The Do's and Don'ts of B2B SEO
B2B growth marketing can be a challenging road to navigate in the crowded market of today. However, with the right SEO strategy, you can quickly grow your online presence, drive in more traffic to your website and see business-changing results.
When it comes to B2B marketing, it is essential that the type of content you share as well as how such content is optimized is strategized carefully keeping in mind the needs of B2B companies.
Below, you can find the do’s and don’ts of B2B SEO marketing so that you can successfully optimize your online presence.
The Do’s of B2B SEO
- Do have a regularly-updated blog
One of the best ways to dish out fresh and valuable content to your audience is through a regularly-updated blog. Blogging is a time-tested method of increasing your website ranking and traffic and a great way of scanning prospects and generating leads. In fact, as per a HubSpot report, B2B companies with blogs generate as much as 67 percent more leads every month than those that don’t. By creating well-written, original, keyword-rich, and valuable content that is highly optimized for search engines, you can attract more prospects and drive in more traffic. - Do write for your persona
Your persona refers to the representation of your quintessential audience, that is, the people you are trying to reach with your content. While B2C businesses can target their consumers according to their age, gender, location, interests, etc., for B2B companies, it is important that you craft your content keeping in mind the persona who is likely to do the research for their own company and thus, is most likely to be the one finding your content. For instance, most companies have their communications manager or HR manager researching, so it would be smart to write for people in these positions and gear your content towards them. - Do add backlinks
When you add links to other external websites to your content, it helps built legitimacy for your own site. These links are known as backlinks. Remember to add backlinks from sites that have authority, are well-known, and have a broad reach as this makes your own site look even more credible. Keep in mind not to add too many backlinks as this can make your content look spammy. Instead of making you look legitimate and credible, it can backfire, and Google may penalize you. - Do use analytics for performance measurement
The only way to know if your B2B SEO campaign is performing well is by using analytics to measure the performance. Even before you create your content, you can make use of keyword analytics to see which keywords you should try to rank for. This helps greatly in optimizing your content. There are several wonderful platforms for these such as HubSpot, Marketo, and Moz. Often, it’s best to try ranking for keywords or phrases that have a low difficulty score but still relate to your business. Since fewer companies will be competing for these keywords or phrases, it will be easier to rank higher for them, thus resulting in higher conversions. - Do optimize images for SEO
One of the most overlooked but important SEO tip is image optimization. Not only does it help bring in more traffic, but it also makes your entire content or web page look more attractive and organized. Always add an ALT tag to your images. An ALT tag tells Google what the content of the image is. It will be shown when an image is taking a long time to load or when it cannot be displayed. Another tip for image optimization is to include the keywords in the file name instead of using generic names such as IMAGE01. When the file name has keywords in it, it increases relevancy. - Do create valuable, relevant content
Content should prioritize the audience and then optimized for search engine, not the other way round. If you are only creating content for search engines and high rankings, chances are you won’t develop valuable, relevant content that your prospects will find useful and enjoy reading. Moreover, if you have high-quality content that is shareable and quotable, you have higher chances of other sites linking back to you, thus helping to build your credibility.
The Don’ts of B2B SEO
- Do not toss around/stuff keywords
One of the most common SEO mistakes that businesses make is that they overuse keywords and mindlessly sprinkle them all over their content. This can be seriously harmful for you, and Google may even penalize you. Instead, what you should be doing is use your keywords wisely and strategically. Allow your keywords to build the content that your audience wants and make sure they are not just inserted unnaturally but go with the flow of your writing. It can be very annoying for people to read content that is clearly stuffed with keywords as this only compromises the quality of your content. - Don’t forget to make external links open a new tab
While adding external links to your content is important, there are several things you need to keep in mind. We have discussed the importance of adding backlinks in moderation as overdoing it can harm your ranking and make your content uncomfortable to read. Another important tip to keep in mind is to make your external links open a new tab. You don’t want to direct your users away from your site and this allows them to open the link while still staying on your site. - Don’t copy other people’s content
Last but not the least, remember to create original content. Plagiarism is a huge no-no in B2B SEO and will definitely harm your ranking. It is okay to take inspiration from other sites and quote their content but don’t copy large pieces of content from other websites. Search engines are getting smarter every day, and they are not a fan of copy-pasting content. Sites with such contents are only getting pushed down on search engine result pages.
While creating your B2B SEO strategy, make sure to implement (or not) these do’s and don’ts, and see the results for yourself!
