Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies are continually evolving, making it necessary for businesses to stay up to speed on the latest best practices that algorithms favor. With a business-to-business (B2B) service or product, your SEO needs to expand your reach while ensuring that your website appeals to the professionals who would use your product or service. If you find that your current SEO practices aren’t quite doing the trick to draw in your ideal clients, then these B2B SEO tips might come to your rescue.
10 B2B SEO Tips and Best Practices for 2020
Your B2B business can shine bright in search engines by adopting these SEO tips and best practices directed toward the B2B business model.
1. Create a Content Calendar
Consistent content creation is a pivotal factor in website ranking and growth. With a content calendar, you can keep yourself on track with content creation. Don’t forget a content calendar for social media content, too!
2. Get Your Expert Thinking Cap on to Plan Keywords
Short and generic keywords are a thing of the past for B2B SEO. Decision-makers for businesses search for highly-specific queries that lead them directly to the results they want. They won’t search for “business loans,” but rather, “small business loans startup” or a similar query.
Use your expertise to guide your keyword research. What industry-specific words and phrases might someone use to find you? Browsing Google, Wikipedia pages, and other authority websites in your niche might help you spark some keyword ideas. Then, use the Google Keyword Planner or a similar tool to find relevant long-tail keywords with the most search volume and low to medium competition – those are the keywords that will be easiest to rank for.
3. Optimize Metadata
Metadata refers to areas of your pages that search engines gather information from, like your title, meta descriptions, and your page URLs. Each element should be optimized for simplicity and clarity. You want your headlines and meta descriptions to be enticing while making it clear to potential visitors what your content is about and what they’ll learn by visiting your website.
4. Make Your Landing Pages Impossible to Ignore
More landing pages for prospective clients to land on can lead to more traffic – and more conversions. Each landing page should be laser-focused on key search terms that decision-makers might search for. Scope your competition for the keywords you’re targeting to make sure that your landing pages are comparable to – and better than! – other high-rankers.
5. Have Plenty of Long-Form Content Up Your Sleeves
While B2C businesses can typically get away with producing blog posts of 1,000 words or less, your B2B company is dealing with a different type of customer. Your customer wants information, and lots of it, without having to skim through 10 blog posts to find it.
Long-form content in B2B marketing is the best way to ensure that your content is the go-to resource for all the information prospects need. A Moz study found that content pieces with 2,000 words or more consistently get more average shares and backlinks than those with fewer words.
6. Add Video Content to Your Strategy
Video is taking over the internet world of content, so there’s never been a better time to hop on board – especially with a B2B business. Decision-makers are busy; sometimes, videos are the most convenient way for them to absorb information quickly. And your videos may even show up in search results, just like a blog post would.
Consider adding a transcript of your video, which you can place directly into your video or create a file to upload to your video. This process allows search engines to pick up more text, leading to a higher chance of getting your video ranked.
Be sure to add video share buttons to your website to give viewers an easy way to share your videos with their networks.
7. Tailor Keywords to Voice Searches
People use voice searches out of convenience when they need to find information quickly, especially when multitasking like decision-makers tend to do. To capitalize on this trend, cater some of your keyword research to voice searches.
Think about how people talk naturally, which is often different than what they’d type. For instance, a decision-maker might type “content agency” to save time searching for an agency to create content for their business. However, that person might say, “content agency that specializes in family law” in a voice search. Or, someone might say, “Where’s the nearest printing shop?” in a voice search, whereas they’d be more likely to type something like, “Dallas printing shops.”
8. Tweak Your Strategies to User Intent
Not everyone ends up on your site for the same reason, so your content shouldn’t target them the same. Instead, your landing pages and blog posts should be relevant to a user’s intent for their search, which could mean targeting content differently to specific decision-makers.
While a chief financial officer might look for affordable solutions for a payroll program that allows for direct deposits, a chief executive officer might search for more of an overview of how payroll software works and essential features to look for.
9. Leverage Other Authority Blogs in Your Niche
Backlinks should be a central part of your B2B SEO strategy because they prove that your site is relevant in your niche and that others find your pages helpful. Consider guest blogging for other authority blogs to build a web of backlinks to your website.
10. Pay Attention to Mobile Users
According to Statista, there are more than four billion active mobile internet users globally. You can count on busy decision-makers being a significant part of that number. Your website, therefore, should be optimized for mobile devices, not only to boost your SEO but also to ensure that your website offers a good user experience for your B2B visitors. Google even has a mobile-friendliness tool to check how well your site performs in the mobile world.
The SEO tips above are sure to give your B2B website a boost. We also suggest adding share buttons to each blog you post to make it easy for anyone who finds your content helpful to share with their networks. For B2B websites, the LinkedIn share button is an especially helpful tool. It’s an excellent way to spread the word about your product or service to other key decision-makers in your industry.
