SEO marketing strategy is one of the best customer acquisition channels for businesses. It helps accelerate organic traffic growth and visibility on search engines if it’s done right. However, everyone knows that coming up with a sound SEO strategy is challenging — and it is especially challenging for B2B companies.
The challenge comes from the fact that the ideal keywords for B2B have low search volume in most cases. This means you need to be specific and on-point with keyword research so that you can find high-quality and search-volume keywords that align with your audience’s search intent.
However, before we discuss any further B2B SEO strategy, it is important to understand what is B2B SEO.
What is B2B SEO?
As the name suggests, B2B SEO is a strategy that focuses on optimising a functional website with quality content to engage new and existing business partners. Simply put, B2B SEO focuses on attracting other businesses to your business using SEO-optimised content. This will help other businesses know what your business has to offer to them.
Also, in B2B SEO you would want the traffic from your business segment and similar businesses to be affiliated with your business services — allowing you to gain a new audience and increase brand awareness for your business.
Besides that, B2B SEO strategy is often based on keyword research and a page’s metadata to ensure that your website is visible to the company’s decision-makers. To increase the chances of your website being found by the company’s decision-makers; there are four elements that you would want to consider adding to your website.
Technical SEO
B2B technical SEO is not much different from B2C technical SEO activities; optimising a website’s backend — XML sitemap, compressing media file size to increase load speed, and page/section responsiveness.
Content SEO
Unlike B2C content SEO where you create content that is relevant and relatable to individuals, B2B content SEO is about optimising and creating content that attracts the attention of other businesses and helps them understand the services or products that your business has to offer.
On-page SEO
The on-page SEO activities for B2B is pretty much the same as B2C on-page SEO activities — create meta tags, optimise image and add proper heading tags in copies.
Off-page SEO
Besides the mentioned activities, creating high-quality backlinks and blog posting will also increase your website’s relevancy and visibility as a brand.
But what is the difference between B2B and B2C SEO?
Though we may have mentioned the difference between B2B and B2C SEO above, they are not the complete picture of it. So in this section, we will explore in detail the difference between B2B and B2C SEO.
Complex sales funnel
One of the differences is the sales funnels; B2B SEO funnels are completely different from B2C’s. The B2B sales funnels are in view from the business owner’s perspective, not the consumer’s.
For example, a consumer is looking to buy some pastries for themselves, while a food packaging and delivery business owner will be looking for cafes to collaborate with by offering their delivery and packaging services. You can see here the search intent is different between the two.
In addition, the B2B trends are often for long-term commitment between two businesses, while B2C is often short-term — one-time purchase or monthly subscription. So, when devising a B2B SEO strategy, remember that you are targeting suppliers or business owners looking for solutions for their products or business.
Keyword strategy
Unlike the B2C keyword strategy where you will want keywords that have high search volume and high quality; the B2B keyword strategy would require you to find a specific keyword but it does not need to have a high search volume. What’s important is that the keywords can reach the audience they are targeting and can push through to the next stage of the sale funnels.
B2B conversion rate
Another unique challenge with B2B SEO is the low conversion rate — the conversion we are talking about is click-to-buy, not click-to-inquire conversion rate. To handle this challenge, you will want to devise an SEO strategy that can attract specific traffic looking for a particular product or service. In other words, build content based on a niche keyword that is relevant to your audience and state clearly how your product or service can provide solutions to their business.
To ensure your website conversion rate is up to par with your industry standard, you can analyse your conversion rate, and then compare it to the industry’s benchmark. This will help you to see whether your B2B SEO strategy is working or lagging behind.
Also, if you are wondering what are the good conversion rates for B2B — they should be between 2% – 5%. Though this depends on the industry you are in. Some would need to be 10% before it can be considered a good conversion rate for the business.
Identifying the market before executing your SEO marketing strategy
Much like B2C SEO strategy or any other content marketing strategy, the first step is to identify your target market and understand its needs. When able to identify the market and understand the market needs, or to be exact, issues that need to be addressed — you will be able to determine the relevant keywords that can be used to create content on your website.
This will help both Google algorithms and the audience to understand what is it that you are offering to them and how is it relevant to them.
For example, when a business is searching for another business that can provide them with solutions using keywords that are present in the content on your website, Google algorithms will then consider your website relevant to that business’ search intent and include your website on SERPs.
Keyword research
After you have determined both the market and its needs, the next step is to conduct keyword research. Currently, there are keyword research tools available, such as Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner and Semrush.
Using keywords that niche and align with the industry you are in will allow your website to show up in SERPs when B2B decision-makers search for solutions for their business. So make sure to research and identify keywords that align well with B2B searchers of your industry.
Content
The keywords you have found mean nothing if you use them incorrectly. You may have heard to repeat a keyword and its variation a lot of times so that search engines will be able to detect it whenever someone searches for those keywords. However, bear in mind that, keyword stuffings can be detrimental to your website — your website could even be penalised for abusing keyword stuffings.
So instead you will want to create quality content. And in B2B SEO’s case, you will want to use a very niche keyword; keywords that only business owners would use in their searches. The content must be well-written, provide value and engaging for it to be able to rank well and attract the audience from your target market.
Effective/Best practices for B2B SEO
Now that we have covered the basics of it, in this section we will explore what are the most effective and best practices for B2B SEO.
As we have mentioned above, B2B SEO strategies are designed to work in business-to-business environments. In other words, to allow other businesses to discover your own business website, and to inform them that you have the solutions to their issues.
To ensure that your B2B SEO strategies are effective, there are several other factors that you should consider and include in your B2B SEO strategies.
Create personas
When it comes to a business purchase decision it will often involve multiple searchers, which equals multiple search intents. To deliver effective B2B SEO strategies, you must be able to understand them.
To help you understand them, you can start by creating a persona for each search intent. By having a persona for each search intent, you will be able to increase the chances for your website or its web page to appear in SERPs — increasing your outreach.
You can also reach more target audiences when each persona profile is well-defined and has all the right qualities, and aligns with the keywords and your on-site optimisation.
Having persona profiles will allow you to plan for more advanced B2B SEO campaigns and content that match your target audience.
Social and customer service
Social media interaction and customer service are some of the most important aspects for every business, no matter whether you are in the B2B industry or B2C industry.
Social media marketing will help increase the brand awareness for your business by engaging your customers with the latest updates, promos or just a simple response in the comment section or direct message inbox.
This would also help improve your business image and profile in the eyes of your business partners, increasing the likelihood of them recommending your business to other businesses.
You can implement social media marketing as a part of your B2B SEO campaign, to increase brand visibility and presence online.
Optimise your service or product landing pages
Optimising the landing pages for your products or services is important because the landing pages are the ones that will convert your visitors into customers. Plus, the first impression is important with websites. If your website or its landing pages look dodgy, it will likely chase away potential customers. So it is vital for you to properly set up and design your landing pages so that they look welcoming and proper in the eyes of your website visitors.
Here’s a list of what landing pages should look like and include:
- A landing page can be as simple as having only text and images. But just don’t make it too bare, you would want to spruce it up a bit so it doesn’t like a scammer landing page.
- Must include a clear and functioning call to action button. You can position the call to action button in the landing page banner section or at the bottom of it. This will help smoothen visitors’ process to buy or their next step.
- An opt-in form to allow visitors to sign up for newsletters or purchase your services or products.
- A clear image that includes detailing of the product or service your visitors are about to purchase.
Promote content to earn backlinks
Yes, you can create a private blog network to act as a feeder site for your backlinks and improve organic search visibility. However, it is even better if you promote the content you have created to official and well-known websites because these websites have high authority, and thus will be able to generate high-quality backlinks to your website.
One of the best ways to increase backlinks to your website besides having other websites mentioned is by sharing the content you have created on social media. If people find your content useful and engaging, they will share it. So the more people share your content, the more likely someone will click on the link and visit your website.
B2B SEO trends for 2023
The tips we explored in this article will remain relevant for a long time as they serve as the foundation for your B2B SEO best practices. However, it is a different story with trends in B2B SEO.
Much like every other industry, the landscape in SEO constantly changes, especially when we are only a couple of weeks away from a new year. So it is only natural to expect new trends to emerge in the SEO landscape this coming year.
So that is why we would like to give you the heads up on the trends to watch out for in 2023:
- Voice search — yeap the voice function is becoming popular and expected to become even more popular next year. This is because the voice search feature has become reliable compared to a few years ago. The voice search feature has opened a new accessibility option, thus adding a new demographic of customers to the current pool. So it would prudent to properly update your content long-tail keywords to be more natural as the voice search feature uses natural language.
- User experience or UX remains one of the things to watch out for as there are more and more accessibility features are made available. A few years back, user experience solely focused on providing easy navigation and a smooth website experience. But with the availability of accessibility features, it has become more than just providing smooth and easy navigation and experience. It has become the thing that allows people with disabilities to access websites and use them. One example of an accessibility feature that can be implemented on a website is the screen reader which will read out loud words on the screen. So don’t forget to include accessibility features on your website as it is expected to become even more common next year
Besides the accessibility features, don’t forget about mobile optimisation for mobile devices, so that your website can provide a smooth user experience for mobile device users.
Talking about mobile optimisation; if you are running an online casino website and looking for ideas to improve its SEO and mobile optimisation, you might want to check out this article.
- Another neat feature that becomes popular is the visual search. Businesses would want to take a closer look at the products or services provided before approaching the providing company. So don’t forget to insert keywords into the images; image file name and alt texts. Also, make sure the image is of high quality and sharp so that it can provide a clear viewing experience.
Begin your B2B SEO journey today
B2B SEO does pose its own set of challenges, but it is not much different from B2C SEO. However, it can be challenging for those new to it. Fortunately, there are parties that can assist you in executing a B2B SEO strategy and campaign.
One such party is us, the SEO Solution, a data-driven SEO agency that helps rank websites using quality content and SEO. Contact us to get a free consultation!
