The Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) 2016, conducted by the seven zonal IITs under the guidance of the Joint Admission Board (JAB) declared important dates of JEE Advanced 2016. According to the scheduled dates, the exam will be conducted on May 22.

Priyanka Chopra has been spending the quarantine time with her husband, Nick Jonas and their two adorable dogs. And with a very special and curious make-up artist. The first Monday of May is the Met Gala day and the event,

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Unlike China, Indian companies are managing to create games remotely despite the lockdown due to coronavirus outbreak

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The H-1B is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers from countries like India and China in speciality occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise.

The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.

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The new restriction, which means travellers including Britons arriving in the UK would have to self-isolate at a private residence and fined up to 1,000 pounds or deported for flouting the rules, is expected to take effect at the end of this month.

Dolat Capital is bullish on Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone has recommended buy rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 360 in its research report dated May 06, 2020.

How we wish we could just delay the hair wash day. But that is not possible. Or is it? Washing hair every day or every alternate day not only is a tedious task but also damages your hair. While overwashing the

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ixigo, India’s leading mobile travel marketplace has announced partnerships with Uber and redBus to enable instant bookings for cabs and buses natively within ixigo trains app.

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The court also suggested that the government should publicise the decision so that migrant workers learn about it.

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West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures rose as much as 8.2% to a three-week high of $22.06 and were up 7.6%, or $1.55, at $21.94 at 0108 GMT. The U.S. benchmark is on a five-day win streak that started on April 29.

Crude inventories rose by 8.4 million barrels in the week to May 1 to 518.6 million barrels, compared with analysts#39; expectations for a build of 7.8 million barrels.

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The board has not recommended any dividend for FY2020 as per RBI direction to banks.

Argentina will keep pushing for talks with creditors even as a deadline for its $65 billion debt restructuring proposal passed on Friday with little sign it had the support needed from international bondholders to unlock a comprehensive deal.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Friday he aims to present plans next week to reopen the economy, as key sectors like carmaking look to begin business again after over a month of quarantine measures to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

U.S. luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus Group said on Friday it received court approval to access $675 million of its debtor-in-possession financing, which will allow continuity of the company's business during Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings and enable it to pay employees and vendors.

EU states should guarantee vouchers for travel cancelled during the coronavirus pandemic and start lifting internal border restrictions in a bid to salvage some of the summer tourism season, the bloc's executive will say next week.

Why do B2B marketers need SEO?

For B2B marketers coping with the global health crisis, search engine optimization (SEO) is showing its strength, stability, and resiliency in many forms.

SEO has seen better performance and consistency than other marketing tactics during the pandemic, as we’ll explore with data from recent surveys and reports, and with more consumers than ever conducting business online and searching for best-answer solutions, many B2B marketers may find that the time is right to increase focus on SEO.

Here are five reasons why SEO is more important than ever for B2B marketers.

1 — SEO is Performing Better During the Health Crisis

63 percent of marketers believe SEO is more important during the pandemic, according to newly-released survey data.

Combined with the fact that during 2019 paid and organic search were the top performing online channels, as shown below, the increasing focus on SEO this year during the pandemic is understandable, as marketers turn towards the strongest and most stable tactics.

SEO can also represent a lower-cost channel, which has led some 34 percent of marketers to say that they plan to invest more in less costly marketing channels such as SEO, according to the same survey.

Data from another recent survey found that 65 percent of advertisers believe the health crisis will result in more spending on media that is able to show direct sales outcomes, making SEO a natural choice for many marketers in both B2B and B2C industries.

Among U.S. marketers paid search garnered both the greatest rate of budget retention and the smallest expected spending decrease in a recent eMarketer survey, faring significantly better than display advertisements, paid social media, and digital video. While what will play out in the long term remains to be seen, initial survey results such as these point to continued opportunities in SEO-centric marketing efforts.

This may be why Google has rolled out new SEO-related features to its Ads Editor that include a real-time optimization score, as the search giant seeks to improve one of the most-used ad tools, and why it has released a series of guides touting the benefits of SEO during the health crisis.

2 — SEO Helps as Pandemic Consumers Are Shopping Primarily Online

Both B2B and brick-and-mortar brands with shuttered physical locations during stay-at-home orders can benefit immensely from the benefits of SEO, as more business is moved online and more people are searching not only for goods and services, but for answers to new sets of questions brought about by the health crisis — questions your brand should be ready to answer in properly optimized content.

Marketer looking to create this type of optimized content can learn from our CEO Lee Odden, who asked 16 B2B experts for their top tips to optimize marketing performance in an article examining B2B marketing fitness.

As early reports have come in, both B2B and B2C brands have seen increased website traffic figures during the pandemic, up 13 percent in March 2020 compared to February, according to HubSpot benchmark data.

With more people visiting B2B websites, it’s never been more important to have online content that’s properly indexed, easily findable, and that swiftly answers customer questions. Providing best-answer content is a key part of SEO best-practices, as we’ve written about in the following articles:

• How B2B Marketers Can Win at Search with Best Answer Content
• The Science and Art of Best Answer B2B Marketing Content
• Trust Factors: How Best Answer Content Fuels Brand Credibility
• How A Best Answer Content Strategy Drives B2B Marketing Results
• Power Pages and Best Answer Content: Should You Go Long or Short Form?

[bctt tweet="“With more people visiting B2B websites, it’s never been more important to have online content that’s properly indexed, easily findable, and that swiftly answers customer questions.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

3 — SEO Platforms Help Maximize Remote Worker Efficiencies

There are perhaps more SEO platforms available now than ever, built to help businesses achieve successful ongoing search campaigns. During the best of times, using some of the top platform tools adds efficiency to teams tasked with SEO implementation. During the remote work boom caused by the health crisis, using such tools can provide even more efficiency to B2B firms that are increasingly turning to SEO.

Finding the right SEO platforms has been an ongoing challenge for B2B firms, which is why we recently researched nine of the top platforms, including how leaders at each is handling the pandemic both in their professional and personal lives, in “Best SEO Tips for Marketing During the Pandemic Plus 9 Top SEO Platforms.”

Even before the coronavirus hit, longtime SEO industry consultant Aleyda Solis predicted that SEO would play a major role in 2020 for B2B marketers, as she outlined in our annual “10 Top B2B SEO Trends & Predictions for 2020” roundup.

[bctt tweet="In 2020, I expect a growth in importance and usage of structured data, an increase in predictive search features, and a shift to a more technical SEO ecosystem. @aleyda" username="toprank"]

Recently Aleyda took to her video channel to discuss how SEO’s role will change during the health crisis, in “Coronavirus & SEO: Its Impact in traffic and business, and the actions to Take as an SEO Specialist.”

We've also explored how B2B marketers are successfully adapting to remote work, including the following recent articles:

• 6 Tips to Keep B2B Marketing Teams in Rhythm While Working Remotely
• Remote Communication Opportunities For B2B Marketers
• How Authentic Content Builds Brand Trust in Uncertain Times

4 — Doing SEO Now Will Strengthen Future Brand Efforts

As Patrick Reinhart, vice president of digital strategies at Conductor recently told Marketing Land’s Greg Sterling, “What a lot of businesses are doing right now is only talking about the virus and not talking about other ways to help their customers," Patrick said. "Right now is a great time to plant trees for SEO if you haven’t already. The trees you plant now will provide shade on sunny days in the future and there is nothing wrong with creating it along with content that addresses the current state of things,” he added.

While the pandemic has affected how SEO specialists both in-house and at agencies implement search strategies — as the following chart shows — businesses are continuing forward with SEO fundamentals that will help lay the foundation for expanded search success when the health crisis has passed.

[bctt tweet="“B2B marketers who continue forward now with SEO fundamentals will help lay the foundation for expanded search success when the health crisis has passed.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

5 — SEO’s Stability Is Important For B2B Brands

With 47 percent of B2B customers using search to find information, suppliers, and solutions, SEO has always been important for B2B brands, and now its stability in times of flux adds to its marketing strength.

The pandemic has brought fluctuations to all areas of marketing, just as it’s affected many parts of our lives, and while search results haven’t been entirely immune — as shown in the following Google desktop result chart from an interesting look at “16-straight days of rankings volatility: SEOs dig into the COVID-19 effects on search” — the strength and endurance of SEO has brought it into more focus than ever.

Best-Answer B2B Marketing Solutions Increasingly Feature SEO

As we've examined, the time may be right for many B2B marketers to increase focus on SEO, because it has seen better performance and stability during the health crisis as more consumers than ever are conducting business online.

Paired with it's ability to increase remote work efficiency when the right SEO platforms are used, and considering SEO's overall effectiveness as a long-term strategy, B2B brands can benefit from turning to SEO for providing best-answer solutions, even during the pandemic.

The post SEO Strategy: 5 Reasons Why It’s More Important Than Ever For B2B Marketers appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

How B2B Buyer Behavior Has Changed in Light of COVID-19, and What Marketers and Sellers Can Do Now
82 percent of B2B buyers said they were concerned or strongly concerned about the possibility of a pandemic-sparked recession, while 30 percent have reported spending more on videoconferencing software — two of several findings of interest to digital marketers in a recently-released survey examining B2B buyer shifts. eMarketer

How Bad Data Hurts B2B Companies [Infographic]
Just 33 percent of marketers say they can rely on their customer relationship management (CRM) software, and 88 percent said that bad data has a direct impact on their company's bottom line — two of the findings in a new infographic look at the effect of poor data on B2B firms. MarketingProfs

The Evolving Discussion Around COVID-19 and How Brands Have Responded [Infographic]
Brands have used Twitter the most often to mention the global health crisis, according to recently-released survey data examining how brands are using social media in crisis management planning. Social Media Today

Social Media Users Value Brands Responsive To COVID-19 Crisis
83% of social media users expect brands to address the health crisis in their ads, with 31 percent saying they appreciate brands offering products suited for remote work, 28 percent promoting social distancing, and 24 percent mentioning brand philanthropic efforts, according to newly-released survey data of interest to marketers. MediaPost

Why It Takes So Long to Apply Data-Driven Insights to Campaigns
Just 5 percent of marketers say they can immediately go from data gathering to actionable intelligence, while 31 do so later than they would like, and some 3 percent take so long that the output is irrelevant, according to new survey data. MarketingProfs

Instagram Live Streams Can Now Be Viewed on the Web
Facebook-owned Instagram has made it possible for its users to view its previously app-only Instagram Live video streams from its website, bringing marketers a new cross-promotion opportunity with the feature, the firm recently announed. Social Media Today

Twitter notifies users that it’s now sharing more data with advertisers
Twitter has notified its users that a previously available user privacy ad interaction sharing option has been shuttered for all, in a move that will bring more audience data to advertisers, the firm recently announced. The Verge

What Customers Need to Hear from You During the COVID Crisis
The types of brand stories companies should be telling their customers include those that put solutions before sales, according to a new examination by Harvard Business School of interest to B2B marketers. Harvard Business School

Facebook Has Launched a New Tournaments Option for People to Create Their Own Gaming Events
With online gaming forecast to produce $196 billion by 2022, a recent move by social giant Facebook allowing its users to create their own private or public gaming events could bring brands new opportunities for reaching its sizable gaming audience. Social Media Today

Content Plays Various Roles in Brands’ Customer Engagement Strategies
61 percent of marketing leaders said that interactive branded content communicates brand promise and value, according to recently-released survey data from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council, with 51 percent saying that it delivers thought-leadership, and 45 percent saying that interactive content helps communicate with customers, partners and prospects. MarketingCharts

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at digital transformation and organizational change by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

Grinning Tim Cook Announces New iPhone Will No Longer Be Compatible With AirPods — The Onion

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — Leadership and Engagement In a Time of Crisis [Podcast] — Traject
• Amie Krone — Navigating the new world of working at home — Chaska Herald
• Dell, SAP — Building A Perfect B2B Influencer Program During Imperfect Times — Forbes
• Lee Odden — Marketing During a Pandemic – Resources for Small Businesses in the Coronavirus Crisis [Roundup] — Simple Machines

Do you have your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week? Please let us know in the comments below.

Thanks for taking the time to join us, and we hope that you'll return again next Friday for more of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news. Also, don't miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.

The post Digital Marketing News: Shifting B2B Buyer Behaviors, Brands Evolve Crisis Response, Bad Data’s Effect on B2B Firms, & Twitter Shares New Data With Advertisers appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

The grunts, groans and the sound of pulsing music and crashing weights has returned to some of Beijing's gyms after being closed for nearly three months due to the coronavirus outbreak. Ciara Lee reports.