Two of the biggest continuum any business faces are how to rank high and how to maintain the ranking. Incidentally for both, you are indirectly dependent on search engines and hackers. However, the question is, for how long do you want to continue being dependent?

On one hand, you have both on-page technical best practices and off-page methods to enhance your ranking, while you can use encryption to fight cybercriminals.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO for all intents and purposes shouldn’t be about only performing on-page technical best practices. You also need to come up with out-of-the-box ideas that will enhance your website’s visibilities.

In as much as social media is a means of communication, it shouldn’t ordinarily improve organic search rankings. But be as it may, you need social media platforms to share your content since your website alone cannot give you the required reach.

You need social media platforms to boost traffic to your site as well as to enhance the profile. While the business world is still grappling with whether Google looks at social signals when determining the rank of a web page, the fact remains that if a large number people are able to share your content on social media, then it’s expected that more people will link to it, and links are a hugely important SEO ranking factor.

On the other hand, Google according to an article, as of October 2019, Google dominated US search queries but Bing was also able to achieve more search in a fair share. This should be interesting to marketers because according to Bing, social media plays a role in today’s effort to rank well in search results.

Whether you are grappling with on-page technical best practices or off-page methods to increase your website’s visibility in order to enhance SEO and ultimately your ranking, the most important thing is ensuring that your website is up and running. One thing that can bring your website crashing faster than any other thing is the activities of cybercriminals.

Encryption

As you plan to use social media to enhance your ranking, it’s important you know that cybercriminals earn nearly $3.25 billion per year violating social media. This is a good reason for you to consider encryption which is a surefire means of converting information into secret code thereby, hiding the true meaning.

The technology involved in encryption and decryption of information is called cryptography.

While your unencrypted data can also be referred to as plaintext, the encrypted one is known as ciphertext in the computing world.

You make use of encryption algorithms or ciphers to encode and decode messages. Before an unauthorized person can make any sense out of your encrypted message (if it is intercepted), such an entity has to guess which cipher you used to encrypt the message and also work out what keys were used as variables.

While it may sound outlandish to you, the simple truth is that the task can be very herculean and frustrating. This is why encryption has become such a valuable security tool.

The following are two of the best methods of encryption you can use to secure your website and enhance your SEO rankings.

1. End-to-end encryption (E2EE)

E2EE is a means of ascertaining that data being transmitted by you to another party cannot be viewed by an attacker that may probably intercept the means of communication. However, ordinarily using an encrypted communication circuit, as provided by Transport Layer Security (TLS) between the web client and web server software, is not always an assurance that you have an E2EE. The actual information you are transmitting must be by client software before being passed to a web client and decrypted only by the recipient.

Messaging apps such as Facebook’s WhatsApp and Open Whisper Systems‘ Signal provide E2EE. It is also possible for Facebook Messenger users to get E2EE messaging with the “Secret Conversations” option.

2. Quantum cryptography

What could be more heartwarming than knowing that your website and social media account can’t be messed with? This is what quantum cryptography can do for you.

Based on the quantum mechanical properties of particles, your data is protected. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle postulates that the two properties you can use to identify a particle, both its location and its momentum, cannot be measured without changing the values of those properties.

This means that once you quantum-encode your data it cannot be copied and if an intruder attempts to access the encoded data, the data will change. Since you will be alerted by any attempt to copy or access the data the aim of the intruder is roundly defeated.

With encryption, you are secured from SEO spam-infected sites that typically redirect visitors to spam pages. The motivation behind this method for cyber attackers is simple – its ease.

One thing attackers won’t be able to do to your website is to gain access and steal your hard-earned SEO ranking as they consider it a big task to start from scratch to build up their own new rankings from the ground up. You are also protected from damages to your SEO rankings and brand reputation that will definitely lead to loss of traffic from SEO spam.

Access to your website for the purposes of SEO and comment spam which can be very tricky to detect is checkmated. Usually, hackers tend to inject spammy links on a website knowing fully well that they are visible only to Search Engines and visitors, whereas, you may not even be aware of it.

The end result would have been that malware will steal your domain authority and tarnish your reputation to boost their own.

Being an entrepreneur or a decision-maker, encryption is surely something you should get started with to safeguard your business from losing its reputation, credibility, and dollar bills. Feel free to share your queries in the comments section.

John Ejiofor is the founder and editor in chief at Nature Torch. He can be found on Twitter @John02Ejiofor.

The post How encryption can enhance your SEO ranking appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Source:: searchenginewatch.com

How important is influencer marketing to businesses in 2020?

Influencer marketing will see global brand spending of up to $15 billion by 2022 (Business Insider Intelligence), and B2B marketers who haven’t yet experienced its many benefits now have more research data than ever to make the case for starting an influencer marketing program.

Even if you’ve already developed an influencer marketing strategy, the wealth of new information coming out about its power to build trust and inspire action is growing, which is why we wanted to share 24 significant B2B influencer marketing statistics that combine to tell a compelling story that will alter your future campaigns.

Let’s jump right in with a look at some of the latest influencer marketing statistics.

Making The Statistical Case For B2B Influencer Marketing

It Makes Financial Sense

Among B2B buyers the type of influencer content with the most value is the venerable case study. 47 percent of B2B buyers found case studies to be the most valuable type of influencer content, ahead of webinars at 39 percent, third-party or analyst reports at 35 percent, and user reviews and video content, each at 32 percent, according to survey data from MarketingCharts as shown below.

Influencer marketing has also delivered impressive value, beginning in 2018 when analyst data showed that each dollar spent for influencer marketing yielded $5.20 return in media value.

From that point forward influencer spending increased, as in 2019 it saw the highest growth of all online channels, reaching some $2.6 billion in the U.S. alone, and a growth rate of a whopping 70.5 percent year-over-year, according to report data from MarketingCharts.

The same forecast predicts $3.4 billion for influencer spending in 2020 in the U.S. alone.

It Builds Trust & Credibility

[bctt tweet=““Partnering with relevant influencers to co-create content can open doors for brands trying to engage hard to reach and increasingly skeptical audiences.” @LeeOdden“ username=“toprank“]

The recent Edelman Trust Barometer report placed influencer trust above that from delivered from brands.

63 percent of survey respondents said that they trust influencers more than what a brand says about itself.

A compelling case for influencer marketing in the B2B world also comes from the aforementioned MarketingCharts B2B buyer survey, which found that 95 percent of B2B marketers say they prefer credible content from industry influencers.

Separate survey data of senior level marketers, also from MarketingCharts, revealed that 65 percent of B2B buyers said their consumption habits have changed to prefer credible content from industry influencers.

When done well, influencer marketing builds levels of trust that exceed traditional campaign methods, however consumers need to feel confidence in the influencers they follow. 82 percent of U.S. consumers believe that influencers should disclose their history of personal use of a product or service. (Influence.co)

Consumers are also wary of influencers who post too frequently. The same survey found that 74 percent of consumers say they would sever ties with influencers who post too often, a statistic savvy B2B influencer marketers take into account.

It’s Being Rapidly Adopted For Good Reason

In several 2019 surveys influencer marketing was cited as one of the top marketing trends expected to have a sizable impact in 2020, a prediction that during the first two months of the year has materialized according to initial influencer marketing spending figures that we’ll examine.

By the end of 2019 survey data forecast that influencer marketing adoption among B2B tech marketers was expected to expand by 31 percent from 2018 implementation levels, a prediction that now appears on the conservative side as influencer marketing has continued to swiftly evolve.

At our client SAP’s annual conference, a group of only 15 influencers drove 25 percent of all social media impressions, which our CEO Lee Odden explores in more detail in a recent article examining how even a small number of influencers experiencing a brand event can make a big impact, with “25 B2B Influencer Marketing Campaign & Engagement Ideas for 2020.”

Another positive signal for the growth of influencer marketing is that 21 percent of marketers plan to make influencer posts the focus of their 2020 social media strategy, according to Social Media Today poll data.

Additionally, 88 percent of consumers have found purchasing inspiration from viewing influencer content. (Rakuten 2019 global influencer marketing survey.)

It Spans Global Boundaries & Generations

The global nature of online advertising has proven to mesh well with influencer marketing, as nearly 70 percent of consumers follow at least one influencer from a country not their own (Rakuten), which plays especially well in the hands of B2B businesses that often include multinational units.

Globally during 2019 some 59 percent of marketers said their budget for influencers has increased, while 39 percent of brands in the U.S. say they would be encouraged to invest even more in influencer marketing programs if they were better able to see the impact it has in the broader scope of the customer purchasing journey, the same survey noted.

[bctt tweet=““Influencer marketing for B2B offers impressive options to optimize marketing performance across the entire customer lifecycle.” — Lee Odden @LeeOdden“ username=“toprank“]

Implementation of influencer marketing has grown not only among pure B2B marketers, but also in the marcomm sector. 67 percent of global marcomm professionals now see influencer marketing within their scope, according to recent data from Talkwalker and MarketingCharts.

Influencer marketing’s power has been seen not only in its global scale, but also its multi-generational pull, as 18 percent of Gen Z consumers say they discover brands via influencers (GlobalWebIndex).

When an influencer recommends a product, 51 percent of Millennials say they are more likely to try it, according to survey data from Valassis and Kantar.

Influencer Marketing & Social Platforms

When it comes to the under-10,000-follower micro-influencer niche, Instagram is the clear top social media platform of choice at 75.9 percent, according to recent survey data, which offers a look at the top social network choices among micro-influencers.

We recently published a list of “31 DIY Marketing Tools To Create Remarkable Experiences,” which includes some of the tools used most frequently by micro-influencers to create content targeting Instagram.

Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, and LinkedIn (client) top one recent list of most popular social media platforms for influencer marketing. 89 percent of marketers said that Instagram was important for their influencer marketing strategy. (Fourstarzz Media)

How Do I Begin An Influencer Marketing Program?

Finding the ideal influencers for your audience is a challenge most marketers consider significant, as 51 percent of marketers have reported difficulty finding the right influencers. (Visme.)

At TopRank Marketing we’ve specialized in influencer marketing for years now, and were named by Forrester as the only B2B marketing agency offering influencer marketing as a top capability in its “B2B Marketing Agencies, North America, Q1 2019” report.”

To help you along your influencer marketing journey, including suggestions for finding the right influencers for your particular audience, here are five articles we’ve written that dig in to the nuances of the process:

• 11 Qualities You Should be Looking for to Find Your B2B Influencer Match
• How to Intertwine Online & Offline Tactics to Cultivate B2B Influencer Relationships
• Do Your Homework: Selecting the Right Influencers for Your B2B Brand With Tips from the Experts
• 5 Essential Questions to Guide Your B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy
• What B2B CMOs Need to Know About Successful Influencer Marketing

Learn More From TopRank Marketing Online & In Person

Statistics tell an important story that can help direct B2B marketers along a data-and-research-based journey. No matter how revealing statistics may be, however, they don’t tell the entire story, as the human elements are what drive real progress in successful influencer marketing programs.

[bctt tweet=““Stories are just data with a soul.” @BreneBrown“ username=“toprank“]

B2B marketing’s use of influencer marketing to bring a human touch is the focus of a Break Free B2B video interview we held with our client LinkedIn’s Marketing Manager Judy Tian.

You can learn more about how B2B marketers are benefiting from influencer marketing, whether it’s through building better customer experiences (CX) or building trust, by attending one or all of the speaking events our CEO Lee Odden has lined up in the coming months, which are listed below.

February 24-25, 2020 – B2BMX – Scottsdale, AZ
How to Optimize ABM Results with Influencer Marketing

March 19, 2020 – Convergence Summit – Minneapolis, MN
In Search of Trust: How Authentic Content Drives Customer Experience

March 24, 2020 – Pubcon – Miami, FL
B2B Influencer Marketing Workshop

April 20-22, 2020 – Content Tech – San Diego, CA
How to Optimize Content Performance with Influence

April 22-23, 2020 – Content Marketing Conference – Boston, MA
Be Best Answer for Your Customers with SEO and Influence

May 27 -28, 2020 – B2B Ignite USA – Chicago, IL
In Marketing We Trust: How to Build Influence with the C-Suite and on the Street

The post 24 Essential B2B Influencer Marketing Statistics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

Source:: toprankblog.com

The start of international expansion is an incredible milestone for any business, and gearing up to take your venture around the world will be one of the most exciting moments of your career. But just because your business is thriving at home doesn’t mean that it will be a success abroad. To achieve that, you’ll need to give attention to your international SEO strategy.

Achieving online visibility on an international scale can be tricky, particularly when you factor in differences in language, culture, and search habits. It’s not a cookie-cutter approach where one size fits all across all regions. However, you’ll be more than ready to tackle the challenges of international SEO once you’ve followed these six must-know tips, and should soon see your business soaring in search rankings across the globe.

1. Pick an effective domain strategy

A .com TLD is usually considered the cream of the crop when it comes to domains and the authority afforded to them by search engines. But this can be far too generic to attract international customers. Instead, your domain should clearly target your country of choice and show users around the world that your website is catered specifically to them.

A ccTLD, for example, cocacola.fr, is often popular because the country code immediately shows users and search engines what the target country is. However, if you have multiple localized versions of the website across a number of ccTLDs, search engines will treat these as separate entities, meaning each domain will need to build up backlinks and authority from scratch.

A subdirectory, like, nike.com/fr maintains all your pre-existing SEO efforts as you’re simply adding a localized folder to your current domain. However, this risks causing internal cannibalization if different international landing pages are optimized for the same keywords, such as a US subfolder and an Australian subfolder where the language is largely the same.

A subdomain (such as fr.airbnb.com) is often the default for CMS tools, but users are less likely to associate your site with their country as the country code comes first rather than last, meaning click-through-rates could take a hit.

All domain strategies have pros and cons, so it’s important to ascertain how each option would work for your business specifically. Matthew Finn, one of the SEO specialists at Go Up, highlights several points that could determine your international domain strategy decision. Budget obviously comes into play – ccTLDs can be particularly expensive – and your branding could be a factor too.

As they explain: “If your company has a logo which features your domain, or brand guidelines which stipulate talking about your business as YourBrand.com, then a ccTLD wouldn’t work.” You also need to consider possible limitations of your CMS and current domain. For instance, subdirectories and subdomains only work with an existing generic top-level domain like .com.

Look at the domain structures of competitors in your new target countries to see what Google favors. You might decide to use a combination of all three strategies to target different markets.

2. Conduct localized keyword research

You may feel like you have a good understanding of your current audience’s search habits, but these keywords may not be popular across the board. Conducting localized keyword research will help you judge the online queries likely to serve you best in each country.

This isn’t so difficult when you’re targeting other English speakers, though you still have to take slang and regional variations into account. For example, if you’re a shoe business going after an Australian audience, you would probably be better off targeting “thong” rather than “flip flop” keywords. This is especially relevant to voice search.

Of course, things become more complicated when dealing with entirely different languages. You may not understand the words themselves and also need to consider how cultural context can impact intent. Findings from Webcertain showed significant differences between the search habits of US and Chinese users. Roughly 60% of US searches about chairs related to style and shape, yet only 20% of Chinese searches had the same intent. In fact, 5% more Chinese searches were action-based – what to do with the chair. Culture can hugely influence how people formulate their online queries and you can’t ignore this factor when choosing location-specific keywords.

3. Don’t assume one language means one culture

One size does not fit all when it comes to international expansion, especially considering the diversity of languages. There are many differences in Standard Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese, while there are plenty of Spanish variations spoken across North America, South America, and the Caribbean, let alone the many regional dialects in Spain itself. You may think that translating your website into a “standard” language will enable you to connect with all relevant markets, but you risk alienating millions of potential customers if you don’t tailor your content to each target location.

First of all, remember that idioms or colloquialisms may make sense in one place but not in another, even if the same language is spoken. If an Ireland-based furniture business used the word “press”, it’s highly unlikely any English-speakers outside the country would realize this referred to a kitchen cupboard. Similarly, some words, images, and practices are accepted in one place but offensive in another. Though Arabic is the official language of both Morocco and Saudi Arabia, references to alcohol would only be permissible when targeting the former as drinking is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. You also need to use the correct measurements, currencies, and other details, which may vary from country to country regardless of language. French-speaking Canadians would be puzzled to see prices in euros rather than Canadian Dollars.

Errors like this could deter users and damage a business’s trust, authority, and click-through-rate. Therefore, it would be a huge mistake to focus on accurate translations without considering the unique historical and cultural factors making every place unique. Consulting people familiar with the nuances of each target location will ensure your content is suitable for all the potential customers living there.

4. Think beyond Google

Google is normally the holy grail when it comes to all SEO efforts, but there may be other search engines to prioritize during international expansion. The majority of users in China and Russia, two of the largest markets in the world, direct the majority of their online queries to entirely different platforms, so focusing on Google alone could be detrimental to your visibility and profits.

In Russia, the leading search engine is Yandex which holds 56% of the market share. This success has been put down to the search engine’s deeper understanding of Slavic languages. Meanwhile, Google has been blocked in China under the country’s Internet censorship policy. Most Chinese users conduct their online searches through Baidu, which held between 60 to 77% of the search engine market share in China during 2019.

You can’t afford to ignore alternative search engines when targeting markets like these, and it’s also important to recognize each has its own unique algorithms. There will be some similarities—for example, Google, Yandex and Baidu all reward quality content – but you’ll need to be aware of the differences. Indexing can be very slow for both Yandex and Baidu which means it will take longer to see the benefits of your efforts, so long-term results should be the priority. Paid search is crucial to Baidu, as paid results are given much greater precedence than organic results. Meanwhile, Yandex still values meta keywords – a metric that Google removed from its ranking algorithm some time ago.

5. Implement hreflang tags

Hreflang tags signpost which languages and locations your pages are aimed at, helping Google to understand which version of a page is most appropriate for its users. For example, if someone in Paris typed in a search term relevant to your product page, the hreflang tag signals to Google that the French version of the page should appear in search results.

To target users as accurately as possible, you should include hreflang tags for both language and region. For instance, an ‘en‘ tag shows Google that your page is for all English speakers, but you could also add tags to emphasize the specific geographic locations you’re targeting, en-ca for English speakers in Canada and en-us for English speakers in the US. It’s crucial you use the correct codes—for instance, the UK is ‘gb‘ rather than ‘uk’—and a hreflang tag generator like Aleda Solis‘ SEO tools recommended by Moz that could help minimize mistakes.

6. Start localized link building

Just as with any domestic SEO strategy, links are essential in building the authority of your website within a target locale. To elevate your brand in local search, it’s vital to source links from local platforms within your industry. The more hyperlocal, the better. For example, if you’re opening a new hotel in Berlin, links from travel platforms in the German capital will be more valuable than those in Munich or Hamburg.

Seek out journalistic opportunities and serve as a source of expertise, guest post on influential sites within a region, and use social channels to build connections with local influencers and businesses. It’s also recommended that you use a translator or someone accustomed to the language and customs of a target region to handle the outreach. The more you extend your brand in a target market, the more you will be rewarded with high authority backlinks.

Edward Coram James is an SEO professional and the Chief Executive of Go Up Ltd, an international agency dedicated to helping its clients navigate the complexities of global SEO and the technical aspects of delivering location-specific pages to targeted audiences.

The post Six must-know international SEO tips to expand your businesses appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

Source:: searchenginewatch.com

Marketers are still asking, what is B2B influencer marketing? Here’s a definition I’ve been using over the past 5 years or so:

B2B influencer marketing is activating internal and external subject matter experts with engaged networks to advocate and co-create content of mutual value that drives measurable business goals.

As the groundswell around influencer marketing rises and becomes a normal part of the B2B marketing mix, the volume of information and misinformation on the topic also increases.

One of the most popular questions people also ask about B2B influencer marketing focuses on what makes a good business influencer? By now we all know that popularity alone does not make someone influential. It’s certainly important, it’s just not the only thing.

As B2B marketers mature in their understanding of the role influence plays and how the dynamic of brand content co-created with industry experts plays out with customers, they begin to realize that other factors matter. Topical relevance matters of course as well as resonance of the topic amongst an influencer’s community.

The intersection of individual expertise, how well that expertise resonates with followers and the size of network creates a baseline of characteristics when evaluating whether a certain influencer might be a match.

But there’s more than that. Understanding what makes a great influencer is both art and science, soft and hard skills. The success of identifying, qualifying and engaging influencers is also directly tied to how they will be engaged and to what end.

Some people reading this might think that influencer marketing isn’t the magic pill some are playing it up to be. There’s a reason for that, because it’s not magic. It’s more like alchemy.

The reality is, there’s no one formula for the perfect B2B influencer, but there are some common characteristics that B2B brands should look for in varying proportions according to what’s important to a program or activation. I call those characteristics:

The 5 Ps of B2B Influence

Proficiency – In B2B marketing, the vast majority of those considered influential possess deep expertise in the field they work in. This is a significant difference from many B2C influencers who are often self proclaimed as influential with clever media creation skills.

As B2C influencer content and engagement tactics evolve, some are crossing over into B2B with a trickle of opportunists successfully creating influence amongst B2B audiences not solely for their expertise, but for a combination of adept social media content creation skills and some expertise. B2B marketers who do their due diligence will be able to filter accordingly.

Popularity – While network size is not the only thing, nor is it the most important thing, it is definitely a metric to consider. Some marketers swing in the direction of ignoring audience size altogether because of lower engagement rates with popular influencers. This is simply foolish. All things being the same, I’ll take 2% engagement of an influencer with a million followers over 2% from someone that has 1,000 followers.

What matters is how network size factors in with the type of influencer you need. For example, popular influencers aka “brandividuals” are often best for top of funnel content. Niche domain expert influencers are better for middle and end of funnel content. Engaging a brandividual and expecting conversions is just naive.

Personality – If you’ve worked in B2C influencer marketing and been exposed to all the characters there, B2B is going to seem a bit dry. Now there are some colorful characters in the B2B influencer community, no doubt. But personality is often a trait that needs to be uncovered when you’re working with some types of business influencers.

The good news is that savvy influencer marketing practitioners know how to plant the seeds that can grow and blossom within an otherwise introverted influencer. You don’t need them to be a colorful character, ripe with personality per se, but you do want them to connect with the passion they have with their craft and how their expertise can help others be successful.

Publishing – Content is the media that conveys the ideas of influence and while B2B influencers are not expected to produce the same types and quantity of content as in B2C, it is ideal when there’s a platform where the influencer publishes. At a minimum, that would be social networks but to be a B2B influencer, it’s most likely that also includes articles contributed to publications if not research, books and presentations.

Promotion – The value a B2B influencer brings beyond adding expertise and credibility to brand content is the ability to share what they helped create with their network. Trust of brand content is at a low, especially with advertising. Customers yearn for authentic content and the right kind of influencer collaboration can give them that, delivered via the influencer’s own distribution channels. That means social networks for course but also potentially blogs, email newsletters, podcast, LinkedIn Live, contributed articles or columns in industry publications.

I know some people reading this are thinking there could be even more P’s like being Prolific, Persuasive or Passion. Yes, there could be so many more but we have to draw the line somewhere! It’s important to be able to manage the data and insights necessary to factor these characteristics into selection, qualification and engagement.

Some of these traits will not fully reveal themselves until you work with an influencer on a few content activations. Others will fluctuate over time and that is normal. It’s important to understand that influence is a temporal thing. It is not fixed or permanent. It’s important marketers realize that before they disengage an influencer in the short term due to lower performance. The same goes for high expectations after great performance.

Organic influencer engagement is a little dynamic and what you don’t spend on paid influencers like an ad buy you will (in part) need to invest in relationship management, education and even tips that will help the influencers be more effective.

B2B brands with high influencer churn or low performance often apply “ad buy” perspectives to a what is actually a relationship driven effort. Mismatched expectations are not helpful for anyone, so think about the 5Ps as you evaluate and nurture your influencer community. Consider where of each your ideal influencers need to score on the 5 Ps in order to be a good match for the kind of activation you have in mind.

When there’s 5P alignment, there’s happiness: for customers, influencers and your B2B brand.

The post 5 Key Traits of the Best B2B Influencers appeared first on Online Marketing Blog – TopRank®.

Source:: toprankblog.com