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We've talked before about the basics of SEO for lead generation -- but SEO is always a moving target, both because search engines are continually changing the exact signals and red flags that they consider in their rankings and because there's no such thing as being "done" with SEO: it's an ongoing process.

So to stay on top, you have to keep adding new tools to your bag of tricks. Well you're in luck: BuyerZone SEO specialist Samantha McCormick just published a slideshow on Quick and Dirty Ways to Use Social Media to Get Ahead in Google. Check it out -- and add a few new SEO tactics to your repertoire.



(Can't get enough SEO tips? Check out these 5 SEO No-Nos for a few missteps that could undo all your other hard work.)

As the holidays approach and you're busy buying gifts for family and friends, have you taken a moment (even a brief one) to put together a wish list for your lead generation activities for 2012? As you reflect back on 2011, I'm sure there are wishes you have for 2012 related to your marketing and sales activities. And while they won't come wrapped with a pretty bow, they just might dramatically change your business.

What's on your 2012 lead generation wish list?

• Do you wish for alignment between marketing and sales?
• Do you wish for a true definition of a lead?
• Do you want to improve conversion rate on contact forms on your site?
• Do you want to explore new marketing channels to keep the sales pipeline filled?
• Is this the year to roll out a marketing automation platform?
• Is it time to stop tracking ROI in Excel and invest in a CRM system?
• Do you want to cut down on the follow-up time for inbound inquiries?
• Is it time to truly figure out social media for your business?
• Do you want to get your brand noticed (and generate leads) by becoming a thought leader?
• Do you wish to figure out the whitepaper lead generation model -- as so many other companies have?
• Is it time to nurture your leads versus calling them immediately, regardless of BANT?
• Is it worth going back to direct mail as a lead generation source?
• Do you wish to master SEO as a cost-effective lead generation tool?
  
• Do you want to figure out the right volume of leads your sales team needs to meet their goals?

This is just a quick list off the top of my head - what are yours? Share your 2012 wish list items in the comment section below!

Happy Friday everyone!

As the work week winds to a close (does it ever stop though?), we want to share some relevant news across the web that caught our eye.

• Liz got you caught up on what this whole marketing automating thing is about. If you're considering making the investment - and trust us, it's a worthy one - there are a lot of choices out there. Our friends at Marketo made news this week with their launch of Spark - a lite version of their slick marketing automation platform, designed for small businesses. 

• As marketers continues to rely on search engine marketing and experiment with social and mobile, email marketing continues to chug along - as instrumental as ever. The folks at Hubspot have put together a solid cheat sheet for creating successful email campaigns. We covered email tips in-depth last year - and they still holds true. Check out our Foundations series on everything you need to know about email marketing for lead generation.
  

• Google has made a number of changes to their search algorithm starting earlier this year with the goal to eradicate 'content farms' - sites designed to beat the system by offering little in terms of value to users - from their organic search results. While well intentioned, the update has impacted many legitimate sites, especially manufacturing-focused sites. Has your site been impacted? 
  

In the wake of Google Panda update, there has been a lot of buzz around content marketing and the benefits that it can bring your website. Not only can it potentially help your page rank on Google and other search engines, but it can also improve the overall quality of your site -that is, if it is implemented correctly. In years past, sites would squeeze as many keywords into their content as possible to improve rankings, but now we are learning that might hurt you. But where do you get started?

Read our simple tips below.

Keep it fresh. Depending on the size and depth of your website, this may be more of a challenge than you might initially think. Keep track of when you write articles or blurbs on your site so you can assess when it becomes outdated. Then you can rotate your efforts rather than updating your entire site in one sitting. Set goals for yourself by creating a reasonable timeline, keeping in mind that not only do you have to update old content, but you also have to add new copy regularly -whether it's articles, blog posts, or changing out homepage content. Just assume that you want to give people a reason to return to your website. And when search engines crawl your site, you want them to see that you are constantly updating your site - providing users with the most relevant experience.

Make it easy to share. So you are trying to get people to download your whitepaper and fill out your form, but aren't getting much traffic? Think about how social media friendly your website is. Can someone read an article on your site and share it on Facebook or Twitter at the click of a button? In this day and age, you can let your fans and customers do the work for you by letting them publicize your content.

Search engine marketing, as the name suggests, is marketing via search engines - like Yahoo, Google, and Bing. Under that umbrella, PPC ads are the paid ads located on the right hand column and top of the search results, and they are based on the keyword terms that the user searches for. This is different from the main column of results - impacted by SEO which are "natural" or unpaid. The main PPC objective for companies is to convert as many of these paid ads as possible - and, as a result, reduce costs and increase profit. However, this also means that you have to actively make adjustments to your keywords and copy - rather than the "set and forget" methodology.

Here are some tips to get you going:

Be proactive! There are always improvements to be made, so constantly monitor results and make adjustments. Also, keep an eye on your competitors to see what they are doing.

Think ROI. Sometimes you have to spend more to get more. The rates for certain keywords or positions are high, but if they are producing the best leads, it is worth the price. Just be sure to collect enough data to be able to draw logical conclusions - including the lifetime value of a customer.

Check out BuyerZone's new Lead Generation Resource Center! BuyerZone's resource center offers in-depth tools and guides for every stage of the sales process.  From generating new sales leads to following up and closing sales, our resource center has the information you need to grow your business.

Here's a snapshot of our latest tools and guides:

Lead generation 101: Discover how lead generation companies capture leads, what to look for in a lead generation provider and decide if it's right for your business.

Lead generation ROI calculator and lead tracker: Download our simple ROI calculator that you can use to compare the performance of all your internal and external lead generation programs, as well as do basic lead tracking.

Lead nurturing basics: Discover basic lead nurturing strategies to help you start generating revenue from stale leads.

Following up on a lead: Maximize your close rate by following our simple, but effective, follow-up tips.

SEO and lead generation: Learn how to use SEO tactics to optimize your website and generate more leads for your business.

Marketing and sales alignment: a shared path: Follow these tips to help bridge the gap between marketing and sales, and generate and close more leads.

Please comment below to let us know what topics you'd be interested in learning more about.

If your customers can't find your website you won't see results. One of the top ways to increase traffic to your site is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - the use of various techniques to optimize your site to appear at or near the top of search engine results pages and thus attract more visitors.

One important component of your SEO strategy is link building. There are two types of links that are important for SEO - outbound and inbound. Outbound links are links on your site that lead to an external page, while inbound links come from an external website to yours. Inbound links are important because search engines view them as a measure of the popularity of your site.

However, all links are not equal. Below are a few important factors for quality inbound links:

1. The anchor text used in the link - Ideally, your links will have your keywords or variations of your keywords in the anchor text. For best results, mix it up - don't use the identical keywords for all of your links.

2. The trustworthiness of the linking domain - Links from reputable domains, particularly Government (.gov) and Educational (.edu) domains, are often considered more valuable by search engines than .com pages.

3. The popularity or page rank of the linking page - A link from highly ranked www.nytimes.com is considered to have more authority than a link from a poorly ranked website.

As 2010 winds down, we thought it would be worth recapping some of the most popular posts from this year in case you missed one, or if you want to review one of the topics we covered in detail.

This was our first year authoring this blog, and we hope you've enjoyed our thoughts on the world of lead generation. Of course, we're still new at this, so please let us know what you like and what we could do better.

Without further ado, the top 10 posts this year:

10. The Importance of Speed-to-Call in the Sales Process - our friends at Leads 360 talk about the need to follow-up on leads, quickly.

9. Selling Tips for New Sales Representatives - hiring a new salesperson? Here are some thoughts on getting them up and running smoothly.

8. Insights on the Construction Buyer -  key findings from our research on how to best sell to people looking for buy construction equipment.

7. Nine Online Sales Tools Worth the Money - learn about nine tools that are worth the money and give you more control in how you manage your time, connect with clients and perform sales operations.

6. Five SEO No-No's - five SEO tactics you should absolutely, positively never do.

Heading into the Thanksgiving holiday, we thought what better way to whet your appetite than a link round-up.

Here's what we're reading this week:

• Buying and Selling 4.0: Info Commerce Group's interesting take on how companies (like BuyerZone) are bringing creativity to the classic lead generation model of matching buyers and sellers.
  
• Closing the Loop: Brian Carroll highlights an interesting point: maybe we're too reliant on CRM software, especially when sales fails to keep it updated.
• SEO + Social Media: Used together, these 5 tactics can contribute to your ongoing lead generation efforts - cheaply. Is it finally worth your time?
  
• Lessons from Don Draper: What sales advice can we learn from the TV series Mad Men? More than you think.

What are you reading this week? Let us know in the comments below.

A few weeks ago, I covered lead forms and offered some simple advice on how to make them friendlier with the goal to increase conversion rates.  Now, I'd like to take it one step further and offer some quick tips on building conversion-friendly landing pages which are pages that appear after someone clicks on an advertisement such as an email or pay-per-click ad.

We all spend time designing good looking emails or optimizing ad copy for paid search campaigns. While that's important  - don't forget about the landing page you're sending that traffic to!

Here are a few quick things to keep in mind when creating landing pages:

Maintain design continuity - make sure your design (including images, fonts, colors, etc.) is consistent from the ad to the landing page (and to all subsequent pages). You want your users - your potential leads - to be comfortable and to feel like they're in the right place.

Ensure consistent messaging - the messaging/copy you use in the initial advertisement should be reused in places on your landing pages. For example, if you're advertising low health insurance coverage options, you're landing page should - naturally - talk about how to get low health insurance rates. Doing anything else would confuse the user and distract from your goal.

Be helpful - you want to ensure that the user knows where they are and where they can turn for help. Clearly display your company logo and make it easy for them to pick up the phone or email you if they want to reach you by prominently showing a phone number and/or email address.

Give direction - You're likely not building a landing page for someone to peruse for hours. Rather, this is a conversion page where you want the user to quickly get acclimated and then take an action. Make it abundantly clear what that action is - don't bury your offer or your desired next step!

Keep it simple - Sure, you have more room to showcase your jazzy marketing copy than you would in an email, but don't get carried away (and don't be too sales oriented and pushy). Definitely share what's needed to whet the appetite, but remember: the core purpose of a landing page is to drive leads or sales for your business.

Test - I know this sounds basic, but you should always be trying new things on landing pages. You never know which slight tweak can make all the different in the world. Experiment again and again.

What landing page tips have worked for you? Share yours in the comment section below.

Further reading on this topic:

• 30 principles to a better landing page design
• Increase landing page conversions
• 10 tips for lead generation landing pages
• Ultimate guide to A/B testing
• 5 ways to improve your SEO landing pages