SEO for a B2B Website: 9 Features of Search Promotion

Search engines do an excellent job − every month they bring websites millions of organic traffic, which mostly comes from the search of the giant Google.

But the ways of interacting with traffic in the B2C (business for people) and B2B (business for business) segments differ somewhat.

There are important nuances both in developing the site structure, in building the semantic core, in SEO optimization, and in preparing content.

SEO for a website in the B2B sphere is a tool that is hard to argue with even for systems that bring paid traffic.

Its potential is truly inexhaustible.

Read about all this, as well as about how to work with this potential, right here and now!

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What kind of website "business for business" needs

A small business-card site, a landing page, or a multi-page site with a complex structure?

Let's figure out what is more effective in the B2B sphere.

A business-card site is the representation of your company on the Internet.

Here you can learn what the company does, view contacts and working hours, see the list of services and a brief history of the company.

It would seem that this is enough, and the information doesn't even need to be updated.

However, for SEO promotion a business-card site won't work very actively.

And if we face the truth, then simply poorly.

Too few pages, too small a number of queries can be covered.

And a site with static information will rank so-so.

It certainly won't harm the business, but it's unlikely to help it scale.

A landing page is a single-page site, which, as a rule, assumes a direct response, for example, submitting a consultation request.

A landing page is created for paid traffic, it works great in combination with contextual or targeted advertising, but for search promotion it's not very suitable.

Nobody will stop you from adding keywords to the landing page text, but there will be only one or two of them (one keyword group)…

The second option is over-spamming, which will scare off even those who come from advertising.

Cases where landing pages reach the top of the organic results are very rare.

They can be considered exceptions; this happens more often in exotic narrow niches.

A corporate website − now that's your format. After all, the larger the business, the more important it is for the site to be full-fledged, modern, informative, and prestigious.

There is also an inverse relationship: the more competently the site is developed and optimized, the more opportunities for business scaling it provides.

If we talk about a corporate website, then the key word here is "informative".

A multi-page corporate website should cover even those non-obvious queries with which your business audience may go online.

The fuller the coverage, the more search traffic the site will receive.

And that is the main task it should solve.

A feature of B2B sites is that spontaneous purchases are practically excluded here − in companies, as a rule, there is a fairly long decision-making path and the matter will certainly not be limited to a single interaction with your site.

And it's very important to take into account that a corporate website in the B2B sphere is not designed for the mass user.

It is designed for the decision-makers in companies who are interested in your services/products.

As a rule, among the decision-makers and those who participate in this indirectly, there will be:

• the business owner, if it's a startup or a small company;
• the director of a company/online store;
• leading specialists and heads of departments − the chief engineer, the head of the supply service, the head of the IT department or HR department;
• top managers;
• specialists who are looking for the tools they need for their work. Thus, a dentist may order certain dental alloys from management, a surgeon − a more comfortable uniform that doesn't restrict movement, a teacher − additional materials such as contour maps or copybooks.

Your site should provide information relevant to the queries of every person in the decision-making chain in a particular company.

And that means quite a few pages will be needed.

In addition to the home page and the "About the company", "Team", "Services", "Delivery", and "Contacts" pages, you will definitely benefit from:

• a page with a list of suppliers (if you are a dealer of certain brands) and brief but concise information about them;
• a catalog divided into categories + a page for each product for a better match with the search query;
• pages of regional representative offices, if there are any (usually placed on separate subdomains);
• an article blog; this is a very good source of search SEO traffic, especially if the blog is updated regularly;
• pages/sections for different categories of users. For example, "For business owners", "For marketers", "For supply departments", "For specialists";
• a "Clients" page − here you can briefly tell about each major client, using the search queries by which your particular company may be searched;
• a "News" page; with constant updating it will help not only attract SEO traffic (if the news copywriter works with keywords), but also improve the site's ranking;
• a "Product use experience / cases" page;
• a page for working with end customers (B2C), if this is possible for the company.

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How to carry out SEO optimization of a website in the B2B sphere

Let's talk about collecting semantics, internal and external SEO optimization of a corporate website.

There are nuances everywhere!

SEO optimization of a website in the B2B sphere is specific, first of all, in terms of forming the semantic core and working with content.

But first things first.

Building the semantic core

When the semantic core is collected correctly, it becomes the basis for the successful development of the resource for a long time.

When collecting the semantic core for a website in the B2B sphere, the situation is complicated by the fact that not just thematic queries are needed, but precisely those that are relevant for all participants in the decision-making chain.

Example: A company is switching to remote work and the employees who make decisions are thinking about how to organize this process so that the company's efficiency does not drop.

The CEO may enter the query "how to improve work efficiency when working remotely".

The head of HR − "how to organize remote hiring of employees: services tools".

The head of the security department − "software to prevent data leakage during remote work".

The project manager − "services for holding a video conference" or "best task managers".

At the same time, the number of commercial queries with the words "buy", "order" will obviously be smaller than in the B2C sphere, because consumer demand for sets of pots is higher than for complex production equipment, and for programs for personal use it is higher than for corporate software.

But your potential clients will definitely want to learn as much as possible about the product/service before concluding a cooperation or supply agreement.

An SEO specialist needs to keep all these non-obvious nuances in mind.

As a result, the semantic core will turn out quite specific and broad − one capable of bringing exactly the people you need to the site.

Use digital services in your work of compiling the semantic core: Yandex.Wordstat, Google Keyword Planner Tool, and the original utility developed by SEOquick specialists.

Internal optimization of the site

This is the process of optimizing the site's pages so that they rank better and bring the most relevant traffic possible.

At the same time, all pages must meet the requirements of search engines and be well recognized by search robots.

Internal optimization of the site includes writing meta tags, headings for each piece of material, working with content − page-by-page distribution of the collected keywords and their native embedding into the texts.

This same group of work also includes internal linking of the site's pages − so that it is easy for the user to get additional information on the topic that interests them.

For a corporate website the loading speed of each page is very important, so their full caching is most often used − this way, when revisiting the site, your clients won't have to wait for loading more than a couple of seconds.

And this is also about internal optimization.

Internal optimization also includes purely technical aspects − micro-markup, closing off information that shouldn't be indexed by search engines, working with the sitemap, and detecting and eliminating any bugs that interfere with correct operation.

Visitors won't see all this, but the robots will both see and appreciate the quality of such work.

In general, the result of high-quality internal optimization will be:

1. Good visibility of the site.
2. Fast indexing of new pages.
3. Increased relevance of the content to users' interests.
4. Improved traffic quality.

External SEO optimization

Mainly, this is work on building up a high-quality external link mass or on building the site's link profile.

This increases the trust of search engines and contributes to better ranking. And that means obtaining a larger share of relevant thematic traffic.

How to get external links to your site:

1. Place links in the company's group on social networks. If there are no groups yet, it's high time to create them. Even for the B2B sector this makes sense, since decision-makers may well find you there.

2. Run targeted advertising on social networks with a link to your site. Paid traffic is also taken into account by search engines and helps the site rank better.
3. Don't forget about video hosting sites with enormous traffic, such as YouTube. On this platform it makes sense to create a company channel and upload thematic videos − at least to place external links to the resource.

4. Work with forums. This format is becoming a thing of the past, but hasn't gone away completely yet. Set up company profiles on forums on the topic of your business and answer users' questions. Links to the site should be embedded into the answers very organically (don't try to sell anyone anything, your task is simply to get links to the site), so that users don't complain about you and forum administrators don't ban you.
5. Post expert thematic materials on large platforms. Most often, platforms allow placing links to the resource of the company the expert represents.
6. Promote new publications in your company's blog − links can be sent to existing clients (provided, of course, the content is high-quality, genuinely interesting and valuable) and placed all on those same social networks.
7. Reach out to an opinion leader in your business sphere. Perhaps they will agree to tell about your new/high-tech/cool/innovative/world-changing product, for example, in an interview or in their company's blog with a link to your site.

Important: If you want to buy links, do it extremely carefully − Google fights against sites that buy links en masse. There should be few purchased links, and they should be placed on high-quality donor sites of a topic as close as possible to your company's. Thus, if you sell 3D printers for printing casting molds, then it makes sense to place links to the site ONLY on sites that are in one way or another related to foundry production. Everything else is decay and money thrown away.

In the end, if dozens of large, well-known, and well-ranked resources link to your site, search engines will automatically consider the content high-quality and willingly show it to users.

Recommended reading:

1. Guarantees in SEO Promotion: Myth or Reality + 7 Tips for Choosing an SEO Specialist
2. SEO Promotion of a Blog, Media, News Site. A Guide to Promotion

9 tips that will make SEO optimization of a B2B site more effective

Let's talk about cornerstone and tactical content.

Let's discuss what to do with prices if they fluctuate and you don't want to show them to site visitors.

Let's figure out when a site needs translation.

Tip 1. When working with content, remember that the information on your site should cover the interests of several decision-making users. Tailor each article to a specific group of users.

Tell managers in general terms about how your solutions will help make remote work easily controllable and effective.

Tell the HR officer in detail about working with the service in which they can conduct video interviews, and show that mastering this tool is not difficult.

Show the security service employee solutions for ensuring the information security of the company's remote work.

Show the project manager tools for setting tasks, monitoring their completion, and group online communication.

Tip 2. Work with low-frequency queries. The B2B space is narrower than B2C.

In the B2B sphere you need to focus on low-frequency queries that can simply be ignored when working with end consumers who are individuals.

If a low-frequency query costs $100, can bring just one targeted visitor, but at the same time the deal amount in the company is $100,000 − it makes sense to use it!

Tip 3. Don't sell anything head-on. The goal of SEO texts on a B2B site is not to convert a person, but to give them the information necessary for their work and decision-making.

Bet on informational and expert content.

This can be "cornerstone content" and "tactical content".

Cornerstone content is reviews, analytics, a general introduction to technologies.

It solves the tasks of building up expertise and ranking the company's site for industry-wide keywords.

Tactical content is life hacks, guides on a narrow topic, training materials.

They give you the opportunity to demonstrate your product, and users − to find answers to specific questions.

Tip 4. Constantly track the queries for which your site is in the top of the search engine results. Or at least on the first page.

When the site moves to lower positions, try to understand the reason (Has the query changed? Has the content become outdated or non-unique?), eliminate it, and return to the thematic top.

The audience should get used to seeing your site immediately when they need to solve some work task related to the topic of your business.

Tip 5. Let "this music last forever" (c). Working on SEO optimization of a website in the B2B sphere is not a sprint, but a marathon.

Therefore, at the initial stage don't strive for an unattainable ideal − it's important to find the line beyond which perfectionism begins to slow down the development of the business.

Define the main semantic core and prepare content for it, and then, when the site is already being indexed and bringing in users, the work can be continued, searching for new non-obvious keywords, creating new content.

Tip 6. Use SEO of product categories. If you are a manufacturer of those same 3D printers for industrial needs, try to make sure the site ranks precisely in this category.

Add the keyword "industrial 3D printers" to the title of the home page, with some additions − to the title of the page with technical specifications, and if specific prices are listed on the site − then also to the title of this page.

Tip 7. Use product categories for content prepared for external platforms. When you write an expert article on the topic "New technologies in foundry production", include in the text of the publication not only the brand name, but also the category name "industrial 3D printers".

Tip 8. Indicate prices at least for search engines. Very often in the B2B sphere it is extremely difficult, if at all possible, to specify the exact price of products.

Everything is customized and refined to the requirements of a specific customer, and the price turns out to be floating.

But even in this case there is always some minimum price, which is indicated approximately like this: "from $50,000".

Specify this minimum cost for search engines in the markup − this will increase their assessment of the site's informativeness, which means it will help you get traffic more actively.

Tip 9. If you plan to enter the international market − translate! Translate all the site's pages into the language of international communication − English − or into the languages of the countries you want to cooperate with.

The translation should be high-quality, literary, not an "interlinear gloss" of text that someone ran through Google Translate.

All SEO elements in this case will also have to be translated.

What smart SEO gives in the B2B sphere

Let's talk about the results that can be achieved with competent SEO work on a website.

Take a look at cases of different companies.

So, what real results can be achieved by working with SEO for B2B sites from different spheres:

• A 100% increase in traffic in 3 months and 60% of queries in the top within 8 months.

A manufacturer of complete transformer substations got a +100% increase in site traffic in just 3 months with the help of SEO optimization.

And 8 months after the start, the site reached the top of the results for 60% of queries.

The result was shared by the "Prodvizhenie" agency.

• A 1200% increase in traffic.

The marketing agency OES shared a case: the traffic of a plumbing online store after the site's SEO optimization grew by 1200%.

• A 70-fold increase in SEO traffic.

The case of the "B2B" agency — is a story about how, with the help of SEO optimization of a corporate website, it was possible to increase the organic traffic to the resource of a roll-label manufacturing plant 70-fold.

• A 2.5-fold increase in SEO traffic and a 6-fold increase in requests.

The "Konvertraf" agency posted a case about how smart SEO helped increase the organic traffic to the website of a company selling laser machines by 250% over a year.

And over the same period increase sales 6-fold.

Conclusions

SEO for a website in the B2B sphere is distinguished by a minimum of hot queries and at the same time a broad semantic core.

When developing SEO content, it's important to take into account the interests of all groups of users involved in the decision-making chain of a company operating in a particular industry.

A high-quality link profile is very important for a website in the B2B sphere.

Website promotion should be planned work, not a one-off campaign.

The time, money, and resources spent on SEO in the B2B sphere will definitely deliver results − just as, with the absence of SEO, creating a corporate website "for show" won't help find and bring targeted traffic to the site.