B2B SEO Best Practices and Strategies

A recent report by Hubspot found that companies are making brand awareness as their #3 overall marketing priority, narrowly surpassing sales as a goal.

Where marketers are completely dependent on paid marketing services alone for brand awareness, longevity of such campaigns are questioned. These campaigns must necessarily be complimented with Search Engine Optimization(SEO) techniques for improved organic traffic, higher SERP positions, increased domain authority and sustainability.

After all, a survey by Databox suggests that 70 percent of marketers see SEO as more effective than PPC.

Through this blog, we’re bringing out the best practices and strategies for B2B SEO for a broader brand awareness.

What is B2B SEO?

Thanks to digitalization, the line between B2C and B2B companies is blurring. While there is hardly anything unique about SEO for B2B companies, B2B marketers must work for unique case situations like,

A startup founder may require a “HR software”
A surgeon may search for “most comfortable surgical gloves”
A CMO may search for “omnichannel marketing”

And this is where they need to differentiate their SEO strategies with that of B2C counterparts.

Best Practices for B2B SEO: manipulating Google & other search engines

Figure: Poll response recorded by Hubspot’s State of Marketing Report 2020

On-page SEO: What should be your B2B Content Strategy?

From the survey above, top marketers are equally focussing on the total time spent on a page.

You’re targeting business clients. They’re busy people.

Any form of content, be it a blog post or a video about your services, will not attract them if none of your marketing channels is backed by a human face.

Tip#1: Associate your content with the most credible person in your organization. Simply put, high-quality thought leadership content marketing can be the best SEO strategy in 2021.

Consider YouTube as a search engine too. You may repurpose the content of your high-performing SEO posts into videos, however, do not forget to add that human touch here as well.

Skip robotic voices and unnecessary stock pictures to explain your service. Be real, or take a cue from Lumi business & their YouTube strategy!

Figure: Poll response recorded by Hubspot’s State of Marketing Report 2020

While we agree that content marketing is the best SEO strategy, marketers in 2021 preferred video as the most used form of media. Within video marketing, you can focus on Brand storytelling and Product of Service Promotion as Customer Case Studies & Product Demos seem to be less preferred by top marketers in 2021.

Tip#2: Instead of hiring lesser-experienced and dedicated Content Writers, you should think of augmenting resources in-house, especially from your Sales department.

Have your B2B Marketers/Content Writers conduct regular sessions with the Sales department. They will have more useful insights to discuss the existing gap in client reach, based on which your B2B Marketers can develop a better B2B strategy.

Small-scale B2B firms have a unique point of differentiation from their large competitors that they can project their services more personally. B2B marketing may showcase the fact that customers can get associated with the founders directly, which is usually not the case with large corporations.

For automated Page title and meta description generator for B2B companies, click here.

How to improve your Off-page SEO Strategy?

Gossiping is all you have to do. (Not kidding!)
But it’s the other way around.

Off-page SEO is performed to make websites with high domain authority add or link any piece of content page related to your website. This helps the intended audience to recognize your business brand indirectly.

Influencer Marketing is the least effective B2B marketing game plan.

Link building is the most popular Off-page SEO strategy. In the B2B marketing game plan, it would include:

Joining an industry association,
Making high-quality blog posts, infographics, videos,
Getting customer reviews, and
Avoid black-hat SEO strategy.

Don’t miss out on B2B Local SEO

Local SEO is more aligned with B2C business trying to leverage the local customers. However, there are enormous opportunities for B2B companies to tap into the local market.

Out of the 2,395 Google My Business Categories listed here, there are at least 1,270 categories applicable to B2B companies. Some of the companies included are by nature B2B (wholesalers, suppliers) and companies that are B2C could have a B2B offering (restaurants, event sites).

B2B companies can look to combine local SEO with local content for better outreach. They can start by registering their business with the search engine (Google My Business or Bing places for business).

The next step is to focus on Keyword research to complement your content strategy. While it gives an idea about how locals are looking for things like you, B2B marketers can benefit by knowing which keywords their local competitors are using.

Technical SEO: Do-it-yourself or Hire a professional

Apart from optimizing mobile performance of your website, you must also give due importance to improving page load, fixing broken links and site navigation errors. Certainly, a B2B audience is someone who is more likely to visit your desktop site rather than your mobile site.

Technical SEO can be a time-consuming task, and it is best left for companies to outsource their SEO maintenance to a professional.

SEO demands consistency & commitment. It is not a one-time solution, but a long-term investment for organic traffic.

Wrapping Up

Google’s unique position in the market has given it an unparalleled opportunity to put together the user, their geolocation, their browser habits and businesses who want to serve or at least sell to targeted communities online.

Here, we have highlighted some unique points of differentiation that B2B marketers can do differently to target audience through SEO strategy. The prerequisite to succeeding using these strategies is a solid foundation of technical SEO and keyword research.

If you’re looking to partner with a like-minded digital agency for your SEO requirements, we can help you. Click here to get started, or call us at +91-944-278-9110 to speak to our digital strategists.