8 B2B SEO Best Practices to Leverage Your Strategy

Without a strong B2B SEO strategy, you won’t be able to seize everything that SEO has to offer. You probably already know that SEO for B2B and B2C are completely different, but what are the practices that will help you make the most of SEO for B2B? Don’t worry, we’ll tell you. 

In this article, we will look at the most important practices that’ll help your B2B business really outrun the competition and get the deserving first place on Google–or any other search engine.

Let’s see how you can make a flawless strategy that gets you where your users are looking.

Ready to make it on top of Google mountain? Let’s do this.

Why is SEO Important for B2B?

Search engine optimization is what allows your amazing content to be found by your target audience. It’s the science that works like the most accurate dating match: finding the perfect couple between your content and your ideal customer–a match made in marketing heaven.

However, despite brands knowing its importance and probably using it in their strategies already, most are not seizing it the way that is possible. 

Why?

Various reasons, probably, and going through a recession doesn’t help, is that it’s hard to show its return on investment. But, trust us, SEO for B2B can be your go-to channel for your customer acquisition strategy, and it can truly show its worth.

When done correctly SEO can help you gain trustworthiness, brand awareness, and build thought leadership. After all, in B2B content, readers aren’t looking to be entertained, or see one article of yours before they make a decision. No. They want to know you are a reliable source, that you know and understand their problems, and that you’re an expert in the subject.

SEO is based on three pillars that work together to get you to the top of the search results. Those pillars–which we will discuss how to make work for you–are:

• Technical SEO. The technical aspects that make your page indexable and rank higher by search engines are: site speed, website architecture, accessibility, redirects, crawl budget, and more.
• On-page SEO. The specific things you can make on your page and content to let users and search engines know what your page is about and give it a better user experience, which will result in a higher ranking are: keywords, URLs, meta descriptions, content quality, images, internal links, and others.
• Off-page SEO. The elements that go beyond your own page can help you rank higher by letting search engines know that your website is trustworthy and that other people are linking to: link-building and the quality, authority, and relevance of the incoming links, and more.

What’s the difference between B2B SEO and B2C SEO?

To really understand why a B2B SEO strategy is so important for businesses and how to make it work there are three key things we need to understand. 

First, different from B2C where you’re targeting the person that will probably make the final decision of buying your product, in B2B you have multiple decision makers to convince. This also means there is a lower conversion rate than in B2C. B2B SEO is about the long game, not the quick wins.

Second, in B2C, the more people that see you, the better. Instead, in B2B you want your specific target audience to see you. So, the quality and targeting of your readers are better, not the quantity. This is why sometimes you’re better off targeting low-volume keywords, rather than high-volume ones if they are highly specific to your ideal customer profiles (ICP).

Third and last, in B2C your brand is important, but in B2B it’s crucial. In B2C, someone might buy a pair of headphones just because they are cheap enough, regardless of the brand they are. Instead, in B2B and due to the long line of decision makers that usually have a say before purchase, your brand and your thought leadership are essential for them to make a decision.

Here are some important B2B SEO statistics to look at:

• Paid search and social media marketing account for 10% and 5% of the traffic to B2B and B2C sites. Instead, organic search–accomplished with SEO efforts–drives 51% of all visitors
• The first page of SERPs accounts for 71% of all traffic
• Long-tail keyword searches have a click-through rate of 3% to 5% higher than generic keyword searches
• Over 25% of internet users will click on the first result on the SERPs

• 45% of large companies invest more than $20,000 a month in SEO. Instead, most small businesses invest less than $1,000–worried about the budget you’ll need. Worry not and learn how to set up your B2B marketing budget.

Getting to the top search engine results pages will always be a priority for businesses. To do this, you’ll need to create useful content and custom-made B2B SEO strategies.

By using the right B2B SEO strategies you’ll be able to:

• create the content that your ideal customer is looking for
• have your content be seen by the right people
• convince multiple decision makers and improve conversion
• improve your brand’s awareness and thought leadership

Now that we’ve seen why it’s so important, let’s see how you can develop a bulletproof strategy.

8 B2B SEO best practices to use in your strategy

According to HubSpot, Google’s search algorithm uses more than 200 factors to rank websites. This means that getting on top of the results is not an easy feat. However, it isn’t impossible–just look at this result and how we’ve managed to be at the tippy top of the results page.

Here are the 8 B2B SEO best practices you need to include in your B2B SEO strategy to make sure you’re doing everything you can to succeed:

1. Create Ideal Customer Profiles

Unlike social media, where you’ll be shown things that might be interesting to you and you’ll actually end up following more than ten accounts of cute puppy dogs–without you ever intending to use Instagram like that. In SEO, it is all about user intent.

If you’re not showing the user what it is they’re looking for, they’ll either leave your site as quickly as they got in or simply scroll on by.

Creating ICPs should be your first step when designing a winning B2B SEO strategy which is an abstract representation of who your ideal customer is. It’s made based on quantitative and qualitative data from thorough market research.

Of course, most businesses will have a set of different buyer personas as they are not catering to only one type of customer. The more specific you can go with each, understanding their pain points at different stages of the buyer’s journey, their online behavior, and more, the better you’ll be at creating an SEO strategy that addresses each of their needs at the stage of the journey they’re currently in.

2. Focus on keyword research

Now that you understand who your ideal customer profiles are and you’ve set up your buyer personas, you’ll need to focus on keyword research.

Keywords are one of the main elements that will let search engine crawlers know what your site and content are all about. Additionally, keywords are how people communicate to search engines what they want. After all, that’s what you’re typing into the search bar.

There are a few things to consider when doing keyword research:

• Different keywords for different stages: You need to find the specific keywords that people are using to drive them through your sales funnel from top to bottom–see the image below to understand how each stage can change the content you want to show and the keywords would be logically changing too
  
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• Focus on long-tail keywords: the more niche you can go on B2B SEO, the better. After all, users will come to you with very specific problems that your business is solving. Which means that the narrow you can go the better. Instead of ‘SaaS SEO’ go for ‘SaaS SEO Competitive Analysis.’
• Use tools to your advantage: keyword research is not rocket science, but that doesn’t mean it should be entirely done manually. There are plenty of tools out there designed to help you find what other URLs are ranking for, what people are looking for, find the monthly search volume of the keyword, estimated keyword difficulty, and much more.

To name just a few keyword research tools you have:

• SEMrush
• Google Search Console
• Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
• KWFinder
• Google Keyword Planner
• Moz Keyword Explorer

You can have great content, but if the keywords you’re using on your titles, meta description and copy do not match the search intent, you’ll be wasting your time.

Keep in mind that related keywords are also important to consider. If you fill everything with just one main keyword, Google won’t be as impressed. Instead, if you’re talking about SEO and you mention things like:

• Search volume
• Google search console
• Organic traffic
• Landing pages
• XML sitemap
• Buyer persona
• SEO marketing
• and so on…

Google will see all of these related keywords as a sign that you really are talking about SEO and that you know your stuff.

We know it all sounds a bit daunting but fear not. It’s possible to have great keyword research and an optimum SEO strategy with the right tools and knowledge. However, if you want to leave SEO in the hands of the experts. Check us out–a B2B SEO agency created to do all the heavy lifting for you.

3. Create great quality content

“Content is king, but only when quality is the cloak it wears.”

This means that unless you have a well-thought-out content marketing strategy and execution, your SEO strategy will only take you so far.

How do you make sure you have a killer content strategy?

• Ensure you’re creating content that is relevant for your industry, keywords, and user intent
• Make your content available in the different formats and channels that your target audience is consuming information–it could be webinars, videos, podcast, blog posts, or more
• Tackle your content gap–the keywords and topics that your competitor is ranking for but you’re not
• Follow the 70/20/10 rule: 70% of your content is educational, 20% is for engagement, and 10% is self-promotion
• If it’s not valuable content, better leave it out–don’t make the mistake of thinking more is always better, sometimes less but better quality is what will get you the right audience to engage
• Take inspiration from those in the first places of search rankings–see what you can learn from them. The length of their blog posts, the keywords used in their titles, the general format of their resources, and anything else that stands out.

Content creation is not easy, but it will be easier if you focus on providing value to your users. After all, in B2B you aim to prove you’re a thought leader in a specific problem and that you understand better than them the problems they are having.

When you focus on doing these things, and you pay attention to what users like in terms of images, white space, and whatever is working for your competition, you’re staying on top of your content SEO.

4. Make your content accessible

Google and other search engines don’t disclose every single factor they use in their algorithm. However, increasing the accessibility of your site will always be a good idea.

We don’t mean only accessibility for those with some type of visual impairment–e.g. colorblindness for example–but the general accessibility of your site for crawlers and humans.

Accessibility checklist to make sure your content is as accessible as possible:

• Font type: remember that part of the algorithm of Google and other search engines is seeing if people that click on your page actually stay on it. If your font is so fancy that it’s illegible, it won’t matter how good the keywords are or how fast the site loads, people will leave your site in a heartbeat.
• Heading style: this is both for humans and website crawlers. By using the right hierarchy of headings and styles of headings–h1, h2, h3, and so on–you let people and crawlers know what your page is about and how it is organized. This is especially important for humans as most people will skim a page until they find what they’re looking for. In fact, it has been found that 55% of the people that click on your content read only 15 seconds of it.
• List styles: breaking your blocks of text with styles with accessible list styles makes it easier for people to take in the information
• Alternative text: for those with seeing impairments alternative text is crucial. It allows text-to-voice software to describe images to them. Additionally, alternative text can be another opportunity for you to include keywords and give those crawlers more information about your content
• Linking context: anchoring more than just one word or brand, but actually including some contextual words can improve how search engines read the links in your content
• Mobile-friendliness: in 2021, it was found that over 63% of organic search engine visits came from a mobile device. This means that if your site is not mobile-friendly you’ll be losing some precious market share, and it will negatively impact your SEO efforts
• Luminance contrast: when you set a contrast ratio that makes it easier for older or those with low vision to distinguish text from the background you’re helping more people be able to read your content
• Clarity in forms: if you need your users to fill out forms, make sure you have labels that specify the type of information they need to fill in, and clearly explain when an error has occurred and what the user can do to fix it
• Multimedia alternatives: if you’re adding a video, an image, or audio multimedia, make sure you offer alternatives so that those that are blind, have low vision, or are deaf can still access the content you’re sharing
• Overall layout: the way you’re presenting your content to your users can dramatically change how they perceive it. Make sure to add enough whitespace so as to not tire the eyes of the reader, and that any division, CTA, title, and other elements are clearly defined

If you’re in the SaaS industry and you want to learn more about how to make SEO-friendly content. Check our Best SaaS SEO Checklist for Creating Optimized Content.

5. Check the competition

Checking the competition is a key aspect of SEO. After all, if you’re trying to compete for that first page, you need to see what they’re doing that’s working, and how you could improve on it.

Obviously, you’re always aiming to provide original content. However, noticing the gaps that there are between your competitors’ content marketing strategy and yours is essential to understand what you could be doing better.

If you want to dig deeper into how to conduct an insightful competitor analysis. Check out our article and you’ll learn the eight steps to take in order to get the most out of your competitor analysis.

6. Don’t forget about backlinks

One way that Google and other search engines know how trustworthy and relevant your page is, is by looking at backlinks.

Backlinks are the links on other websites that point back to your site. This lets Google know that your information is accurate and that you’re a thought leader–if you have backlinks from respectable websites, of course.

The more backlinks you have, the higher you’ll be in rankings, and this can help you get more organic and referral traffic.

In case you don’t believe the importance of back-linking, check these two statistics that paint a powerful picture:

• Search Quality Senior Strategist at Google, Andrey Lipattsev, said that high-quality content and link-building are the two most important signals used by Google to rank your website
• Over 90% of all pages get no organic traffic from Google, and this is mostly due to the fact they don’t have backlinks

Source

Backlinks are really important because it’s what give more weight and authority to your content. Although the best way to get backlinks is simply to have amazing content, there are some other ways for you to get more backlinks through:

• Vendors and partners
• Brand mentions
• Badges
• Press releases
• Funding & investor updates
• B2B Podcast interviews
• Roundup articles
• Guest posts
• Original research
• Product reviews
• Conferences

If you want to learn more about how to implement some winning back linking tactics to give your site the chance it deserves. Check out our article 11 B2B Link-Building Tactics & How to Implement Them and you’ll become an expert in a matter of minutes.

7. Don’t forget about internal linking

Although back-linking seems to be an important sauce in our SEO hotdog build, we can’t forget about internal linking. Especially, since it is the one in charge of letting Google and search engine crawlers find, index, and understand all the pages on your site.

When used properly, internal links can organize and give page authority to your important pages.

Best practices for internal linking:

• try to use keyword-rich anchor text that is still relevant and natural for the reader
• link to important–pillar–pages
• avoid using the same anchor text for different pages
• use Google Search Console to audit your internal linking
• place links higher up in your copy–avoid a closing statement with all your links
• make your internal links ‘Dofollow’ links–these are links that are indexed and crawlers will include them in their searches
• when linking to the same page on one piece of content, keep in mind Google will only take into account that first anchor text
• ensure the most important pages on your website are accessible from the homepage–this helps Google understand the architecture of your site better.

8. Technical SEO is just as important

Now that we’ve mentioned some on-page and off-page SEO best practices, you can’t forget about technical SEO.

Quick reminder: technical SEO refers to all those elements that make your website easier to crawl and index.

Some important elements you should be including and optimizing in your B2B SEO strategy:

• Meta elements: meta tags–titles, descriptions, and others–are placed in the code of the site and let crawlers know what the page is about at a deeper level than on-page titles and copy
• Page loading time: if people have to wait for your page to load, they’ll likely move on to another that charges quickly–has it not happened to you? To make sure your page is loading at the right speed make sure all elements in your page–images, videos, and others–are optimized.
• Schema markup: these rich snippets that show your business, products, and other relevant information better to users are not only important because it increases your chances of users clicking your result, it also helps Google better understand your business and potentially add you as an entity in the Knowledge Graph–which comes with added benefits for your SEO and brand.

To understand these elements and many others that you should be thinking of when you think of technical SEO, head over to our technical SEO guide–see how internal linking works.  

Now we’ve covered the elements and practices that will help you implement your SEO strategy like an absolute SEO expert. Let’s look at proof of how all of that works in one amazing B2B SEO success story. 

Winning examples of B2B SEO in the real-world

MailChimp: A monkey-climb to success

Thanks to their thoughtful and valuable content–as well as great tools and technical SEO–they’ve jumped to SEO success. Their Ahrefs’ Domain Rating is 93, with 18 million backlinks that come from 46 thousand of linking websites. They have 17.9 million monthly visits, and they’ve made it to the top of SERPs’ crucial high-volume keywords like ’email marketing,’ ’email automation,’ and ’email tools.’

Nathan Latka: a year to see results

Nathan Latka signed up for our SEO Management service and we increased his organic traffic by 568% in 12 months, dethroning giants such as Owler, Crunchbase, and Profitwell. He now has multiple crucial SaaS keywords on the first SERPs. 

Additionally, getlatka.com gets 10,500 monthly organic visits according to Keywords Everywhere and ranks for a total of 9690 keywords. All thanks to a 12-month SEO marketing plan. 

Final thoughts on B2B SEO best practices

Now that you know what to do to improve your chances of ranking on the first page of Google, all you have to do is keep on optimizing, keep on looking for link-building opportunities, and have patience.

SEO is something that takes some time to show results. Make changes, and keep checking and analyzing your key sites and business metrics to see if you’re on the right course or if you need to readjust.

Your site’s online visibility and traffic are key to the success of your business, so keep working on it until you see results, and then keep working on it. SEO is an ongoing practice and you’ll be tweaking and improving it for as long as Google and search engines exist.

However, remember what’s the most important thing here: your audience. Create valuable content first, and then focus on the rest and you’ll see your business climbing higher.

B2B SEO best practices FAQ