Why SEO is indispensable for effective B2B marketing

This article I wrote for and previously appeared on Marketingfacts.

B2B companies are enthusiastic adopters of marketing automation software (according to some surveys, 55 percent of B2B companies work with it). The inbound-focused approach promoted by marketing automation providers has increased the importance of SEO for B2B companies. According to the Regalix State of B2B marketing survey, 54 percent of B2B companies said they spent more money on SEO in 2016. That's just as well.

Differences from B2C

In B2B marketing, the effect of SEO is more indirect than in B2C, this is due to a number of reasons:

1. Purchase processes are longer. Leads come in contact with a company through several channels before they become customers.
2. There are almost always multiple decision makers influencing the buying process.
3. The price of products/services is high.

Opportunities for B2B companies

The long buying process with multiple influencers offers companies an opportunity to differentiate themselves from competitors through a good SEO strategy. According to research, B2B researchers do an average of 12 searches before going to a specific brand's website.

If you are highly visible as a potential supplier at this stage, you will have an advantage over competitors who are not.

The difference between content marketing and SEO

To be clear, there is overlap between content marketing and SEO but the two disciplines are not the same. Content marketing focuses on creating and distributing good content(Content Marketing Institute). SEO focuses on improving the quantity and quality of organic traffic through a search engine to a website (source MOZ).

Content is one of the three pillars of SEO, along with technology and link building. There are a number of ways B2B companies can use SEO to get more out of their produced content.

Content

With B2B companies, there are thus more influencers during the customer journey. The questions these individuals have are often different and therefore the content must also have a different approach.

For SEO, for example, this means different word usage in meta titles and descriptions.

For example, content to influence a CFO will emphasize cost savings (in numbers) and ROI (in percentages) in meta titles and descriptions.

The type of content that is effective also varies by influencer or stage in the buying process. Sometimes it's an article, but it can also be a video, infographic or calculator. For SEO, these content types each have different opportunities to attract visitors and properly inform them.

Videos, for example. These can provide views on YouTube, of course, but from an SEO perspective, they can also provide traffic through search engines. To do that, create a page on the website with the same topic with the video and the transcript of the video. By doing so, the video generates views from two channels and provides traffic not only to the YouTube channel, but also to the website. And that, of course, is what you want.

Producing and distributing content is one thing. Making sure the content is findable and continues to attract visitors to a website is at least as valuable.

Technology

When it comes to content marketing, B2B companies produce a lot: all stages of the buying process x all the different influencers x all the information they need. As a result, you run the risk of pages competing against each other in search results instead of reinforcing each other.

Therefore, from an SEO perspective, it is essential to establish a good website structure and hierarchy to properly map content. In addition, it is important that your website can load the large amount of content quickly.

Link Building

When creating all this content, priorities must inevitably be set. SEO techniques, in this case link building, can play a decisive role here. After all, content that has a high probability of getting links has great value for the findability of the website as a whole.

This recent article by Kerry Jones on Moz discusses content types that can continue to generate links. Many of these content types are often used by B2B companies. By using link building smartly, you ensure that your entire website benefits from the content you create.

SEO kpi's for B2B

Before you start SEO, you want to know where you currently stand, so that you can hopefully conclude later that it has not all been for nothing. Below are a few examples of kpi's that will tell you where you stand.

Here I assumed that pages on the website are already categorized by stage in the buying process.

Overall:

• CAC: cost of one customer
• CLTV: revenue per customer over entire term.
• Rankings: positions in search engines on chosen keywords
• Number of linking domains to the website
• Total organic traffic to the website

Awareness:

• Pageviews/time on page - pages awareness phase
• Number of views and CTR in organic search results pages awareness phase

Consideration:

• Pageviews / time on page - pages consideration phase (possibly by influencer)
• Number of microconversions
• Number of views and CTR in organic search results pages (consideration phase)

Comparison:

• Pageviews / time on page - pages comparison phase
• Number of quote requests/conversion percentag
• Number of views and CTR in organic search results pages comparison phase

Conversion:

• Number of new customers
• Conversion rate number of new customers/quote requests
• Number of views and CTR in organic search results pages conversion phase

Retention:

• Pageviews/time on page customer service pages
• Number of clients that mention collaboration on its website
• Number of views and visitors entering the website through customer cases.
• Number of views and CTR in organic search results pages retention phase

Mapping these indicators reveals where opportunities for improvement exist. Prioritize these opportunities, make time to work on them and evaluate whether it has worked.

An earlier article by Tristan Lavender advocated a shift from campaign-based to continuous B2B marketing. With SEO, this is also the recommended course of action. By continually investing in SEO, you improve the overall findability of your website, increase the value of your produced content and your list of leads fills up.

Additions and comments about SEO in a B2B environment are more than welcome in the comments.

Credits image: Markolf Zimmer, License: CC BY-NC-ND (Noncommercial reuse)