CMOs in B2B companies can have a difficult time in selling in their marketing budget to the CFO or to the CEO. Often marketing in B2B companies is viewed as a cost rather rather than an investment that can drive revenue. It can be sometimes difficult to justify the budget allocation ahead of other departments. One area that often raises concern is Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), i.e. will it bring in results and return.
Most B2B companies do not have much experience with SEO and there is sometimes a fear of the unknown. If you push for investment in SEO and digital marketing as a whole and your company does decide to invest, its important that it brings tangible results and some rate of return.
If you do decide to invest in SEO, I highly recommend gaining a basic understanding of SEO, how it works and what activities should be carried out, so if you hire somebody in house or decide to go with an external SEO company, you have a good understanding of what they need to do.
If you are unfamiliar with SEO or have little or no experience in this area, then I suggest you I recommend reading the following guides:
Both of these guides will explain SEO in more detail and will give you a good understand of the types of activities that your SEO or digital marketing company should be undertaking each month.
Business owners that I have spoken to are wary of SEO, because they do not understand what it is or have had a bad experience of it in past, or heard of someone who has. For this very reason, its important for business owners to gain a basic understanding of SEO and digital marketing, so they can make a more informed decision about whether it is a marketing strategy they want to pursue.
On-site Optimisation
If your site has had no SEO work done to it previously then the first area you should be aware of is on-site optimisation.
Before making any changes to the site, you should identify the target keywords you want to rank for and take a benchmark of where your site is currently ranking, as you may find some quick wins before you even start. There are many ranking tools out there including:
The types of changes you will need to make include:
- Meta Data Optimisation – Page Titles and Description
- H1 Optimisation
- Content Optimisation and Content Creation to create content for new keywords
All of these elements across the site will need to optimised to ensure your site can rank for a wider variety of keywords.
Content Optimisation and Creation
Once the target keywords have been identified, content optimisation and content creation should be carried out on a regular basis. An external agency should be sending across new content ideas based upon keyword research and audience analysis. Adding additional content to your site is essential after the Google Panda update.
Authority Linkbuilding
The third basic element you shold be looking for is authority link building. When working with an agency or even someone in house you should start to to see new authority links coming from sites that your potential customers would visit. SEO is more than about links, its about securing quality links from high quality domains and engaging with potential audiences online.
Choosing An SEO Company
If you do decide to hire an external agency, choose a specialist SEO company like ROI Digital Marketing that offers SEO services to B2B companies. Going with a specialist agency can help ensure that they either understand B2B marketing or may even have previous sector experience meaning that they will be able to hit the ground running.
I hope this guide has given you an understand of the types of activities that you should see on an on-going basis once you decide to invest in SEO for the first time.
