I wanted to write a snap shot about b2b and what it really is, but more importantly how it can benefit you, our readers. So I have to explain who our audiences are, SEO Consultants, SEO and internet marketers, Web Designers, and Marketing professionals wanting to learn about SEO. Does that sound like a group wanting to promote businesses? Promotion of business to business and helping online businesses get leads to sell products and services is what SEO consultants do? So if millions or billions of people are searching on the internet every day for products and services, could Google be the #1 B2b marketplace in the world? I have made a case for it in the past, but that is not why we are here.

I was gong to reference the article below from CIO magazine about What is B2B, but most importantly I want to make the connection of SEO, B2B and Blogging. All three topics are covered in this blog all the time, except B2B. The article below is old, but still useful, from a great resource. Also, I wanted to mention that I actually worked for Gartner Group from 1996-1999, the Analyst source mentioned below. It sure feels good to have my old company helping to make my point. By the way, for those of you who don’t know Gartner, they were/are considered by many in IT industry to be the #1 Analyst organization for IT Trends, Directions, and analysis.

Now back to the basics, blogging is a great a way to promote your business, you already know that, and SEO is a must for Internet Marketing today, especially for promoting websites. So B2b promotion really is made up of anything we use to promote our business, and on the internet it is SEO, SEM, and Blogs and maybe even Social networking. Social networking is probably the most B2C, but smart marketers like you are trying to figure out how they apply to B2B. Sorry SEO consultants and marketers, in my humble opinion B2C is usually at the forefront. Why, it’s the teen agers and trend affect. That is why we are combining the two in our b2b and online marketplace. Below is the article enjoy:

What is B2B? – a definition from Whatis.com – see also: e-biz, business-to-business
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DEFINITION – On the Internet, B2B business-to-business, also known as e-biz, is the exchange of products, services, or information between businesses rather than between businesses and consumers. Although early interest centered on the growth of retailing on the Internet sometimes called e-tailing, forecasts are that B2B revenue will far exceed business-to-consumers B2C revenue in the near future. According to studies published in early 2000, the money volume of B2B exceeds that of e-tailing by 10 to 1. Over the next five years, B2B is expected to have a compound annual growth of 41%. The Gartner Group estimates B2B revenue worldwide to be $7.29 trillion dollars by 2004. In early 2000, the volume of investment in B2B by venture capitalists was reported to be accelerating sharply although profitable B2B sites were not yet easy to find.

B2B Web sites can be sorted into:

Company Web sites, since the target audience for many company Web sites is other companies and their employees. Company sites can be thought of as round-the-clock mini-trade exhibits. Sometimes a company Web site serves as the entrance to an exclusive extranet available only to customers or registered site users. Some company Web sites sell directly from the site, effectively e-tailing to other businesses.
Product supply and procurement exchanges, where a company purchasing agent can shop for supplies from vendors, request proposals, and, in some cases, bid to make a purchase at a desired price. Sometimes referred to as e-procurement sites, some serve a range of industries and others focus on a niche market.
Specialized or vertical industry portals which provide a “subWeb” of information, product listings, discussion groups, and other features. These vertical portal sites have a broader purpose than the procurement sites although they may also support buying and selling.
Brokering sites that act as an intermediary between someone wanting a product or service and potential providers. Equipment leasing is an example.
Information sites sometimes known as infomediary, which provide information about a particular industry for its companies and their employees. These include specialized search sites and trade and industry standards organization sites.

Many B2B sites may seem to fall into more than one of these groups. Models for B2B sites are still evolving.

Another type of B2B enterprise is software for building B2B Web sites, including site building tools and templates, database, and methodologies as well as transaction software.

B2B is e-commerce between businesses. An earlier and much more limited kind of online B2B prior to the Internet was Electronic Data Interchange EDI, which is still widely used.

CONTRIBUTORS: Paula Jones
LAST UPDATED: 21 Jul 2001

As some of you know we are building a b2b marketplace, with B2C capabilities(Business 2 Consumer) online marketplace, we are doing this as we don’t see an adequate or cost effect Marketplace on the market. Please don’t tell me about Craigslist, it’s too frivolous and most professional businesses need better tools. Also, do you know why we have more pictures of women than men on our site? It’s because women do more shopping than men, and that is why they are also used more in online marketplace advertisements. The main reason we are doing this is to promote our small business community. Just to be self-serving as all businesses should be, we want to promote our trading business community and Barter system at ITEX.com. Why? We think there are significant advantages to joining a barter network, the main one being attracting new customers, and getting rid of perishable inventory such as time related products & services such as Hotel or rental vacancies, Lawyers having fixed employee cost, but not enough billable clients, etc. etc.

The biggest problem to promote our barter system @ ITEX is the lack of awareness of how Barter works. We all can immediately see the value, but how does it work today? A professional barter system is not just a swap meet, it’s a trading business community of professionals. But, most small business owners just don’t know the value of Barter, because they have not been made aware of how it can help them grow their businesses. Bartering has been around for a long time, but don’t make my word for it, even the ancient times of India:-), Ok, I just wanted to add a word about India, as I had this picture.

There are actually fortune 500 companies, not just small businesses that barter for goods and services, and in the IT and NYC finance world, I have heard the term called soft dollars. The key is to not hide the transaction report the sales as sales and costs as costs, and pay the IRS it’s dues, keep The Uncle happy:-).

Enough about barter for the moment, let’s talk about our b2b and B2C marketplace, and the lack of features available in most online marketplaces today. Here are some of the features that are missing:

1. Missing a professional low-cost or free online marketplace, that attracts huge consumer based. You have eBay which charges huge fees, but it’s really an auction site and it works well for sellers but not buyers. Amazon is all about them, they charge even more, and Yahoo Stores has too many technical issues every Christmas season.

2. Most online marketplaces that are free, are not professional and don’t offer the tools and social business community tools that sellers and buyers really need.

3. Customization to represent the brand of the seller is missing, especially within the eBay stores or Amazon, they will charge you to set up a website or web store, but in their online marketplace, they are again all about them. Yahoo stores is much better in this category.

4. The ability to provide SEO and optimized content to promote the sellers stores is done in a limited fashion, almost by accident. The Yellow pages companies have started to go down this road, but they don’t have any significant value in the local SEO tools, all they have is the advertising dollars.

5. Online marketplaces are going towards allowing their client businesses advice, tips, and news letters, and some blogging tools. But a true collaborative social networking community is at the moment separate than the shopping. As we know shopping is a social activity, especially for women, any men want to debate this one?

As you can see their is a lack of a professional businesses online marketplace. Our goal is to come from the business community tools perspective and provide the businesses not only the ability to have classifieds and online marketplace, but a large consumer base based on our SEO capabilities of each product and profile listing of each member. So to say this in a light manner, we will build the SEO in the store, so that the members will get more traffic than their own websites, why should Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay be the only ones. Our online marketplace and small business community will get results to help each and every entrepreneur.