Many businesses believe that: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of today’s most effective marketing tactics. If done correctly, businesses can increase their ranking on search engine result pages as well as experience a boost in traffic to their site—resulting in increased lead generation and conversions. If your business is implementing SEO but you are still not seeing your site on the first page of Google, Yahoo or Bing, your execution may be off. In our November 10th webinar, Mike Turner, Search Marketing Executive discussed the Top 5 SEO Mistakes in B2B Marketing. Here is a recap in case you missed it:
1) Keywords are the most important aspect of SEO and if they’re not researched properly, they can be one of your biggest problems.
A keyword is typed in by a potential client so be sure you’re using consumer vocabulary and not company jargon. Another point is that the best keywords to invest in are usually phrases, as illustrated by this graph:
Shown above, the one-word phrases are likely to have high competition from other sites and a high search frequency. The more descriptive phrases that are upwards of five words long are going to have low competition and a lower search frequency.
At Webmarketing123, we have found that the Keywords with the best ROI will be three to four words in length. These more descriptive terms will have a higher conversion rate than the single keyword searches. People who search using three to four word key phrases will generally be further along in their sales process, more informed and therefore more likely to make a purchase.
2) Missing Keywords in content and text links.
Once you have the correct keywords, you want to make sure that they’re visible to Google spiders. Including Keywords in more places than just the written content of your site will improve your raking for those keywords. Here are a few places to include your keywords:
- Title tags
- Headings
- Paragraph titles
- Keywords in body copy
- Anchor text in links
- Image alt text
Pages can have as little as one to two keywords but should not have more than seven to ten. Too many keywords on one page will overload the user. Pages should flow nicely and make sense. You need to decide what the preferred landing page for a given search term will be. These could be called the blueprints of your site.
3) Using content that search engines can’t read.
This is a common mistake because Google bots cannot read certain content and thus cannot give your site credit. Flash and images are not variables that go into a search engine’s algorithm.
4) Not creating fresh content.
If Google bots don’t see any new content they’re not going to visit your site regularly. An easy way to avoid this, especially for B2B companies, is to have a blog and regularly post keyword-rich content with links back to the primary website.
…and make it easy for others to link towards your site by utilizing some of these tools:
- RSS
- Facebook & LinkedIn status/groups
- Networks & Media
- Digg
- Delicious
- StumbleUpon
- Flickr
- YouTube
5) Being Activity-focused, not outcome-focused.
Set goals for keywords with high conversions. Google analytics and Webtrends are just two of the programs that you can use to determine conversion rates on your different keywords.
Be outcome-focused, not activity-focused. Focus on what matters—outcome!
Finally, here is a graph to help you keep your site SEO Friendly.
This Wednesday from 11:00 a.m. (Pacific) to 12:00 p.m. we’ll be hosting our next webinar, How to Succeed with SEO During the Holidays–click here to register!
