Applying the Buying Cycle for B2B Professional Services to Online Marketing

Online marketers need to keep the basics of marketing at the forefront of their strategy.  In B2B professional services companies, there is a pretty standard buying cycle that online marketers can use to address the strategy, tactics and campaigns to accomplish their business objectives.  The buying cycle usually consists of  5 steps and with each step, there are better online marketing tactics than others.

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Drupal’s SEO modules for multi-lingual websites

I read an article the other day about Elxis, a content management system that appears to also be a helpful Content Management System (CMS) for multi-lingual websites.  Problem was, their SEO Book is written in Greek – that’s not a mistake -yes – Greek.

Anyway, we’ve been working on a website for a client that needed some pretty slick features for their multi-lingual website and have been using Drupal.  There are several modules that work very well with the system.  And, of course, the Drupal website  has a terrific SEO Checklist.  We’ve been pleased with the modules we found, we tried out 3 and all of them worked well.

First, use the locale module to translate the core module of Drupal.  This step is needed if you intend to have content contributors who will be loggining in to Drupal.

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5 Best Practices for Multi-lingual Search Engine Optimization

I recently had several meetings with organizations interested in translating their website as they enter global markets.  Along with our partnership with The Magnum Group, a world-class translation agency based in Philadelphia’s international business district, we provided consulting for these organizations prepared to take on multi-lingual SEO projects.  We advised them with some of following best-practices for multi-lingual SEO projects:

1. Start with your analytics.  Do a deep dive to see what content is visited most often.  Look at complete paths.  It’s not enough to develop a list of the most visited pages.  Users don’t visit the website to just see those pages.  Look at click paths to see how they enter the site, and more importantly what they do once they consume the most popular content.  Pages that have your calls to action are obvious, but it’s pages in between the final call to action and the most frequently visited content that are frequently forgotten. read more

How should PPC influence SEO?

Pay Per Click Scouts assessing keywords before conducting SEO

Pay Per Click advertising is like reconnaissance, especially for companies that are starting their online marketing strategy. read more

Can digital agencies do Strategy?

It’s difficult to find a digital agency that operates at the level of a strategic management consulting firm.  Can they make the transition?  It would mean a new group of relationships.  Some of the management consultancy’s have done precisely this.  Diamond Partners, an off-shoot of McKinsey, used to do technology strategy only.  But now they build websites too.  Some of the larger defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin have digital ad agency capabilities and Public Relations teams that are as big as the Madison Avenue agencies. read more

West Point Launches an iPhone App

Graduates of the Long Gray Line who use the iPhone will be pleased to know that West Point launched an app.  The app contains the full version of “On Brave Ol’ Army Team”, recent pictures, news, polls, videos, references such as the West Point Mission, FAQ’s, parent information, facility hours, and Admission Sheet.  I think my favorite part is the campus map.  The calendar feature is pretty cool as well and lists the major activities, although it would be nice to events from Ike Hall posted there as well.

West Point iPhone App

Candidates can view a checklist for getting into the United States Military Academy as well.  West Point was ranked as the Best College in America by Forbes in 2009.

Are keyword queries getting longer?

Indeed they are.

On average, Google states that the average query is now a little over 4 keywords.  That’s been true since the fourth quarter of 2007.   Comscore indicated that in Latin America average length of keyword queries are still about 1.5.  This should continue to increase as users there learn how to target local ads and as they search for more specific topics.

Google also indicated that about 14% of their clicks go through their Sponsored Links program, commonly called Pay Per Click Advertising through Google Adwords.  Of course, that means that 86% of their clicks are organic.  Oddly enough, they also indicated that this figure is actually up slightly, meaning that users are finding more value in their paid advertisements than in months past.

Lastly, another find is that 25% of Google’s user queries are unique, meaning no other user has used the same query previously. This is pretty constant over time.