Request a demo

How To Stay Up-To-Date with the Latest Digital Trends

Stay up-to-date with the latest digital marketing trends and become a thought leader in the process

The digital industry continues to change at a rapid rate. Several times a year, Google releases new updates to their algorithm, which can then cause changes in the strategies people use on their websites. Staying up to date on all of the different changes that occur can sometimes feel like an entire job on its own. Here are a few helpful strategies to make sure we remain up-to-date on the latest changes in digital trends.Stay up-to-date on the latest digital marketing trends with these tips - brightedge

  • Follow Google
  • Follow leading digital blogs
  • Subscribe to popular industry magazines

1. Follow Google. With over 60 percent of online searches going through Google, the search engine giant has an enormous impact on digital marketing trends and SEO optimization strategies. Brands that want to remain updated on the latest developments and trends should follow Google’s various content outlets closely.

Various Google representatives actively post on Twitter, making them great resources for those who want to know as soon as Google makes official announcements. Google also publishes various blogs that discuss some of their latest updates and recommendations. Signing up for their digests to receive an email whenever Google posts a new update.

2. Follow leading digital blogs. A number of leaders in the digital world have made it their mission to stay updated on the latest digital marketing trends and changes in SEO. These professionals use a variety of tracking software, along with conversations with search engine representatives, to stay on top of any changes in the industry. Following these digital leaders' blogs can provide the latest updates as well.

At BrightEdge, we work to do this for our community. Our blog provides valuable information for our followers, helping them understand not only the latest changes, but also how these changes personally impact them and their SEO strategy.

3. Subscribe to popular industry magazines. In addition to blogs, there are also several industry publications that solicit contributions from some of the best minds in the industry. Our own Jim Yu regularly publishes at Search Engine Watch, Marketing Watch, and MarketingLand. These publications do a wonderful job of updating followers on industry news and trends so you can feel confident you have some of the latest information.

Remaining updated and informed on the digital industry has become an important part of being a successful professional. Using these strategies can help you stay informed and ready to maximize your online presence.

Stay up-to-date with the latest digital marketing trends and become a thought leader in the process

The digital industry continues to change at a rapid rate. Several times a year, Google releases new updates to their algorithm, which can then cause changes in the strategies people use on their websites. Staying up to date on all of the different changes that occur can sometimes feel like an entire job on its own. Here are a few helpful strategies to make sure we remain up-to-date on the latest changes in digital trends.Stay up-to-date on the latest digital marketing trends with these tips - brightedge

  • Follow Google
  • Follow leading digital blogs
  • Subscribe to popular industry magazines

1. Follow Google. With over 60 percent of online searches going through Google, the search engine giant has an enormous impact on digital marketing trends and SEO optimization strategies. Brands that want to remain updated on the latest developments and trends should follow Google’s various content outlets closely.

Various Google representatives actively post on Twitter, making them great resources for those who want to know as soon as Google makes official announcements. Google also publishes various blogs that discuss some of their latest updates and recommendations. Signing up for their digests to receive an email whenever Google posts a new update.

2. Follow leading digital blogs. A number of leaders in the digital world have made it their mission to stay updated on the latest digital marketing trends and changes in SEO. These professionals use a variety of tracking software, along with conversations with search engine representatives, to stay on top of any changes in the industry. Following these digital leaders' blogs can provide the latest updates as well.

At BrightEdge, we work to do this for our community. Our blog provides valuable information for our followers, helping them understand not only the latest changes, but also how these changes personally impact them and their SEO strategy.

3. Subscribe to popular industry magazines. In addition to blogs, there are also several industry publications that solicit contributions from some of the best minds in the industry. Our own Jim Yu regularly publishes at Search Engine Watch, Marketing Watch, and MarketingLand. These publications do a wonderful job of updating followers on industry news and trends so you can feel confident you have some of the latest information.

Remaining updated and informed on the digital industry has become an important part of being a successful professional. Using these strategies can help you stay informed and ready to maximize your online presence.

How To Manage Reputation and Reviews - B2B & B2C

Managing your reputation and reviews for B2B & B2C businesses

Reputation can have a tremendous impact on how potential customers perceive you and the trust that they will have in your organization as they begin their search. Therefore, finding ways to protect and promote your reputation and customers’ perception of your organization can help you build your brand recognition and trust, encouraging potential customers turn to you when they find themselves in the market for your product or service.

Reputation management should be a chief concern for both B2B and B2C customers, but the strategies that they use might differ.learn how to manage your reputation and customer reviews for b2b and b2c - brightedge

B2B

Those in the B2B sector will want to focus on building a reputation with prospective customers in a professional sphere. For example, they will want to make sure they pay close attention to professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Across all social media sites, B2B brands will also want to pay attention to how customers discuss their organization, their industry, and their competitors. Responding to complaints and questions that arise and seizing opportunities to demonstrate helpfulness and goodwill can help build the brand in prospects’ eyes.

B2B brands will want to focus on the customer experience. Keep in mind that B2B brands generally have a number of different people who need to approve purchases, particularly larger ones. Therefore, the brands who understand how to create a positive experience and provide ample support throughout this entire process will find the most success. Continuing this level of support by providing help for customers as they use the product or service also benefits customer perception.

B2B brands can also boost their reputation by engaging in thought leadership strategies. Publishing guest posts, speaking at conferences, and writing guest posts for popular industry publications can all help get your brand name recognized in a positive way.

As you build your customer list, cultivating positive reviews and testimonials should also be a goal. Customer testimonials can provide strong motivation for customers considering your organization, as it gives them the chance to hear directly from your customers like them who have seen success.

Finally, remember that employees fill the role of the biggest advocate for any organization. Creating a positive company culture will make it easier to build a favorable reputation. Your employees can naturally spread positive impressions of the organization and encourage people to engage with your business.

B2C

Brands in the B2C sector will want to build a presence that focuses on where they can engage with prospective customers as individuals. This means that they often want to build a strong presence on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. In addition to posting on these platforms, like B2B brands, they will also want to engage in social listening. Monitoring social media conversations for brand mentions or industry questions can help them present themselves as helpful industry leaders.

B2C companies also want to work to create great products and an excellent customer experience. Although the buying process might not take as long for the B2C buyer as the B2B buyer on average, brands still want to make sure the process runs as smoothly as possible. Helpful customer service and quality products will help the brand build a positive perception.

B2C companies also want to solicit reviews from satisfied customers. Having active accounts on various review sites and encouraging customers to leave reviews after positive interactions can also help build a strong reputation.

Building a positive customer perception can help your brand maximize its presence online. Follow the suggestions above to help build your reputation and extend your market reach.

Managing your reputation and reviews for B2B & B2C businesses

Reputation can have a tremendous impact on how potential customers perceive you and the trust that they will have in your organization as they begin their search. Therefore, finding ways to protect and promote your reputation and customers’ perception of your organization can help you build your brand recognition and trust, encouraging potential customers turn to you when they find themselves in the market for your product or service.

Reputation management should be a chief concern for both B2B and B2C customers, but the strategies that they use might differ.learn how to manage your reputation and customer reviews for b2b and b2c - brightedge

B2B

Those in the B2B sector will want to focus on building a reputation with prospective customers in a professional sphere. For example, they will want to make sure they pay close attention to professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Across all social media sites, B2B brands will also want to pay attention to how customers discuss their organization, their industry, and their competitors. Responding to complaints and questions that arise and seizing opportunities to demonstrate helpfulness and goodwill can help build the brand in prospects’ eyes.

B2B brands will want to focus on the customer experience. Keep in mind that B2B brands generally have a number of different people who need to approve purchases, particularly larger ones. Therefore, the brands who understand how to create a positive experience and provide ample support throughout this entire process will find the most success. Continuing this level of support by providing help for customers as they use the product or service also benefits customer perception.

B2B brands can also boost their reputation by engaging in thought leadership strategies. Publishing guest posts, speaking at conferences, and writing guest posts for popular industry publications can all help get your brand name recognized in a positive way.

As you build your customer list, cultivating positive reviews and testimonials should also be a goal. Customer testimonials can provide strong motivation for customers considering your organization, as it gives them the chance to hear directly from your customers like them who have seen success.

Finally, remember that employees fill the role of the biggest advocate for any organization. Creating a positive company culture will make it easier to build a favorable reputation. Your employees can naturally spread positive impressions of the organization and encourage people to engage with your business.

B2C

Brands in the B2C sector will want to build a presence that focuses on where they can engage with prospective customers as individuals. This means that they often want to build a strong presence on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. In addition to posting on these platforms, like B2B brands, they will also want to engage in social listening. Monitoring social media conversations for brand mentions or industry questions can help them present themselves as helpful industry leaders.

B2C companies also want to work to create great products and an excellent customer experience. Although the buying process might not take as long for the B2C buyer as the B2B buyer on average, brands still want to make sure the process runs as smoothly as possible. Helpful customer service and quality products will help the brand build a positive perception.

B2C companies also want to solicit reviews from satisfied customers. Having active accounts on various review sites and encouraging customers to leave reviews after positive interactions can also help build a strong reputation.

Building a positive customer perception can help your brand maximize its presence online. Follow the suggestions above to help build your reputation and extend your market reach.

How To Staff for SEO and Content Projects?

How do you choose team members for SEO and content projects?

When you undertake an SEO project, working with a wider team can help you complete the project more efficiently. It can also help you present the best possible content to users by taking advantage of the expertise of others at your organization when needed.

Determining the team that will work best for these projects and knowing when to bring in this outside help, however, requires careful thought. Here are the guidelines we find helpful for knowing when to bring others into your SEO and content projects and who to select.put together the best possible staff for your seo and content projects - brightedge

  • Create a list of what the project entails
  • Consider the audience you want to reach
  • Assess people's strengths
  • Look at time commitments of all team members

1. Create list of what the project entails. Create a thorough list of what exactly you will need to accomplish with a particular project or campaign. For example, if you will need to incorporate video, create an infographic, or create website effects to improve the user experience on a particular page, this should all be noted.

In this list, you will also want to consider the topics you want to cover. Particularly if any of the topics you need to cover for this project fall outside of your personal area of expertise, you will want to make sure it is included on your list.

2. Consider the audience you want to reach. Next, you want to note the specific audience you will target during this project. Think about their particular pain points and where they fall on the buyer’s journey. This will help you better conceptualize the depth the prospect will want to see and the perspective they will take on the issues you discuss.

3. Assess people’s strengths. Now, consider the strengths of people on the marketing team and others who collaborate on SEO and content projects. Note any people who have the strengths that line up with the needs of your project from a technical or content perspective.

If certain team members have particular backgrounds or qualifications that will help them create higher-caliber content, then they should be included in your considerations. Remember that Google wants to see content that exhibits expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness. Working with the people who have the optimal qualifications to deliver particular types of content will help you meet this requirement.

4. Look at time commitments of all the team members. Finally, you will need to take into account the time commitments of the team members you want to include on your project. For example, if the project is small and you personally have the qualifications needed to produce quality content, then proceeding personally may be the best route. For larger projects, you will likely finish the project more efficiently through collaboration.

When you want to collaborate on projects, consider their time constraints and the schedule you have for your SEO or content project.

To ensure that your projects stays on schedule, consider these tips:

  • Speak with team members before you assign them tasks. Let them know what you would like to accomplish, how you would like their help, your timetable, and get their feedback.
  • If the teammates that you would like to have help with your project have several other high priority items on their plates, then consider alternate means of soliciting their collaboration. For example, if you want their expertise, consider scheduling a meeting and asking them for their insight and then producing content personally. If you need their help with technical specifications, ask them to set time aside in the future - such as in two weeks - to help with that final step. Then you make sure the rest of the project is assembled in the interim.
  • Once you assign tasks, make deadlines and expectations clear for everyone involved. If the project has a number of parts, consider creating smaller deadlines for different portions of the project.

To create optimal SEO and content marketing material, knowing when and how to include others in the project can help you keep your projects moving forward and ensure that you provide the best possible experience for your prospects.

How do you choose team members for SEO and content projects?

When you undertake an SEO project, working with a wider team can help you complete the project more efficiently. It can also help you present the best possible content to users by taking advantage of the expertise of others at your organization when needed.

Determining the team that will work best for these projects and knowing when to bring in this outside help, however, requires careful thought. Here are the guidelines we find helpful for knowing when to bring others into your SEO and content projects and who to select.put together the best possible staff for your seo and content projects - brightedge

  • Create a list of what the project entails
  • Consider the audience you want to reach
  • Assess people's strengths
  • Look at time commitments of all team members

1. Create list of what the project entails. Create a thorough list of what exactly you will need to accomplish with a particular project or campaign. For example, if you will need to incorporate video, create an infographic, or create website effects to improve the user experience on a particular page, this should all be noted.

In this list, you will also want to consider the topics you want to cover. Particularly if any of the topics you need to cover for this project fall outside of your personal area of expertise, you will want to make sure it is included on your list.

2. Consider the audience you want to reach. Next, you want to note the specific audience you will target during this project. Think about their particular pain points and where they fall on the buyer’s journey. This will help you better conceptualize the depth the prospect will want to see and the perspective they will take on the issues you discuss.

3. Assess people’s strengths. Now, consider the strengths of people on the marketing team and others who collaborate on SEO and content projects. Note any people who have the strengths that line up with the needs of your project from a technical or content perspective.

If certain team members have particular backgrounds or qualifications that will help them create higher-caliber content, then they should be included in your considerations. Remember that Google wants to see content that exhibits expertise, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness. Working with the people who have the optimal qualifications to deliver particular types of content will help you meet this requirement.

4. Look at time commitments of all the team members. Finally, you will need to take into account the time commitments of the team members you want to include on your project. For example, if the project is small and you personally have the qualifications needed to produce quality content, then proceeding personally may be the best route. For larger projects, you will likely finish the project more efficiently through collaboration.

When you want to collaborate on projects, consider their time constraints and the schedule you have for your SEO or content project.

To ensure that your projects stays on schedule, consider these tips:

  • Speak with team members before you assign them tasks. Let them know what you would like to accomplish, how you would like their help, your timetable, and get their feedback.
  • If the teammates that you would like to have help with your project have several other high priority items on their plates, then consider alternate means of soliciting their collaboration. For example, if you want their expertise, consider scheduling a meeting and asking them for their insight and then producing content personally. If you need their help with technical specifications, ask them to set time aside in the future - such as in two weeks - to help with that final step. Then you make sure the rest of the project is assembled in the interim.
  • Once you assign tasks, make deadlines and expectations clear for everyone involved. If the project has a number of parts, consider creating smaller deadlines for different portions of the project.

To create optimal SEO and content marketing material, knowing when and how to include others in the project can help you keep your projects moving forward and ensure that you provide the best possible experience for your prospects.

How To Migrate a Website?

What is the best way to migrate a website?

Migrating a website can be an important part of customer experience, SEO, and managing a domain. If you need to change your CMS, enable HTTPS, undergo a rebranding or a merger, or otherwise need to migrate your site, however, completing this process accurately and correctly remains critical and takes careful planning. Without proper execution, it can have dramatic and bad impacts on your website.

With a site migration, you want to take every step possible to preserve your page rankings so that your site maintains its traffic and engagement rates. You also want to ensure that your customer experience remains consistent and positive. Here are the steps we recommend our community use.understand best practices for how to migrate a website - brightedge

  • Get baseline measurements
  • Start small
  • Create a thorough 301 redirecting map
  • Monitor throughout the process
  • Ask for help when needed
  1. Get baseline measurements. Before you begin your migration, you want to get baseline measurements that will allow you to see exactly how your site performs now. This will allow you to carefully watch for any potential dips in traffic throughout your migration. If anything goes wrong in the process, you will be able to correct it as quickly as possible. You can also easily see how your migration impacts the future of your website. Key items to assess are: page load speed, mobile performance, SEO rank, SEO traffic, pages per visit, time per visit, and conversion.
  2. Start small. Once you begin to set up the migration, begin small. Start with a subdomain or small portion of your site. This will allow you to test your process and ensure that everything has been established as intended. If a certain portion of the new site or the migration process has not been set up correctly, you will find the error before it impacts the entire site.
  3. Create a thorough 301 redirecting map. If you change any urls, you will need to carefully and completely map every page of your old site to its corresponding page on the new site with a 301 redirect. You should create a list that shows precisely where the 301 redirects users to from each URL. This process is critical, as customers can easily still click on the links that take them to the former pages of your URL, and you do not want to create a poor user experience if they receive an error message in return. The redirects also will make it easier for you to maintain as much link equity as possible.
  4. Monitor throughout the process. As you migrate your site, be sure to continually monitor your site traffic and engagement rates. You want to make sure that you do not see sudden and dramatic drops that indicate a potential error. You also want to make sure that your traffic rates recover completely and that you can see steady progress following your migration. BrightEdge makes it easy for customers to set up this monitoring.
  5. Ask for help when needed. Involve your web develeopment and site operations teams. Develop a detailed QA plan and allow time for QA and adjustments. If you run into any problems with your migration, ask for help quickly. You do not want to have your traffic and rankings plummet following a migration and waste time trying to figure out the problem when an expert could help you find the problem faster. If you are part of the BrightEdge community, for example, the support staff can help you navigate the migration and keep your site strong.

A site migration can benefit you from an SEO perspective, but you have to make sure that you do not risk losing potential traffic and leads from errors. Instead, following the steps above should help you run through the process smoothly.

What is the best way to migrate a website?

Migrating a website can be an important part of customer experience, SEO, and managing a domain. If you need to change your CMS, enable HTTPS, undergo a rebranding or a merger, or otherwise need to migrate your site, however, completing this process accurately and correctly remains critical and takes careful planning. Without proper execution, it can have dramatic and bad impacts on your website.

With a site migration, you want to take every step possible to preserve your page rankings so that your site maintains its traffic and engagement rates. You also want to ensure that your customer experience remains consistent and positive. Here are the steps we recommend our community use.understand best practices for how to migrate a website - brightedge

  • Get baseline measurements
  • Start small
  • Create a thorough 301 redirecting map
  • Monitor throughout the process
  • Ask for help when needed
  1. Get baseline measurements. Before you begin your migration, you want to get baseline measurements that will allow you to see exactly how your site performs now. This will allow you to carefully watch for any potential dips in traffic throughout your migration. If anything goes wrong in the process, you will be able to correct it as quickly as possible. You can also easily see how your migration impacts the future of your website. Key items to assess are: page load speed, mobile performance, SEO rank, SEO traffic, pages per visit, time per visit, and conversion.
  2. Start small. Once you begin to set up the migration, begin small. Start with a subdomain or small portion of your site. This will allow you to test your process and ensure that everything has been established as intended. If a certain portion of the new site or the migration process has not been set up correctly, you will find the error before it impacts the entire site.
  3. Create a thorough 301 redirecting map. If you change any urls, you will need to carefully and completely map every page of your old site to its corresponding page on the new site with a 301 redirect. You should create a list that shows precisely where the 301 redirects users to from each URL. This process is critical, as customers can easily still click on the links that take them to the former pages of your URL, and you do not want to create a poor user experience if they receive an error message in return. The redirects also will make it easier for you to maintain as much link equity as possible.
  4. Monitor throughout the process. As you migrate your site, be sure to continually monitor your site traffic and engagement rates. You want to make sure that you do not see sudden and dramatic drops that indicate a potential error. You also want to make sure that your traffic rates recover completely and that you can see steady progress following your migration. BrightEdge makes it easy for customers to set up this monitoring.
  5. Ask for help when needed. Involve your web develeopment and site operations teams. Develop a detailed QA plan and allow time for QA and adjustments. If you run into any problems with your migration, ask for help quickly. You do not want to have your traffic and rankings plummet following a migration and waste time trying to figure out the problem when an expert could help you find the problem faster. If you are part of the BrightEdge community, for example, the support staff can help you navigate the migration and keep your site strong.

A site migration can benefit you from an SEO perspective, but you have to make sure that you do not risk losing potential traffic and leads from errors. Instead, following the steps above should help you run through the process smoothly.

Best Practices For Lead Generation and Routing

BrightEdge SEO Blog
blog hero image

gregalbuto
gregalbuto
M Posted 6 years 2 months ago
t 9 min read

Ninety three percent of B2B buying processes begin with a search, making the information that brands publish critical to the success of their organization. Strong lead generation strategies and practices can build businesses, while errors and mistakes can result in poor ROI and countless sales left on the table. We wanted to discuss the best practices for lead generation and techniques with our community.

Here are a few best practices for lead generation that we find work well.

1. Have strong alignment between your marketing and sales team

To optimize your lead generation and lead routing processes, you must have strong alignment between your marketing and sales teams. Too often, organizations end up with problems that arise when sales teams think that marketing leads are weak or not worth pursuing. Meanwhile, marketing teams grow resentful that sales teams do not maximize their efforts to engage the leads they pass on. Both sides of the organization must have a common understanding of the process to move forward.

Have the sales and marketing teams get together to discuss and define what qualifies as a lead and when that lead has progressed far enough through the sales funnel to speak to a sales representative. Many businesses find it helpful to use some sort of scoring system to help them quantify when a particular lead has reached the point where they would be most receptive to sales outreach.

Have your marketing and sales team work together for best practices for lead generation - brightedge

In addition to forming a common definition around leads and the hand-off process, the sales and marketing teams should also discuss what precisely happens when the lead gets passed to sales. Put agreements in place that outline the first steps after a lead hand-off. For example, there might be a schedule of contact, such as a phone call or email to be made within two hours of the hand-off. This will help build confidence that each lead receives the attention deserved.

As these agreements and common definitions begin to form, the teams should also develop an understanding of how these agreements should be enforced and held accountable. The leaders of the teams should explain the documentation they will use so that both teams understand what this process will look like. Set regular meetings between the two teams to discuss progress, ROI, and to identify areas of improvement throughout the year to promote best practices for lead generation.

2. Make sure the marketing strategies are built around precise personas and journeys

The marketing team now needs to ensure that their lead generation process revolves around precise personas and their buyer journeys. They need to know exactly who they want to reach and then create content targeted to them.

If your marketing team has not already defined your target customers, that is the place to start. Speak with existing customers to learn more about what drives them to your company over the competition. Ask them about their buying process to learn more about the questions they asked as they got closer to converting. Look at the market research to learn more about who has the precise need of your product or service and what their pain points are. Consolidate their information into three to five main personas that you will target with the various marketing campaigns.

The marketing campaigns you run should then revolve around nurturing a specific persona. Consider the pain points this person encounters and how you can use your various types of content to engage them and convince them to learn more about your organization. Your campaigns should have a strategy for bringing people down funnel.

As you run your campaigns, consider the definitions you created in cooperation with your sales team. You do not want to hand off leads that have done little more than download a whitepaper or attend a webinar. Therefore, you should have a plan in place to nurture these customers through the funnel. We will speak more about creating a concrete funnel for these customers in a few minutes.

3. Create concrete campaign goals

As you build out the marketing campaigns, make sure that each one has concrete goals. Your team should know exactly what persona they want to target, what part of the buyer’s journey they want to create content for, and how this campaign plays into the marketing team’s overarching goals.

Create and understand campaign goals that work for best practices for lead generation - brightedge

KPIs should be established to help the marketing team track their progress. Select KPIs that align well with the goals of the campaign. For example, if this campaign wants to bring in more people to the top of the funnel, then KPIs surrounding traffic rates and engagement will provide more information than purchases. On the other hand, if you want to coax those at the top of the funnel towards the middle, mid-funnel conversions regarding the download of whitepapers or webinar attendance for topics that relate to the mid-funnel will provide the best information.

4. Use a variety of lead capture and lead magnet strategies

To maximize your potential to generate leads and master best practices for lead generation, you will want to use a variety of options and strategies. Make sure that your lead generation campaigns include the following:

  • Well-formed funnels of content that allow you to continue to nurture a prospect
  • PPC ads that help you rank for important but hard-to-reach keywords
  • Social media that empowers you to engage with prospects through the popular platforms
  • Take action to build trust with customers through the creation of a trust-centric website, high-quality content, and reviews and customer testimonies
  • Make it easy for customers to convert into top-of-funnel and mid-funnel leads with easy registration for segmented email lists, demos, and other information that prospects may find interesting.

Attracting customers to your site requires the building of highly customizable lead magnet strategies. Using a variety of the items suggested above can help you maximize your lead potential and encourage more prospective customers to enter the buyer’s journey.

5. Have a defined journey for the customer

As already discussed, leads the marketing team hands over to sales should be well-nurtured and well prepared for those first conversations with a sales representative. Therefore, the marketing team needs to have a process established that will allow them to continue to nurture leads after that initial engagement to get them warmed up for the sales representative.

Not only does this process help them to build a relationship with the prospect, but it also makes it easier for the organization to collect more information on the lead, thus creating a more complete data set for the sales representative. The sales team can then have more targeted conversations with this prospect.

Know where the customer is going in their buying journey for best practices for lead generation

You likely already have a defined point at which the lead will move from the marketing team to the sales team, so use that as your guiding reference. This transfer point might be the lead achieving a particular score or taking a particular action – such as clicking on pricing pages or requesting a demo.

Use your buyer personas and your defined buyer journeys to help you determine how to nurture a particular early lead. You can use email automation and segmentation to continue to provide them with relevant material until they progress far enough in the process to be handed over to sales.

6. Know how to route leads that come in

As the leads come in, brands will want to route each one to ensure that it goes to the sales representative best prepared to engage with this particular prospect. Lead routing allows you to automatically send the leads to the appropriate sales rep.

To ensure that your lead routing process works effectively and contributes to best practices for lead generation, you will want to follow these steps:

  1. Determine how your leads will be split. For example, some businesses may divide them by industry, geographical region, or size.
  2. Assign the reps or small teams to each category used in the division.
  3. Use automation to route the leads as efficiently as possible and ensure that the guidelines for outreach and communication still get followed.
  4. To keep the leads routed correctly, focus on improving the data that comes in. The data and the leads should be regularly ‘cleaned’, ensuring that missing data is filled in, errors are corrected, and duplicates are joined or deleted.
  5. Regularly check for lost leads that end up in queues of former sales team members or other black holes and watch for leads not contacted according to the predetermined schedule. Work to maintain an optimal user experience.
  6. Make sure the lead lists remain balanced. If one particular list regularly outpaces another, consider assigning more representatives to cover it to ensure consistent customer experiences.

Lead capturing and routing remain two of the most important tasks for an organization. Understanding how to not only capture potential leads but then nurture them and pass them successfully along to the sales team can boost ROI and build the company. Consider this best practices for lead generation advice above and create plans to build your lead capture strategy.

MYOB Increased Search Channel Sign Ups by 162% and Drove New Leads

Discover how they successfully collected leads using BrightEdge Technology features

Download Case Study
162%
increase in trial sign ups
2,000+
new leads in 3 months

MYOB Increased Search Channel Trial Sign Ups by 162% and Drives Thousands of New B2B Leads

Discover how they successfully collected leads using BrightEdge Technology features

THE PROBLEM

MYOB helps Australian and New Zealand businesses succeed. They offer intelligent and intuitive accounting software and business management tools to make business life easier. Their primary aim with BrightEdge was to enable the team to increase leads and sales via the organic search channel and to improve the synergies and efficiencies of organic and paid search.

"We were using another provider for rank tracking however, we quickly outgrew the limitations of the tool and needed a more robust platform to help us with dashboarding/reporting and keyword tracking."

Learn How MYOB Drove Thousands Of New Leads With BrightEdge!

Determine Your Data Quality With These Tips

Bad data can make it increasingly challenging for brands to accurately target customers. It can lead to inaccurate information about them and make it hard to know who will be the most receptive to your promotions and sales pitch. Therefore, organizations should pay close attention to how to improve data quality and what they should do about it if its not up-to-par.

Let’s explore first some of the major forms of bad data to better see how to pick out this unhelpful information.use brightedge to figure out your data quality

  • Inaccurate or missing data
  • Non-relevant data
  • Non-reliable data
  • Vanity data

Inaccurate or missing data. Inaccurate or missing data might be a particular problem for your sales team. For example, you might see two entries for a single prospect, missing contact information for a lead, or inaccurate information regarding the company of the lead.

Sometimes data comes from mistakes in data entry, but it also can come from inaccurate data posted online, or data that ages.

To solve these problems, you will want to tackle the problem from a few different directions.

  1. Help everyone in the organization see the problems that can come from bad data. Make sure everyone has training on the business’s best practices regarding data entry.
  2. Make sure the sources from where you gather data about leads are accurate and trustworthy.
  3. Dedicate time to data scrubbing. Allot time for people to regularly sort through their existing data and update it as needed, delete duplicates, or otherwise scrub out inaccurate or unhelpful information.

Non-relevant data. As you collect data, you also need to make sure that the information you gather is relevant. You might have plenty of data on prospects that accurately describes your lead, but if that information will not help you understand their pain points and solve them, it does not offer you any value.

Examine the data you have for relevance. Delete irrelevant data and do not waste more resources collecting this information. Focus on the data points that better help you serve your customers.

Non-reliable data. Data also sometimes comes from sources that you should not regard as reliable. Sometimes people post inaccurate data online. Othertimes, the results of market research or surveys arrive from organizations with a clear bias. The information from these types of sources cannot be trusted to guide business decisions.

To root out this type of outlier data, be sure to verify the sources as you collect data and check to be sure that they will provide solid information.

Vanity data. Vanity data describes information that might help an organization look good, but the information itself does not help with marketing, sales, or customer engagement.

To avoid wasting time and resources collecting vanity data, make sure that you carefully plot out KPIs that reflect your marketing strategy. Know what your campaigns want to target and use that information to help you choose KPIs that will guide your organization and offer immediate value.

Bad data can derail marketing and sales efforts by making it hard for brands to accurately target potential customers and leads. Consider the tips for each of these types of bad data to ensure that you maintain clean, effective data banks that will help you target and bring in new customers.

Bad data can make it increasingly challenging for brands to accurately target customers. It can lead to inaccurate information about them and make it hard to know who will be the most receptive to your promotions and sales pitch. Therefore, organizations should pay close attention to how to improve data quality and what they should do about it if its not up-to-par.

Let’s explore first some of the major forms of bad data to better see how to pick out this unhelpful information.use brightedge to figure out your data quality

  • Inaccurate or missing data
  • Non-relevant data
  • Non-reliable data
  • Vanity data

Inaccurate or missing data. Inaccurate or missing data might be a particular problem for your sales team. For example, you might see two entries for a single prospect, missing contact information for a lead, or inaccurate information regarding the company of the lead.

Sometimes data comes from mistakes in data entry, but it also can come from inaccurate data posted online, or data that ages.

To solve these problems, you will want to tackle the problem from a few different directions.

  1. Help everyone in the organization see the problems that can come from bad data. Make sure everyone has training on the business’s best practices regarding data entry.
  2. Make sure the sources from where you gather data about leads are accurate and trustworthy.
  3. Dedicate time to data scrubbing. Allot time for people to regularly sort through their existing data and update it as needed, delete duplicates, or otherwise scrub out inaccurate or unhelpful information.

Non-relevant data. As you collect data, you also need to make sure that the information you gather is relevant. You might have plenty of data on prospects that accurately describes your lead, but if that information will not help you understand their pain points and solve them, it does not offer you any value.

Examine the data you have for relevance. Delete irrelevant data and do not waste more resources collecting this information. Focus on the data points that better help you serve your customers.

Non-reliable data. Data also sometimes comes from sources that you should not regard as reliable. Sometimes people post inaccurate data online. Othertimes, the results of market research or surveys arrive from organizations with a clear bias. The information from these types of sources cannot be trusted to guide business decisions.

To root out this type of outlier data, be sure to verify the sources as you collect data and check to be sure that they will provide solid information.

Vanity data. Vanity data describes information that might help an organization look good, but the information itself does not help with marketing, sales, or customer engagement.

To avoid wasting time and resources collecting vanity data, make sure that you carefully plot out KPIs that reflect your marketing strategy. Know what your campaigns want to target and use that information to help you choose KPIs that will guide your organization and offer immediate value.

Bad data can derail marketing and sales efforts by making it hard for brands to accurately target potential customers and leads. Consider the tips for each of these types of bad data to ensure that you maintain clean, effective data banks that will help you target and bring in new customers.

How To Use Google's URL Inspection Tool?

Google’s URL inspection tools can help brands identify and then fix any potential problems that might occur with their URL. This offers an excellent opportunity for organizations to maximize their potential on the SERP, as correcting any problems that Google sees can increase a site’s chances of ranking higher.

By inspecting your URLs, you can look at your web page from two main perspectives. One, you can investigate your current indexed URL. This refers to the web page as the search engine has indexed it. THe time it take for Google to read and index your site can vary so keep in mind the index might not reflect to the newest version of your site if you've made recent changes. Use a website inspector from Google to fix URL issues - BrightEdge

When you investigate the indexed version of your URL, you can learn valuable information such as:

  • Whether or not the URL is present on Google.
  • Your current index status, including valuable information such as the last time the URL was crawled and your canonical URL.
  • You can also learn about any ‘search enhancements’ that Google has detected on the page. Google says these enhancements include features such as your mobile usability, if there is an AMP version of the page, and what structured data/rich results appear on your page.

You will find this portion of the inspection tool helpful in a variety of situations. For example, it can help you if you want to know whether or not Google has indexed recent changes to your site, if you have any problems that have prevented Google from indexing your page, and if all of your search enhancements have been properly noted and recorded by Google.

You can also use the URL inspection tool to learn more about the live version of your web page. Running a live test asks Google to go and try to access your site for indexing. This test is designed only to allow you to confirm that your page is available for indexing. It does not help you actually get your page indexed.

Like when you test the indexed version of the URL, your live URL test will let you know about any search enhancements that the search engine detects on the page. Additionally, this particular inspection will let you know if any problems arise with Google being somehow blocked from accessing or indexing your site, allowing you to fix the problem immediately.

Other helpful features of Google's URL Inspection Tool

In addition to using these two inspection options, site owners can also use the URL inspection tool to get a glimpse of how Google renders their page. Particularly when you work with your site design, using this feature can allow you to verify that your site appears as you intended.

You can also request that Google re-index your page. Assuming your page was declared indexable during the live test, you can also submit your page to the indexing queue and the page should be reindexed within a week or two.

Google’s URL inspection tool offers a variety of helpful pieces of information. Site owners who want to make sure that their site is presented to Google and users the way they intended should regularly make use of this tool so that they can catch any errors early in the process and feel confident that thy know how Google perceives their site.

Google’s URL inspection tools can help brands identify and then fix any potential problems that might occur with their URL. This offers an excellent opportunity for organizations to maximize their potential on the SERP, as correcting any problems that Google sees can increase a site’s chances of ranking higher.

By inspecting your URLs, you can look at your web page from two main perspectives. One, you can investigate your current indexed URL. This refers to the web page as the search engine has indexed it. THe time it take for Google to read and index your site can vary so keep in mind the index might not reflect to the newest version of your site if you've made recent changes. Use a website inspector from Google to fix URL issues - BrightEdge

When you investigate the indexed version of your URL, you can learn valuable information such as:

  • Whether or not the URL is present on Google.
  • Your current index status, including valuable information such as the last time the URL was crawled and your canonical URL.
  • You can also learn about any ‘search enhancements’ that Google has detected on the page. Google says these enhancements include features such as your mobile usability, if there is an AMP version of the page, and what structured data/rich results appear on your page.

You will find this portion of the inspection tool helpful in a variety of situations. For example, it can help you if you want to know whether or not Google has indexed recent changes to your site, if you have any problems that have prevented Google from indexing your page, and if all of your search enhancements have been properly noted and recorded by Google.

You can also use the URL inspection tool to learn more about the live version of your web page. Running a live test asks Google to go and try to access your site for indexing. This test is designed only to allow you to confirm that your page is available for indexing. It does not help you actually get your page indexed.

Like when you test the indexed version of the URL, your live URL test will let you know about any search enhancements that the search engine detects on the page. Additionally, this particular inspection will let you know if any problems arise with Google being somehow blocked from accessing or indexing your site, allowing you to fix the problem immediately.

Other helpful features of Google's URL Inspection Tool

In addition to using these two inspection options, site owners can also use the URL inspection tool to get a glimpse of how Google renders their page. Particularly when you work with your site design, using this feature can allow you to verify that your site appears as you intended.

You can also request that Google re-index your page. Assuming your page was declared indexable during the live test, you can also submit your page to the indexing queue and the page should be reindexed within a week or two.

Google’s URL inspection tool offers a variety of helpful pieces of information. Site owners who want to make sure that their site is presented to Google and users the way they intended should regularly make use of this tool so that they can catch any errors early in the process and feel confident that thy know how Google perceives their site.

How To Do Schema?

Schema provides sites with the opportunity to provide more information to search engines about the content contained within a page and who it is intended to serve. This can help the search engine know when the site should be displayed. It can also help sites ensure that their page is fully eligible to appear in any relevant rich snippets, increasing their chances of earning that extra bit of real estate on the SERP.  Here is what all site owners should know about how to do schema and what it means to use the markup.how to do schema for technical seo - brightedge

Schema is a structured data markup that provides search engines with additional information about content on the web by defining precisely what it is. Schema was also developed collectively by a group of search engines, which means that marketing your page up with this code will help your page across multiple search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the Russian search engine, Yandex.

You can use schema to indicate a variety of different parts of your web page and to highlight several different types of content. For example, some of the most common selections are:

  • Places
  • People
  • Products
  • Events
  • Store hours
  • Reviews
  • Creative work type (Article, Blog Post, etc.)
  • Job Postings

Getting started with schema has also become relatively straight forward with Google’s Data Markup helper. By going to this website here, Google will help you create the code you need to create some common types of data markup. You simply need to enter the URL of the page you wish to tag, and it will walk you through the steps of adding the appropriate code to the page.

You will first select whether you want the markup for a webpage or an email. Then, you will select the type of information on the page that you want to mark up. Once you enter the URL, it will help you generate the HTML needed to markup your page.

Those who are more accustomed to creating and editing code directly can also use the information on the schema.org website, where they can access examples and learn what code would need to be added to generate the proper markup.

Schema has the potential to add valuable information to your website. It will help search engines better classify the information on your page, and increase your chances of getting your content displayed in a rich snippet. Those interested in taking advantage of this potential should consider how they can use the advice above to start adding schema to their sites.

Schema provides sites with the opportunity to provide more information to search engines about the content contained within a page and who it is intended to serve. This can help the search engine know when the site should be displayed. It can also help sites ensure that their page is fully eligible to appear in any relevant rich snippets, increasing their chances of earning that extra bit of real estate on the SERP.  Here is what all site owners should know about how to do schema and what it means to use the markup.how to do schema for technical seo - brightedge

Schema is a structured data markup that provides search engines with additional information about content on the web by defining precisely what it is. Schema was also developed collectively by a group of search engines, which means that marketing your page up with this code will help your page across multiple search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, and the Russian search engine, Yandex.

You can use schema to indicate a variety of different parts of your web page and to highlight several different types of content. For example, some of the most common selections are:

  • Places
  • People
  • Products
  • Events
  • Store hours
  • Reviews
  • Creative work type (Article, Blog Post, etc.)
  • Job Postings

Getting started with schema has also become relatively straight forward with Google’s Data Markup helper. By going to this website here, Google will help you create the code you need to create some common types of data markup. You simply need to enter the URL of the page you wish to tag, and it will walk you through the steps of adding the appropriate code to the page.

You will first select whether you want the markup for a webpage or an email. Then, you will select the type of information on the page that you want to mark up. Once you enter the URL, it will help you generate the HTML needed to markup your page.

Those who are more accustomed to creating and editing code directly can also use the information on the schema.org website, where they can access examples and learn what code would need to be added to generate the proper markup.

Schema has the potential to add valuable information to your website. It will help search engines better classify the information on your page, and increase your chances of getting your content displayed in a rich snippet. Those interested in taking advantage of this potential should consider how they can use the advice above to start adding schema to their sites.

Subscribe to
,