Below are other articles I've written about search engine marketing, many featuring specific advice for B2B campaigns.

• 5 Reasons for B2B Search Engine Marketing:
  Explains why a search marketing presence is necessary for B2B companies.
• 3 Reasons to Hire a Search Marketing Consultant:
  Three quick and compelling reasons why hiring a search marketing consultant is in your best interest.
• B2B Search Marketing Lead Gen Best Practices:
  Covers 6 steps to increase the performance of your lead generation campaigns.
• 4 Elements of B2B Online Marketing Campaigns:
  An overview of 4 possible elements on online marketing for B2B companies, all of which can be achieved through variations on search engine marketing.
• B2B Pay Per Click Search Engines:
  An article for those ready to add to the mainstays of Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. Provides a concise list of B2B search engines that should be considered for expansion.
• Importance of Negative Keywords:
  An often forgotten part of search engine marketing optimization, negative keywords are a great way to limit your exposure and, thus, increase your ROI from qualified prospects.
• 4 Ways to Reduce Customer Anxiety:
  Details 4 quick things you can do to improve your conversion rates by making your website more appealing, and less anxiety causing, for your prospective customers.

Make subtle changes to your website to help customers feel comfortable with your business.

You may be doing everything right in your advertising, but unless people feel comfortable with and trust your website, they'll never convert into a sale. The back button is so much easier to hit when you don't make it easy to use or trust your site. People are inherently untrusting, and the web is a scary place for many, so you have to go beyond the call of duty to make sure you portray how trustworthy you are.

So just what is it that makes people anxious about online transactions?

It's important to note that a potential customer's anxiety happens in their mind and emotions, not on the website. Thus, you need to react to their perceived fears and concerns, not those that you think are valid or that you think are caused by your website. They may have a big fear of using their credit card online, and while you may not share that concern, it's a valid reason why that person won't complete their purchase with your company. That is, unless you can proactively provide reasons they should overcome those fears.

The bottom line? Doing even a few of these things will significantly build user's trust in your website and business. This will mean a lower bounce rate, and ultimately more sales and higher revenue. And it's much easier to do than contemplating a design change or test. Just follow these steps to improve your website conversions buy reducing customer anxiety.

Build Credibility

Improving your credibility helps legitimize your business in the eyes of your customers. This is best achieved by using outside sources that your customers already have a relationship with and trust.

To do so, employ all the possible external credibility indicators such as BBB online, Trust-e, and VeriSign to name a few. Make sure to place these on pages of the site where people will be making the decision whether to place an item in their cart. They're also useful at the end of the checkout process when people are debating whether to hit the purchase button.

Add Customer Ratings

Its one thing to say it yourself, but quite another to have other customers review your product or service. Ratings are a great way to prove how effective or reliable a product might be to those who are skeptical of its authenticity.

I recommend using 3rd party ratings systems such as Shopping.com and BizRate/Shopzilla to ease customer fears about reliability. Just make sure to check back often so that you don’t suffer by displaying low ratings which hurt your sales.

Bring out the Testimonials

Testimonials can be a powerful tool to assuage the concerns of prospective customers. Make sure to organize your testimonials so that those which discuss a specific concern are closest to the location where that concern will occur. Thus, if the testimonial is about how easy the checkout process is, make sure to place it near the shopping cart or at the beginning of the checkout page, not on the homepage.

Build Up Your Reputation & Be Transparent

Everything is in the eyes of the beholder. You may be a trustworthy company, but if you don’t make the effort to explain why, your customers will never know, much less believe you. You can build up your company using many techniques. Prominently display a phone number so people know they can reach a real person. Use your About Us page to speak personally to the customer. Satisfaction guarantees, easy to find shipping options & return policies, and an easy way to reach customer service are other ways to ease common customer concerns.

Additional Tips

• Common sources of anxiety are customer service, product reliability, credit card security, personal information sharing, and price. These are the areas you should focus your forms of anxiety relief as discussed above.
• The best way to reduce customer anxiety is to employ these techniques as close in proximity as possible to where the customer will be feeling that anxiety. Security seals work best in the checkout phase, but contact telephone numbers should be readily available as soon as someone hits your site.
• The language and tone of voice used across your website can also affect a customer’s anxiety. Make sure to match the tone of your site to the buying decision, whether that’s professional or casual.