By Dr Horst Joepen, CEO of search analytics software specialist, Searchmetrics
Given the increasing regularity with which businesses now search online when trying to find information and answers on all manner of topics, B2B marketers are realising that search engine optimisation (SEO) – which helps businesses improve their visibility on internet search engines – can and should be an important part of their digital marketing armoury.Here are six key considerations to help you plan your B2B SEO effort:
1: Be clear about the objectives of B2B SEO
While consumer marketers often rely on SEO to generate traffic to support online selling, B2B marketing is rarely about generating instant web based sales. The B2B sales cycle is usually longer and more involved and there are normally multiple decision makers and influencers. Very often there is lengthy offline communication (phone calls, meetings, product demos) before the final sale. So SEO has a different, but very important objective in B2B marketing; it helps companies get onto customers’ supplier shortlists.
Think about it. At any point in the decision making process – or possibly even before they’ve established a need for a new supplier – there’s a good chance that target decision makers and influencers will search online to find answers to challenges or issues they’re facing or specifically to research potential products or services. If you’ve optimised your web site content and it comes high on page one of Google or Bing, then they’ll find your site. And if what they see is relevant and valuable, you’ll increase the chance of being remembered when they eventually build a shortlist.
Obviously searching on the web isn’t the only way that companies find potential suppliers to put on their shortlists; they very often include suppliers recommended by their peers or business contacts. But you can bet they’ll still plug the names of these recommended companies into a search engine to see what comes up. So another B2B objective for SEO is supporting a company’s online reputation. This is about using SEO to help manage the content people are exposed to when they perform online searches around your company name. You want to make sure the information that ranks highest is up to date and positive and certainly not negative.
And SEO for online reputation management objective isn’t just important for potential customers. Anyone who wants to find out about your company – from suppliers and partners to job candidates or journalists who are writing about you – is likely to do their initial research using the search engines.
2: Pay attention to keywords
When someone types a search query into a search engine, one of the basic factors that determines what pages they are shown in the search results, is the text that appears on those pages. The search engines scour the web to identify pages that include the same ‘keywords’ or phrases as the original search query.
So, while there are many other factors that come into play, a simple part of your B2B SEO effort should be focused on making sure the pages on your site reflect and include the keywords that customers within your market will be searching for. Think about words and phrases related to your industry: buzzwords; commonly used acronyms and jargon; product names; specific industry challenges; frequently asked questions or issues that customers in your industry are currently having to address.
You might even decide that the brand names of well known competitors are important keywords that you want to focus on.
The search engines tend to place a greater value on words that are included in specific parts of a web site, including page titles, headings and URLs, so your SEO consultant or agency should be making sure your target keywords and phrases appear in these areas.
3: Develop online content to support your SEO
Obviously SEO has to work hand-in-hand with and support the content on your web site. So creating relevant and appropriate content which includes your target key words and phrases is an important aspect of any SEO programme.
Your content has to be relevant to your customers, addressing the information gaps and insights they will be looking to fill online. So, current industry issues, hot topics, challenges, new trends and developments will all be important, as well as good information about your company and its products and services.
Make sure you are using all the familiar B2B marketing content techniques; customer case studies, ‘how to’ articles and white papers; as well as interesting news about your company and its offerings.
More and more these days online content is not just limited to text. You can create video testimonials and product demos, as well as audio podcasts, all of which can be optimised to be visible on the search engines.
4: Build links from relevant sites in your sector
Search engines use the number of links to a page from other relevant web sites or blogs as one measure of how important that page is. So if a page has a lot of links coming in to it – especially from well known, high authority web sites such as news sites or influential blogs – then it will generally be ranked higher and will be more visible in search listings.
As a B2B marketer, you will be wanting to obtain links from appropriate web sites and blogs within your industry. One of the important ways of getting links is to place valuable content on your site that other sites will be want to link to. This can include some of the techniques already mentioned including White Papers and How To articles that help to educate or provide insights.
It is also important to proactively go out and generate links. In B2B environments this could include making sure you are listed with important online trade directories, or industry bodies and associations. Ask your business partners and customers to link to you from their sites or mention you in their blogs. Use PR to generate links by distributing online news releases or offering to write for key trade publications or blogs (which often give you the opportunity to link back to pages on your web site).
5: Integrate SEO with your other digital marketing
You can’t keep your SEO separate from other parts of your marketing effort. Your copywriters, bloggers, PR agency and social media experts all need to be informed by and support your SEO strategy. The content churned out by these separate teams needs to be reinforcing the target keywords you’ve chosen. And PR and social media should be aimed at increasing the visibility of your content with a view to getting links from online publications and bloggers.
Recently Google and Bing revealed that the way content is shared on Twitter and Facebook has a direct impact on search rankings. A specific example being that if a page is shared on Twitter by ‘authoritative people’ then that can help its ranking in organic search results ‘to a degree’. So there’s now an even stronger argument to make sure your social media activity is integrated with your SEO.
6: Measure, monitor and review SEO performance
Finally, SEO is a battle that’s never won. You may be top on a specific keyword or phrase one week, then on page two for the same term the next month. So it’s critical to continually track your performance and review what you are doing.
Competitors’ tactics are shifting and new keywords and industry phrases are emerging, while the search engines are frequently changing their algorithms and the way they present search results. You need to keep up with these changes and build them into your strategy.
And measuring performance is not just about tracking where your business ranks for specific keywords or phrases. To measure the overall success of your SEO, you should be looking at a variety of metrics, including the traffic generated through specific keywords, average search engine ranking positions and ‘bounce rates’ – or how often site visitors immediately click away from your site without lingering.
