As the digital landscape evolves, the way B2B acquires new leads will change as well. According to BigCommerce.com, 74% of B2B buyers research at least half of their work purchases online. With buyers transitioning to online browsing, this makes having a web presence more important than ever. Implementing SEO best practices will make your website more visible on Google’s search engine, allowing you to reach these customers. SEO is the process of optimizing your website through content, keywords, and user experience to meet search engine standards and drive quality traffic. In this SEO guide for B2B, we will share five crucial tips on optimizing your website to achieve higher rankings.
SEO Guide for B2B Tip #1: Understand Your Audience’s Search Intent
Understanding the audience’s search intent is about knowing the audience’s keywords when searching for your services. It is a great starting point when planning the content on your website and picking the keywords you want to incorporate.
The goal here is to understand the audience’s search intent so that your website ranks for these search pages.
Understand that users may use generic search terms when looking for your services. For example, if a user searches for “landscape contractor,” the search results will be higher and over-saturated with competitors trying to rank for the same keyword. Defining your services in long-tail keywords will earn more business from users that have specific search intent. For example, you can define your services as “commercial landscape contractor Dallas,” where you clearly define your services and identify your location, reaching more prospective customers.
Ranking for both forms of keywords will drive traffic. However, the more niche your keyword is, the more prospective customers you will reach.
To learn more about how users search for your services, visit seedkeywords.com. You can create a search scenario to send to friends and learn more about how they would search the given topic. To learn more about how users search for your services, visit seedkeywords.com. You can create a search scenario to send to friends and learn more about how they would search the given topic.
SEO Tip #2: Create Content for Customer Acquisition
Once the user has reached your website, it is time to sell your content for customer acquisition.
The content on your website needs to be easily digestible so that all audiences can easily understand the services you offer. If possible, try to keep an 8th-grade reading level on your homepage. Once your customer reaches the services page, you can get into the nitty-gritty of the services you offer.
In the sales cycle, the audience will need to develop brand consideration before they take action.
Introduce your brand through creative content. For B2B, you should:
- Use a portfolio page or case studies to showcase experience
- Introduce your team on a team page
- Provide a FAQ or an advice column
The brand consideration phase is your opportunity to develop content that pushes the customer to the next level, so they develop a brand preference.
SEO Tip #3: Build A Website for Humans and Search Engines
The point of building an SEO strategy is so that search engines recognize the quality of your website and give it authority over competitors.
Like humans, search engines like web pages that are easy to understand. They use a bot known as a crawler that quickly evaluates the subject matter of your web pages. To help the crawlers, the content on your website needs to be structured, focused, and organized. This optimization also pertains to the text that is not visible to the human reader but lies within the HTML code and text embedded in your images.
Search engines also like links. Google uses the PageRank system to evaluate the quantity and quality of the links found on your website. The internal links on your website matter because they drive traffic throughout your website, i.e., inbound links found in blogs and articles.
External links are important because they help boost your rank. External links can be social media profiles, reviews, and other public relation-driven content.
At the end of the day, design your website experience for the user. Your website structure must be in your audience’s best interest.
SEO Tip #4: Keyword Research for B2B Audiences
When a user starts a search query, they are usually looking for an answer to their question. As an SEO best practice, identify the most valuable and effective keywords within that search query.
This keyword research goes back to tip number one in identifying user intent. Aim to be the search result that pops up and answers that user’s question. As a B2B, allow this keyword to relate to your business.
When researching and choosing keywords, you want to pick the one that has high visibility but low competition. These tend to be long-tail keywords searched by users with high purchase intent. Try to pick 5-6 of these phrases.
Utilize short-tail keywords frequently throughout your site for search optimization. You should include keywords throughout the content of your page plus any link text, image alt-text, the page’s meta description, and web page URL.
There are a plethora of websites that help identify the best keywords. Google Trends and Ubersuggest are great tools to use for insight on keyword data.
SEO Tip #5: Meeting Page Speed and Mobile Expectations
As a last tip, search engines will be checking the user experience as it relates to page speed and mobile friendliness.
According to Biznology, 40% of users abandon websites that take more than 3 seconds to load. Having a website that does not meet users’ page speed expectations can result in a high visitor bounce rate and hurt your website’s quality score. With mobile users accounting for half of the web traffic worldwide, mobile-friendliness is another standard set by users and search engines. Website designs should be able to work across all mobile devices.
Consulting with a web developer can help identify the ins and outs of a website that are harder to understand. However, tools such as PageSpeed Insight by Google and Pingdom can help check your website’s page speed quickly.
SEO Guide for B2B Results
Following these SEO for B2B Guide tips, it is essential to understand that ranking on the first page of Google does not happen overnight. It can take up to 24 months to make it to the first page depending on the keyword. As long your tactics are consistent, search engines will recognize your efforts and increase your authority. If you are looking for SEO experts to help optimize your website, Contact Bold Entity.
