8 Best SEO Practices for B2B Companies in 2024 [How to Increase Your Search Rankings?]

You researched your business online and found it on the second page of Google -Oh, what a bummer!!

Despite fueling your efforts and money in strategies for improving your Search Engine Ranking (SERP), your business is not among the top searches. It feels disheartening, and you begin to worry if you would ever make new customers and make profits. If you are a beginner in digital marketing marketing, and want to gain expertise, check out our digital marketing courses from top universities. 

Stop worrying now – You can get highly-targeted visitors to your website- Yes, you can!!!

Google statistics indicate:

ü 57% of B2B marketers reveal that SEO generates more leads than other marketing initiatives

ü 72% of digital marketers disclose content marketing as their top-performing SEO tactic

ü 47% of buyers view 3-5 content pieces from a business before conversing with its salesperson

ü 14.6% close rate from leads by search engines as compared to 1.7% close rate from outbound leads (cold-calling, direct mail)

Wondering how these insights can help you promote your business online? Read on to find out.

The advent of the Web has unlocked a plethora of opportunities for businesses and individuals. Today, a small-sized, local business can expand its horizon globally, thanks to e-Commerce stores. But, conducting business in the marketplace is not easy; it takes time-tested best digital marketing strategies to gain customers.

So, What Are These Strategies?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the strategy that laid its foundation two decades ago when the concept of SERP was born. A SERP enables web pages to be displayed to consumers when they seek information by typing specific phrases and terms (keywords) in the search engine (Google, Yelp, Bing, DuckGo, etc.).   

An SEO for B2B companies as a strategy enables businesses or individuals to rank their web pages higher on the SERP for potential customers to find them and eventually purchase their products/services. An SEO for B2B companies as a strategy focuses on keywords that a company’s key decision-makers search for.

If you want to network with your industry leaders or wish to expand your business offshores, you should be investing in a B2B SEO strategy.

How to Create a Search Strategy that Works?

Your strategy should focus on answering these important questions:   

ü What is your audience searching for on the Web or in the marketplace?

ü How can you meet the expectations of your targeted viewers?

ü How can you convince search engines that you will meet the audience’s expectations?

That said;

The Four Pillars of a Successful B2B SEO Strategy Are

1. Page Optimization for Different Buyer Personas

Since a B2B purchase is a long-term investment, hence several decision-makers are involved who must precisely weigh the benefits and challenges. Each key decision-maker (executives, practitioners, managers) will make a purchase decision based on their unique business challenge. Thus, you should expect the decision-makers to search for information through different and unique query terms (keywords) on search engines.     

Subsequently, your web pages must be optimized for answering;

ü Strategic questions from executive stakeholders

ü Tactical questions from practitioners

ü Management and tactical questions from managers

2. Use Low-Volume Keywords for Better Engagement

The B2B marketplace is smaller than B2C, and your web pages must be optimized with low-volume and high-quality keywords to grab the attention of the key decision-makers. A strategist of SEO for B2B companies needs to invest more time searching and grouping related keywords for web pages or blogs that would generate substantial organic traffic monthly.

Often, the audience is a repeated user. Now, that can sound de-motivating, but the positive is that your company is competing with lower competition, unlike the B2C marketplace. Hence, the probability of purchases and profits is higher.   

3. Low Conversion Rate with a High Probability of Sales

Often, the organic traffic generated from the SEO for B2B companies as a strategy is insufficient. The sales cycle is long as it involves several stakeholders who seek valuable information to make an educated high purchase decision. Nonetheless, the probability of converting such leads is high, as your business is competing in a niche segment with a few competitors.  

Since your business is competing against lower competition, the SEO for B2B companies as a strategy is simpler as it involves low volume keywords for optimizing top-level pages like home page and product/services pages only. Therefore, you can quickly boost SERP and generate more traffic on your website.

4. Focus on Branding and Thought Leadership

Since B2B visitors don’t convert at the first step, they need to be nurtured as per their position in the buyer’s journey or the sales funnel. Subsequently, building the brand in the targeted audience’s mind is crucial.

For your brand or company to be embedded in your audience’s memory, you must always rank higher on SERP. You should always be visible to your audience when browsing the search engine for your market niche.

How can you stay relevant and visible? By posting regularly informative, engaging, and keyword-rich thought leadership blogs. Voicing your opinion on social media channels also helps. Remember, quality content informing and educating your niche audience will encourage them to purchase from you than your competitors.   

Must Read: Top SEO Interview Questions & Answers

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A Few Kicks on the Side!!

Use Natural Language

Gartner research indicates, over the next four years, 30% of web browsing sessions will not be done on a screen.

What does that mean?

Users will swing towards voice search and machine learning applications. Hence, your B2B SEO strategy must adapt to natural language applications in the future. Digital marketers should use natural language algorithms for page tagging and on-page content optimization for ranking higher on SERP.

Checkout: Digital Marketing Tutorial

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Keep Up-to-date with Google Search strategy

Google regularly launches updates on its search engine strategy; hence, content marketers must opt for receiving newsletters from Google regarding such changes. It’s only when the marketers are well-informed they can optimize the page title, content, meta-data, and page tagging for gaining higher ranks on the search engines.   

For instance, if Google displays your product/service offering names first in the title tags, it indicates that users are actively searching for such information than plain titles. You could use this insight to optimize other page titles.

What do you think?

To know more about such marketing strategies, you can read blogs on upGrad’s website. Additionally, they are a leading online platform for providing courses in various areas. You can avail of benefits by signing up for the ones you like. 

If you wish to explore and become an expert in Digital Marketing, check out MICA and upGrad’s Advanced Certificate in Digital Marketing & Communication. Become an expert in social media marketing, content marketing, branding, marketing analysis, and PR.

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