Our Blog

SEO for B2B Companies: What You Need to Know

B2B stands for Business to Business. And as a business trying to sell to other businesses, you’re going to have a harder time attracting leads and converting those leads into paying clients.

As a B2B business owner, you don’t make your company’s money from direct customer interaction like B2C businesses do. While this may sound like a disadvantage, it can actually be an opportunity for you to gain first-page ranking on Google and other search engines.

SEO for B2B companies requires a different set of strategies and tactics. You are no longer reaching out to customers ready to make a purchase. Instead, you’re leading decision-makers from your target market to your website.

As a B2B business owner, you don’t make your company’s money from direct customer interaction like B2C businesses do. While this may sound like a disadvantage, it can actually be an opportunity for you to gain first-page ranking on Google and other search engines with basic SEO.

If you intend to work with B2B companies, SEO is more important than ever. According to a recent survey, 46% of all B2B researchers and buyers are millennials. This means offline marketing strategies are no longer enough.

You need to implement a specific set of strategies to ensure you get found online.

In this blog post, we’re going to discuss SEO strategies for B2B companies. You can implement these strategies right away and without professional assistance.

Let’s get started.

What is B2B SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the act of using strategies to ensure you rank for your target keywords in search engine results.

Let’s say you run an Italian restaurant. You can use SEO to get found by people searching for a nearby Italian restaurant.

B2B, or business-to-business, SEO is one of the most popular forms of organic search marketing today. The process of B2B SEO – like other forms of organic search – is to attract visitors to your website through natural search results. Typically, this is done by attracting people who are actively searching for companies within your industry. These searchers seek to learn more about the products and/or services offered by these types of businesses to enhance their lives or better their workplace environment.

With Business to Business (B2B) SEO, you’re attempting to get found by a more specific audience. You are a business who would like to work with other businesses, not a specific person.

However, it’s impossible to connect with an entire business as a whole online. You will need to connect with representatives of the business, and their job titles may differ depending on what product or service you offer.

If you’re a PR agency, you most likely want to lead Marketing Directors to your website.

If you offer human resources training, you would need to connect with Human Resources Managers.

If you sell office supplies for large corporations, you need to get in touch with Facilities Directors.

Understand search intent.

Before you even create content, you need to determine which keywords you’ll target with the aforementioned content.

Keyword research is the first step of any successful SEO strategy. This is the part where you brainstorm possible keywords and determine which ones you will target using data from online tools.

Several factors usually determine whether a business should target a keyword or not. They include the following.

• Keyword Volume – This is the number of times a keyword is searched for during a given timeframe.
• Keyword Difficulty – This is how difficult it would be to rank for a keyword. If a keyword has a high level of difficulty, you will most likely be competing with high domain authority websites.
• Search Intent – This is the reason why a person is searching for something online. He or she could be ready to make a purchase, looking for information, comparing products, and more.

For businesses that are targeting individual consumers, all three factors are equally important. The higher the keyword volume, the bigger the chances that you will be found by potential customers.

The same cannot be said for B2B SEO.

In this case, search intent determines whether a keyword will yield valuable results or not.

Search intent is one of the most important SEO factors. When people use search engine, they often have a task in mind. It may take several searches to complete this task or to find information about it. You need to understand what your users are searching for. There are three major types of search intents: navigational, informational and transactional.

Let’s say you sell air conditioning systems for commercial spaces, and you’ve started doing keyword research.

The keyword “air conditioner price” has a monthly search volume of 2,900. The keyword “office air conditioner price” has a monthly search volume of 10.

The difference between the two keywords’ search volume is quite large. At first glance, it may seem that the first keyword will bring more potential clients to your website.

A different picture begins to emerge once you analyse the search intent behind the two keywords. People searching for “air conditioner price” are most likely searching for air conditioners for their homes.

The keyword “office air conditioner price” will bring potential clients who are searching for exactly what you offer to your website. Its volume may be lower, but it could yield more valuable results.

Create cornerstone content.

Cornerstone content is your website’s best content. This is the content that represents your business as a whole, showcasing your expertise and authority in your field.

For example, you offer link building seminars for business owners.

Link building is a very broad subject. You could write several blog posts on E-A-T, inbound links, Google updates, and more.

Instead of doing that, you decide to write a blog post entitled The Beginner’s Guide to Link Building: Everything a Business Owner Needs to Know. The blog post covers several link building topics at once and is several thousand words long.

That is your cornerstone content.

At this point, you might be wondering why creating cornerstone content is better than writing several blog posts.

Google is now smarter than ever. Instead of detecting how many times a keyword is used in a piece of content, the search engine now takes a look at the context. It checks if related words are used in a blog post.

If you use the keyword “link building for business owners” over and over, Google will not give your search engine rankings a boost. The search engine may even penalise you.

It may, however, reward you if it sees related words like “inbound links,” “guest post,” and more.

Creating cornerstone content allows you to use target keywords and related keywords organically. It also allows you to target several keywords at once.

Conclusion

B2B SEO is vastly different from B2C SEO. Instead of focusing primarily on long tail or short tail keywords, B2B SEO requires an understanding of the complexities that accompany business-to-business interactions.

Understand the search intent behind each keyword is key. Targeting keywords with high search volume may seem like the best option, but the search intent weeds out visitors who will not be interested in your product or service.

Since the days of keyword stuffing are long gone, creating cornerstone content is essential for getting found by other business. You have the opportunity to rank for broad search keywords, targeting several keywords at once.

Need a top-class SEO strategy? Cornerstone Digital is an SEO agency in Sydney that can lead your ideal customer to your website. Call us on (02) 8211 0668 or email us at info@cornerstone-digital.com.au.

• Comments (0)
• Trackbacks (0)
• Permalink

Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.