Search engine optimization (SEO), or the practice of improving a website’s quality so that it has a higher level of visibility in the search engine results page (SERP), is no new invention. It really is the tried and tested method of increasing the amount of organic traffic that websites receive by securing top ranking positions on Google.
The benefits of this for business-to-consumer (B2C) companies are obvious – the more attention a product gets, the higher the product sales will be. And it’s relatively common knowledge that this primarily involves making webpage content consist of popular keywords so that consumers are likely to be directed to their page when searching.
The SEO marketing strategy changes however, in regard to business-to-business (B2B) companies. This is because an essential part to driving organic growth requires having a keen understanding of your target audience, the basis of acquiring a notion for the buying cycle.
Evidently, when you are directing content towards other businesses, rather than consumers, you have to take a fundamentally different approach. It’s for this reason we’ve put together an in-depth guide on how SEO for B2B companies works. Throughout we’ll cover:
- What is B2B SEO?
- What are the differences between B2B and B2C SEO?
- How to create a successful B2B SEO campaign
What is B2B SEO?
B2B SEO is the process of optimising website content in order to achieve an improvement in organic search engine traffic and rankings for a product that is specifically designed for use by other businesses. Thereby, providing your service with increased coverage on Google’s SERP. This, in turn, translates into more revenue due to a higher degree of brand visibility.
The process is not so simple as it may appear, and doesn’t just refer to top keyword research and the subsequent use of which, as we briefly mentioned. There are four aspects to a successful SEO strategy. Namely, Technical SEO, Content SEO, On-page SEO, and Off-page SEO.
- Technical SEO: This refers to the refining of the technical elements of your website so that it’s easier for search engines to crawl, a key quality signifier. Technical optimization takes into account things such as page loading speeds, responsiveness, and the XML sitemap.
- Content SEO: Optimised content is that which is informed by thorough research into user intent and needs when a search is carried out. E.g. are they looking for information, a specific website, or a certain product? This comprises ideation, creation, and promotion.
- On-page SEO: Concerning the actual contents of a webpage, it encapsulates the readability of content, the structure of it, and relevancy alongside the meta description, title tag, and the alt text that’s attached to images.
- Off-page SEO: It’s also integral that you have an external presence. Backlinking is when you have already high-quality pages linking to your product or service. This works to establish you as a reliable expert in your particular field, therefore increasing the likelihood that searchers will visit your page and purchase what you’re offering.
So far it might seem like B2B SEO is no different than B2C SEO, and you’d be partially right in assuming so. This is because the basics are very much the same, the real difference lies in the details.
What are the differences between B2B and B2C SEO?
As we mentioned at the start, your target audience is vastly different when you’re marketing a product for businesses as opposed to consumers. The aim of B2C SEO is to increase website traffic which results in instant turnover. Whereas, B2B SEO aims to generate a solid sense of awareness and trustworthiness for your brand in the market, thus leading to lucrative long-term sales opportunities and agreements.
Naturally, then, the way in which SEO is approached for B2B companies differs since businesses make extensive considerations that an average consumer would not. Let’s go over the unique complexities inherent in B2B SEO:
1. Sales funnel
A sales funnel, or purchase funnel, illustrates the process that potential customers go through before purchasing a product. The model used for B2B and B2C SEO is similar on the surface, however, the outlining becomes a lot more nuanced in the context of B2B SEO.
Consumers and businesses each follow a series of mental stages which begins at awareness, is succeeded then by interest, which then further develops into an intent or desire to buy, before they then eventually complete the transaction. The purchasing process differs for B2B transactions because businesses will almost certainly be investing a much more substantial amount of money into the product or service in question. For instance, an individual wanting to buy a single-use hair product faces little risk in comparison to a brand in the market for a company-wide digital server.
Consequently, the latter will spend considerable time in the research stage, comparing various offerings and watching demos before negotiating cost and terms. In order to convince a prospective business to purchase from yours, you must comprehensively and preemptively meet all the queries that will appear along the way. Singular attention to detail is vital if you’re to make a B2B sale, you have to instil a feeling of trust. It goes without saying that this requires you to know your audience extensively, that is, what their wants and needs are, what questions they’re bound to ask, and what data they’ll want to see.
2. Keywords
Since, as with the sales funnel, your audience for B2B SEO has a very particular idea of what they want from a service or product, you too have to be very particular about the keywords you use. This entails a distinctive deep-dive into the types of keywords that will increase your chances of being discovered.
The ideation for B2C SEO strives to reach a wide audience so that an exponential number of people purchase what you have on offer, this means going for high-volume keywords. Whereas, B2B SEO has the goal of targeting a relatively niche audience bracket, therefore, somewhat niche keywords have to be utilised.
Labelled as low-volume and long-tail keywords, these are keywords that the average consumer is unlikely to search with or those phrases which have an extra level of specificity to them. Catering to a lower sum of people may seem counterintuitive, but what really matters is having businesses with a genuine and specific interest in what you provide be directed to your website. This goes hand-in-hand with audience intent, that is, how your audience expresses their intent in the form of a query.
3. Content
The consequence of going for low-volume and long-tail keywords is that you’ll have relatively lower click-to-sale conversion rates. This is quite plain to see, given that you’re not really focused on attaining as many sales as possible in B2B. Rather, you’re marketing for an audience that carefully considers decisions before they make them, meaning you’ll have to conscientiously plan your SEO content.
Thought leadership oriented content is the way to go here. That is, content that conveys a degree of professionalism, expertise, and passion while being fundamentally informative and data-driven.
Whether it be blog posts, your website’s homepage, customer profiles or competitive analysis, all of your content must demonstrate your possession of competency within your industry, and be corroborated. Content of this nature is the backbone to actualising a B2B deal, it inspires confidence and trust as opposed to the unapologetic casualness and boldness of B2C content. Not to say that B2C marketing isn’t effective, it is just tailored to a contrasting audience. A B2B audience certainly expects a lot more, which may make it necessary for you to speak at conferences, webinars, and hold presentations, for example.
How to create a successful B2B SEO strategy
Now that you know the groundwork of B2B SEO and how it’s distinct from B2C SEO, let’s address how you should put it all into practice by going over the essential steps to establishing your brand in a competitive market by increasing organic traffic for your website.
1. Create buyer personas
As we’ve stressed, the foundation of your B2B SEO strategy is your target audience, it’s what informs the entire marketing campaign. A great way of visualising your audience is by creating a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is essentially a theorised profile of your ideal customer which details the industry they operate in, who they are, online sites they frequent, and how your product/service can address their issues. The more thoroughly crafted your buyer persona is, the better understanding you’ll have of who you’re marketing towards. And thereby, in what manner you should present your product. Insights such as these are vital, so don’t limit yourself to one buyer persona. Instead, make multiple and try to equally satisfy them all at once to ensure that you’re prepared and know where exactly you should be dedicating your resources.
2. Conduct keyword research
Keyword research is likewise an integral part of B2B SEO, it gives you the ability to discover where your opportunities in the market lie, as well as who your competitors are.
The goal is to find out what phrases are being searched by your target audience, ideally being informed by your buyer personas, so as to find similar businesses to yours. From there you can garner an idea of what search queries you’ll need to address in your content. For a B2B SEO strategy, this primarily involves addressing informational queries within your content. It’s good practice to make sure that the keywords you’re using correspond to each individual stage in the sales funnel so that you exhibit a wide-ranging coverage for every step of the transactional process.
There are many outlets that allow you to carry out keyword research, you can do this simply by looking at the highest-ranking pages on Google which relate to your product, or by getting more detailed analytics from a tool such as Ahrefs provides.
3.Optimise your website
Google’s crawlers favour websites with sound functionality such as those characterised by having fast load speeds and relevant linking, as previously mentioned. This entails mainly working on your technical SEO alongside certain aspects of your on-page SEO.
Your website is easier to crawl for if you have an XML sitemap that contains all of the webpages present on your overall website. Additionally, having your landing page link to the various articles and such that are live will justify their reasoning for their being there while improving general accessibility. This is a factor which will determine your website’s quality and might necessitate the employment of a web developer if you don’t have access to SEO-directed plugins.
For on-page SEO, the aforementioned structuring of your content is important, your title tags, meta descriptions, image alt text, and even URLs should all relate to page content in terms of keyword usage so that there’s a pervading sense of congruency throughout. For the images that appear on your webpages, it’s significant that they’re reasonably compressed. Having a 4K image load on your landing page will noticeably hinder user-experience. Likewise, your website should accommodate both PC and mobile platforms so that you aren’t actively restricting your user base. After all, the majority of website traffic comes from phones and tablets. This point should always be adhered to, whether for B2C or B2B companies, but it is especially resonant for demonstrating a lasting impression of professionalism for B2B sellers.
4. Create optimised content
Content comprises a wide array of forms and types, making it necessary to build a systematic approach. Evidently, for all SEO this is where you can put your keyword research into use by writing blog posts and articles which incorporate certain phrases that you’ve recognised as being prominent. This type of content should be your starting point, it will not only go towards establishing your image and level of expertise in your given industry, but also develop your website’s presence on Search.
To further enhance your visibility you can then move onto formulating studies that will corroborate your product’s or service’s case as a necessity for a business you’re marketing towards. Subsequently, creating video content, whether on a separate platform or having it embedded into your website will improve your brand’s accessibility; some people simply prefer visual content. On the other hand, a weekly or monthly newsletter would provide you with a consistent source of organic attention and growth.
It’s not wholly necessary to craft content for every single format available, hosting a podcast, for instance, isn’t life or death for your business. However, the more content that’s out there about your brand, the better. Don’t overwhelm yourself, just ensure that you nail quality content when you decide to go through with it by making the topics relevant and keeping the results up to date and well-maintained.
5. Promote your content
The final step is to promote the content that you’re developing in order to earn backlinks and further recognition. As mentioned briefly, this is when more authoritative websites link to the service or product that you are offering. This will require a degree of networking and may prove to be one of the more trying aspects of B2B SEO. It is, however, a key part of any successful SEO campaign and a considerably effective method at that.
After all, it’s no use putting the work into making quality content if your target audience isn’t viewing it. The main way you can distribute your pieces is by using email outreach to get a feel for the sort of topical content that certain websites are looking to publish and reference. Once you’ve identified such sites, it’s generally advised against cold contacting them without first building a rapport. You may have singularly informative content, but so too will other businesses. An integral part of link building, therefore, is forming mutually beneficial relationships with influential bodies.
Once you’ve built up a significant reputation it’s then a good idea to branch out onto social media platforms. If it crosses your mind that this should be the first course of action for promotion due to it being free then you’re very much mistaken. The sheer mass of promotional accounts will have your business struggling for recognition if you haven’t established a following beforehand. When you have done so, however, then you’ve got a powerful tool at your disposal that shouldn’t be ignored.
We hope that this guide has been helpful in both explaining how SEO works for B2B companies and how it is distinguished from B2C SEO. We understand that all of this information may be overwhelming at first so if you’ve got any further questions or would like to employ us a B2B SEO agency then be sure to get in touch!
