Not every business should invest in an SEO campaign. The most common reason why we recommend against running a campaign is due to competition.
Google favors big websites with a large number of links, age, and authority. In some scenarios, competing against these types of businesses is cost-prohibitive.
Another common reason we recommend against SEO campaigns is that the search volume is too small. This is often the case for B2B businesses: the product or service is too niche, and they’re better off trying to make connections with key industry colleagues than relying on those companies to find them online.
Despite the search volume problem, some of our best campaigns have been B2B SEO campaigns.
Here are some search engine optimization considerations to remember:
National, Regional, and Local B2B Companies. Build Local Landing Pages
Does your B2B company sell its services or products locally, regionally, or nationally?
If you sell locally and are extremely niche, gaining a lot of traction can be difficult. However, when selling locally to other companies, the competition is usually limited. This means you can still rank well, even if the search volume is quite limited.
Having more pages can increase organic traffic.
To improve your chances of ranking higher in local searches, create rank worthy local landing pages for each location you serve or operate in.
A site with more high-quality local pages targeting more keywords relevant to the business and the customers’ needs can drive more organic traffic.
Regional or national service providers, can also create individual location pages for every location you serve. The potential for these more expansive geographic areas is hundreds or even thousands of pages, increasing your chances of higher rankings in multiple cities.
For example we’ve done that for a Biomedical Calibration company we work with.
You can get some organic traffic to the pages because each city will have some search volume for your target keywords.
While these many pages don’t necessarily have to be unique, try to ensure 40-50% of the content on each of these pages is unique. Here is an example of that.
It’s also ideal to create pages with audience-first content that offers accurate information about each location and your business’s unique selling points.
Here’s how you can make your location pages unique:
- Customized photographs: Add pictures of work or services you’ve completed in that market.
- Reviews and testimonials: Add testimonials and reviews from real clients in that location. You can get local reviews from your Google Business Profile.
- Localize the content: Add local information specific to that location. For example, if you run chiropractic clinics with different staff at each location, highlight this on each location’s page.
- Local partnerships: Mention local partnerships, vendors, events, resources, and charities your business is involved with.
- Use location-specific URLs: Add the specific town, city, or region to the URL of the corresponding page. For example: www.greatdomain.com/north-vancouver-bookkeeper
- Location-specific FAQs: Customize the FAQs to match your audience’s concerns and your business’s specifics. For example, “What services or products do you offer in Houston, Texas?”
Local location pages are much more useful than simply offering geographic information. Use them to improve your local organic rankings and boost lead conversion to increase your customer base in different areas.
Target Top of Funnel Keywords with Informational Content
Your local company can improve its chances of high organic rankings if you target top-of-funnel (TOFU) keywords.
TOFU keywords are search phrases you target early in the customer buying journey to create awareness about your business, services, or products.
The keywords are typically broad at the awareness stage and have the highest search volume. You’ll want to target high-volume keywords, ideally with some local search intent.
Create content that satisfies the user intent and your potential customers’ questions better than the businesses you compete with.
Ranking well for TOFU keywords can be challenging for local B2Bs.
For regional and national B2B businesses, you can craft informational content that will have a bigger impact on reaching more potential customers. This is because if you serve a national customer base a reader in Texas is just as likely to become a client as a reader in California.
However, if they find your content and aren’t located in your city of operation or service, even if the content is useful they can’t buy your goods or services.
As such, informational content has greater SEO value in a regional or national B2B SEO campaign than a local one. It can also act as supporting content, helping your commercial content rank higher.
Targeting Shoulder Topics with Informational Content
Shoulder topics are topics that aren’t directly related to your products or services but are relevant and interesting to your potential customers. They can help put your company in front of potential buyers in the future.
For example, if you sell agricultural machinery, “agricultural grants” can be a great shoulder topic because users can use these grants to buy your equipment.
Since the B2B sales cycle or customer buying journey tends to be longer, targeting shoulder topics can help form some of the touch points along the journey. Such touchpoints can include blogs, case studies, white papers, location pages, and service or product pages.
From these touchpoints, potential customers can enter your customer relationship management system, and your sales representative can contact them to start and develop a relationship.
Most B2B businesses overlook this strategy.
Create Case Studies / White Papers
A B2B case study is a critical marketing tool that uses solid examples to show how a customer solved a problem using your product or service.
On the other hand, a B2B white paper is a marketing tool you use to educate your audience, helping them understand a given topic or solve a problem. It proves your expertise and shows your ability to analyze a problem and provide a helpful solution.
The idea of a case study is to focus on the customer and the pain point your business solved for them rather than on your product or service explicitly.
To develop a winning case study, it’s best to think of the study before you deliver the product or service.
Thinking in advance can help you be more thorough or detailed. It also allows you to confirm with the client first if they are okay with a case study being published. They can even provide crucial information before your product or service helps transform their company.
Additionally, planning the case study in advance allows you to see how to tailor your service or product to the customer for better results. You can also see what pieces of the case study to include to improve its effectiveness as a marketing tool.
White papers and case studies aren’t great for attracting organic traffic, but they are ideal for keeping users engaged when they visit your site. Users can look at them as evidence of your past work, expertise, and results.
As such, they can be excellent touchpoints for taking users from the top of the funnel to booking a call or consult, filling out your contact form, or responding to another suitable call to action.
Find Creative Ways to Target Keywords
Running a local SEO campaign is typically relatively straightforward: there are a certain number of keywords worth targeting to rank in the map pack and organic search.
With regional or national B2B companies there are usually more opportunities.
B2B campaigns can be harder to run at broader regional or national levels. This can be advantageous because you can find opportunities that aren’t overly saturated. There may not be too many companies targeting them.
As example for a cleanroom testing company we created dozens of unique city pages because they serve several states.
Another example – for a B2B uniform manufacturing company we created look pages that serve as inspiration and rank for very specific keywords.
We add several products to each look and create catchy, detailed, but brief product descriptions for each one.
Having several such pages can help attract a lot of traffic, especially if there aren’t many competitors. Try to target keywords with these product descriptions and names.
Leverage Social Channels to Drive Traffic
B2B ticket prices tend to be higher than consumer brands’, often reaching tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and even millions.
You can use social platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and LinkedIn to drive traffic to your case studies and white papers that showcase your experience and expertise.
You don’t need huge audiences on these platforms to drive lots of social traffic to your business website. The basis here is that your Linkedin or X audience is a fairly targeted audience that is easier to convert into paying clients.
You’ll want to post helpful and authoritative information on those platforms, preferably industry-related or about your product or service and the problem it solves.
It’s best to post from a personal account because it is seen as more social and tends to gain more traction than a brand account. Unlike a brand that’s faceless, a personal account helps personalize connections with your audience.
Done correctly, a solid social media campaign will help your organic rankings. Google loves seeing traffic from other sources, aside from just search.
Create Content That Provides Value & Is Hard To Replicate
B2B content is typically challenging to produce since it can be quite technical and requires more expertise and resources. It’s also more nuanced. The good news is that this difficulty favors you in that you can rank the content faster and more easily because there isn’t a lot of competition.
Here’s an important question: What type of content can we produce that isn’t easy to replicate and will provide a ton of value to our audience?
The key is trying to combine this strategy with keywords that have some search volume. The keyword volume doesn’t have to be massive because you have high ticket prices, and the search intent is much more niche or specific.
Is Your B2B Company a Good Candidate For SEO?
Now that you know some of the most important B2B SEO considerations or strategies, you may wonder if your business is a good candidate for search engine optimization.
I’ve observed that there’s no one good answer to this question. It depends on a case-by-case basis.
You’ll want to consider the following aspects to judge correctly:
- Is there enough search volume?
- How competitive are those target keywords or topics that meet the search volume criterion?
- How strong is your existing website? How much authority does it have?
- Who are your competitors? Are there gaps you can fill with content?
- How much content can you realistically produce on a certain topic or subject? What types of content would you produce?
- Will the required resources for executing the campaign be too high as to diminish the returns you think you’ll be able to generate?
The solution is to talk to several SEO companies to find out if they think you are a good candidate.
If they do, ask them to explain why and the rough roadmap they would use (such as the types of product pages, service pages, location pages, and blogs they plan to create).
Book a strategy call with us today to find out if your business is a great candidate for SEO and how we can help you.
