Eoin Keenan

Last week, following the news that Google Now functionality may be coming to Google.com, I asked if Google Now would become the Holy Grail for inbound marketers. To sum up, I think it will. The thought of having your brand appear before a prospect has started searching has too much potential to ignore.

The next question is a tough one, what can we do about it?

Google rarely provides a lot of detail on how it’s algorithms work. We get broad nudges, like ‘write great content’ or ‘create user friendly layouts’, without a clear understanding of what that means to Google’s crawlers.

In Google Now’s case, we know that the contextual search methods use search history, location, time of day and other factors to find the most relevant content. That’s not a lot to go on.  But...

One of the most common discussions we have with our clients is around the idea of “success”. We often ask clients how they have been classifying online success, because it’s become a bit of a flexible term. Some clients look solely at web traffic or simply keep an eye on their Twitter follower count. If you develop an online presence for personal amusement or because you felt it was a ‘minimum requirement’ then these measures may well fit the bill. Success can be a very personal idea.

What’s Success To You?

For us, success always means the same thing, business growth. When we engage a client, that’s our goal. Without putting too fine a point on it, if you’re in business online, you should be looking...

Sometimes it’s hard to spot the root cause of a problem. You know you have one, you know you can do better, but you just can’t put your finger on the cause of the problem. That’s how most B2Bs feel about their online presence.

You may be having so much trouble finding the problem, because it doesn’t look like a problem. Something you think is great about your digital marketing may be the factor that’s dragging you down.

It may even be a collection of things. Lets look at some of the most common digital marketing mistakes.

The “What We Do” Mystery

When a visitor arrives on your website, do they instantly know what you do? How many links do they have to follow and lines do they have to read to get it? This “...

The Internet has a habit of helping you to lose perspective. If you spend too much time online, you begin to forget what’s normal and what the rest of the world sees as a bit weird. It’s so easy to get used to certain Internet terminology, images or memes that you forget that not everybody in the ‘real’ world knows what they are or what they mean. When you get a reminder, it can leave you feeling a little silly.

I got that feeling recently when I foolishly clicked on a link to an article about the ‘strangest trends on YouTube’. Now, I spend a lot of time online, but I’d like to think that as a B2B marketer I stick to the brighter, more normal, avenues of the Internet. And ‘strangest trends on YouTube’ is quite a claim. But, on the whole I will say that the article did mention some pretty...