Designing the Best B2B SEO Strategy to Benefit Your Business

Like any other business, Business-to-Business (B2B) companies need a solid search engine optimization (SEO) strategy to succeed. Given the fierce competitiveness of the SEO field, finding the right plan can be challenging. Following the approach of a B2B SEO agency can help you design a winning strategy.

This article discusses the critical components of an SEO strategy guaranteed to help your business. We talk about:

• Developing a buyer persona
• Finding transactional keywords
• Identifying hub topics
• Optimizing technical and on-page SEO
• Conducting competitor analysis
• Creating high-quality content
• Building backlinks

Let’s go!

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Creating a Customer Persona

A successful B2B SEO strategy requires a solid understanding of your target audience. This is why a customer or buyer persona is crucial. A persona represents your ideal customer based on market research and data. It significantly helps you create content that speaks to your target audience, ultimately driving more traffic to your site.

Creating a buyer persona requires critical information such as demographics, objectives, behavior, and budget. This information answers questions that strengthen your B2B SEO strategy.

Finding Transactional Keywords

Any credible SEO strategy guide tackles keyword research. In B2B, the priority of research should be finding transactional keywords. This type of search term indicates an intent to make a purchase or action, such as “buy project management software” or “request a demo.”

In short, customers who use transactional keywords are the most likely to convert.

You’ll need to filter your keyword list for those intending to complete a transaction to find transactional keywords. The best way to do this is with the help of keyword research tools, such as Google Keyword Planner.

While transactional keywords are valuable, remember to have a holistic approach to keyword research. Prioritizing these high-value keywords only ensures that you have the most important search terms at the start.

Identifying Hub Topics

While transactional keywords lie at the end of the customer journey, hub topics or keywords lie at the start. Unlike the former, they target potential customers who may not be ready to purchase but are exhibiting interest.

These “hub” keywords cover a range of subtopics related to your industry. Creating high-quality content around these topics can establish authority, and drive more traffic to your site.

Take, for example, a B2B software company specializing in project management tools. One of their hub topics would be “project management.” Some subtopics might include “project management best practices” or “project management tool subscription,” of which the latter is a transactional keyword phrase.

Finding transactional keywords is arguably more important for your B2B SEO strategy, but hub keywords are a close second. They let you start strong with content marketing, while also helping you find more transactional keywords.

Optimizing Technical and On-Page SEO

Getting your website’s technical and on-page SEO in shape might seem like tedious work, but it is integral to any B2B SEO strategy.

Optimizing technical and on-page SEO involves clearing a list of tasks. For technical SEO, these include:

• Improving site speed and responsiveness
• Achieving mobile-friendliness
• Enhancing site architecture
• Fixing crawling and indexing errors

For on-page SEO, the list may include:

• Optimizing content, keywords, and meta descriptions
• Building internal links
• Using images effectively

Addressing technical and on-page SEO issues takes a lot of time and effort. Working with an SEO expert to expedite the process and ensure success is advisable.

Analyzing the Competition

In B2B SEO, the best way to win against your competitors is to study them. Through competitor analysis, you can identify weaknesses and highlight success points. It also lets you differentiate your company and improve your search engine ranking.

Competitor analysis focuses on your top contenders in the market. This includes direct and indirect competitors targeting similar keywords or topics. Once you have identified the competition, analyze their websites and SEO strategies in detail.

Some key factors to consider when conducting competitor analysis include the following:

• Keyword targeting: What keywords are your competitors targeting in their content and metadata? Are there any gaps in their keyword strategy on which you can capitalize?
• Content strategy: What type of content is your competition producing? Are there any topics or formats that they are neglecting that you can focus on to rework your site?
• Backlink profile: What type of backlinks does your competition have? Are there any opportunities to build backlinks from high-quality websites that your competitors are not currently leveraging?
• Technical SEO: How does your competition's website perform in terms of site speed, mobile-friendliness, and site architecture? Are there any technical issues that you can address to improve your own website's performance?

A closer look at your competitors can give you valuable insights into your market. It also helps in developing a more effective B2B SEO strategy.

Creating High-Quality Content

As mentioned above, on-page SEO involves optimizing your website’s content. A large part of this process is creating high-quality content.

High-quality content provides value to your audience by answering questions and solving problems. It offers unique insights and perspectives on your industry. Best practices, such as developing a buyer persona and analyzing competitors, make this easier to achieve.

Natural insertion of keywords and metadata optimization comprise the other half of creating high-quality content. These practices do not directly impact content quality, but help it to perform better.

Content creation is integral to a digital marketing strategy, which is why so many companies invest in a blog. Ensure that your site’s content is of the highest quality possible. Work with a B2B SEO agency to get help from professional content creators.

Building Backlinks

Backlinks are among the many factors that help search engines decide which web pages to display on the first page. Backlinks are also called inbound links, and they tell search engines that a webpage’s content is relevant and of good quality.

You have plenty of options for building backlinks. By creating high-quality content, you are already attracting backlinks from other websites. Other options include:

• Guest posting
• Broken link building
• Collaborating with other businesses

Backlink-building deserves an entire discussion, but the pointers above should help you get started. Remember to avoid black-hat tactics such as, buying backlinks and participating in link schemes. Instead of helping your website, these may harm your SEO ranking.

Summing Up

Once you understand how your business can benefit from a B2B SEO strategy, you should immediately start designing one. A solid strategy ensures that you can successfully challenge your top competitors, by giving you a good chance of ranking high on search engine results pages (SERPs).

If you need expert help implementing them, contact Digital Authority Partners today.