If you’re a B2B business, you will know how tough it can be to dominate rankings and grab positions in SERPs. However, it’s not impossible. With these 10 advanced, B2B SEO practices, you can beat the competition and get closer to your goals.
Perform a Complete SEO Audit Of Your Website:
Although it’s not exactly an advanced SEO practice, it’s amazing how many websites still miss out on basic SEO stuff like descriptions and page titles. Many of these things get overlooked at the time of website creation.
But, a simple audit can spot all the little details you’re missing. An SEO audit of the site will tell you about your site’s performance. Based on that, you can create small goals and tactics to reach them.
Use all the right Web Analytics Tools:
Once you have all your optimization goals written, next you need to have all the essential web analytics tools handy. These tools help you track what all strategies are bringing you closer to goals and which ones aren’t.
You can use Google Search Console, Google Analytics, ahrefs, and many other private analytical solutions to keep tabs on your progress and data.
Learn What Your Users Want:
After all, your customers are the backbone of your business. When you know what their pain points are, their desires and wishes, you can craft content around those points. But, how do you know what your users want? Well, for that you get their feedback.
Here’s how you can connect with them to get their feedback –
- Through social media platforms such as Quora
- Observing what kind of posts get the maximum number of shares and engagement
- Paying close attention to what your customers are saying in the comments section
- Using Google Analytics to find out your best-performing pages
Create and Optimize Landing Pages:
When you create multiple, well-optimized landing pages, you are essentially creating multiple gateways to capture the incoming search traffic. Unfortunately, most B2B websites fail to understand the importance of creating multiple quality landing pages to capture new users.
According to MarketingSherpa, 44% of clicks for B2B websites go to the home page only. That shows a lot of missed opportunities. There’s no denying that the homepage is crucial but landing pages are where the company can establish a relationship with customers.
Here’s what makes a quality landing page:
- Informative content that serves the customers
- CTAs prompting relevant actions such as downloading a brochure, sign-up for some service or free trial, etc.)
- No navigation to keep the users less distracted
Remove Things That Slow Down Your Site:
With 5G around the corner, people are getting used to fast-loading pages. That means slow websites can easily frustrate a visitor and deter them from buying or trying your product even in the future.
If your site takes more than 3 seconds to load, be sure to get rid of everything that serves no purpose. WordPress users should ideally deactivate all the plugins they don’t ever use.
Decluttering the sidebar and leaving only the essential widgets is another thing to do. You can use Pingdom to check the loading speed of different pages.
Encourage High-authority Sites to Link to You:
Quality inbound links continue to remain a huge determining factor for search engine rankings.
It’s a good practice to combine nofollow and dofollow links so you can maintain a natural link profile. Google rewards websites that do that.
For B2B marketing, the trick to encouraging inbound links from high-ranking sites is to consistently publish engaging and informative content that establishes you as a thought leader. It should naturally encourage people to link to and share your content across social media.
Once you get at the forefront of your niche, you’ll see that more and more people are mentioning you. This is what lies at the foundation of effective link building.
Create Simple, Readable URL Structure:
It’s a mistake to create confusing URLs that users can’t read. Search engines are also confused by complex URLs.
Make sure that your URL reads something like this:
https://sleepsherpa.com/how-to-sleep-better-after-drinking-alcohol/
Instead of like this:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/272531
Even though the first URL is lengthy; both search engines and readers can easily decipher it and know what the page is all about. Using complex characters or numbers, on the other hand, can throw users off.
The numbers at the end of the URL aren’t exactly suggestive of anything useful.
Keep your URLs memorable, easy to type, and Google-friendly. You should also refrain from using stop words like – in, but, the, an, a.
Write Unique and Relevant Meta Descriptions:
A meta description is the first piece of interaction the moment your page comes up in a web search. That’s why they hold immense value. Google prefers unique descriptions that give a summary of what the page is all about.
You must write unique meta descriptions for each page. While sometimes it’s necessary to cite a sentence or a paragraph from some other source, make sure that you don’t fall into the habit of copy-pasting them.
Duplicate descriptions could also get you heavy penalties and they don’t serve your visitors either.
Pick the Right Keywords at the Right Time:
Competition for B2B businesses can be cut-throat. Therefore, general keywords won’t get you anywhere. The real trick lies in picking those long-tail, ultra-specific keywords.
These keywords will get you customers willing to shell out money and become regular customers. In other words, these are keywords from the bottom-of-the-sales-funnel.
While creating pages and content around those keywords, be sure to write with the intent in mind so that pages can:
- Rank well
- Answer all the most common concerns of the searchers
Use a mix of content assets such as landing pages, ebooks, blog posts, infographics, explainer videos, case studies, white papers, podcasts, audios, etc.
Target the Right Audience aka buyer-personas:
B2B companies often have different kinds of decision-makers. Usually, these are people in top managerial positions. You must know where these key decision-makers are present. What kind of resources do they read and what platforms do they use? Connect with them and know what excites and what would help them.
For example, if you sell HR solutions, then the HR representatives of other companies will be the key decision-makers. Knowing the mindset of your own HR might give you an insight into what they want and seek through your product.
With this knowledge, you can create a razor-sharp and personalized B2B strategy.
Final words
B2B SEO best practices may be tough to get around but it’s certainly not impossible. Thousands have mastered it. You can be next in the game.