments. I’ll go back and update the post to add more if you come up with some solid finds that our readers would enjoy as well.

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SEO Content Strategy: The Importance of Personas

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There are many components of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), from keyword selection to technical optimization to the way you approach content as a whole. While it was once sufficient to simply stuff a bunch of keywords onto a page and show up well-ranked for those terms, those days are long gone.

Quality and Relevance Are Even More Important than Ever

The Panda / Farmer update introduced quality as a key metric, and it is measured through a rather complicated algorithm. This algorithm reviews the word count, the style, the grammatical correctness, and the type of website it is. Then, it factors in how it ranks sites that it deems “similar”, and assigns a ranking factor there as well. There are no “tricks” to get around this one. Just write good content with correct spelling and grammar, in natural language that a real reader would understand.

Relevance also influences this algorithm, albeit indirectly. Panda incorporates metrics that indicate how readers respond to the content (bounce rate, time on page/site, pageviews / visit, etc. – all readily available via Google Analytics or any leading commercial analytics package). This is a GREAT development for those of us who practice white hat SEO exclusively. Write for your audience, keep them engaged, include keywords that your readers will relate to, and the rankings will come over time.

How to Manage Relevance

The first requirement is clearly to understand  your space. Keep up with the latest trends, jargon, technologies, events, thought leaders, and social “buzz” to start. If you have been in the same industry for several years, you likely already have this covered.

The second, and most commonly overlooked, requirement is to develop good user personas. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, here is my definition of the term as it relates to web content:

A persona is a fictional character that describes your target audience or a segment of your target audience, whichever is most practical for making rational splits in content, tone, and approach.

So basically, a persona is “Joe Customer” or “Jane Prospect”. It is outlined in prose format, often reading like a brief biography of the fictional person. Many companies go so far as to give the persona a name, age, job title, and even a photo. The idea is to get buy-in across your leadership team as to exactly who you are writing for. To know them, their story, what motivates them, what their hobbies are, whatever it is about them that you think you should message to.

Check out some sample personas on the following websites for reference:

Some marketing and IT  types (personas are also useful for Software Interface Design and Usability) are skeptical about this idea. They claim to already know their audience. Some call this a silly exercise. And really, it may not be necessary to document each individual persona…in one situation: where you already know the persona intimately, and you ( and ONLY you) will be involved in generating content for that audience. If you write content for a business with more than five employees, there is a place for user personas.

How to Apply Personas to Content

The first step to moving the needle with personas is to get buy in from the most important decision makers in your organization. We’ve seen far too many persona efforts scrapped mid-way because leadership was not included early enough. It is crucial that those decision makers start to really envision the fictional character to whom you will be messaging. Once you are all on the same page, you will get a lot less pushback later once you turn persona into messaging and finished content.

Next, review your customer lifecycle in more detail. Do you already have content for all the key pre-sales stages in the life cycle? Specifically, you should have:

  1. Thought leadership materials that educate (not pitch) the customer on important trending topics in your space? Complete with calls-to-action that drive them to your website for potential conversion
  2. More in-depth content about the technology, technique, service, or product type you sell, and even deeper content about your own products or services
  3. Very focused differentiation and validation materials, such as why you are best, case studies, third party reports, and testimonials
  4. A very clear path to purchasing once they are ready to do so

Now you are ready to take action. Look at each persona and start listing the types of materials they might like to see at each of these points in the life cycle. Look for where there are overlaps and differences, because overlaps are opportunities to write content once, and use it for multiple audiences. Then prioritize based on two factors:

  1. Relative importance to your business or cause for each persona
  2. Areas where you can provide relevant content to multiple personas with the same information or very similar content

Once you complete this exercise, you should have a reasonable start on the content plan to improve your analytics and relevance in tandem.

Summary

User personas are a key component of any content strategy that places relevance at the top of the priority list. With Google Panda now measuring relevance, you really have no choice but to pay attention to this topic. Take time now to be sure you know who your target audience is personally, and enjoy the SEO and increased traffic it will offer to you under the new ranking algorithm.

Have you ever been involved in user persona creation? What worked and didn’t work? Do you have any samples that would help our readers better understand this?

Please share your experiences, successes, failures, and samples in the comments section below!

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An SEO Experiment Gone Awry (Mea Culpa)

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Today I am writing the most difficult blog post I’ve ever authored. Why so difficult? Because something I did has made some people very unhappy. So here I will state my case and lay myself before the mercy of the jury. I do not know if it will help, but at least the information will be available for any and all to read.

For those of you who know me personally, you can attest to the fact that everything I do is on the “up and up”. I’ve been called honest to a fault on numerous occasions. I value my reputation like I value those I love and cherish. In the spirit of honesty and transparency, I present the following.

Google Panda and an SEO Experiment

Several months ago, I first learned that Google was working on a algorithm update that was meant to penalize low quality and duplicate content online (now known as “Panda“). Needless to say, I was intrigued. As an SEO and online marketing practitioner professionally, I had witnessed sites like eHow manage to leap to the top of the rankings for nearly any search term you might enter into Google. On the other hand, I had syndicated blog posts from friends and colleagues here on Return On Now… content that would now be considered “duplicate” by Google. I was worried my SEO would take a negative impact, so I kicked off an experiment to test just how hard the update would affect me.

Structuring the Experiment

To perform an SEO experiment, you need content. In this case, I needed duplicate content. But I wanted to see just how aggressively Panda would penalize it. So I decided to design two test sites, one with essentially all duplicate content, and another with a handful of original pages plus some duplicate content as well. Since this was to be a short term trial, I built two WordPress sites using freely available standard templates and found a plugin that let’s you create posts from RSS feeds. Bingo! My experiment was ready to go.

Then I started thinking about what topic areas might be rich with RSS feeds to run the experiment.

I had already purchased “supplymyhobby.com” for an etail business idea I kicked around in 2010, and it was sitting there unused, so I chose it for the first site. Obviously, hobby content is widely available on the web, so I decided to make it the “all duplicate” site.

I also selected a new domain focused on back pain, an ailment I’ve suffered from since a car accident in 1994. I figured, since I am in the demographic of who would want to read this sort of content, I could hack together several pages of original content to supplement the duplicate material. In this way, I could test whether Google Panda would “slap” a site harder based on how much of the content is duplicate.

On both sites, I wanted to be sure Google indexed them as real sites and not experiments, so I did add some more promotional content. One asked for what hobbies readers want to see on the site. The other had a few pages of product reviews for back relief remedies.

Populating the sites

I built both sites first, and then configured the autoposting plugin. At this point, I actually had second thoughts and nearly scrapped the whole idea, but I figured that this was a short-term trial. I could set it up, get the sites live, ensure they are indexed in Google, and then watch the traffic trends until a few weeks after the Panda rollout. Then I could draw conclusions, turn it off, and integrate the learnings into my ongoing SEO work. The key phrase here is “turn it off”, which is where it gets hairy.

Now, I understand the slippery slope of using content from other blogs, There have been many debates about what a copyright means online vs. in print, what rights authors have, and what attributions are required for copied/shared content. As you’ve seen here on RON many times, I frown heavily upon stealing content for personal gain or other financial reasons. I would never, ever steal someone else’s high quality content for the sole purpose of taking credit for it or making money in a shady fashion. This is an important point, and one I will come back to shortly.

To get the sites indexed in Google, I had to connect it to some RSS feeds. Since I needed to get the site live as fast as possible to build a little momentum pre-Panda, I hurried to connect some RSS feeds that were serving up quality on-topic content and turned the sites on. I also set the content autoposting plugin to append two things on each post, the official name of the source blog and a link to the original content. I figured, at least I’m establishing backlinks which wouldn’t have hurt the original sites in any way pre-Panda, and I’m being upfront about what sites actually created the content. I did this because I am no content thief, and I would never do such a thing otherwise.

In this process, I did overlook one important thing on the WP template – I didn’t change it at all. That was an outright mistake, because they came with verbiage claiming that all material on the site was copyrighted by the site itself. Shame on me for the oversight, because I knew full well that some or all of the content would be written by others on their own sites. It has been suggested that I should have simply asked for permission, and I can’t argue that point. In my haste to make the experiment happen, thinking no one would even notice, I did not do so. Again, shame on me.

Once the sites were live, I did not promote them aggressively. Upon launch, I did link to them from another website or two, ping Google directly, and bookmark a handful of pages and posts. Basically, just enough to get them indexed. My goal was not to build traffic, grow the sites, or create some sort of business. It was purely academic, and once indexed, only organic search traffic needed be measured to draw any conclusions.

Drawing Conclusions

Let’s keep this part short. What did I learn about Google Panda in this experiment?

  1. As we saw across a variety of sites, the penalty for duplicate content was swift and severe. Traffic essentially fell off a cliff back in February when it went live.
  2. There was a marked difference in negative impact between the two sites. The faucet was nearly turned off completely on the hobby site, while it merely took a downturn of >50% on the other site.

The second observation was especially enlightening, because it showed that Google weights its rankings according to amount of duplicate content, not an across-the-board slap for having any of it. This is exactly what I was hoping to see, because now I don’t have to worry about my organic traffic completely drying up on Return On Now.

Great, experiment over. Back to business….Not so fast buddy.

Finish What You Start

I made a crucial mistake at that time. I neglected to turn off the sites as planned.

I could spew a littany of excuses including adding a new client for my SEO business, rolling out a major new website for a local tech company, and having to deal with some personal stuff that distracted me elsewhere.

But bottom line: the sites lived on.

Earlier this week, a Google Alert came to my In-Box that really caught my attention. One of the bloggers whose content I used in the experiment (In Stitches) had seen SupplyMyHobby and was rightfully upset. I knew immediately that leaving up the site had backfired, and that I now had created a mess for myself. The old adage “finish what you started” came to mind, and I realized I had completely dropped the ball.

You see, In Stitches is a GREAT blog. They have a good quorum of regular participants on the blog, and the author (Pam MacKenzie) has built a wonderful online presence within the knitting community. I respect her work with the highest regard, which is part of the reason I used the content in the first place. I feel the same way about every one of the blogs that populated SMH during this experiment.

Immediate Remediation

This Google Alert pushed me to immediate action. After reading her scathing blog posts directly, seeing words such as “plagiarize” and “stealing”, I immediately opened my hosting FTP account and deleted the two sites completely. Of course, this was over 2 months too late, but I removed them from the web without delay and also deleted the Google Analytics accounts I used to track the experiment. I wanted no semblance of these websites to remain live online for any reason.

As I mentioned earlier, I am 100% dedicated to honesty, transparency, and taking responsibility for my own actions. The next step I took was to send an email directly to Pam with a full apology and an attempt to explain what I was doing. But you can only say so much in an email, which is why I am posting this live on my REAL blog for the whole world to see. Nothing to hide here.

Picking Up the Pieces

Ms. MacKenzie continues to think I am a scammer.

While I can understand why she might think so, I implore you to take this into account – if I were actually stealing content and taking credit for it, why in the world would I have attached it to a hosting account that lists my real name? Just search for me online and you’ll get a whole page of links to my various blogs and social media profiles. I bare myself to the world in full color, without editing or filtering. I am who you see online, in person, and in writing.

It’s known that scammers make up fake IDs, names, and contact information so that you can never actually trace their footprints. Do the math for yourself, and you’ll see that this is a severe misunderstanding that blew up in my face in the worst way possible.

I screwed up, and I apologize from the bottom of my heart to every one of the bloggers whose work I used in my experiment without asking for advanced permission. It was wrong, and I’m done fielding isolated SEO experiments altogether. It’s far too risky to touch again.

Lesson learned. I hope you can understand. Namaste.

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SEO: Why You Need A Content Strategy

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Search Engine Optimization is an ongoing need for any business that is serious about establishing and maintaining good positions on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Many businesses depend on Google alone for more than 50% of their overall traffic.

Achieving that sort of success with SEO takes more than the basics (on-page, backlinks). It requires that your website take another step to plan out a site that is:

  1. Easy to navigate
  2. Structured with broad keywords at the higher levels, and more specific keywords deeper in the nav
  3. Generating quality new content on a regular and ongoing basis

While it is rather easy to dive in and start tweaking the on-page elements that are used by search engines (page title, meta description, H1 / H2 / H3, etc.), the opportunistic online marketing mind will ask the question, “Is this the right content in the first place?”.

Content Strategy Before On-Page

Before diving into the tactics, it makes the most sense to do a self-review of your business, cause, nonprofit, or whatever entity it is that drives you to generate quality content. Map out the categories (e.g. product lines or different audiences served) at the highest level and decide what keywords best match with those categories.

Then line up the most important topic areas in the next level beneath. These will also be keywords. Feel free to even build out more specific topics at the third level (we recommend only three levels for most types of site). Continue until you have a solid plan for what keyword-rich, highly relevant content you need.

From there, you can begin generating or reworking content to fit. As you generate the new material, take a couple of extra minutes to label the right keywords…highest level category, keyword for that level, any long-tail words that make sense….and insert those into the appropriate on-page locations. And be sure to pepper in some conversion pages to collect leads if it makes sense for your business.

Planning Ahead Works

There are multiple benefits to optimizing your website with this approach.

First, it gives you a chance to take a fresh look at your site from a macro perspective. It is so easy to get caught up in the daily minutiae, that we sometimes need to take a step back to evaluate where we are, how we got there, and where we want to be.

Second, the output will be very helpful at beginning your ascent up the rankings. By structuring your website in a way that the search engine crawlers will find logical, they will better be able to connect your website to the keywords you are targeting. The bonus is that, when you relaunch your website or launch a new website, Google will typically do a full crawl of the site quickly, assuming you have an XML sitemap file logged with them.

We Can Help

You can most likely manage the build out of a content strategy yourself. If not, SEO and Content Strategy are specialties of ours. If you need help, drop me a line at tommy (at) returnonnow (dot) com.

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Why You Need A Website Part II [Toon]

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Thanks for all of your feedback to my previous commentary about how the Yellow Pages are about to be completely replaced by the Internet. I received both kudos and jeers for the post, the jeers mainly coming from those of you who are already wired and think the conclusion was a “so what”.

While I also think it’s a no-brainer that this is happening before our eyes, there are many, many of us who still think the old way works! As suprising as that might be, it’s a reality, hence the post.

Today I came across the following comic / toon on the Hubspot site and simply had to share. Good stuff Hubspot, keep up the great work.

Internet vs. Phone Book

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Local Services Businesses: Why You MUST Have a Web Presence

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Much of the material I’ve covered on here to date has focused on higher level concepts such as social media, marketing, public relations, entrepreneurship, etc. However, in recent discussions with local services businesses (electricians, auto mechanics, etc.), I learned than many of them do not truly understand the power of the internet over old contact methods such as the Yellow Pages.

Now, for those of us who are comfortable with and well versed in the online world, this may seem like a surprise. If you work in a high tech hardware or software company, a Fortune 2000 enterprise, or any profession that relies on the exchange of data or information, your business simply cannot operate without an online presence. But for local services businesses, the most common sources of leads mentioned to me were the phone book, word of mouth, and local advertising.

So, if these businesses are seeing success with the old school, tried and true methods, why am I insisting they go online?

Forget the Past; This is About Tomorrow

Sometimes, a change happens and we simply need to be on top of it. That’s what is happening now.

20 years ago, you could do everything in print. Word of mouth was offline, typically in the form of verbal referrals from one customer to another prospect. There was no simple way to scale this process, and most certainly no way to push yourself to the forefront of the yellow pages, except for buying premium space in the print publication. In the end, everything was based on purchasing ad space, and then hoping you did good enough work for your customers to pass along the word.

Now, there is a wellspring of opportunity before us. Your website can be set up and left to gather leads on your behalf. Potential customers are out there searching for the services that you do…when they are already ready to buy and interested. And those searches are moving online at an alarming rate, as evidenced by the financial difficulties we are seeing with many of the providers of business phone books / yellow pages.

You have the opportunity to help them fix whatever problem they have that suits your skill set. All you need to do is find a way to get in front of them at this important time.

What Does a Web Presence Give You?

The vast majority of these types of searches have already moved online. But Google is getting smart and starting to parse out search results based on where you are or where you want to find a service provider. There are a variety of ways to get your business listed in the local search results, and there are proven methods to move yourself to the first page of the rankings. That is where nearly all of the leads go – to the vendors who show up on page one.

The trick is not just to launch a website blindly and hope it works. If you go about that incorrectly, very few people will find the site without you providing them the URL. Considering this is a way to generate new business, that’s clearly not how you want it to work.

What you need is a properly structured and built website, with everything optimized for the search engines to place you among the top results in your locale. You need to be included in the right online services and directories. Other websites must link to you, but only the right websites with relevant content to your topic area or profession. And you need a supporting marketing strategy to harvest the leads from the website, nurture them along until ready to hire you, and close the deal.

Summary

This is the first in a series of posts I will be authoring, all focused on the opportunity available today for local services businesses. In this series, I will dig into many of the topics that need to be addressed in detail to get this right. Bookmark Return On Now today (or sign up for the RSS or email list), and come back to follow along with the series as it plays out.

I am also available to help you implement the strategies I’m about to lay out for you. If you want to investigate working together, please contact me directly via email: tommy (at) returnonnow (dot) com.

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Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Software Vendors: Starring the ‘New’ White Paper

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Since I have been unable to generate any new content for two weeks due to a personal situation that has taken up nearly all of my attention, I share with you another fine writeup by my friend and colleague Julie Hunt. The following post originally appeared on Highly Competitive just last month.

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For the past several years, multiple studies by different research firms have been conducted to evaluate the most sought-out and influential content for B2B technology customers during decision-making buying cycles, and every time, in every study, the #1 preferred content is the White Paper.

The white paper is the #1 most influential piece of collateral that technology purchasers consult when making or influencing a buying decision for their company, according to a recent survey by Eccolo Media

However, many B2B software vendors still are missing the boat with their use of white papers and have not employed them in ways to engage potential buyers, let alone convert them to customers.

In The Beginning…

Technology white papers find their origins in government briefs that were called white books, alluding to the plain white binding that was used. With the transformation to the technology white paper, experts, lead architects, systems designers used these documents to provide authoritative discussions of key ideas or technologies to show thought leadership and future direction. The classic white paper was very technical and dissertation-like, rich with in-depth details and research results.

Then something happened to white papers when many software companies began to generate them as “product collateral”. White papers were hijacked by many product marketing and marketing groups to directly promote products. Content became thinly veiled product brochures extolling the virtues of the software offerings, highlighting information favorable to the vendor. White papers became just another item in the checklist of collateral to generate for a product launch. Little strategic thinking or advance planning went into creating white papers, including the recruitment of a top tech professional to write the white paper. Well, guess what: software solution buyers do not like that kind of white paper.

When asked what most disappointed in a white paper, poor writing ranked number one.

One surprise in the findings – the respondents said they’re more disappointed when a white paper doesn’t contain enough technical information rather than when a paper contains too much.

What Potential Buyers Want In Effective White Papers

Quality Quality Quality

Customers continue to call out high quality writing with accurate and useful content as top values for the white papers that they want to read and use. They want plenty of details (tech / business), which means content has to be: tight, clear, compelling, authentic.

The survey also found that the quality of report writing gets noticed. Some 86% of respondents felt that high-quality writing was at least moderately influential and 51% ranked good writing as either very or extremely influential. By contrast, poor quality writing was the most frequent reason respondents gave for decreasing the influence of a white paper.

Less Time to Consume Content

A lot of great content is constantly published on the web, due largely to constant brisk evolution of business needs and corresponding software solutions. Customers would like to consume a large variety of content, so they prefer shorter lengths for white papers. Shorter white papers also allow vendors to generate a constant flow of new content that also keeps pace with business and tech changes. According to most of the studies cited in this article, the ideal length of a white paper is 4-8 pages. (Tech Marketing Best Practices Research Series on white papers states that 86% of tech buyers want white papers under 10 pages.)

Buyers are proactive in the use of white papers:

How to Maximize the Use of White Papers in Your B2B Marketing and Sales Process, released by InformationWeek in February 2009. Its survey of 542 professional buyers found that 93% of IT buyers pass along up to half of the white papers they read/download, and that 54% of those surveyed contacted a vendor for more information after reading a white paper.

No Registration Please

When marketing groups co-opted the white paper another marketing staple was added: requiring buyer registration to be able to download the white paper. There is a strong buyer sentiment that vendor websites should not require any information from the buyer for any content downloads.  After all, the sales engagement is buyer-driven, with the buyer deciding when and if next steps will be taken.

A recent survey done by Spiceworks (SMB IT management resource site) addressed the issue of having to register for white papers:

We also found a lot of people – more than 75% – DON’T sign up for papers requiring registration, which means the vendor is missing the opportunity to share and disseminate their knowledge.

How many (vendors) stopped requiring registration as the result of your survey?

A handful so far. The results are pretty staggering. When you remove the “registration wall,” downloads go way up. One white paper that was offered without registration was downloaded 500 times in three days!

White Papers and Content Marketing Strategies

Potential buyers visit B2B corporate websites with the intent of finding all kinds of information that will help with purchase decisions. Buyers also look for vendor information on other web venues. It is critical for any vendors who see web presence as a key to success to build a strategy for content marketing. A content marketing strategy for B2B software vendors should focus on providing relevant, compelling, and frequently updated information for target markets and customers/buyers. A high quality white paper is a significant business asset for content marketing: quality content holds its value for reusability, engagement, impact, and vendor credibility.

Adam Needles: Content marketing is the architecture behind information exchanged with the buyer before we can get them to ’sales ready’; it is the rationalization of what content that our prospective buyers need at various stages of the buying cycle and via what media and channels; and it is integral to the nurturing process.  Content thus has moved from tactical to strategic.

Many B2B software vendors could benefit greatly from building a content marketing strategy around white papers. Don’t just produce single white papers in a reactive fashion, as a product launch checklist item done in a hurry. Plan, create and publish excellent white papers well in advance of any product launches.  B2B software vendors should be publishing white papers with high frequency (since customers want shorter white papers): set the stage for what your company does now and will do in future. Show authentic thought leadership, clear understanding of various customer needs and real problem-solving.

Publishing sets of “companion” white papers is a good idea for vendors targeting buyers with different perspectives such as business and tech buyers, and biz-tech composites. Some white papers can be created to bridge the gap between business and tech, to encourage collaborative definition of needs and problem-solving. Series of white papers that break down a complex topic can be an interesting approach as well. These approaches will show vendor commitment to helping customers understand current technology trends as well as provide guidance for solving problems or for becoming more competitive.

Beyond publishing great white papers is the opportunity for vendors to engage customers in conversations through social media, wherever customers participate. There already is a social aspect to downloaded white papers – customers have a high rate of sharing white papers. Tap into social media for interactive conversations with potential buyers and industry writers. On download pages include links to communities and forums to encourage discussion. Schedule Tweetjams for topics covered in white papers. Comment on blogs that address the topics of vendor white papers, not to directly promote the white paper, but to add to the brainstorm and show command of the topic.

Value of white papers for B2B software vendors:

Value of white papers for B2B software vendors

The Right Industry Professional to Create White Papers for B2B Software Vendors

Keeping in mind that customers have made clear that they want high quality content with extensive tech details, it would make sense to work with a software industry professional with strong tech experience, business smarts, and who can articulate complex ideas clearly and authentically. This would be a professional who has worked with customers, understands both business and tech, has the ability to hold the interest of these readers. And of course, this professional has to be a really good writer.

White papers will benefit from a professional who has decent smarts for several software solution categories and who has good hands-on experience on the tech side of software. The business-technology professional should contribute rich insight, produce creative content and original thinking, see unexpected connections and future trends. Direct customer experience enhances an understanding of how tech will help customer competitiveness, and will enable writing from the customer POV.

Another very useful attribute of the right professional would be one who is inter-connected to individuals throughout the software industry: analysts, practitioners, consultants, writers, vendors. A professional who is in constant conversations with other industry SMEs will be up-to-date on key topics and trends, and will have resources at hand for research and confirmation. Quality white papers will result if the professional regularly writes software industry-related articles and blog posts, participates in new product briefings from various vendors and start-ups, and continually monitors several software solution spaces. A business-technology professional who is well-connected in social media can also provide guidance to vendors for content marketing strategies that target white papers and social media.

The ‘New’ White Paper:

  • Reflecting studies cited: high quality and accurate content, plenty of deep details (tech / business), 8 pages or less which engenders content that is tight, engaging, well-written, inspiring
  • Often written from the customer POV, using customer language
  • Covers trends that matter: new solution segments – transitions of solutions
  • Real takeaways that benefit customers whether they buy the vendor solution or not – vendor is associated with insight to solving problem, doing things in new way that is useful
  • Inform, educate at sophisticated level to provide real depth
  • Create companion white papers when different customer roles come into play for the topic (business, tech, hybrid/composite)
  • Passion in the treatment: blogging has shown that writing about software solutions is more engaging if the writer inserts personality into the work – apply this to white papers when appropriate
  • Provoke thought about the solution space: new thinking for addressing needs; provoke desire to find out more;  provoke a conversation that will lead back to the vendor
  • Look into employing variety of buyer scenarios to connect customers to relevance of topic
  • Infographics, tech details, guidelines, suggested reading, links to other resources (not necessarily on vendor site) – all add to value in buyer eyes
  • Format for readability, flow, quick-scanning, engagement
  • Publish on the distributed web – not just on corporate site but share on sites frequented by buyers
  • Stir the pot: encourage social media conversations through blogs, Twitter, forums, communities, Facebook; also actively contribute comments on relevant blogs
  • Not self-serving brochure-ware solely touting vendor offering – but can address issues that matter to buyers that generally could be solved with vendor’s offering

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Contact the author, Julie Hunt, on Twitter at http://twitter.com/juliebhunt

SEO: Don't Overlook the Competition!

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Surely you have all seen the news this past week about Google Instant, where search term recommendations are automatically populated in a pulldown menu that adjusts as you type out the key terms you want to search for. This is actually a very cool new feature, but don’t believe any of the FUD about how this means that SEO is dead. This feature is more likely to change the way people search, rather than make the whole practice obsolete altogether. And improving the way people search should be seen as an opportunity rather than a deal-killer!

Not that we’ve established that SEO will in fact remain relevant moving forward, let’s take a step back to consider the most commonly ignored piece of the SEO puzzle…

SEO Competition

You can find thousands of blog posts that coach you about how to get the on-page components of your website optimized. You can also find hundreds of posts about backlinks – why you need them, how to get them, and which types of backlinks are the most beneficial to your rankings.

However, the one topic that is most overlooked or “glossed over” in this whole set of content is the most important of all – the SEO competition. Let’s define what I mean by the term, just to be sure we’re all speaking the same language.

SEO Competition characterizes how many web pages and sites are already competing for a keyword or term. It also characterizes the strength of that competition against Google’s ranking formula.

Notice something different in that definition as compared to the typical use of the word “competitor”? It says nothing about the businesses that you would typically consider competition!

SEO Competition: Don't Overlook It

SEO Competition: Don't Overlook It (Courtesy of Vishraval via Wikimedia Commons)

That’s right, for SEO purposes, your competition is not the list of companies who offer similar products, services, etc. to you or your business. In this case, competition is comprised of all companies who are trying to rank for the specific keyword/term of interest. Obviously, this means that more common keywords have higher volumes, but are also much more difficult for you to rank highly for, since a lot of strong competitors are likely already optimized for them. As you dig deeper for more specific keywords, competition can be completely different due to variables such as longtail vs. broad keyword terms, singular vs. plural tense, and even misspellings.

How to Gauge SEO Competition

Since SEO competition is so different from what we typically think about as competitors, let’s review the specific criteria by which you can judge a strong from a weak SEO competitor.

  1. Domain Age: Different SEO experts have conflicting opinions about how important this variable is in the Google formula, but rest assured of one thing…it does matter. Once your site has been around a year or two, it matters a lot less, but domain age is very important when trying to rank a new site in an established niche. Be sure to do a search for the key term you want to rank for, document who shows up on the first page, and do a whois search to learn more about how long the site has been online.
  2. Size of Site: Although this is a minor piece of the overall equation, Google does consider quantity of content in its estimation of “authority”. You may never have as many pages online as Wikipedia or other large established sites, but you CAN have more focused pages on a specific topic area. Which brings us to…
  3. Volume of Relevant Pages: Following on the size of site idea, you need to consider how much of that content is optimized for your desired keywords. If you find 3-4 SEO competitors who are also “real world” competitors, and they also have a large number of pages on their website focused on the words you want to optimize for, you might need to dig deeper for a better term to go after.
  4. Number of Backlinks: This is where the competitive analysis becomes a little more tricky. There are three types of backlinks to consider: Total backlinks to the domain, total backlinks to the specific page that ranks for your desired keyword, and how many of the backlinks to that page are from EDU and GOV domains (which Google deems to be high authority backlinks). If a site has a ton of backlinks to the domain, that will help them more easily rank for new keyterms. BUT, you also want to see how many backlinks they have to the specific page which is on-topic. If there are few or none, or the links that they have are low authority, you have an opportunity to put up a good fight. This topic is so complex that I will have to save a deeper dive for its own post, lest this one become a novelette.
  5. On-Page Optimizations: Once you determine who the top SEO competitors are, go to their site and review whether they’ve aligned all the appropriate elements of the page properly. Does the keyword show up in the URL, page title, meta description, keyword list, and H1/H2 tags? If not, you can make inroads by focusing on getting the on-page elements right.
  6. Cache Age: This may not seem intuitive, but you should absolutely take time to investigate how recently Google has cached the page (you can do this on site analytics tools such as Alexa or a premium SEO software package). You see, Google likes sites that are updated frequently. They will crawl your site to find what has changed every time you change your content, particularly if you automate your Sitemap submission. If you determine that a competitive site has not been cached in 14+ days, their site is not being updated, and you have an opportunity to get a foot in the door.
  7. Page Load Speed: Simple thinking here…Google won’t put you atop the rankings if your site loads too slowly. Web surfers simply will not stick around to wait 20-30 seconds for your home page to load. If Google sees this, you WILL be sandboxed to some degree. The same holds true for your SEO competition. If you find that most of the top sites in the SERP are slow or take too much time to load, get a good hosting account, remove any widgets or code that injects overhead into your website, and add some CSS compression code to hasten load time.  Whatever you do, get this right, because it can hurt your ranking more than you would expect.

Conclusion

Be sure to think in terms of not only “real world” competition, but also virtual SEO competition. There are many tools and techniques you can employ to determine the competitive landscape as outlined above. Find one you like and put it to good use.

Getting this right will be the difference between wasting time chasing keywords you cannot own and getting yourself established correctly from the start. If you’ve  already spent a great deal of time on keyword research and on-page optimization, yet you continue to see minimal progress in your rankings, take a step back to analyze whether you are simply trying to compete in a no-win situation. Adjust accordingly, and you’ll be off to the races!