Basic SEO Techniques for Business-to-Business (B2B) Companies

Although the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) is widely recognized, it is all too often overlooked by B2B organizations, which is surprising given the following statistics:

• 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine
• 81% of people perform some type of online research before making a large purchase
• 75% of people never scroll past the first page of search engines

B2B marketers are prioritizing SEO because it is a proven method of attracting more visitors to their websites and increasing their company’s visibility. SEO can also be used to raise overall brand awareness, generate inbound leads, manage one’s reputation, and improve one’s brand’s influence.

To improve your organic search rankings and achieve goals like the ones listed above, compare your SEO efforts to these best practices:

Create high-quality content

Is the content you’re producing truly meeting the needs of your audience or answering real-world questions for the personas you’re trying to attract, with content still being one of Google’s top-ranking signals? Surprisingly, this question is rarely considered, which can lead to content that is company-centric rather than audience-centric.

Create content that genuinely educates or informs your target audience. Provide practical, actionable advice and insights to your personas’ pain points. Consult with your sales team to learn what product and industry-related questions prospects and customers are asking, and consider creating content that answers those questions.

Choose 1-2 keywords or a phrase to focus on when writing content like blog posts and articles. You can find this keyword by conducting a few searches on your own and seeing what other topics or content come up in the results. The first step in creating high-quality content is always to brainstorm and conduct thorough research on your topic.

Build a backlink strategy

Backlinks are still considered an important ranking factor for an SEO strategy, according to top SEO industry studies. Backlinks are created when someone or something outside of your company creates a link to your website.

As Google’s search algorithms become more sophisticated, they have learned to distinguish between good and bad links. More backlinks from reputable external sources driving traffic to your site boost your page authority and credibility with search engines, resulting in more (and new) visitors engaging with your site.

Tips for developing an effective backlink strategy:

• Produce useful content.
• Consider producing content that includes first-party data (such as a benchmark or industry report), an industry-related infographic, or a long-form article that includes references to key influencers.
• Have a well-designed website architecture.
• Your website should be simple to navigate and understand for your visitors.
• Make use of social media to help spread the word about your content, and reach out to reputable publications for guest posting and content syndication opportunities.
• Develop relationships with other content publishers and key organisations to share links.

Optimize for mobile

Having a mobile-friendly website is critical as Google continues to place a greater emphasis on mobile devices. Google will soon make mobile-friendly pages the default for search rankings, and mobile browsing has already surpassed desktop browsing. To get an idea of your website’s mobile and desktop load times, use Google’s PageSpeed Insights and optimise accordingly.

To see how your pages appear on different devices (iPhone, Android, tablets, etc. ), test your website’s user experience. Many website creation platforms include mobile viewing options; it’s a good idea to check this as you build, update, or change your website.

Determine whether Google’s AMP (accelerated mobile pages) makes sense for your business. AMP-optimized content is intended to reduce loading times on mobile devices.

Take care of technical SEO

Ascertain that you have the skills required to implement and test the technical elements required for SEO success. Ensure that search engines can easily crawl your website. Duplicate content, or the same exact content on too many of your website’s pages, makes indexing difficult.

Make sure your DNS settings are set up correctly. Domain Name Service (DNS) is the abbreviation for Domain Name System (or Servers). When you buy a domain name from a hosting company, the default settings are already set for you. Your IT department will be able to advise you on the best web solutions.

Secure your site

While it’s unclear whether Google’s algorithms favor HTTPS websites over non-secure HTTP sites, the company recently announced that web forms on HTTP pages will be flagged as “not secure,” potentially driving visitors away. If you haven’t already done so, your company should seriously consider migrating to HTTPS.

Benefits of HTTPS websites:

• Your website will be marked as ‘secure’ by Google.
• HTTPS websites give your visitors more confidence (especially for purchases)
• HTTPS pages are more likely to be ranked higher by Google than HTTP pages, giving them a slight advantage in organic search.

SEO is a never-ending process that you should not leave to chance. Consider these best practices and use analytics to track and monitor the performance of your website.