Avoid duplication
Number one on our list of B2B SEO best practices is avoid duplication. Lots of B2B companies we work with resell vendor products. They create product pages and fill them with content from their vendor’s site.
Unfortunately this means they’ll never be able to rank for the name of the product. Search engines will look for the source of the information (the vendor’s site) and return that to the user, removing your page from the index.
Instead, think about how you can improve on the vendor copy. Consider what the vendor’s page doesn’t have e.g. video explainers, images or instructional guides/product manuals. What’s going to cause the visitor to spend longer on your version of the product page and engage with your site?
Think about the pain, claim, gain and proof content structure of your product page. Not only can you do a better job exploring your specific prospects’ pains, you’ll also be able to detail your own USPs and proof points (using your internal subject matter experts), enabling you to create valuable page content with a chance of ranking for the product you’re selling.
Assess the competition
We often find a client’s organic search competitors, aren’t the ones they detail when you ask them for a list of competitors. They’ll detail ones they’ve come up against in pitches or RFP situations. But B2B marketers considering B2B SEO best practices need to consider the companies returned in the search engine results pages for the keywords they want to rank for. These are the companies you need to be better than to generate online enquiries from organic search.
Don’t forget you can use Moz’s free SEO toolbar to assess the authority of your website versus your competitors’.
Work on your niche
While broad brush keywords (e.g. ‘IT support’) may be too competitive, keywords related to your niche are likely less competitive. Think about your strongest services/products (whether from a revenue generation perspective, or from a USP perspective) and think about pairing them with modifiers like location or sector (i.e. the ones you operate in) to generate achievable keyword targets.
Look for easy link building opportunities
Link building is hard (though crucial to B2B SEO strategy success), but you may be sitting on some quick wins:
- Are you members of any industry bodies prepared to link to you?
- Do you regularly use the same suppliers? Can you write them testimonials in exchange for links?
- Do you have vendors with partner pages? If so are you listed? If you’re listed have they linked to you?
- Are you doing any events? There are numerous linking opps from event sites to your website.
- Are you involved in any charity initiatives? If so can you secure links from these charities when you complete a round of fundraising?
- Are you involved with local business groups? E.g. Chambers of Commerce or other business networks prepared to link to your website?
Understand your customer
Fundamental to your B2B SEO success will be quality keyword research. From a B2B SEO best practices perspective you need to consider niche terminology relevant to your industry and the services/solutions you sell. What are your products and services known as to the companies you sell them to? If you are reselling a vendor’s products then have they changed the name of the product recently and are your customers still searching for what the product used to be called? What are your customers searching for before they buy from you i.e. what kind of search terms are they using in the research phase? Get this right and not only do you capture them when they’re ready to buy, but you also influence the selection decision at a much earlier stage.
Want to make sure you’ve got B2B SEO experts onboard to help your company sell more? Then give us a call! We’d be glad to help.