B2B SEO – 10 of the Best Strategies for Organic Success

In a digital world where there’s a seemingly endless number of strategies for B2B lead acquisition and brand awareness, there’s one that truly stands out for its cost-effectiveness and long-term value: B2B SEO (search engine optimization, which yes, does really work).

When done right, B2B SEO enhances not only your overall content marketing strategy, but boosts your website and effectively makes leads come to you. 

In this article, we’ll discuss: 

• What B2B SEO is 
• The difference between SEO and SEM 
• Effective strategies for organic success in B2B

What is B2B SEO? 

B2B SEO is the process of optimizing web pages so they rank for terms being searched by key business decision-makers. The goal of B2B SEO is to not only reach these decision-makers, but delight them and prove yourself a valuable resource for their business needs. 

What’s the difference between B2B and B2C SEO? 

The biggest difference between B2C and B2B SEO is the target audience. The end goal of B2C (business-to-consumer) SEO strategies is for businesses to reach their target audience of consumers. The end goal for B2B SEO strategies, on the other hand, is for businesses to reach their target audience of business leaders and key stakeholders. 

The type of content that’s created for B2C SEO and B2B SEO is different, too. B2C SEO content may appeal more to a buyer’s emotions and focus more on storytelling, whereas B2B SEO content may focus more on logic, hard numbers, and thought-leadership.

What are the differences between SEO and SEM?

While the end goals for SEO and SEM (search engine marketing) are similar, their strategies differ. Key differences include: 

• SEO focuses on organic traffic, a free channel that lends itself to long-term online growth. 

• While SEM can also focus on organic traffic, it mostly focuses on paid strategies that can provide faster results, but don’t necessarily lend themselves to long-term growth. 

Think of SEM as the channel to focus on if you need big results quickly (but you’re going to cough up some cash for it), and think of SEO as the free long-term strategy that may take some time to build.

Read on for the best B2B SEO strategies 

There are plenty of B2B SEO strategies businesses can utilize to put the right messages in front of the right decision makers. Read on to learn the best strategies your business should use for maximum organic growth. 

Tips for the best Business to Business SEO strategy 

1. Identify your target audience 

The first step to take in a B2B SEO strategy is to identify your target audience. The target audience for B2B content typically consists of business leaders, executives, and other business-decision makers. The goal of B2B, after all, is to market your business as a solution to another business’ problem. 

Once you narrow down your target audience, put yourself in their shoes and think about their needs. Think about things like their: 

• Business needs 
• Industry needs
• Tech needs
• Workflow needs 

Putting yourself in your target audience’s shoes and thinking about their needs helps you craft your messages—and sparks content ideas.

2. Analyze your current content 

If you’ve created B2B content already, inventory it and analyze it. Identify key topics you’ve already created content around and how that content has performed. Ask yourself: 

• How old is this content? 
• Is it still accurate?  
• How is the content structured? 
• What format is the content in? 

Analyzing the content that already exists is essential for SEO content planning. That way, you don’t accidentally cannibalize existing content and create more work for yourself. 

While analyzing your content, it’s also crucial to look at your data and see how the content performs online already. Tools you can use to analyze organic search data include: 

• Semrush—A powerful SEO and marketing tool that allows you to analyze your website’s content, from keywords you rank for to keyword opportunities that can help your content grow organically. 

• Ahrefs—Another powerful SEO tool that helps you analyze your backlinks, find keywords to target, and audit your existing content. 

• Google Analytics—Google’s platform that gives you key insights into how your content performs, measuring pageviews, visitors, time on site, etc. It can also show you the top performing content on your website. 

3. Identify topics you want authority in 

Creating content to boost your B2B SEO is a smart move, but you want to be strategic about the topics you want to have authority in. Having authority in a topic means you want to be seen as an expert in that specific topic field. Typically, B2B companies that create content aim to have authority in their industries. 

Building authority in specific topics is an extremely important element for SEO. For starters, “authority” is a key factor in Google’s E-A-T standards (more on that shortly)—the “a” in E-A-T stands for authority. Authority is also important for building trust with your audience. 

Trust is important to have from both a content and consumer perspective. Statistics show that, according to a survey, a whopping 81 percent of consumers say they need to be able to trust a brand in order to buy from them. 

Since the ultimate goal for B2B SEO is to boost your Google rankings and make other businesses come to you organically, and ideally have them turn into clients or partners of yours, it’s important to create authoritative, trustworthy content.

4. Keep E-A-T in mind 

As previously mentioned, it’s incredibly important to keep Google’s E-A-T standards at the forefront of your content creation plan with B2B SEO. E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. According to Semrush, E-A-T is a crucial way that Google looks at pages on the web, and how it differentiates between low-quality content and high-quality content. 

So, how do you create E-A-T content? Keep these tips in mind: 

• Write what you know—As a B2B company in a specific industry, you and your employees have a wealth of knowledge to share with the world. Create content you know and have expertise in. Or, hire freelancers who are also experts to create the content. 

• Pay attention to the author—Who writes your content is another factor to consider with EAT content. Part of gaining authority and trust with content is having the right people write your content. Make sure the authors of your content have some level of expertise in the topic they’re creating content for, whether they’re an expert themselves or have written about the topic in the past.

• Back your statements up with facts—Anyone can say pretty much anything on the internet. Support the claims in your content with statistics, facts, and research. That way, both Google and your audience know that what you’re saying can actually be backed up. 

5. Do your keyword research 

Doing keyword research is another crucial element for your B2B SEO strategy. Keyword research is the process of looking up search terms (also known as queries) and creating content that ranks well for them. Important tips for keyword research include: 

• Analyze the intent of the keyword—Think of the intent of a keyword as the reason why people are searching for a specific query. Are they looking for information, to purchase something, or for something that has a specific brand or product in it? Looking at the intent of a keyword will help you determine the structure and makeup of your content. 

• Look at the monthly search volume (MSV)—Looking at how much search volume a keyword gets will help you prioritize your content. For instance, if you have a keyword with 20,000 MSV compared to 1,600 MSV, you may prioritize the keyword with 20,000 MSV since your content can get more eyeballs on it. Looking at the MSV may also tell you if you need to create multiple pieces on a topic as opposed to just one piece. 

• Don’t forget the long-tail keywords—Long-tail keywords are keywords that are longer than the average keyword and, typically, are more specific. For instance, “best email service providers” is a keyword, but “best email service providers for small businesses” is a longer, more niche keyword to target. Going after long-tail keywords can help you reach more specific audiences and create niche content that answers targeted topics. 

6. Focus on content structure 

The structure of your content is an important pillar of B2B SEO to pay attention to. Content structure refers to how your content is laid out. If you’re writing a blog post or article, content structure includes: 

• Subheadings 
• Paragraph length 
• Bulleted lists 

Remember, at the end of the day, Google’s main job is to provide the best possible answers for search queries. Being strategic with your content structure will help Google better recognize your content.

For instance, instead of writing one long paragraph, break your piece up into scannable paragraphs. According to Medium, paragraphs that are too long (and too short) are not favorable for SEO. Instead, focus on paragraphs that have between 100 and 200 words each.

7. Don’t forget technical SEO

As important content creation and on-page SEO are for B2B SEO overall, technical SEO is another crucial element to hone in on. Technical SEO refers to the technical elements of your website that help it rank higher on search engines. Some elements of technical SEO include: 

• Site speed 
• Crawlability 
• URL structure 
• Indexation 
• Site map 
• Metadata 

Why is technical SEO important? Technical SEO helps you inform Google that your site is top-notch and easy to maneuver and, as such, is the best website to rank on the first search engine results page (SERP). If it’s been a while since you’ve checked on your website’s technical SEO and overall website health, take the time to perform a thorough analysis. Take a close look at your website design, too. The excellent content you produce will need a great home, after all. 

8. Produce thought-leadership content 

Producing thought-leadership content can help your B2B SEO strategy on multiple fronts. For starters, it helps you build credibility and trust, which search engines can reward. It can also help with your business development and lead generation goals. 

How? If other business leaders see your thought leadership piece, they may be impressed with your industry insights and thoughts. As such, they may be inclined to take action, whether that’s following you on social media, following your blog, signing up for your newsletter, or reaching out to you directly about your product or service. 

Examples of thought leadership content include: 

• Blog articles discussing latest industry trends 
• White pages 
• Webinars 
• Social media posts discussing industry trends 
• Research reports 

9. Optimize your landing pages 

Landing pages are great ways to generate leads in B2B. A landing page is a page a web user lands on after clicking on an ad or coming from another specific campaign. Landing pages are beneficial because you can tailor your messaging directly to the user—you already have a good idea of their needs and intentions since they’re coming from a specific campaign. That also allows you to create a strong page call-to-action. 

You should optimize your landing pages for SEO, too, so they have a better shot at ranking on the first SERP. Many of the same on-page SEO principles apply to optimizing a landing page compared to optimizing content, including: 

• Optimizing for a keyword, if possible 
• Incorporating the keyword naturally in the copy
• Structuring the content properly 
• Monitoring page speed 

10. Interlink your content 

Interlinking your B2B SEO content is a strong SEO strategy to incorporate into your content creation strategy. Interlinking your content means you add hyperlinks to your content throughout your pieces. When you interlink your content, you signal to Google that you have other relevant content within the topic you’re writing about, and therefore, have expertise in that area. 

Interlinking content has other valuable SEO benefits, including: 

• Aiding in crawling and indexing 
• Boosting your pages 
• Helping user navigation (and, as a result, possibly increasing time on site) 

Key tips to keep in mind when interlinking your content include: 

• Linking to relevant anchor text—Ideally, the anchor text is the keyword for the piece you’re linking to 
• Linking relevant content—Link to other content that relates to the content you’re writing about so it gives more context to the overall topic for the user
• Spread the SEO wealth—If you already have a page that ranks really well, go in and see where you can add relevant internal links to spread the SEO wealth to those other links. 

Need help with your B2B SEO strategy? 

We get it—B2B leaders have a lot on their plate, and doubling down on B2B SEO can feel like an uphill battle. However, it’s an extremely beneficial organic strategy that, when done right, increases authority, ranking, and ideally, lead acquisition. 
If you want to get a pulse on your current SEO performance, and learn how it can be improved, contact Mediaboom today for a free SEO evaluation. Our expert team will work with you to evaluate your current SEO strategy and explore where there’s room for growth, including with local SEO optimization and solutions.