One of the most effective ways to enhance your visibility and reach potential customers is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO involves optimizing your website and content to rank higher in search engine results, which can lead to increased traffic, better brand awareness, and more qualified leads.
Why SEO is Important for B2B Companies
As a B2B, SEO is one of the most important digital marketing strategies to focus on. Potential clients are searching online for businesses like yours every single day.
B2B SEO is how you compete to be at the top of SERPs, also known as Search Engine Results Pages. The better your SEO is, the higher your web pages will rank for specific keywords on these SERPs. This is so important because the #1 organic result is 10x more likely to receive a click compared to a page in the #10 spot. The higher your ranking, the better the chance of bringing new potential clients to your website!
A keyword is an idea or topic that defines what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called “search queries.”
Getting Started With B2B SEO
Maybe you’re diving into B2B SEO for the first time or maybe you’re already a seasoned SEO veteran in your field. Either way, our goal here is to break down as simply as possible what specific things you should look to focus on to rank #1!
We’re going to be breaking down each of the following business strategies for SEO:
- Local SEO: Google Business Profile
- Keyword Research
- Content
- Execution
If you can focus on all of these strategies and implement them on your website, you’ll be one step closer to seeing the results SEO can yield.
So let’s dive in!
1. Local SEO
As a B2B company, it’s still important to focus on local SEO, including your Google Business Profile, since that is just more social proof (with reviews) that pulls potential clients your way.
Additionally, here are the Top Local Business Directories That Boost Your Local SEO.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is one of the best things that you can do as a B2B business trying to increase your online presence with SEO. GBP is a free tool that gives you a listing of your business that appears on Google and Google Maps. Your listing can include things like:
- Business Name
- Location
- Business Hours
- Customer Reviews
- Photos
- Contact Information
Make sure to set up, claim, verify, complete, and optimize your GBP page. If you need any help doing this, we created a Google Business Profile guide to help you out!
Reviews
One of the huge benefits of having a GBP page is the ability to collect reviews from customers. Customer reviews are gold in the digital marketing world, as people tend to trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations.
The reason they trust these reviews is that it isn’t easy to collect positive reviews, and people are much more likely to leave a review when they are upset than happy. So if a company has a good star rating, that’s a great sign!
It also makes a difference in how you respond to bad reviews. It will happen, and it’s important to try and make bad situations better. It may not erase the review, but it does show potential clients that you tried to right a wrong.
You can also use a specific link that is on your Google Business Profile page that will send people who click on it directly to the place to give you a review. This helps take away the guesswork for your previous customers and clients.
Local Information
Making sure your website has local information throughout it is important too. Make it as easy as possible for someone to figure out how to get to your office if they so choose.
Having your address in places like the footer of your website and the contact page are two crucial areas for your address to live. Having your phone number and a contact form is a nice way for potential clients to reach out to you. If you have a good rating on your Google Business Profile, it’s a great idea to link to this on your website to show that off as well!
2. Choosing The Right B2B SEO Keywords
Another very important step in a successful SEO strategy is finding the right keywords. You want to make sure that you pick keywords that people are actually searching for and will also convert into clients for you.
Go ahead and do a Google search for “local manufacturing companies” and see what comes up. Depending on where you are, these results are going to be different.
The companies that are at the top of the SERP are not there by chance. They’re at the top because they used many of the SEO strategies we’re covering today.
This is a great time to mention that if there are any directories or review sites like G2 that rank highly when you conduct this search, you should make sure you’re listed on them as well. ie – if Yelp was one of the first results, it’d be well worth your time to make sure your business is also listed on Yelp.
Keyword Research
Choosing the right keywords can seem like an incredibly hard task, but there are tools out there to help you make educated decisions and improve your chances of success! This step is incredibly important, so make sure you don’t skip it!
When doing keyword research, put yourself into a potential client’s shoes. What type of things would they search for? What are the common problems of your existing clients? Search for these things in Google, add them to a list, and do more research.
Before we talk about some of the tools that you can use to your advantage when picking the best keywords for your practice, there are some terms to get familiar with first.
TREND
Trend is the search volume for a specific keyword over the last 12 months. You can use this to see if said keyword has been searched more or less lately.
SEARCH VOLUME
Search Volume is the number of monthly searches that are done for a particular keyword.
COST-PER-CLICK (CPC)
Cost-per-click (CPC) has to do with paid ads and isn’t something you’ll have to worry about for SEO.
PAID DIFFICULTY (PD)
Paid Difficulty (PD) is how competitive a specific keyword’s paid ads are. Another thing you won’t have to worry about when thinking about your SEO strategy.
SEO DIFFICULTY (SD)
SEO Difficulty (SD) is how competitive a specific keyword is. The higher the number, the harder it will be to rank highly for this keyword.
Keyword Research Tools
There are a lot of great tools for keyword research, from SEMRush to Ahrefs. You’re able to see search volume, SD, and trends for specific relevant keywords. You can also run a monthly SEO audit and track the results of your efforts!
Moz is an amazing tool if you’re looking for something a little more advanced. The price tag is not cheap for this tool, but it can definitely be worth it if you’re serious about SEO. Moz has all of the mentioned tools above, but also can store results and look at them month-over-month to be more specific with analytics.
Google Autocomplete Research is also a great tool for discovering additional keyword ideas. Simply start typing in a term related to keywords you believe your potential clients would search, and you can see additional options to think about.
Use these tools not only to find pieces of content to create but to figure out what types of keywords you should be targeting on the main pages of your website, too!
Another thing to note about your keyword research is that it’s not always the best to find the keywords with the highest traffic and shoot for those. Keywords with smaller monthly volume can still be beneficial. Specifically, when they’re what is called “Long-tail keywords”.
Focus On Long-Tail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are those three or more keyword phrases that are very, very specific to whatever your services are. A perfect example of this would be “manufacturing businesses that support nonprofits”.
These types of keywords are great because they are typically much higher converting. If a nonprofit professional can find your services by searching that term specifically, vs searching for “manufacturing businesses near me,” there is a much higher chance that they are going to find the type of services they are looking for.
Learn more: How to Develop a Long-Tail Keyword Strategy That Converts.
3. Creating EEAT Content
EEAT stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. One of the most important factors that Google looks at when ranking your web pages is the EEAT of the content on your website.
Google wants to make sure that your content is well-written, not spammy, and provides value. Content is the main course of your SEO strategy. Once you figure out what keywords you want to focus on, you’ll know how to create content around those keywords. Whether that is building on the pages that you already have created, or creating brand new pages and blog posts, you want to make sure that the user who comes to your site gets their questions answered!
Put Yourself In Your Audience’s Shoes
We’ve mentioned this briefly earlier, but it’s incredibly important to put yourself into the shoes of a potential client of your B2B business if you want to succeed at SEO.
Conduct research and take a look at who is ranking and the content that is on those pages. Take notes and figure out what the common qualities of each are. For example, if every single page on the top page has a video front and center, you probably should too.
Your main goal of SEO should be to provide value to anyone getting to your website. If their problem wasn’t solved by reading your content, that’s a loss.
What separates you from other businesses in your field? Show the difference with the content you put out!
4. Starting Your B2B Business SEO Strategy
Now the B2B SEO fun begins! You have your Google Business Profile made, you have your keyword research done, and some great ideas for copy. Now what?
Now we need to put all of the work together, and that’s where the execution comes in. We’ll do this by laying out SEO best practices and things to make sure each of your pages has, so you’ll be able to rank right for the right keywords!
Learn more: Guide to Building a Modern B2B User Journey & SEO Strategy.
Keywords In Your Content
You’ll want to make sure the content you create is created around the relevant keywords you’ve decided on.
Create the content so that if someone gets to your website by searching for the keyword, their questions will be answered with the content you create. Google typically likes to see each page on your website with at least 500 words.
Don’t force it, though.
NOTE: One thing in today’s age that is becoming more and more frequent is the use of AI. Now this is great, and there are many solid AI tools that can help with your B2B SEO strategy and content, but DO NOT use AI to write all your content.
You do not own the rights to AI-generated copy, and quite simply, this is lazy SEO. Humans connect with human-written content. That doesn’t mean you can’t use AI to help with some pieces, outlines, keyword ideas, etc., but please do not just copy and paste what you get into your content.
Title Tags & Meta Descriptions
You’ll want to customize each of your pages’ titles and meta descriptions to describe what the individual web page is about.
You can learn more about The Importance of Meta Descriptions (And How to Write Them).
If you’re on a WordPress site, a plugin called Yoast SEO can help you out a lot with this.
Header Tags
Part of SEO is making your content as “readable” as possible. You do this by breaking your content up by using things like header tags (h1, h2, h3, etc.).
Another way to break up your content is by using lists, bolding important pieces of your content, or italicizing special notes. If it helps a user read and find answers more easily, Google will like it.
Images & Video
Adding media such as images and videos to your web pages is a great way to engage your website users! It helps break up your copy, helps grab users’ attention, and can answer questions easily for someone who is more of a visual learner. Just make sure the images you are uploading aren’t so large that they slow down your website, and be sure to add a description for that image.
Also, always remember to add alt text!
Mobile Friendliness
Chances are that most of the people coming to your website are going to be mobile users. Check your analytics to confirm, but you’ll want to make sure all of the web pages you create have a mobile-first mindset.
And there you have it! Building your SEO as a B2B business professional can be tough, but it is rewarding. Feel free to reach out if there are any questions after reading this guide!
By following these B2B SEO tips, you can improve your search engine rankings, attract more targeted traffic, and ultimately achieve your marketing and sales goals.
If you’re looking for more of an in-depth resource, take a look at our Beginners SEO Guide.