Cold Hard Facts about Organic Search

By Krista  LaRiviere

Over the past two weeks I’ve read numerous blog posts and articles written by SEO professionals who claim to be able to predict the future of organic search. Blogs titles such as, “My SEO predictions for 2011” or “What’s important for Organic Search in 2011” or “The Future of SEO”.

Although these insights can be useful, I’d like to take the opportunity to revisit some cold hard facts about organic search and its importance to your overall digital marketing mix. I’ve picked 4 of my favorite facts that have been proven by industry analysts and experts who have collected data and drawn conclusions about what is really going on out there. They are:

1. Marketers and marketing agencies continue to invest more into organic search strategies as they understand its impact on lead generation and conversion (Forrester).
2. SEO is the most effective way to generate conversion according to senior-level marketers (Forbes).
3. Ninety-five percent of searchers do not go beyond the first page of search results (iCrossing.com).
4. Exposure to organic search results almost doubles the likelihood that a prospect will visit a web site when combined with a paid search strategy (iProspect & comScore).

Here’s each in more depth:

1. Marketers and marketing agencies continue to invest more into organic search strategies as they understand its impact on lead generation and conversion (Forrester).

Forrester Research surveyed just 867 US marketers and marketing agencies and was able to determine that the amount of investment in organic search strategies over the next 3 years will continue to increase. From $1.8 billion in 2009 to an estimated $5 billion in 2014.

Forrester goes on to say that marketers continue to look for clicks at a much lower cost and once they are able to prove conversion with organic search they shift former paid search monies to SEO.

(More about this study.)

Something to think about: How does your organic search budget compare to your paid search budget? If you’re aware of a particular keyword phrase that works well in paid search why not optimize for that same keyword phrase in organic search?

2. SEO is the most effective way to generate conversion according to senior-level marketers (Forbes).

Forbes produced its Ad Effectiveness Study by interviewing senior-level marketers in the US. They were able to determine that SEO is the most effective way to generate conversions outranking email marketing and paid search tactics.

Something to think about: Are you able to determine your conversion rates on your email and paid search campaigns? Imagine an even higher conversion rate on an organic search campaign.

(More about this study.)

3. Ninety-five percent of searchers do not go beyond the first page of search results (iCrossing.com).

iCrossing.com, a leading interactive marketing agency in the US collected search data from 1.8 million queries over a nine-month period and was ultimately able to determine that just over 95% of all searchers do not go beyond the first page of the search engine results page (SERP).

(More about this study in PDF.)

Something to think about: Are you ranked on Page One for your top non-branded keyword phrase? If not, where are you ranked? How much effort do you think it would take to get to Page One? What do you think the impact would be on your business?

4. Exposure to organic search results almost doubles the likelihood that a prospect will visit a web site when combined with a paid search strategy (iProspect & comScore).

iProspect conducted a study in conjunction with comScore’s online behavioural panel where they examined the impact of the combination of certain digital media marketing tactics – primarily organic search, paid search and online ads. Here’s a brief taste of their findings about organic search (by industry):

• Software: Exposure to organic search impressions boosts likelihood to visit a website 37%, and likelihood to purchase a software product 30%, while organic search in combination with paid search generates a 58% lift.

• Banking and financial services: Exposure to organic search and online display impressions produces a 44% lift in brand trust.

• Hotels: Exposure to organic search results plus display impressions produces a 144% lift in likelihood to purchase.

• Insurance: Exposure to organic search impressions produces a 150% lift in the likelihood to purchase.

(More about this study.)

Something to think about: If your marketing budget is weighted heavily with one particular tactic, what do you think the outcome would be of shifting some of the spend into organic search?

These cold hard facts about organic search will hopefully convince you to examine your 2011 marketing budget to ensure all tactics are adequately represented.

Reposted from gShift Labs

Krista LaRiviere is the CoFounder & CEO of gShift Labs. This is Krista’s third software start-up having successfully exited from the previous two. Having been in the Internet marketing space for over ten years, Krista is able to identify trends and gaps in the daily lives of Internet marketers. gShift has web presence optimization software that is  demystifying, simplifying and standardizing organic search. Her vision is to change the way people think of and perform organic search optimization.

The RIC blog is designed as a showcase for entrepreneurs and innovation. Our guest bloggers pro vide a wealth of information based on their personal experiences. Visit RIC Centre for more information on how RIC can accelerate your ideas to market.

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Search Engine Optimization & Social Marketing

By Mary Dytyniak
Social media and search engine optimization have been the buzz words in business in 2010, says Dev Basu, President and CEO of Powered by Search.

Basu, along with panelists Krista LaRiviere, Co-Founder and CEO of gShift Labs and Roy Pereira, President and CEO of Shiny Ads were keynote speakers at the final Growing Your Business session of 2010: Search Engine Optimization and Social Marketing December 9 at the University of Toronto Mississauga Faculty Club.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is currently the leading online tool businesses use to recruit clients and customers on the web.  Google accumulated an astounding 16.4 billion searches worldwide in the month of June 2010, according to Comstar.com, and it’s no wonder page ranking is on business moguls’ lips. But according to Basu, recognized as Canada’s foremost search optimization guru, basic page ranking techniques aren’t enough to drive traffic to a website. Although it is fast, scalable and easy to control, users don’t trust paid page rankings or top results, he says. And 90% of search users zone in on organic and local results.

While people love to buy, they don’t like being sold [to]. Essentially, [they] don’t trust an ad. That’s why people don’t click it,” he said.

Basu suggested that smaller businesses with tight budgets move their websites over to a free content management system such as WordPress, Expression Engine or Drupal to further optimize their sites. Building links and credibility so that suppliers, venders and local directories link back to a company’s website is an important step. So is ensuring that the site operates in a trusted domain and includes the essential components of a search engine friendly website: texts, links and images.

Krista LaRiviere and her company gShift, specializing in offering web presence optimization software, and aspire to make search engine optimization accessible to everyone.

“Our vision is to change the way people think of and perform organic search engine optimization. We want the entire world to be able to do their own organic search engine optimization. We want non-technical marketers to be able to do it and non-technical business people to be able to do it.”

Google Analytics is one solution. It’s a free tool many companies use to enhance search engine optimization. Google Analytics helps aggregate, track, manage and explain how a user’s website is being searched. One important component that businesses often overlook is key word selection. What clients type into search tool bars often does not match the key words businesses insert into their web pages. Tools such as Google Analytics and WordStream list what key words are being used by potential clients, explaining why a company’s page rank is lower than their competitors. Narrowing the choice of key words to indicate a unique product or service offered by a company, filters search users and increases clicks.

What about popular social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, boasting millions of users? Roy Pereira’s advertising technology company Shiny Ads relies on search engine optimization and social media to generate 90% of their inbound revenue. Pereira has moved on from using traditional marketing focused on micro websites and trade shows that he claims are no longer effective.

“Twitter is fantastic. It’s all text and it is all very searchable. It’s a great way to increase an awareness of what you’re up to as well as what your product is. Sending out a press release or [posting] the title of your press release on Twitter is alright, but it’s… a little spammy… [This] is so much more natural,” Pereira commented.

Tools such as Twitter reveal individual voices and personalities of those employees who represent a company, encouraging an open and honest relationship with potential clients, something that has now come to be expected in everyday business practice.

The Research Innovation Commercialization (RIC) Centre and the Ontario Center for Environmental Technology Advancement (OCETA) jointly host the 10-event series, which runs from September to June 2011.  For a complete schedule visit riccentre.com.

Mary Dytyniak will be graduating from the University of Toronto with an Honours Bachelor of Arts this June 2011. She is currently finishing her major in Professional Writing and a double minor in Classics and History. Mary has published works in the fields of non-fiction, creative, journalistic, research and corporate writing. She is currently pursuing a career in the magazine and publishing sector.

The RIC blog is designed as a showcase for entrepreneurs and innovation. Our guest bloggers provide a wealth of information based on their personal experiences. Visit RIC Centre for more information on how RIC can accelerate your ideas to market.

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Search Engine Optimization and Social Marketing

Being visible is key to having a successful start-up. Customers and investors are relying more heavily on the internet to gain information about your company and product. Optimizing your website for search engines and having an online presence in today’s social media tools can help you gain an edge over your competitors.

Join us for Search Engine Optimization and Social Marketing at our “Growing Your Business” breakfast event series Thursday, December 9 at the University of Toronto Mississauga’s Faculty Club.

Our  guest speakers include:
Dev Basu, President and CEO, Powered by Search, is a leading Toronto-based Internet marketing agency specializing in Search Engine Optimization, Local Search Optimization, and Paid Search- driven marketing solutions for Fortune 1000, and small and medium-sized businesses. In 2010, Powered by Search was ranked amongst the Top 3 Local Search optimization firms in Canada, by independent market research firm, TopSEOs. Dev is also a guest lecturer for upper level information marketing courses at the University of Toronto and Seneca College.

Krista LaRiviere, Co-Founder & CEO, gShift Labs. This is Krista’s third software start up having successfully exited from the previous two. Having been in the Internet marketing space for over ten years, Krista is able to identify trends and gaps in the daily lives of Internet marketers. gShift has web presence optimization software that is demystifying, simplifying and standardizing organic search. Her vision is to change the way people think of and perform organic search optimization.

Roy Pereira, President and Founder, Shiny Ads, an advertising technology company focused on helping online publishers maximize revenue from advertisers of all sizes. Roy has over 15 years of experience in technology companies and has been involved in 5 startups with his first in 1992 which focused on Internet and Email software. He has been a marketing executive at both medium-sized public corporations and VC-funded startups, and also has a highly technical background with several patents and Internet standards to his name.

The Research Innovation Commercialization (RIC) Centre and the Ontario Center for Environmental Technology Advancement (OCETA) jointly host the 10-event series, which runs from September to June 2011.

For a complete schedule visit riccentre.com

Pre-Registration $25, Pay at Event $30 (covers breakfast and parking). To register, visit www.riccentre.com.

For more information, contact Shantanu at shantanu@riccentre.com or at (905) 273-3530.

The RIC blog is designed as a showcase for entrepreneurs and innovation. Our guest bloggers provide a wealth of information based on their personal experiences. Visit RIC Centre for more information on how RIC can accelerate your ideas to market.

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How to Promote and Syndicate Your Local Business Listings

Part 4 – This is the final installment in Dev’s extensive series on Local Search Optimization. See the links to Parts 1,2 are 3 below.

By Dev Basu

So you’ve claimed your listing and can finally find yourself on the major search engines when you search your business name and the city you’re located in. But you might be asking yourself, “Why can’t I find myself for <insert city> + <your services> yet?” One of the reasons your listing doesn’t rank is because it does not have enough citation data aggregated via your local business profile, such as your Google Place page.

In order to “get found,” you’ve got to start building citations to your listing, much like building links to your website for organic SEO rankings. At its core, citations can be of two types, structured and unstructured.  Structured citations come from third-party data providers that the search engines know and trust as business data providers. Unstructured citations would include any reference to your business’ name, phone number, or URL on any given web page recognized by a search engine.

Most citations will at the very least contain the following:

• Your DBA Name
• Business Phone Number
• Business Website URL
• Business Categorization

You may also find citation sources that allow more rich information about your business, such as the ability to include pictures, videos, extended information such as your business hours, and even reviews and customer ratings. All of this extra information will help you rank in local search, so I encourage you to complete your citation profiles to be as complete as possible.

Essentially, citations are the search engine’s way of validating the popularity and credibility of your business, especially since it is difficult to fake a business’ inclusion in a chamber of commerce, print business directory, or government website.

Web citations come in many forms, but the most common ones include:

• Business Data Syndication Houses such as InfoUSA and Axciom
• Internet Yellow Pages Directories such as Superpages and Merchant Circle
• Review and Rating Directories such as Yelp and TripAdvisor
• Local and National Business Directories such as Brownbook and Praized
• Location Based Services such as FourSquare
• Industry Specific Websites
• Chambers of Commerce or Government Websites

On my site I’ve compiled a list of the 20 Best Local SEO Citation Sources for the United States for you to use. That being said, you can either choose to build these manually, use an agency or Local SEO specialist to manage your citation building process, or use a syndication service and business data management service such as Universal Business Listings or Localeze.

Before you begin building your citations, I have 6 actionable tips to offer you:

1. Always use your Doing Business AS (DBA) name in all your citations.
2. Avoid keyword stuffing or mis-categorization.
3. Do not use call tracking phone numbers in your citations.
4. Use your main website as your primary business website URL
5. Do complete all available options related to your business information available at each citation source.
6. Be patient, since citations take anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 months to show up in your local business profiles

Part 1 The Rise of Local SEO and the Death of the Yellow Pages

Part 2 How to Claim and Optimize your listings on search engines

Part 3 8 Steps to Building an Optimized Local Business Listing

Dev Basu is a Toronto based Search Engine Optimization, Local Search, Internet Marketing, and Social Media Expert. Dev is the founder and CEO of Powered by Search, an internet marketing agency based in Toronto. He blogs on the topic of Local Search and Small business marketing at his personal blog, Search Marketing Insights.

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8 Steps to Building an Optimized Local Business Listing

Part 3

Part 1 The Rise of Local SEO and the Death of the Yellow Pages

Part 2 How to Claim and Optimize your listings on search engines

By Dev Basu

Now that you’ve claimed your listings and verified them, it’s time to optimize them. This article will contain little fluff and lots of actionable advice, so let’s get started:

Optimizing your Google Places Page (formerly known as Google Local Business Center) listing consists of paying attention to the following steps as you fill out your business profile:

1. Basic Business Information
2. Email, Description, and Website
3. Business Category Selection
4. Service Areas
5. Hours of Operation and Payment Options
6. Images and Videos
7. Additional Details
8. Review and Submitting Your Listing

Profile completeness is a ranking factor within Google’s local listings. Profiles that are more complete have better rankings than ones that are less complete, so it’s important to fill out the entire business profile.
Nick Thomas of G5 Search Marketing submitted this to Blumenthals.com 4-Aug-2009.

Step 1: Include Basic Business Information

This includes filling out the required fields such as Country, Company/Organization, Street Address, City/Town, State, ZIP, Main Phone, and Fax numbers.

Make sure you use the actual DBA (Doing Business As) name for your company and that your address information is reflective of your actual address. Fill out the fields as accurately as possible, since Google will attempt to cross-reference them with information from other business databases that mention your company.

Step 2: E-mail, Description, and Address Display Options

1. Use an e-mail address that is associated with your website domain such as info@yourdomain.com
2. Use the 200-character limit in the description to accurately describe your business including product and service areas where possible. The business description should answer the following questions:
   • Who are you?
   • What do you do?
   • Where are you located? Where areas do you cover?
3. Fill in your website details. If you do not have a website, it’s best to at least have a one page website freely available through any of the many free website builders.

Step 3: Business Category Selection

Selecting the right categories can make or break your chance at ranking prominently within Google’s 7-pack, that is, their list of seven similar businesses and organizations in your area.

Google offers one main category and four related categories to help define your services. Start typing in the main categorization of your business and you’ll find that Google Places will suggest a category for you choose. Choose the most appropriate suggestion as your main category and then proceed to fill in related categories or other services your business offers.

In the past, you may have heard that it is a good idea to stuff city or location keywords into your categories. While this was true last year, it is no longer effective and can even be detrimental to your rankings.

If the suggested keywords do not match your business services appropriately, you can you use custom categories. Employ this Blumenthal’s Google LBC Categories Preview tool to find synonyms that are recognized by Google Places. For example, identified synonyms for the suggested category “Lawyers” include:

attorney attorneys defense DUI family law

findlaw law firm law firms lawyer pro bono

Step 4: Service Areas

In recent months, Google Places has offered the option for businesses to define their service areas. This is especially useful, at least in theory, for mobile businesses such as plumbers, roofers, and other contractors, and home-based businesses. Unfortunately, Google Places still places more trust in brick and mortar based businesses than mobile businesses. Our testing has proven that selecting service areas results in a sharp drop in rankings. As per Google Place guidelines however, this is the only way for mobile or home-based business to represent itself on Google Places.

Google Places also offers the option to hide your business address completely, in case you want to keep your business address private.

Step 5: Hours of Operation and Payment Options

Filling these details out accurately will help you get closer to a 100% complete Google Places listing. You can also select split hours in case your business is open at different times during each day.

Step 6: Images and Videos

Adding images and videos not only helps your local business listing become more interactive, it also counts toward a 100% complete listing.

Make use of this option and upload some of your business related photos. They can help your customers get an idea of what to expect when they visit or call you. For example, if you are a real estate agent, you can upload pictures of some of the recent properties that you have sold. Be sure you upload 10 images to help make your profile complete.

You can also upload business videos to your local business profile. These can be promotional videos, company messages, and DIY or how-to videos for your customers. Google Places gives you an option to showcase up to five videos. While more videos provide increased interactive content for your customers, only one video contributes towards profile completeness.

Step 7: Additional Details

This section allows you to provide all additional details you wish to tell your customers about your business. You may add multiple fields, but only one is needed to count towards profile completeness. Example fields where you may add appropriate keywords include options such as parking availability, free estimates or quotes, or awards your business may have won.

A rarely known fact is that you can also add links in your local business listing to your Twitter or Facebook pages. Just add a field called “Follow us on Twitter” or “Follow us on Facebook” and copy the full URL for your Facebook or Twitter Profile into the field on the right hand side.

Step 8: Review and Submit Your Listing

Re-check your listing data to check for accuracy, then click the submit button to save your changes. In about an hour or so — and sometimes faster than that — Google Places will have picked up your listing. If you are in an non-competitive market, you may already have a place in the 7-pack of local business results. If you don’t show up on the first page don’t be discouraged, because in my next article, I’ll explain how to building citations or “links to your listings” that can strongly impact your rankings.

Monday- Part 4 – How to Promote and Syndicate Your Local Business Listings

Dev Basu is a Toronto based Search Engine Optimization, Local Search, Internet Marketing, and Social Media Expert. Dev is the founder and CEO of Powered by Search, an internet marketing agency based in Toronto. He blogs on the topic of Local Search and Small business marketing at his personal blog, Search Marketing Insights.

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Leveraging SEO requires time and resources

By Radi Hindawi

One of the first mistakes individuals make when leveraging search engine optimization and directories, is to assume that the use of these tools is an easy matter. There are no shortcuts around digital marketing. You must be prepared to spend a considerable amount of time and resources in order to yield the benefits of these tools. This may include re-building the coding of your existing design and re-structuring various modules that link to your site.

Below are key mistakes that many individuals continue to make when utilizing search engine optimization and directories to enhance their online presence.

META Tags

One of the biggest mistakes comes from the actual coding of the website. Individuals tend to forget, or avoid using META Tags in belief that they infringe on the privacy of others. This, however, is not the case. META Tags allow you to define your web pages on emerging search engines and directory listings. Even though Google no longer requires an individual to build such coding, many upcoming search engines still use this coding system as a primary means of dictating a name and valid description for a site.

The two most efficient META Tags are “Description” and “Keywords“. “Description” allows you to define your site and its content, while “Keywords” are based on words that people search to find your website.

Site Content

It is also important to structure your content in a more efficient, user-friendly and aesthetically pleasing way. One of the biggest challenges faced by many existing websites is that the information is so cluttered that search engines cannot build a valid set of tags for them. There are a couple of strategies that can be used to build a website’s content including the use of headers and sub headers, bold/italic text and even bullet points.

It is estimated that today’s users will ONLY browse through your content for around 13 seconds, so you must structure your site accordingly.

Submitting your URL

DO NOT limit yourself to Google.

It is important to submit your site to as many search engines and national directories as possible. Limiting yourself to one system may deter your future plans of growth. The current dominance of Google is likely to waver in the next ten years, in the face of fierce competition. With that being said, it is important to ensure that your site is adopted by as many search engines as possible, to compensate users that use Bing, Yahoo and even Ask Jeeves.

It is also important to look at various directories that can help boost your numbers. In Ontario, many organizations fail to submit themselves to the Ontario Business Directory and DMOZ (Open Directory Project). Even though such submission processes are time-consuming, it is crucial for every organization to research these directories, as they have the potential of sharing your site with more users and a wider demographic.

Getting Individuals/Sites to Link to you

It is also essential for you to constantly promote your site and get others to link back to you. Social networking sites do build on your page ranking, but are NOT ENOUGH to extend your sites’ foundations online. One of the most efficient ways of building ranking today is through blogging. However, the biggest mistakes made when blogging is in terms of the featured content. Always ensure that the content being blogged is:

• Easy to read and well-organized with links, bold/italic text and bullets.
• Directly and strongly related to the site that you are promoting. If your website is about your company, do not discuss your personal life on the blog.
• Linking back from the blog to your website. Confirm that these links are clearly visible, active and not broken.

It is also important to keep informing your blog-followers on any updates and progress to your website, and any URL/page changes.

Radi Hindawi is a Digital Enterprise Specialist graduate from the University of Toronto’s Communications, Culture and Information Technology program. Radi has leveraged his academic background and professional experiences in web development, online communications and digital marketing to found a digital media company and manage a successfully growing blog. For more information, please visit www.radihindawi.com

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Attracting prospects to your website

By Axel Kuhn

“The web doesn’t work for our type of business. We don’t get any traffic to our site.” — this a common complaint I hear from small and medium-sized businesses.

The reality, however, is quite different. In fact, your website can easily become your most cost-effective prospecting tool. Yes, even for complex business-to-business products and services, with multiple decision makers and long sales cycles.

How big is your opportunity? You can use Google’s free Keyword tool to check typical search volumes in your market segment. Chances are you’ll find hundreds, if not thousands, of potential customers and stakeholders in Canada and the US searching each month for the kinds of products and services that your company offers.

So how do you attract these potential prospects and stakeholders to your website? My experience is that most small and medium-sized business could easily increase relevant traffic by 5 to 10 times over their current traffic levels by using a combination of the following techniques: Search-Engine-Optimization (SEO); Social-Media-Marketing (SMM); and/or Pay-per-Click Advertising (PPC). Check out these pros and cons to see which approach best aligns with your business model:

Search-Engine-Optimization:

The goal in SEO is to have your company ranked on the first page of search engines like Google when prospects search on a search phrase (or keywords) relevant to your industry. Keep in mind that 85% of searchers never look beyond the first page of results, so you need to target the keywords or search phrases where you can rank in the top 10.

For most small and mid-sized companies, you will not be able outrank the big websites on the generic, popular keywords, and so you must optimize your site around very specific, niche keywords. For example, instead of optimizing around generic keywords like “accounting software”, choose instead a more focused keyword phrase like “activity-based costing software”. Chances are you’ll rank higher, and your traffic will be more relevant.

Finding the right “keyword identity” for your company is primarily a marketing exercise, but the implementation gets technical so make sure you assign both skill sets to the exercise.

In my experience, SEO is the single most cost-effective long-term option for driving relevant traffic to your site. Yes, it requires an upfront effort, but once you optimize your site, and you are ranked high for your target keywords, you will reap the rewards for months and years to come with relatively little ongoing cost and effort.

For more insight, check out this detailed blog post on Advanced SEO for B2B companies.

Social Media Marketing

Surprise, surprise! A recent survey by Business.com showed that SMM is more prevalent in business-to-business world than in the business-to-consumer world.  See Social Media by the Numbers.

That certainly backs my experience in the power of social media marketing. Blogs, LinkedIn, and even Twitter, can all drive plenty of relevant traffic to your site. Our small site gets over 1000 relevant visitors per month, with over 50% coming from social media sites.

SMM can be time-intensive, requiring up to 2 hours per day by a knowledgeable individual in your company to visit social media sites in your industry, participate in the online discussion, and point people back to your site.  The traffic impact is immediate, with most traffic finding its way back to your site within 48 hours of your interaction. To find the online communities most influential in your industry, use a Social Media Monitoring tool from suppliers like Sysomos (very powerful) or Hubspot (less expensive).

Starting your own blog is a cost-effective way to keep your website updated with fresh content that the search engines love.

The value of SMM is not only in driving traffic of relevant industry stakeholders back to your site, but in engaging with other “thought leaders” in your industry.  Think of SMM as attending an industry conference, networking with other stakeholders, informing yourself of the latest trends, and creating a buzz about your own products and services. For relatively young companies, SMM can be especially useful in helping you to refine your business strategy and establish your business network.

For more information, check out this blog post on Social Media Marketing for B2B companies.

Pay-per-Click Advertising

Another option to drive relevant traffic to your site is to buy some online ads. Search engines like Google give you the option to buy positions on the Search Engine Results Page in the “advertiser” section.

The advantage is that you get immediate traffic, and you only pay for each “clickthrough” from your ad back to your website. You can limit your pay for each click, and your overall spend.

The cons are that PPC advertising only attracts a small percentage of “searchers” (most prefer the non-paid, or organic listings – see SEO above). In addition, PPC spending can ramp up fast, especially if you target the more expensive, broad, generic search terms like “accounting software”, instead of more focused, niche-market terms like “activity-based accounting software”.

Also, unlike SEO and SMM, the instant you stop spending, the traffic stops. That is why PPC is my third choice for small and mid-sized companies.

Nonetheless, a well targeted PPC campaign can play an important role in driving very motivated traffic to your site. See this blog post for more insight on implementing a step-by-step PPC campaign.

If you crunch the numbers, you’ll find that these techniques can deliver a very-cost effective stream of prospects to your website, especially when compared to traditional off-line techniques like cold-calling and direct mail. Next week we’ll cover some great techniques to engage these prospects when they arrive on your site, so that they “stick”, bookmark you, and give you permission to start a 1:1 relationship.

Also, see related posts in this series:

1. How to turn your website into a Prospecting Magnet

Axel Kuhn is President and Co-Founder of Gossamar Inc. Gossamar specializes in optimizing the web presence of small and mid-sized B2B companies to deliver “More Sales Prospects of Higher Quality at Lower Cost” by taking advantage of the industry shifts to Inbound Marketing and Marketing Automation.

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