If you were to search online for your type of company, in your region, for the various markets you operate in, where would you show up in Google and Bing’s search results? Every B2B company wants to see their pages rank higher in search results, but many don’t know where to start.
The just-released 2021 B2B Marketing Mix Report reveals that search engine optimization (SEO) is right behind referrals and email marketing as the most effective lead generation strategies. Luckily, with a smart strategy, commitment, and patience, you can implement an SEO strategy that generates leads, drives traffic, and increases your standing among competitors.
Follow along as we show you how to enhance your company’s SEO with these 6 fundamental steps.
Step 1. Analyze and Optimize Your Keyword Usage
As obvious as it may seem, countless websites don’t take the necessary steps to stay up to date with keyword research. What are the most common and natural search terms your ideal customers are typing into Google? Does the copy throughout your website, social media, and content pieces reflect those keywords? There are various keyword research tools available, both free and paid, that digital marketers use to analyze keyword performance and determine the exact terms to use throughout a given site. However, even before that, a simple readthrough of your site may reveal easy opportunities to capitalize on “low-hanging-fruit” keywords. These include the most common industry- and service-specific keywords that your customers use all the time when they need information about your service.
Step 2: Carry Out Competitive Analyses
Conducting a competitive analysis is about developing a clear picture of the other companies operating in your industry or region. What kind of content do they produce, and how could you do it better? What kind of offers and calls to action are others using to generate leads? Use the information you gather about your competitors to boost your own authority and thought leadership. Answer the questions your competitors neglect to discuss and provide better, more accessible, more digestible content.
Step 3: Conduct Routine On-Site Optimizations
Gather as much data as you can about your website, such as how your customers use the site and interact with your content, how leads and new users arrive at your site, your most viewed products and services, and the overall buyer’s journey. All this information helps you make decisions about your website design, layout, and navigation to improve the user experience.
Some things you’ll want to focus on include:
- Simple, intuitive navigation
- Consistent colors, fonts, and brand messaging
- Up-to-date plugins
- Page speed optimization
- Fixing any dead links
- Up-to-date business contact information
Step 4: Conduct Local Optimizations
Local optimization is all about enhancing SEO to attract more business in your region. One of the most critical tasks here is claiming your Google My Business (GMB) page and ensuring all listed information is accurate. Anyone can suggest edits and changes to GMB listings, so it’s essential to review your information routinely and update accordingly.
Local optimization also includes researching and adding your business to relevant online local business or organizational directories and then ensuring all information between those directories, GMB, your website, and social media is consistent.
Step 5: Link Building and Promoting Backlinks
Link building is the process of increasing the quantity of valuable inbound links to your site to gain more referral traffic, boost your domain authority, and increase your ranking in search engines. Backlinks and inbound links are forms of off-page SEO that direct readers from another website to yours. Having good backlinks helps drive traffic to your site and, again, increase your ranking in search engines. Quality inbound links come from authoritative and industry-recognized websites.
Some of the best strategies for building links and promoting backlinks include:
- Maintain a blog
- Link to other industry sources that aren’t direct competitors
- Write guest blogs for popular websites
- Develop case studies around successful customer initiatives and projects
- Administer and report on valuable industry insights (such as this one!)
- Create shareable tools, infographics, and other guides
Step 6: Continued Monitoring and Analysis
Continued monitoring and analysis are vital to understanding your website’s organic performance compared to your competitors. Through ongoing research, you can more easily develop short- and long-term goals focused on the areas you’re most eager to grow, ensure B2B SEO best practices are maintained, and that you’re on course to reach your targets. It’s important to remain flexible and always be prepared to adjust your strategies to meet your customers’ evolving needs.
Put Your Plan Into Action
Now that you have a basic outline of how to boost your SEO, it’s time to put all these tactics to work. Alone, each step yields limited results, but putting these strategies into action in a continuous cycle allows you to organically build a stronger, more trusted, and more valuable online presence, both increasing and maintaining your standings in search engine results.
As you continue refining your marketing strategies, use the just-released 2021 B2B Marketing Mix Report as a resource and guide for other B2B trends and tactics your peers are considering in 2021.
Have more questions about getting started? No problem! Talk to us about your current SEO and digital marketing programs, and let us help develop your online presence to attract more of the right customers and increase your online standings.
