3 Simple B2B SEO Strategies for Beginners

If you have a B2B company, SEO might not currently be your number one priority. Maybe your product or service is highly specialized, your resources are few, or you’ve always relied on traditional marketing channels to bring in regular leads.

However, if you’re not implementing any sort of B2B SEO strategy, your business is probably missing out on a lot of potential customers. While following best practices for B2B SEO may seem daunting, it is worth the effort. We’ve written before about how search engines have changed the way we seek out valid information, and have discussed how mobile technology will continue to drive our interest in getting our questions answered while on the go. And with 61% of B2B decision makers beginning the buying process with an online search, sites that don’t rank well are missing out on internet users who are getting ready to become leads. These customers are actively looking for someone to give their business to, and a coordinated B2B SEO strategy helps them find their way into your inbox.

Luckily, B2B SEO doesn’t have to be a massive drain on your resources. Following a few B2B SEO best practices can take your site a long way, and reaching out to SEO experts is a great way to get the most out of your efforts. To get your B2B SEO strategy off on the right foot, use the following tips to your business’ advantage.

Create Awareness & Visibility

Growing your B2B company with SEO means you’ll need to find ways to drive more traffic onto your site. From an organic search perspective, this means that you want the links leading to your site to shine and draw clicks from the searchers who see them. A simple way to do this is by customizing your page title tags and meta descriptions to convey important information and draw the customer in. Increasing your click-through rate (the percentage of people who click on your site’s link off of the search results page) communicates meaning and trustworthiness to search engines, who reward sites with high click-through rates with high rankings on results pages.

To write these titles and descriptions effectively for B2B SEO, you’ll want to see your business from your customer’s point of view. What role does the searcher perform at their company? How deep is their knowledge of what you offer? What is important to them? If the buyer isn’t someone who would know much about your highly technical product, draw their click by courting their priorities (such as price or customer service), and use basic language that doesn’t leave them confused. Conversely, if your buyers tend to focus on the features of what you offer and like to ask nitty-gritty questions when considering a sale, use language that conveys your company’s expertise and knowledge on the details.

You’ll also want to consider what the customer is looking for when they perform a search. Ask yourself what each page “answers” for the customer; in other words, what phrase would a customer type into the search bar and find this page helpful in their search results? Check out the “Searches Related To ___” section at the bottom of search result pages for more ideas on what customers are looking for when they’re seeking out your offering. Work those key search phrases into your titles and descriptions to match the searcher’s intent with your content.

Leverage Existing Assets

Many B2B companies have content assets such as blogs, whitepapers, eBooks, recorded webinars, or podcasts. Maybe you’ve been using these assets to help inform customers on vital industry updates, or educate them prior to a sale. Maybe you’ve even pursued some promotional efforts with these assets. Luckily for your time and wallet, leveraging these existing pieces can add a lot to a B2B SEO strategy.

First, assess how visitors access this material on your site. Is it buried in a sub-sub-sub-sub-category page, or locked behind a paywall? If visitors and search engine crawling mechanisms can’t easily read or access your content, it’s a missed opportunity to seize a little more space on search result pages by answering searcher questions with your content. Consider leaving some of your content accessible to all visitors to ensure indexation and drive traffic. Having content exclusively for subscribers or customers is a great lead generation tactic, but leaving some pieces open is a B2B SEO best practice for driving customers to your site and gaining essential trust.

Example of an effective content hub on a B2B website

Another aspect to consider: Are your assets original content that your team wrote, or is it mostly recycled or copied information from other resources? You don’t want search engines to crawl your content and deem it identical to other pieces across the web—there’s a good chance yours won’t compete with the original pieces very well, and your site could even see penalties. Focus on creating original content and editing or removing duplicates from your site.

Convert Site Traffic

B2B SEO is just as much about generating qualified leads as it is about driving traffic to a site. If an SEO campaign was driving tons of traffic but none of those visitors were converting, the value of SEO to that site just wouldn’t be that high. Furthermore, search engines like to see that visitors stay and engage with a site, rather than bounce off quickly, and sites with good visitor engagement also tend to see ranking boosts.

For an SEO campaign for a business-to-business company to really pack a punch, consider pursuing conversion rate optimization tactics to get conversions from as many qualified visitors as possible. This can be accomplished in several different ways, and the more metrics you can examine, the more complete of a picture you’ll get about your users and their experience on your site. Some basic conversion rate optimization techniques you can try are:

• A/B testing with a tool such as Optimizely to tweak site your design with different call to action buttons or copy
• Examining Google Analytics to identify common exit pages (viewers’ last page before leaving your site) and pages with high bounce rates (pages that viewers land on and exit quickly) to determine if there are any trouble spots where your site is losing viewers
• Adding SEO-friendly pop-up boxes via tools such as OptinMonster that encourage microconversions (such as newsletter signups) and help you turn casual readers into relationships, leads, and eventually customers

If you’re ready to supercharge your B2B SEO strategy, it’s time to get in touch with an agency that understands the B2B world and its unique SEO needs. At Leverage Marketing, we know the ins and outs of B2B lead generation and are motivated to drive the qualified leads you’re looking for. Check out our SEO services today, or sign up for our newsletter for regular doses of digital marketing knowledge right in your inbox.