In your quest to master business-to-consumer (B2C) digital marketing strategies, you may be overlooking some important business-to-business (B2B) opportunities. The recent economic upswing — reports of an economy on the rise and decreased unemployment — provides tremendous reasons for branching out into the B2B world.
I have found that B2B customers are often spending more time on the internet, looking for the same type of high-quality, informative content, much like B2C customers. This means that webinars, webcasts and online conferences may serve as trade show alternatives for some buyers today.
The only question is: Will they find your company in their search efforts?
Industrial search engine optimization (SEO) for B2B companies means helping potential customers progress through the research, evaluation and purchase stages by creating meaningful content that answers their questions and solves their problems.
SEO for the B2B industrial market isn’t as foreign as you might think. Research by Google found that “90% of B2B researchers who are online use search specifically to research business purchases.” Furthermore, it takes an average of 12 searches before a researcher engages with a brand.
Much like B2C marketing, it’s a matter of knowing your audience and applying many of the same marketing strategies you already use every day. A good plan for SEO marketing for manufacturers consists of utilizing SEO on multiple webpage locations, developing content marketing strategies, being strategic about link building and learning more about SEO for manufacturers.
Boosting SEO Efforts For Industrial Companies
When improving your online presence, there are a few areas to focus:
• optimizing product and solution pages
• finding ways to solve the organization’s complex problems
• posting high-quality SEO content in multiple locations on websites
It’s crucial to remember who your audience is and the many reasons that take them to search engines. They may be looking for suppliers and industry trade publications. They might also be checking out their competition.
SEO For B2B Industrial Market Content
In my experience, the same content strategies for B2C customers are equally effective for B2B customers if you consider a slightly different application. SEO for industrial companies gives you plenty of opportunities for short- and long-term marketing because value-added content can help nurture potential leads.
Challenge yourself to incorporate these content strategies into your SEO for manufacturers’ marketing efforts:
• Optimize relevant keywords.
• Perform keyword research.
• Optimize HTML titles.
• Add meta descriptions.
• Use bold headings.
• Develop engaging content on websites, forums, blogs and social networks.
• Cross-link to related products and supporting content.
• Optimize landing pages for new content marketing initiatives.
• Provide a clear call to action (CTA).
• Look for secondary conversion opportunities such as newsletter sign-ups.
Provide high-quality content that’s readable across a variety of mobile devices. B2B customers are often scouring the web for case studies, product/solution tutorials, whitepapers and research studies.
Link-Friendly SEO For Industrial Companies
In developing SEO for industrial company strategies within my own work, I’ve found that it’s crucial not to forget about the importance of link building. Despite all the changes in Google’s algorithms, link building is still a major factor in how webpages are ranked.
It’s important to recall and apply the top-ranking factors in link building, which are:
• links that originate from high-quality sites
• link popularity
• trustworthiness of links
• authority of links
• the anchor text of incoming links
• the SEO and content optimization of their respective website
I’ve found that it’s easy enough to find sources for link building through content from third-party websites, through bylines and contributor biographies, and through opportunities in key industry publications. Link building leads to business development opportunities and direct sales, as well.
Try to think about all the ways that you’ve developed link-friendly content in your B2C marketing strategies, and apply the same strategies to industrial SEO for B2B companies. Consider how you can use the following tools to establish incoming links:
• calculators
• forecasting tools
• cheat sheets
• reference guides
• video tutorials
• screencasts
• easily accessible training documents
Final Thoughts On SEO B2B Industrial Market Strategies
One of the most important things that I’ve learned as a digital marketer is to be aware of the external factors that affect how customers search for information. Changes in the national economy are opening new doors within the SEO B2B industrial market. I strive to be the person walking through those doors ahead of my competition. To make that happen, I need to know who in the industries are doing research and what they’re looking for.
Being first in the B2B marketing arena requires understanding the demographics of your customer. B2B internet searchers are design engineers, plant managers, procurement managers, CEOs and executive directors. Each of them brings particular pain points and challenges to the table as they type words into the search boxes.
The best news is that we already have all the tools and expertise we need in our marketing toolkits. All we have to do is utilize them in a slightly different application to fill the needs of manufacturers and industry leaders. From there, it’s simply a matter of monitoring the results and adapting strategies.