SEO for B2B is different from traditional marketing in that you’re selling to a very narrow demographic; the one with quite different needs. 

That’s why the marketing approach must also be different. Just so you know, there are no ‘different’ algorithms for business-to-business companies. But, the overall strategy has to be devised according to a unique buyer-persona.

Speaking of which, let’s take a look at the best SEO practices for a B2B company.

Know Your Audience

The kind of decision-makers for a B2B company is different from that for a B2C company. They’re not your typical buyers who are looking to make personal decisions. These people are mostly top-level executives, managers, and CEOs who are trying to buy something for the company/organization.

That’s why it can be tricky to understand who they are, where they are, what they need, and how to connect with them to understand them better.

• You can try talking to them
• Find out the platforms where your competitors are connecting with customers
• Use Google Analytics to gain further insight into where the site traffic is coming from
• You can also observe them on sites like Quora
• Look into the best-performing pages on your sites

Know Your Competition

Instead of reinventing the cycle from scratch via trial and error, it’s best to learn from your competitors. Check out what kind of online presence they have.  

Additionally, you should also look into:

• What kind of topics they are writing about and how they are connecting with audiences.
• What kind of content they are creating? Is it blogs, videos, infographics, white paper, case studies, or something else?
• Shortlist a few keywords and look for them into search engines. Look into what keywords your competitors are targeting. Conduct their sites’ SEO audit. You can further reveal their secrets by using SEMrush to look into more details.

Create in-depth content

For B2B companies, it is particularly important to go deep into detail as the searchers are often looking for detailed information. To establish yourself as an authority, you must create helpful, informative, and in-depth content.

This is not to say that every single entry must look like a Wikipedia page. But, you may want to look at how your competitors are handling it. What’s the appropriate and average length for a typical topic? You must also keep the target audience in mind while writing it.

The length of in-depth content varies according to topic, industry, and persona. But, in some cases, it can go as long as 3,000 - 5,000 words. Sometimes a twenty-minute video can also do the trick.

Use SEO Topic Clusters

Since the days of Google Hummingbird, it has become important to shift from a keyword-centric approach to a topic-centric approach. 

That’s because Google no longer looks at keywords alone. It also looks at the overall context and how well a brand talks about broad topics. The Hummingbird update allows Google to find out websites that are true authorities in the industry.

That’s why every B2B brand must come-up with a content strategy. To effectively secure organic traffic at the level of the topic, you can use a little something called ‘Topic Clusters’.

It’s essentially a type of content model wherein a bunch of pages revolve around one pillar page. The main page will speak broadly about a subject while the sub-pages will go more into detail about each sub-topic.

Link Building

Link Building is the most effective and most time-consuming way to boost your site’s SEO. Because it demands so much time and effort, you could choose to work with a B2B agency that offers link-building services. However, make sure that you pick the right one as many of them will focus on quantity rather than quality.

Truthfully, if you follow the ethos of the B2B industry, you’ll find myriad link-building opportunities. For example, you could contact people from within your network for your blogger outreach efforts. You could also contact publications, industry blogs, associations, podcasts, friends, and partners.

After that, you could tap into high-profile publications within your niche or other relevant sites. But, be sure to pick the right ones that fit the context of your business perfectly. It’s crucial that you format the emails right while reaching out to them. It’s good to work out topics that the publication is lacking so it could add value to their site. You could even choose to run a monthly column.

 You can use tools such as Semrush to detect link building opportunities.

Run co-marketing Campaigns

Another thing B2B companies can do is to run a collaborative marketing campaign with other organizations and strategic partners. This is something so simple yet so powerful that it’s doable by almost every company. 

Chances are, you already have a network/partnerships to leverage. If you are already producing webinars, videos, blog posts, events, SlideShare, etc. - then you could always join hands with another partner to share new insights and find out new ways to leverage the power of content.

You can find out overlapping areas of expertise or audience that you could together use to benefit each other. You could partner-up on a webinar, podcast, or video content and have it promoted on both the organizations’ channels, social media, blog, email, etc. 

Build Your Site on Solid Foundations

It’s not enough to have a well-optimized, content-rich site. You must also make it a point to offer a pleasant experience; both to the visitors and search engines. Otherwise, you’ll have a hard time ranking high.

Make sure you check all of the technical aspects of the website. Also, during the development - keep all the SEO factors in mind. For example, see if the search engine crawlers can access the site. You can do that by removing the noindex tag for all the pages that you wish to appear in SERPs.

Additionally, do create a sitemap to crawl your site and identify key pages. Many CMS like WordPress automatically create a sitemap for you. They also offer SEO plugins like RankMath or Yoast. Make sure to use them well to create SEO-optimized pages and content.

Bottom Line

B2B SEO continues to remain a tough niche to crack; but with proper insight and consistency, you can get the hang of it.