Writing by Nick Stamoulis
Since the B2B business cycle can much longer than the average B2C business cycle, you can’t truly measure the success of your SEO until your business cycle has come to a full close. That’s why it is so important for B2B companies to start their SEO off on the right foot! If you missed the mark with your on-site optimization or off-site SEO, it might be months before you realize that your SEO headed off in the wrong direction, forcing you to start over.
One of the most important things a B2B company can do for their SEO is make sure their content is properly optimized.
What is your customers’ problem and how do they go about searching for answers/solutions? For example, a small business owner may need help managing their employee payroll. They don’t have a strong background in finance but don’t have the budget to hire an outside firm to manage the books for them. They are looking for a tool or software that can help them manage payroll and that is easy to learn on their own.
How would a software company that sells budget and payroll management software optimize their content so they appear in the search results for this potential customer?
First, let’s do some keyword research. The Google Keyword Research Tool reports that there are 390 monthly searches (US) for “payroll management software.” Not a huge search volume but B2B companies using that phrase to search obviously know what they are looking for. Other related keywords (and their search volume) include:
•payroll management system – 480
•payroll software – 40,500
•payroll software small business – 2,400
•payroll software programs – 27,000
•easy payroll software – 480
•and so forth…
In order to optimize your content for the B2B business cycle, it’s important to incorporate keywords that your target audience is using! Remember, content is anything that is pubic and shareable which includes your website, B2B business blog, articles, whitepapers, videos and so forth. Every piece of content you publish online should be optimized to include relevant keywords. The search engines rank individual pages, not websites as whole, which means that each piece of content has the capability of ranking well, increasing your overall search presence. The more links your brand has in the SERP for any given search, the more likely you are to get the visitors clicking through to your site.
Make sure you don’t fixate on one particular keyword. You want to target a variety of related keywords to cover all your search bases. Each potential customer may search for your product using a different search phrase and you don’t want to accidentally alienate them. By targeting different keywords, you are also helping your SEO look much more natural to the search engines. If you rely too heavily on keyword the search engines may flag you for spamming and trying to manipulate the search results.
