Without a doubt, search engines are the single greatest tool the web has to offer. By entering a term and a single click, thousands, even millions of websites are at your disposal. This has revolutionized the industrial buying process. Before the birth of the glorious search engine, product purchasing of industrial supplies and services was done via print directories and catalogs. Options were limited, ordering was a hassle and the process was slow. Remember all that? Compared to the power of Google, Yahoo, Ask and the newest Bing, traditional buying processes seem like a Stone Age activity. Since almost every B2B industrial manufacturer in the world markets their products and services via a website these days, the benefits of search engine buying/specifying are incredible—buyers now have access to product information from every business that markets online without leaving their chair. [Continue Reading Article]

In 2005, Google introduced a "nofollow" method for changing the way search engines view links leading in and out of websites. Before the "nofollow" tag, all hyperlinks from your site to other sites "leaked" pagerank - which is, to put it very simply, a measure of how much authority your site has. This translates directly into how often your site is found by search engines like Google, and as every SEO nerd knows, Google love = visibility, and visibility = business. Regular hyperlinks pass along the pagerank your website has built up by dividing that rank proportionally between themselves. Think of it like inviting friends over for cookies. If you have 3 friends over for cookies and you made 9 cookies, those three friends will eat three cookies each. However, if you invite 9 friends over, each will only take one cookie. But the end result is the same: they took your cookies. [Continue Reading Article]

Business owners and entrepreneurs are taking pay cuts, and even indefinite pay suspensions, to keep their business afloat. This comes as an alternative to employee layoffs, marketing cutbacks (which are damaging in a recession!) or the business’ going under altogether. According to American Express’ OPEN Small Business Monitor survey, 30% of U.S. small business owners and managers have stopped taking their own salaries. Another survey done by Staples found that 50% of the 300 business owners they surveyed are reducing their own compensation. Here are a few more interesting statistics on how the recession is affecting U.S. businesses: - nearly one quarter have reported bartering activities and services (nearly half showed openness to bartering)... [Continue Reading Article]

It’s a very common question, becoming more common by the day as manufacturers are forced to tighten budgets and cut out marketing campaigns. Where should I concentrate on increasing online visibility – in the top 3 search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo) or on vertical search directory sites? The answer is both. Enquiro Search Solutions found that 49% of potential business buyers searching online don’t start their research at one of the three "search kings". If nearly half of professional purchasers aren’t starting out looking on Google, MSN or Yahoo to find waterjet cutting services, then where are they looking? Manufacturers and retailers have little time to wade through irrelevant search results, white papers and YouTube home videos to find the industrial parts they need. That’s why web-savvy industrial product buyers come to vertical search directories like IQS to find the niche product manufacturer or service provider they’re looking for – without having to hit the back button a dozen times. [Continue Reading Article]

This is a question which is often raised by our advertisers. IQS offers free Hitslink website tracking to all companies listed in our directory, not only so that listed companies can track the progress they're making through being listed on IQS sites, but also so that our manufacturers and service providers have an effective tool for measuring their overall success on the web. Naturally, many of the companies which come to be listed on our sites already have some form of website tracking (although you’d be surprised to find out how many companies have no website tracking at all). While some have paid tracking programs, most of the companies that have tracking come to us already set up in Google Analytics, Google’s free website tracking service which goes hand-in-hand with Google’s Adwords program... [Continue Reading Article]

What’s the difference between a hit, an impression and a unique visitor? Aside from all sounding like activities that take place at a Saturday night college party, these terms explain different ways of measuring a website’s traffic and, subsequently, a website’s success. This process of formulating website tracking into quantifiable data is called “metrics”, and with everyone using the new Web 2.0, quantifying a website’s success is trickier than ever. How many visitors does your site have each day? Each month? How many page views? What is the average time each visitor spends per session? What’s your site’s click through rate (CTR)? Is anyone subscribing to your RSS feed? All these questions are pointing to one underlying concern: is my website doing what it is supposed to do? Obviously, website success looks much different to a blogger than it does to an industrial manufacturer. A professional blogger will put more weight in how much time each visitor spends reading content and how many RSS subscriptions she has, while a manufacturer wants to know how many online quotes are being submitted and how many unique visitors view his “Capabilities” page. These qualitative methods of measurement are part of the industry’s shift towards “engagement metrics”. But before we get too deep into this new mind-bog of “squishy” analytics, let’s iron out some definitions. [Continue Reading Article]

As the Wall Street Journal’s figures showed, consumers haven’t stopped buying entirely – in fact, their consumption has dropped far less than production has dropped. When businesses finally empty their inventories, they will face continuing demand – demand which they must meet. Consumers will force businesses to rebuild their inventories, causing the gears of industry and manufacturing to begin turning once more. Granted, Wall Street stocks and the job markets are still plummeting at alarming rates, and no one is quite sure when (or “if”, as many gloomy commentators have said) things will take a turn for the better. However, the inevitability of an inventory rebuild in the manufacturing community gives us in the world of B2B commerce some cause to hope. A recent issue of Alliance News & Info reported that while revenues, purchasing and jobs are still on a steep decline, there is evidence that the decline is beginning to level off. “The longer term economic outlook is beginning to show the first tiny signs of hope”, Alliance observed with caution. [Continue Reading Article]

Industrial manufacturers face a very different market. Few manufacturers have the luxury of being the sole provider of a certain product, with the exception of a few niche manufacturing companies. Competition between manufacturers is brisk, and even if you have the latest technological advances in engineering and manufacturing equipment, there are probably at least a dozen other companies that have the same. Branding, marketing and online visibility will help you stand out among these competitors, but, as Rick Brown commented on Recession Advertising 101, many companies fail to have “essential response tools in place” to deal with the business that comes in. And the last thing a manufacturing company wants in this economic climate is to have customers come knocking then turn away because they received little or no response... [Continue Reading Article]

Not only is there a difference between sales and marketing, but there are also 2 components of marketing that need to be understood and designed to work together in order to be effective. We call these the "why" and the "how"... [Continue Reading Article]

Even with the current recession, one thing is certain. The World Wide Web isn’t going anywhere, and it’s the go-to place to find … anything! Manufacturers who want a fighting chance of staying in business must make themselves visible to potential buyers on the web... [Continue Reading Article]

It makes sense: when budgets are tight, surplus spending gets cut. These “surplus spending” cuts often include a company’s marketing and advertising efforts. This is what marketing gurus call a “big mistake”... [Continue Reading Article]

In industry, where off-the-shelf solutions are a rarity, you need an algorithmic solution - simple, reliable, repeatable - that allows you to react quickly to that prospective customer's needs... [Continue Reading Article]

What industrial manufacturers have to do with online marketing, and how web marketing can boost sales even in a tough economy... [Continue Reading Article]

Comprehensive Search Engine Coverage by IQS® [Continue Reading Article]

Google, the king of the web business indexes, is constantly changing their algorithms to reflect changes in how SEO firms have done business. Do you have the time to keep up with those changes? We do! And we devote ourselves to keeping up with the ever changing world of web marketing...... [Continue Reading Article]

IQS Takes on Big Competitors with a New Approach [Continue Reading Article]

by Mike Mieresonne Print technology is based on product categories that users have to search to try to figure out what the publisher thinks are the most common terms to describe a specific industry. The company then has to decide how much to spend on each product category. Google-empow... [Continue Reading Article]

Industrial Quick Search® provides a one-location method for qualified buyers to find your specialty or product. Utilizing our Request For Quote feature from each of our many URLs virtually guarantees that your leads are in the market to purchase from you. The sites below are specifically... [Continue Reading Article]