But where should you begin when creating a B2B SEO plan?
Not sure if writing another "Top 5 Benefits Of Sales Enablement" post will waste your time?
Need help to comprehend how SEO for B2B works? Here is some help - all it requires is fundamental knowledge about search engines like Google or Bing, and you should be able to grasp its concepts!
Do You Need Help with How to Leverage and Produce Content for B2B SEO?
Your B2B company likely already has an existing content strategy; however, when working in B2B sales, it can be challenging to understand how a "top tips on _____" piece will drive the pipeline.
SEO is holistic--it requires creating an inorganic network of relevant content for your site to drive relevancy and visibility.
We will make SEO as straightforward and understandable as possible for you.
Today, We want to provide you with an 8-step B2B SEO strategy which should assist your efforts:
Learn the necessary steps for ranking and converting money pages.
Understanding SEOs more significant role in B2B businesses will allow you to develop an action plan.
Eliminate dependence on paid growth.
Empower B2B buyers, reduce sales cycles, and extract maximum benefit from B2B SEO services.
Never again ask what content needs to be created for B2B SEO; rather, the question should be, "How" can we produce all this material?
Contrasting other guides to B2B SEO strategies youll find online, this one includes two techniques you have complete control over (unlike building backlinks).
And none of the top guides include them!
Once you read this guide, you will gain an understanding of Google and how it serves B2B companies. Although there may be similarities with SEO for B2C companies, there are also crucial distinctions that will impact metrics and strategies.
Lets jump right in. Lets dive in.
Read More: What a Search Engine Optimization Strategy Includes?
What Is B2B SEO?
Business-to-business (B2B) SEO is a strategy to increase organic search engine traffic and keyword rankings on B2B websites.
A successful B2B SEO plan places its services or products before those searching for them directly, giving businesses access to potential new clients or buyers for engagement.
Though B2B transactions involve businesses buying from each other instead of consumers buying directly from businesses, SEO fundamentals remain the same.
Those basics include:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
- Content
However, B2B SEO brings unique challenges due to your target audience.
People buying on behalf of an organization differ significantly from individuals purchasing for themselves.
Lets investigate these differences and discuss a strategy to achieve B2B SEO success.
The Difference Between B2B SEO And B2C SEO
The primary distinction between B2B and B2C SEO lies in their target audiences.
Why? Businesses purchase services and products differently from consumers; consequently, SEO strategies for B2B should differ significantly from B2C strategies.
Here are a few factors that make B2B SEO challenging:
Complex Sales Funnels
B2B sales funnels tend to be much more intricate and involve many more stakeholders, thus being longer.
Imagine how easy it would be if buying shoes were an effortless process.
Imagine being part of a large company looking for an upgraded CRM system.
Of the two options provided here, which one appears more complex? Surely?
B2B marketers must gain an in-depth knowledge of their target audiences compared to B2C counterparts; that means developing more in-depth customer knowledge for prospective clients than would typically be needed in B2C promotions.
Take full advantage of any opportunities to increase targeted traffic at each step.
Low-Volume Keywords
B2B companies typically target particular audiences, meaning their target keywords typically have low search volumes.
Take, for instance, the search volume for "best CRM software."
Now look at the search volume for "best basketball shoes."
The difference in monthly search volume was substantial--36,000 searches, to be precise.
This means B2B SEOs must execute comprehensive keyword research.
Finding the correct search terms to target specific audiences and push them deeper down your funnel is critical for success.
Step-by-step strategies will explain precisely how this should happen.
Low Conversion Rates
B2B search engine optimization presents another unique challenge; compared with its B2C counterparts, conversion rates tend to be significantly lower.
Low conversion rates signal poor user experiences that negatively affect SEO efforts.
To achieve success with B2B SEO, you must attract relevant traffic that fits with the offerings or services that your products or services offer.
Be specific and understand your audience when pitching products and services that can solve their problems - and youre sure to see results.
Read More: What is SEO and how it is beneficial compared to other modules?
Need For Demonstrated Brand Thought Leadership
All consumers care about who they buy from, but B2B buyers do so differently.
People want to ensure the solution they seek can meet all their specific requirements - even before picking up the phone or filling out forms.
B2B companies must emphasize their expertise. They need to showcase themselves as industry leaders and establish trust within the customer base.
Thought leadership (creating content to demonstrate your expertise in any given area or topic) is one way to establish yourself as a thought leader and show off your expertise in specific fields or subjects.
While multiple strategies can demonstrate expertise, among the more popular approaches are:
- Blogging
- PR
- Guest posting
- LinkedIn marketing
- Podcast appearances
- Video Marketing
- Speaking at conferences (or webinars)
A winning And repeatable B2B SEO strategy
Now that we hope we have convinced you of the value of B2B SEO, lets go over how best to utilize this strategy and achieve maximum effectiveness.
Here is our 8-step SEO Strategies plan to succeed when it comes to B2B SEO.
Understand The B2B Decision Maker.
Have you read any of our content strategy case studies? You will have noticed that before starting any content strategy work for our buyers, we always conduct a complete and in-depth assessment of them first.
Understanding your customers journey before choosing you is integral in B2B sales to qualify them as potential prospects and convert them to leads as quickly as possible before turning them into loyal clients.
Buyer personas represent more than demographic and firmographic data - although both will undoubtedly help shape B2B SEO content - they also represent daily frustrations and goals that shape buyers as individuals and how their roles might change over time.
Because customer interviews or surveys should form the cornerstone of any B2B SEO strategy, conducting customer interviews or surveys as the initial step is essential to creating an effective B2B SEO campaign.
Interviews should always be preferred over surveys as busy individuals will typically only provide quick responses in response to surveys; more valuable data would come from an actual call, and you can include their exact words within your content.
Ask them the following questions; documenting all answers will assist in answering this question more accurately:
- Recognise the stuff that may benefit or harm them.
- Create style guides that inform authors about the difficulties and pain spots of your ICP.
B2B decision-makers are occupied and constantly inundated with sales-related material and information.
The Only Way To Stand Out Is To Ensure Your Content Speaks To Their Situation.
This process prevents your company from making inaccurate guesses about B2B decision-makers usage patterns for your product or service.
Still, it provides insight into their top, mid, and bottom funnel mindset - an invaluable asset when creating content marketing efforts.
Step Two in Your SEO Campaign Strategy Is to Deliberate Over Your Bottom-of-Funnel Keywords.
We developed a guide for interviewing customers for relevant content that resonates with them.
Do Bottom-Of-The-Funnel B2B Keyword Research
Once you reach this step, you should already possess an abundant supply of keywords from your customers: they would likely have told them directly.
BOFU keywords are words people search for to purchase what you offer.
Though an effective B2B SEO strategy will take an all-inclusive approach to keywords from every stage of the sales process funnel, starting by targeting money keywords is essential in creating an effective strategy.
TravelPerk, in our example above, used "corporate travel management software" as their bottom-of-funnel keyword; thus, they optimized one page specifically around this term:
There are multiple approaches for conducting BOFU keyword research.
Use Your Findings
First, go through your customer interviews. Please take note of any words customers used to describe your tool, then check them against keyword research tools.
Otter.ai makes interview recording easy by offering auto transcripts that feature keywords from interviews that frequently occurred - plus, you can search and scan to discover anything interesting thats worth saving for later.
Grow Your Keywords
GrowKeywords can help you generate ultra-specific long-tail keywords. Just type your main money keyword + for * to access this service.
An asterisk (*) will bring up Google Autocomplete variations:
An easy method for compiling an extensive list of BOFU keywords.
Reverse Engineer Your Competitors
Use an SEO tool to understand which B2B keywords your competitors rank for.
That can give you an easy and quick way of finding out where you should start.
Input their URL in Ahrefs and get an immediate list of their keyword rankings.
Focus On More Than Just High-Volume Keywords.
B2B businesses may find most real money keywords have low volumes.
Search volume tools can often be inaccurate and inconsistent; rely on something other than these metrics in making decisions, and be wary of discounting interesting keywords just because they only garner a handful of monthly searches.
There are more than 4.6 billion internet users today, and most searches are long and obscurely specific.
Take for instance this keyword as an example:
"Best CRM for startups" only receives around 80 monthly searches; why invest so much effort and energy to rank for this keyword?
On the other hand, this advertisement has a Cost Per Click of $50 - meaning your competitors are spending $50 just for someone to click it, yet you could rank this ad free of cost and reap its long-tail gold benefits! This should be your goal when searching for keyword opportunities online.
Optimizing Your Features Or Services Pages
Once youve identified your bottom-of-funnel B2B keywords, it is time to verify if feature or services pages are optimized to target these money keywords before beginning new content creation projects.
Start there if your site still needs to feature separate pages for every feature.
BOFU keywords you found during Step Three should serve as your foundational SEO. That should be what your focus here should be.
Avoid lumping all your features or services onto one "solutions" page--each should have its page optimized with relevant keywords.
Make an individual page for each feature, linking back through the menu and footer.
As you create new content, remember to link to feature pages to maintain topical relevance and help increase keyword rank.
Do Long-Term B2B Keyword Research
Once your foundational SEO work has been accomplished, you can shift focus toward growth - which comes through content production.
Now that your B2B feature pages have been set up to take in organic traffic, it is time to begin planning what content needs to be created for these pages.
Your keyword research should focus on:
- Building topical relevance
- Identifying search intent
- Building a portfolio of content from all parts of the funnel
Always bear in mind that SEO for B2B requires holistic strategies. Dont restrict yourself to just bottom-of-funnel optimization strategies - visibility, buyer enablement, and increasing traffic are integral parts of successful optimization for any successful campaign.
Building Topical Relevance
Are you ever confused about why B2B companies invest in "glossary" content without evidence to show it will attract customers or traffic?
Why write content unrelated to what your product offers or cover features not present?B2B companies frequently make the mistake of only writing material related to what they sell as content marketing strategies.
Product-centric content can quickly become dull and lackluster, but it wont strengthen brand equity or increase traffic.
Google ranks websites whose topics are topically relevant at an overall website level and will disregard even your best-optimized blog post, no matter its quality or number of links pointing at it, unless they feature regularly in your writing schedule.
By consistently producing optimized and engaging articles around one topic, metrics like your competitors domain authority become less significant when ranking pages.
Identifying Search Intent
Be wary when choosing keywords based only on search volume or CPC alone; consider multiple aspects when selecting.
Search intent is critical to SEO success.
Sometimes, keywords that seem perfect may not correspond with what was intended.
For instance, if you wanted to rank for "community engagement," thinking you were writing about social media communities or online communities marketing-related, but quickly discovered that people searching for it tend to be interested more in social movements or community welfare initiatives than what you expected!
Make sure that the keywords that you rank for reflect their true purpose.
Build Topic Clusters For Your B2B Blog.
As you develop your contents topical relevance, connect and organize it into content silos or topic clusters for easy navigation.
As shown by TravelPerk above, certain kinds of content can easily be organized together: for instance, broad topics can be broken into subtopics for easier browsing.
Each subject clusters hub, or "pillar page," is its primary page, sometimes referred to as the pillar page. All of its child pages should go back to it.
That can occasionally act as your feature page as well.
Content coverage around your topic clusters main subject matters will allow for maximum efficacy:
- Find people with super-specific intent
- Fill all the gaps
- Rank for your broader keyword
- Dominate SERPs for that related keyword
Build your topic cluster and focus on internal linking, leading us to the next step in the strategy.
Super-Charge Your Internal Linking In Your B2B Content
Internal linking should be addressed, too.
Internal links connect two pages on your website. They help website visitors and crawl bots navigate more efficiently while helping Google understand your site structure more quickly.
Everyone seems obsessed with backlink building - which, although essential, should never come at the cost of internal linking!
Absent an internal linking strategy, your efforts at topic cluster and topical relevance could falter.
Content-led internal linking will strengthen your B2B SEO strategy.
But this doesnt need to be complicated; heres how it can be accomplished:
Keep A Spreadsheet Of Your Content In Each Category/Topic Cluster
Your content editorial calendar can serve this purpose perfectly; write down which category each piece belongs in and, if outsourcing writing services, potential anchor texts the writer could utilize when writing their piece(s).
Include Backlinks To Previous Relevant Content In Every New Post
Link back to older pieces within the same category each time you publish new content. Prioritize linking money pages (feature pages, pillar pages, or BOFU content) within each post as much as possible.
After publishing, revisit older posts and provide links to fresh information
Dont just add links to old pieces onto new content - add them back in as often as every month or whenever a piece from that category comes out! When publishing something new or once every few months.
Consolidate Pages With Cannibalization
This strategy offers quick wins if your content library already boasts numerous pieces.
If your B2B SEO efforts have yet to be very strategic thus far, multiple pages could compete in ranking for one keyword.
Keyword cannibalization can be problematic because by the time Google has identified which page deserves to rank for that keyword, it could already have given that ranking to one of your competitors instead.
Make a list of all competing pages in your content and direct any that dont directly answer search intent to one that does.
Optimize and rewrite as necessary.
One of the easiest and fastest ways to bolster your B2B SEO strategy is focusing on low-hanging fruits.
Build Backlinks For Your B2B Website
Link Building.
One of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of SEO.
As your company expands, however, more links may become necessary.
Most of our clients ask:
"How exactly does that work? Doesnt this sound like some vague old-school scam?"
Theres black-hat link building - which should never be performed - while all SEO work requires white-hat link building to succeed.
So, how do you build links for your B2B website?
An effective strategy to secure backlinks beyond networking and link-building efforts is creating data-rich content that others can incorporate into their posts.
Curating statistics or conducting your proprietary study that news media might link back to is one effective strategy for garnering links to your content.
While such studies dont lead directly to sales conversion, they still drive links.
Start Your First B2B SEO Strategy
Now that you understand how B2B SEO marketing works, you are prepared to start developing a plan.
Keep a keen eye on what your competitors are up to and regularly review and assess your performance.
The Key To An Effective B2B SEO Strategy
Your B2B SEO strategy will be more successful with an integrated approach. Some content should focus on conversion, while others support conversion efforts and further establish your brand.
The brand is everything in B2B sales, and search-engine-optimized content is one of the best ways to build it. Considering all parts of your funnel that require support and having a long-term vision for creating content marketing plans will make it clear what needs to be done next.
Final Thoughts
Once you understand how to increase your chances of ranking on Googles first page, all that remains is continued optimization, link-building opportunities, and patience.
SEO takes some time to produce results, so be patient while making changes and keeping an eye on critical sites and business metrics to see whether your strategy is on course or if adjustments need to be made or hire some SEO companies for these strategies.
Your websites visibility and traffic are vitally crucial to the success of your business, so continue working on its SEO until you see results - then continue improving it over time! SEO should always be seen as an ongoing practice that needs to be tweaked and refined constantly to remain effective for Google search engines and beyond.
Keep this in mind and prioritize creating content with value for your audience - then focus on expanding business operations around that content - you will watch your business thrive and succeed.
