B2B SEO.Best practices, tips and our best recommendations.
B2B SEO
Technically Google’s bots don’t look any different at a B2B website than a B2C website, but from a SEO point of view getting your B2B SEO strategy right is more than just meta tags and on-page descriptions.
But don’t underestimate the importance of SEO for B2B. Let me explain, we recently launched an IoT / asset tracking Tech start up into the hospital and aged care sectors here in Australia.
We did our research, we developed the clients Ideal Buyer Persona (IBP), we mapped out their likely buyer journey, developed our B2B content assets focussing on their industry and the IBP’s pain points and the campaign launched with a decent sized budget for LinkedIn ads… almost at the same time as covid went on a rampage and
In the middle of this sea of despair, a very large ASX listed Company, found our client through SEO and after a successful demo and POV (proof of value), went onto roll out our client’s product and services to their organisation all around Australia and the start up
The industry of the client? Automobiles. Yup.
From a B2B SEO best practice your B2B SEO strategy needs to take on board a number of factors.
What products and services are you selling?
What are your business objectives?
Are you a start-up disrupting your space with a ‘new’ product or service?
What is the search volume for keywords associated with these products and services?
Who are your main competitors?
Who is ranking already for these keywords and how likely is it that you can displace them to get to the first page or two on Google?
People ranking on the first page will have many factors on their side such as a high domain score, a good number of quality (not spammy) backlinks pointing to their website (endorsements in the eyes of Google), and quality content that is relevant to the keyword being searched for.
What does your Google Analytics data and your Google Search Console tell you about people searching for and interacting with your website?
How is your website from a technical point of view? Speed to load pages, any broken links, is your site indexed with Google, is the information structured so Google can best read it?
Armed with all this information and data, which forms part of our B2B SEO Discovery with you we can then move onto frame out your B2B SEO Strategy and Plan.
Your B2B SEO optimisation plan will:
Integrate your analytical assets with our SEO platform so they can communicate data with each other and provide everything we need for B2B SEO, namely your Google Analytics and Google Search Console and either/ or HubSpot (if that’s your platform of choice, which would be handy as we are Gold Certified HubSpot Partners), SEM Rush or Uber Suggest depending on the size and complexity of your B2B SEO project.
Fix all the Technical issues we identify in an SEO Audit- including speed, broken links, incorrect or missing on-page data as well as other common issues we see.
Identify which keywords we need to optimise your website for to give you the best chances of ranking on the first two pages of Google and start to give you increased visitors to you.
Focus on meaningful and relevant content structured and optimised in the way that Google advises is best practice.
Incorporate off page tactics also to build Local SEO credibility (if applicable) and or off site blogs on higher quality websites with a good Domain Authority of 30+ (DA30+) linking back to your website for the ‘endorsement’ link.
Identify ongoing monthly optimisation opportunities as we see how search rankings progress for example, additionally supporting a keyword through writing topic clusters (additional web pages) around the optimised page’s content and linking internally to each other, so increasing the depth of the keyword in Google’s eyes.
Report back the data you need to see such as rankings, clicks, value of your organic traffic if you had to pay for it and conversions (because we want conversions for all our efforts!)
If we can throw in the mix one incredibly important adjunct which is - the more quality, relevant B2B Content you produce (guides, videos, articles, podcast, webinars etc.) with a robust B2B Content strategy- that helps educate and inform your visitors, the more we will have to optimise and the more conversions you will ultimately get as you can increase the numbers of people coming through to your website.
Having a B2B social media marketing strategy to push out some of your B2B content can also assist with your link building efforts from credible sources.
Three one-liner thoughts we feel are worth noting:
Content is king when it comes to B2B SEO.
SEO is a race not a sprint.
Ultimately Google wants to display relevant and accurate pages to users search enquiries.
If this sounds like something you may well be interested in speaking to us more about, please get in touch.
B2B SEO Tips Ten SEO mistakes to avoid during your next website redesign. Here's a helpful SEO guide* you can download (*credit HubSpot).