If you’ve been searching for SEO tips online, you’ve likely seen that much of the conversation revolves around B2C and D2C content, which requires mass traffic to produce high sales. But did you know that organic search traffic drives more than half of all B2B website traffic and that this organic traffic accounts for 70% of total sales?
If you’ve been wondering about the importance of SEO for B2B companies, then that statistic should convince you to focus more on your SEO strategy. But where do you start, and how does SEO differ for B2B companies?
The fact is that SEO is slightly different in the B2B sector, and if you’re not hitting your current goals, then these tiny differences can be the missing link to scaling your growth this year. So, how can you optimize your SEO for the B2B market?
What Is B2B SEO?
At its core, search engine optimization in the business-to-business sector aims to increase organic traffic FROM the right audience. But often, after that initial goal, the B2B market will differ from traditional SEO advice.
You’ll want to remember that the people searching for information in the B2B sector are searching on behalf of their company. Meaning they may or may not have the final decision-making purchasing power.
The main pillars of SEO for B2B marketing remain the same regardless of your audience or business model. These three pillars are:
- On-page SEO
- Off-page SEO
- Technical SEO
However, in the B2B market, your focus will shift slightly on the type of content you create and what keywords you’ll want to target. We’ll dive into keywords more later in this article.
At a high level, the most significant concept you need to remember is that B2B purchasing habits are different. And that you’ll need to convert fewer accounts, but these accounts will result in larger purchases.
So, as you create your strategy, you’ll want to keep your target audience in mind. For example, who is searching for your topic, what are they asking in their searches, and do they have final purchasing power, or will they relay that information to their executive suite?
The second biggest difference to keep in mind when defining B2B SEO is the purchasing patterns of your ideal customers. Most of the businesses you sell your product or service to aren’t going to make their final decision based on the first article they read.
So your content must drive your reader to the next step. This might be either contacting you, downloading a white paper, or signing up for a free trial if you’re in the SaaS industry.
The Importance Of SEO For B2B
For anyone wondering if SEO is important for B2B, we’ll show you the many benefits your B2B company can enjoy from search engine marketing. First and foremost, search engine traffic offers your company a sustainable and scalable platform for driving new traffic and increasing sales year over year.
If your C-suite executives are pushing your marketing team to increase your results while decreasing your budget, we recommend focusing on organic marketing efforts. But, unfortunately, the days of inexpensive advertising with little competition are gone. Instead, the market is saturated, and the platforms exponentially increase their rates.
In contrast to paid traffic, organic traffic can increase website visitors and awareness and, when done right, increase customers. What would your sales conversions look like each month if your sales team had a list of warm leads who already know and trust your brand? What would it look like if they already know they need what you offer and are prepared to make the final buying decision?
That’s what you can expect when you create the right strategy that drives the right traffic to your site. The importance of SEO for B2B companies can’t be overstated here. If you want to scale your results, then you need an effective strategy.
Creating The Right B2B SEO Strategy
In the B2B industry, your search engine strategy won’t concentrate on mass amounts of traffic as we would suggest for our e-commerce or publishing clients. Instead, for our B2B clients, our focus is on creating a strategy that brings the right traffic so we can convert them to paying clients.
In this case study, we helped this SaaS company increase targeted traffic each month by 2,000 new sessions. This resulted in an exciting increase in conversions. What would your company growth look like if you could consistently convert 37 new paying customers each month thanks to your SEO strategy? What would it look like if you could convert 100 or more each month? This is the impact high-quality, strategic SEO can make.
How To Do SEO Keyword Research
The cornerstone of B2B keyword research is to focus on search intent, or what people are searching for. This is where it’s imperative that you know who your target audience is. For example, imagine you create shipping logistics software. Your target audience might be the shipping manager for companies that produce more than a million dollars in revenue each year.
Your next question is to determine if the shipping manager usually has the autonomy to choose which software program they use. If you already have a customer list that fits these criteria, then the fastest way is to send out an email and ask them.
Finally, map out whom they report to, their typical job duties, and how they prefer to communicate. All of this information will help you to create your content going forward.
In the B2B market, you’ll need a strategy that prioritizes high-quality content planned from the top of the funnel through to the conversion. In our shipping manager example, this could include the top five signs their shipping process needs an update or the top seven benefits of having a mapped out process. Then you could direct the reader to a case study or webinar that shows your software’s unique attributes. Finally, you could end the journey with a free trial or demo signup.
Choose Keywords For Every Aspect Of Your Sales Funnel
At the top of the funnel, your goal isn’t to sell your product or service. Instead, your goal is to raise brand awareness and drive new lead generation.
You’ll eventually drive these warm leads to more targeted bottom-of-the-funnel content as you build authority in your industry. This can include content such as an in-depth tutorial on creating an optimized shipping workflow.
Now you can show how helpful your software is in the process and then place your call to action to start their free trial of your software program.
Remember, B2B keywords typically have lower search volume. We like to validate our keywords by looking at data from our paid campaigns. Ensuring we target the right keywords from the start.
The biggest takeaway to remember when choosing the right topics is that you should target low volume, high intent keywords.
In the B2B sector, you don’t need millions of people coming to your website each month. Instead, you’ll see much better success if you drive one thousand new views from your target audience that is in the position to choose to work with you.
More SEO Tips To Help Your B2B Strategy
Our first tip for creating content for your SEO strategy is to understand your audience. Then, you can move on to educating and informing your audience. As we mentioned earlier, in the B2B market, you’ll rarely sell your next client your product or services after reading just one article.
However, when your articles focus on education, you’ll build authority in your industry and build trust with potential clients. And that can significantly impact your conversion rates when they reach that stage of the buying process.
Next, you’ll want to give every piece of content a job. And you’ll want to ensure that everyone creating and promoting that content understands what that job is. Remember, that job doesn’t have to be to sell to your customer; instead, focus on helping your audience.
Finally, our last tip is to work with an expert like Search Nurture that develops cross-channel strategies. We are a full-funnel marketing agency, and we help our B2B clients reach their ideal audience across multiple platforms.
Doing this on your own can be quite complex. Agencies like us help you create a strategy, implement the process, or both.
Scale Your B2B Marketing With SEO
In the end, search engine optimization has the same tenets across industries and business models. However, in the B2B market, you have different goals and audiences than typical marketing managers face.
The best way to scale your marketing is organic traffic. That’s why the importance of SEO for B2B remains an ideal avenue for generating new leads and increasing your sales year over year.
If you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level and scale your results, you need to ensure your website is working as hard as possible. Reach out to us today to see how we can help you get the results you want from your SEO marketing efforts.
