This is How You Successfully Start with B2B SEO
Carolin Puls9/7/2023
Here you will learn what makes a successful SEO-B2B and how you can directly implement it.
Table of contents
- What does Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mean?
- Wherein does B2B SEO differ from B2C SEO?
- 5 reasons why you should use SEO in your B2B communication
- Getting started with B2B SEO
- These SEO Tools are suitable for your B2B SEO
- Success with Patience
The world and the way we do shopping are becoming more and more digital. This also applies to the Business-to-Business sector. More than 70 percent of decision-makers make their purchase decision without having spoken to your salespersons. To help your company provide the answers to the searchers' inquiries, you should use SEO for B2B. In this article, you will learn what search engine optimization is and how B2B SEO differs from B2C SEO. It also covers the specifics of this marketing tool and gives you reasons why you should definitely use it for your company's success. After you have read this text, you will know how to start with B2B SEO right away and which tools will support you.
What does Search Engine Optimization (SEO) mean?
Search Engine Optimization, short SEO, refers to all strategies and measures that help your websites and content to be ranked by search engines in the top places. The positioning at the top of the search result pages shows that Google and Co. rank your content as relevant. This increases the likelihood that searchers will click on your website. In contrast to Search Engine Advertising (SEA) SEO measures improve your visibility organically, thus unpaid.
Wherein does B2B SEO differ from B2C SEO?
For B2C companies, SEO as a marketing tool seems to be something quite natural. It should be for B2B companies as well. But beware - there are a few points in which B2B SEO differs from B2C SEO.
The most important difference between these two approaches is the starting situation. Services and products in the B2B sector are usually much more specific and require more explanation than B2C products. In addition, there is the type of communication. Although you are dealing with professionals with industry-specific knowledge in B2B, who are looking for a solution for their professional concerns, you should not throw around too much technical jargon. Here, it is important to strike a balance between general statements and technical jargon to meet your target group.
Studies have shown that B2B searchers do not make hasty decisions and inform themselves extensively. This is understandable when one considers the economic impact that a wrong decision can have. Often, due to the high amounts of money that need to be invested, several people are involved in the purchase decision. For example, purchasers, production managers, safety officers, technical experts or financial managers could be involved in the decision-making process. For this reason, your offer must provide all the information that is relevant to the different people, in order to categorize it. These include being transparent about prices and delivery times, possible applications or ROI calculations. You should also present this information transparently on your website, as your potential customers have neither time nor inclination to search for it for hours.
At the same time, the high information requirement also leads to supplier loyalty . Once decision-makers have been convinced of a supplier, they are unlikely to change them in a hurry. Unlike private individuals, impulse purchases are very unlikely. You should bear this in mind when implementing your B2B SEO. Therefore, it is all the more important that your offer appears as early as possible in the decision-making process and attracts the attention of the decision-makers. In order to achieve this, you need to select the right keywords.
In this respect, B2B and B2C SEO are significantly different from each other. While in the Business-to-Customer model you go for the frequency of a keyword search, you should better ask the question of the search intent in the Business-to-Business model. Put yourself in your target group's shoes. What needs and questions do they have in order to get the right answers? You should base your decision on your keywords on these insights. Even if the search volume is only 10 - 20 per month, it is highly likely that these searches will turn into real leads - provided you have understood the intention behind them. So in B2B SEO, you deliberately aim to reach a smaller target group, but one that is genuinely interested in your offer.
Another major difference between Search Engine Optimization for B2C and B2B is in the processing of your content. Due to the high information requirement of your target group, it is important to capture their attention early on. Even when they are not yet looking for a solution to a specific challenge. Therefore, when designing your content, you should include informative as well as commercial aspects. You can achieve this by using various content formats, such as website content, white papers or video tutorials. By using different formats, you can pick up your customers exactly where they are in their customer journey and give them new reasons to keep your company in mind.
As you already know, the motto 'Know your target group' also applies to B2B SEO. When creating your buyer persona(s), it is important to know in which departments the searchers work, whether they have decision-making power and what size their companies are. Depending on who is searching for information, their expectations will vary and different content will be relevant for their decision.
To create the best possible user experience, you need to ensure that the usability of your website is flawless. Check therefore
- Loading times
- Website security (HTTPS certificate)
- Indexing
- SEO Crawling
- Clean display of the source code
- HTML Formats
- Sensible Navigation
- Mobile presentation of your page.
You should not neglect your website optimization as the decision-makers will leave it quickly if expectations are not met.
5 reasons why you should use SEO in your B2B communication
Perhaps you are now thinking that website optimization and keyword research are not your thing. But there are good reasons why investing in search engine optimization in the B2B sector is absolutely worthwhile.
1. You get more visibility
Imagine you are searching the Internet for information to solve a problem. Which search results do you click on? The ones on page two or three? Probably not. The companies that occupy the top 10 places on the search result pages of Google, Bing and Co. get clicks - and thus the attention - of the customers. So the better you do B2B SEO, the better your position and the traffic of your website will increase accordingly.
2. You build up a reputation
If you know exactly what your target group looks like, what problems they have and how you can help them solve them, then you can align your content accordingly. Your customers will quickly notice if your content is relevant for them and will identify you as an expert. You can expand your content by developing a comprehensive cluster of topics that picks up your customers at every stage of their customer journey.
3. You achieve a high ROI
Your search engine optimized content, as you know, brings higher visibility and a growing reputation. Over time, your content will draw more and more organic customers to your website. This number of leads will be significantly higher than the ones who arrived at your company via search engine advertising. In return, SEO B2B is also convincing due to a high return on investment.
4. You can measure your success
Even though SEO measures are purely organic, you can still measure their success clearly. Using fixed KPIs, such as ranking, visibility index, number of clicks on your site as well as click-through rate and conversions, you can check at any time how many leads you were able to generate from your efforts. Also, if you want to improve your results, these indicators provide interesting statements based on which you can adjust your SEO.
5. You do not fall behind
Just like you, also your competitors know how important the use of SEO is for their business success. Everybody wants to show that their own company is the unbeatable expert in its field. Therefore, you should not lose time in order not to lose touch with the competition.
Getting started with B2B SEO
To start with SEO? Nothing is more desirable than that! In the beginning, the goal is to find the right keywords for your company. The search volume of individual keywords is indeed often lower in the B2B sector, however, you should definitely think about the search intention. You can determine this, for example, via personal customer surveys. In these, you can ask your customers how they became aware of your website, what they searched for online or how many pages they clicked through until they found what they were looking for. Based on the feedback, you can improve your customer orientation, which in turn has a positive effect on your user numbers, your traffic and your click-through rate.
Now it's time to turn to the keywords. You can use, for example, keywords with rather low search volume. Long tail keywords often reflect the intentions of the searchers much better than individual search terms. You should then definitely include the keywords of your choice in your H1 and H2 headings on your product pages and your service descriptions, so that search engines can find your content. Using an SEO tool, you can display the impressions and click-through rates for your various keywords and adjust them as needed.
Additionally, of course, you can also look around at the competition. This is particularly useful if they have a well-ranking website. How do they design their content? How are their services prepared? What is the usability of the site?
You probably wonder now when B2B interested parties will consider your website content as relevant. Present your content in small knowledge portions that your customers can take in quickly and easily. Avoid lengthy texts that do not get to the point and are full of technical jargon. Enrich your content with detailed knowledge that decision-makers need for their purchase decision. Only then might they see you as an expert and problem solver. Furthermore, it is advisable to provide an uncomplicated contact to your service employees or a live chat on your website where upcoming questions can be clarified. With short videos, podcast episodes or specialist articles, you can liven up your pages and create variety, so that visitors like to stay longer.
Pay attention from the start of your SEO career to use only one main topic and also only one main keyword per page . Also use internal links with defined anchor texts for your keyword placement. This increases the potential of your page to be displayed at the very top and to be clicked on frequently.
When we talk about B2B SEO, you also need to consider the technical side of this measure. This includes optimizing the snippets, i.e., the preview of your page results on Google. This includes using an attractive title tag and writing an appropriate meta description and generating a meaningful URL. Keep it as short and concise, so that the decision-makers can see in the preview why they should click on your website. Also, you should maintain the ALT texts of your images used so that the image search of the search engines can access them. Additionally, the ALT text is displayed if problems should occur when loading your website.
These SEO Tools are suitable for your B2B SEO
The consistent and successful implementation of SEO can be quite challenging - but it doesn't have to be. With the help of an SEO tool you can run your keyword research , monitor and track as well as monitor your SEO performance. Additionally, you can identify and close content gaps. Thanks to these and many other useful functions, you will manage to improve the visibility of your website on the search result pages and to win more B2B customers. In our SEO Software Guide we have put together a comprehensive overview of everything you need to know about SEO tool. If you want to dive directly into the feedback from users, check out the following SEO software or use our article about the best SEO tools, to find the software that suits you best.
Seobility
neuroflash
Google Search Console
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Sistrix
Ahrefs
SE Ranking
Google TrendsSuccess with Patience
Increasing your company's online visibility through B2B SEO does not happen overnight. As with many things, the rule here is: Learn from mistakes and achieve better results. Nevertheless, you can be sure that your efforts will pay off. Always keep your target group in mind when creating content and create it for them - then both your potential customers and search engines will quickly realize that your website should be right at the top.
Author
Carolin Puls
Carolin ist freie Texterin und Pressereferentin mit einer Leidenschaft für das geschriebene Wort. Als ehemalige Brand Managerin in der FMCG-Branche hat sie umfangreiche Marketing-Erfahrung gesammelt und währenddessen berufsbegleitend ihren Abschluss als Marketing-Betriebswirtin gemacht. Heute erstellt sie PR-Texte, Pressemitteilungen und Social-Media-Inhalte, immer mit viel Kreativität und Herzblut.
