B2B Marketing's Best Practice Guide: Search Engine Optimisation gives you a helping hand to understand not only the theory, but the practical know-how to exploit these new techniques. Without this knowledge, you could see your website ranking slip down organic search results, which means less traffic, fewer leads and ultimately fewer sales.

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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June 10
BEST PRACTICE GUIDE
SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMISATION Expert advice and guidance on
business-to-business search engine optimisation
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2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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Contents
SECTION 1 Introduction to SEO ..........................................................................8
1.1 Search engine optimisation ..............................................................................................8
1.2 The UK search engine market ..........................................................................................8
1.3 Why use search engine marketing?....................................................................................9
1.4 SEO’s place in the Internet marketing mix ......................................................................10
1.5 How search engines work ................................................................................................10
SECTION 2 Technical SEO – The foundation of SEO........................................14
2.1 Site architecture ............................................................................................................14
2.2 URL structure ................................................................................................................14
2.3 Canonicalisation ............................................................................................................15
2.4 Sitemap..........................................................................................................................18
2.5 Geotargeting – hosting and domain ................................................................................19
2.6 Technical toolbox............................................................................................................21
SECTION 3 On-page SEO ..................................................................................22
3.1 Keyword and competitor research ..................................................................................22
3.2 Conducting competitor research......................................................................................23
3.3 Organising your research ................................................................................................24
3.4 Keyword research tools ..................................................................................................26
3.5 Writing content with the search engines in mind ..............................................................26
3.6 Keyword mapping ..........................................................................................................26
3.7 Current most important areas for content optimisation ..................................................27
3.8 Anchor text optimisation of internal linking ....................................................................30
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CONTENTS Best practice guide: Retention & Loyalty www.b2bm.biz
SECTION 4 Off-page SEO ..................................................................................31
4.1 The PageRank algorithm ................................................................................................31
4.2 TrustRank ......................................................................................................................32
4.3 Future importance of links ............................................................................................32
4.4 Link development ..........................................................................................................33
4.5 Evaluating link equity and carrying out link analysis…....................................................33
4.6 Link generation methods ................................................................................................34
4.7 Online public relations ....................................................................................................34
4.8 Link bating ....................................................................................................................35
4.9 Social media marketing as part of link development ......................................................35
4.10 Link analysis tools ........................................................................................................36
4.11 Why link analysis is important ......................................................................................36
SECTION 5 Universal search ............................................................................38
5.1 Optimising image content for universal search ................................................................38
5.2 Optimising video content for universal search ..................................................................39
SECTION 6 Google Places ................................................................................40
6.1 Creating a local business listing ......................................................................................40
6.2 Optimising your local listing ............................................................................................41
6.3 Data citations ................................................................................................................42
SECTION 7 Web analytics..................................................................................43
7.1 Free and paid platforms ................................................................................................43
7.2 Importance of analytics when doing SEO ......................................................................43
7.3 Setting up Google Analytics ............................................................................................44
7.4 Tracking the right metrics in analytics ............................................................................46
APPENDIX i. Outsourcing SEO services ..............................................................................................47
ii. Unethical SEO practices ................................................................................................48
iii. Future changes in SEO ..................................................................................................49
GLOSSARY Glossary of search terms ......................................................................................................50
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About B2B Marketing
2B Marketing is the comprehensive information resource for business-to-business
B marketers. Its mission is to provide practitioners with the information they need
to perform better and achieve more, whatever sector of the B2B space they are
operating in.
Launched in 2004 as B2B Marketing magazine, it has since evolved into a multi-faceted
resource, delivering a broad range of content in a variety of different forms and formats.
Its key products are:
B2B Marketing Online: A huge archive of content focusing on every conceivable aspect
of business-to-business marketing, and including various opportunities for online interaction
and learning, such as a best practice webcast programme, and an interactive online directory
for supplier sourcing.
B2B Marketing magazine:The essential monthly guide to business-to-business marketing,
with a key focus on best practice guidance, plus monthly features looking at current trends,
regular research, profiles etc.
The B2B Marketing Awards: The showpiece event for brands and practitioners, attended
by over 600 people, and with former winners including a host of top-tier B2B brands,
including Barclays, TNT, American Express, HP, Microsoft, JCB, Symantec, DPD,
Rackspace, Volkswagen, Stanley, RSA, and many more…
B2B Marketing Events: Regular seminars and training sessions aimed at helping
marketers hear and learn first hand from the experts in order to hone their skills.
For more information on any of these products or services go to www.b2bm.biz
or call 020 7438 1373
About Verve Search
Verve Search is a small, but highly passionate team dedicated to all aspects of SEO and
social media marketing. Verve believes that SEO is not just a technical discipline but a
social discipline, understanding people and their behaviour online is key as well as
understanding of the technical areas of the search engines algorithm. Its ethos is in
educating our clients, not pulling the wool over their eyes. SEO is known as being a bit of
a ‘black art’ and Verve Search’s mission is to de-mystify it.
Best Practice Guide: Search Engine Optimisation © B2B Marketing 2010 3

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INTRODUCTION Executive summary www.b2bm.biz
INTRODUCTION
Executive summary
Section 1: Introduction to SEO
SEO (search engine optimisation) is the process of moderating a website so that it is
displayed prominently within a search engine’s free organic listings. In the UK, Google is the
overwhelmingly dominant player, with rivals such as Yahoo and Bing holding very small
market shares.
SEO is a critical marketing channel because of the incredible power and importance that
search engines hold in supplier selection, which is growing year-on-year. From a standing
start, within 10 years, the Internet has overtaken TV in terms of its importance as a
marketing tool, according to figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is the paid-for equivalent to SEO, with results appearing in the
right -hand column and at the top of search results. Total annual investment in PPC is far
greater than SEO, even though SEO has been shown to demonstrate significantly higher
return on investment than PPC. Lack of transparency of SEO techniques has led to it being
widely regarded as a ‘black art’.
Getting your website ranked highly in SERPs (search engine results pages) for specific
keywords is obviously vital to ensuring that your company gets found – the majority of
searchers only look at the first results page.
There are three primary areas of optimisation: technical, on-page and off-page. These are
dealt with in detail in the next three sections.
Section 2: Technical SEO
Technical optimisation relates to the areas of your website that allow pages to be noticed
and indexed by the search engines. This can be categorised into a number of key areas:
• Site architecture: Aligning your site around a coherent and structured plan.
• URL structure: Making sure URLs are search engine friendly.
• Canonlocalisation: Identification of a preferred URL where there are several ways to
access the same page.
• Sitemaps: This aids the search engines’ understanding of your site and their ability to
access and index all of the content.
• Geotargeting: Allowing your content to be found by the most relevant audience.
Section 3: On-page SEO “SEO is a critical marketing
On-page optimisation is what can be done to the pages of a website to maximise its channel because of the
performance in search engines for target keywords related to the on-page content.
incredible power and
Effective on-page optimisation requires keyword research and development of a keyword
strategy for your entire website. Keyword research is a complex process that is critical to importance that search
the effectiveness of your website.
engines hold in supplier
Competitor research should be carried out in conjunction with keyword research, as it can
help inform the latter.
selection”
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INTRODUCTION Executive summary www.b2bm.biz
Content is key to on-page SEO, as is finding the correct keyword density within your copy. “When creating content,
However, when creating content SEO must be considered, but you must always remember
that the primary purpose is for it to be read by people. SEO must be considered,
The main areas of content that require optimisation are: title tags, meta descriptions, but you must always
location of primary keywords, keyword usage variation, use of keyword in URL and new
content.
remember that the primary
Internal linking is when you link from one internal page to another; the anchor text you use
purpose is for it to be read
for this is a crucial part of internal linking optimisation. Just as links coming from other sites by people”
work as a ‘vote’ to your website, internal linking to pages within your site is also given weight
by search engines.
Keyword mapping is a vital part of developing your keyword strategy – it is particularly
important if you’re developing a new website.
Section 4: Off-page SEO
Off-page optimisation addresses strategic issues that are carried out to generate links.
Whilst it can appear simple, it is generally very complex and time-consuming. It is widely
believed that external links from respected third party sources are critical for off-page SEO,
however there are other factors that can impact on this objective.
Google’s PageRank algorithm has less impact on the value of a link compared to when
first introduced. Factors such as relevancy, the value of the domain and the anchor text of
the link are more valuable in today’s environment. Other search engines have their own
versions.TrustRank is an alternative link analysis technique, designed to help separate useful
pages from spam.
There has been, and will continue to be, debate about the relative importance of on and off-
page optimisation elements. However, search engines have become more and more
dependant on link metrics to an entire domain, rather than just an individual page.
Link building is the practice of creating quality inbound links from authoritative websites,
blogs and portals, thus boosting the value of that page to Google for a targeted keyword.
It can also be used to generate additional traffic.
When assessing sites for link building, a number of factors should be considered: The age
of the domain; trust of the domain/page; authority of the domain; the number of outbound
links from that page; relevancy of content and anchor text.
There are two types of link that can be built: one way links or reciprocal links. The former
is judged as better by search engines.
Online PR can be used to syndicate rich content containing links.
Link baiting is a means of generating links through the creation of popular content that sites
want to link to, e.g. humorous content.
Social media is increasingly being recognised as having a role to play in terms of SEO. The
ultimate objective should be to generate a clearer insight into the positive and negative
attitudes to your brand and act on the results uncovered in terms of content creation.
Link analysis can help you to understand which links your competitors are using to drive
traffic, and help you understand which areas of your website need improvement. There are
various link analysis tools that will help you do this.
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INTRODUCTION Executive summary www.b2bm.biz
Section 5: Universal search “Without analytics, web
Universal search is the merging of listings from different information silos; including news, traffic cannot be tracked,
video, images, local, shopping and book listings. This has opened up new avenues for
marketers by enabling them to optimise new channels. measured or defined,
To take advantage of universal search for images, there are a number of key steps that you therefore sites cannot be
need to take.These include using keywords in your image file names; using the ‘alt’ attribute;
improved and ROI cannot be
captions; putting keywords in the image title tag; creating an image sitemap.
To optimise video content, there are also a number of steps: Use keywords in the title; create
calculated”
keyword rich filenames; incorporate synopses; use a video sitemap; enable ratings; syndicate.
Section 6: Google Places
Google Places was introduced to help users find businesses and services located in the local
area, using IP and geotargeting to deliver the most relevant results. Local listings therefore
give you a second opportunity to be ranked and convert browsers to visitors.
To create a Google Places listing you must first create a Google account. Local listings use
a different algorithm to the organic search results, with weighting towards local information.
The following factors should be considered when optimising a local listing: titles, addresses,
categories, descriptions, hours and payment and photos.
Data citations – online references made to your company – are central to ranking on Google
Places.These differ because they are not always ‘links’ in the conventional sense – references
from major data providers such as your business service or address, give more credibility in
Google’s eyes to the authenticity of your listing.
Section 7:Web analytics
There are two types of web analytics platforms available: Free or paid.
Free platforms such as Google Analytics are great for organisations who are taking their
first steps in the online world, and are limited in terms of time and budget in how much they
can invest in analytics.
Paid platforms such as WebTrends or Omniture provide additional functionality enabling
deeper visitor insight.
Without analytics, web traffic cannot be tracked, measured or defined, therefore sites cannot
be improved and ROI cannot be calculated.
Typical key performance indicators for analytics are: Conversion rate, search engine visitors,
keywords via search engines and bounce rates.
Additional information
i. Outsourcing SEO services
ii. Unethical SEO practices
iii. Future changes in SEO
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INTRODUCTION
Contributors’ biographies
Lisa Myers, CEO and owner, Verve Search Ltd
Lisa Myers is CEO and owner of SEO & social media agency Verve Search. She has 10
years' experience in marketing of which five years are in search. Lisa is heavily involved in
the global search community and respected by peers and search engines alike.
Lisa is a regular speaker at industry events worldwide, including: Search Engine Strategies
(SES), Search Marketing Expo (SMX), Internet World, SEM Konferansen (Norway), IAB,
Search Marketing World, Chinwag and B2B Marketing search events.
She has authored a chapter on search techniques in the book B2B Marketing Experts
(published in 2007), written a chapter on SEO in B2B Marketing’s Best Practice Search
Marketing Report (2008), and wrote a regular search column for B2B Marketing
Magazine in 2008.
Lisa is also an active blogger in the SEO and social media community and founder of the
international SEO blog: SEO-Chicks.com. She is also co-founder of the European search
blog Stateofsearch.com. In addition, Lisa contributes to publications on and offline regularly.
Lisa won the ‘B2B Newcomer of the Year’ award at the B2B Marketing Awards 2007. In
May 2008 she won ‘Best Use of Technology by Under 30 Year Old Woman’ at the
Blackberry Women & Technology Awards. In 2009, Lisa made the prestigious ‘35 Women
Under 35’ high achievers list in Management Today co-published by The Times.
lisa@vervesearch.com
Tel: 020 8439 1521
Twitter: @lisadmyers
Sam Murray, search manager, Verve Search Ltd
Sam is a search manager of Verve Search, working on several brands on a day-to-day basis.
He is in his third year of search marketing and endeavours to continuously progress, due to
his thirst for knowledge and enthusiasm about learning new techniques. He graduated from
University with a BA (Hons) in Marketing in 2007 and showed his early passion for search
marketing by writing his 10,000 word dissertation on ‘How the growth of search engines
has affected online advertising and marketing’.
Sam has previously co-authored a chapter on search techniques in the 2007 book B2B
Marketing Experts. Sam is an active blogger in the SEO and social media community,
contributing to the Verve Search blog and is a regular blogger on the European search blog
stateofsearch.com.
sam@vervesearch.com
Tel: 020 8439 1521
Twitter: @sammurray
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