B2B SEO

Many B2B companies are business service companies and professional service firms that largely operate on a regional basis. Also, many manufacturers and distributors serve a limited geographical region because transportation costs prohibit economically shipping their products to locations further away.

So how do you capture geo-specific B2B search traffic? You know, search phrases for what you sell that also contain some geographical term, like a city, state, or region. You can use some other methods, but SEO seems to be the best alternative.

Google Local and other local search tools work great, but you typically have to have a physical location in the stated geography. You won’t show up in the local results for a search phrase that includes “Chicago” if you don’t have a physical location in Chicago. That makes it tough if Chicago is one of your key markets, but your business is in a nearby city.

You could use geographical terms in your PPC campaign, but research shows B2B purchasers overwhelmingly first look at (and first click on) organic results. So while you may show up, your chances of getting click-through are not as strong as if you ranked highly in the organic results.

In my most recent article in the Strictly Business section of Search Engine Land, I give some practical tips on how B2B companies can best use SEO to capture more traffic and leads from geographically based searches.

If you’re not in sync with how your potential prospects look for your type of products and services via the search engines, it can absolutely kill your chances of getting found in the organic searches results. There are two key factors B2B marketers must consider when developing keyword search strategies for optimized websites.

First, remember you’re usually not talking to one buyer. A typical B2B purchase involves four, five, or more different people who ultimately influence the purchase decision. Sure, they share common organizational objectives—but they have unique perspectives, interests, agendas, and needs. The “technology” buyer may base their search on product and performance attributes, while influential “end-users” considers ease of operation, and the “economic buyer” looks at ROI. All use the web to research, evaluate, or vet business purchase decisions, and yet they may use completely different search terms relevant to their individual interests and concerns. An effective B2B keyword strategy considers varying search strategies.

The second force (more…)

When someone visits an online retailer to buy a book or a Polo shirt, he or she is probably pretty far along the path to a buying decision. Two, maybe three sites are checked for the price on the book, or the colors available for the shirt. But chances are, there’s not a lot of searching going on. The buyer simply wants to find that particular item, buy it, and get delivery as soon as possible.

In the B2B realm, the situation couldn’t be more different, for several very good reasons.

It’s a matter of time.

First, the vast majority of B2B purchases are not snap decisions. For major supplies and capital investments in particular, the factors influencing the decision unfold over time, and in many cases can ebb and flow with business realities. In the B2B buying cycle, it can be a year to 18 months or more from the time the possible need is first acknowledge to the time the “trigger is pulled” for purchase.

Throughout the entire process, starting at the very earliest speculation, information is being gathered and preliminary decisions are being made, at least informally. These prospects—prospects tiptoeing around the rim of your sales funnel—need to know about you early to put you in their consideration set. That’s what B2B SEO does. And why it matters.

It’s a complex issue, with more people involved in it.

Not too many things to think about when you’re buying a blue Polo shirt. And only your opinion matters. That’s not true for B2B purchases. The very nature of many B2B purchases requires significant knowledge and research in order to make the best purchase decision.
(more…)

Obviously, getting your site to rank highly in the search engine results and getting searchers to click through to your site is one of the first objectives of B2B search engine optimization. But that’s just the beginning. You still have to turn the visitor into a customer or client.

In the B2C world, conversion (turning a site visitor into a customer) can happen in a matter of minutes. In the business-to-business realm, however, conversion can take months or even years—and it typically doesn’t occur online. So how should you think about conversion in the B2B SEO environment, and what can you do both to accelerate and measure it?

(more…)

Site visitors like content-rich sites. So do search engines.

It is surprising how often we run across companies that expect their existing sites to be found in the organic search results for a wide range of search terms their sites fail to adequately address. Sure, these companies may have products or services related to those search terms, but they haven’t created organic landing pages for those search terms. They don’t have content-rich sites. To be found for a specific search term, there needs to be an optimized landing page on the website that revolves around that search term. A landing page is the website page to which you want people to click through when they click on a search result for a specific search term.

Effective search engine optimization requires each significant page in a website have its own song, i.e., each page is optimized to specific search terms. You may be able to get two or three closely related search terms to point to the same landing page, but, typically, if the search terms aren’t very closely related, they should have different landing pages. Even when terms appear to be related, for instance “healthcare consulting” and “healthcare consultant”, given the amount of individual competition in the search engines for these terms, each term will likely need its own landing page.

Suddenly, the task of creating a content-rich optimized website seems daunting; you may need to double or triple the amount of content on your site simply to have appropriate organic landing pages for your desired keywords.

(more…)

In Lee Odden’s recent post, The Lowdown on Web Designers and SEO, he does a nice job of pointing out the often-found real world conflicts that often arise between web designers and SEO professionals because of their respective areas of expertise. In response to a comment, Lee points out that it may not be reasonable to expect web designers to stay on top of both their trade AND the knowledge and expertise necessary for SEO. Although I agree with this, his post and subsequent response to comments is focused largely on the shortcomings of web designers with respect to SEO.

I’m not faulting Lee here; I’m sure this was merely the focus of the post. I’m sure, however, that he’d agree with me that the vast majority of SEOs are going to need to speak to shortcomings also. For years, SEOs have been focused largely on ranking: keyword research, attempting to decipher search engine algorithms to get and maintain rankings for key search terms, researching competitor sites, and mining analytics data. To be sure, this alone can be a challenging area in which to develop proven expertise. However, in order to flourish, today’s SEO professionals, are going to have to get much better at understanding the buyer, the sales cycle and how search changes over the buying cycle, desired actions of prospects and how to effect them…in short, getting inside the mind of the prospect and using SEO to create and drive business results and relationships with prospects. Some SEOs are good at this; others are simply too technically focused. The truly effective SEO professional will be just as much an expert at business and marketing as she is at the “traditional” SEO responsibilities.

Although creating web content is cheaper than print communications, creating a large amount of new, original, persuasive web content is still time-consuming and expensive, especially with the complex nature of technical writing that is often required in B2B marketing. Effective search engine optimization requires a unique landing page for each desired search term. You may be able to get two or three closely related search terms to point to the same landing page, but, typically, if the search terms aren’t very closely related, they should have different landing pages. Add to this the fact that often there is no universally agreed-upon lexicon for most B2B products and services (i.e., people call things by different names) and the number of landing pages your site requires grows significantly—one of the key issues that makes B2B search engine optimization especially complex.

B2B companies seeking for the first time to optimize their sites for search engines are faced with the daunting task of creating a significant amount of new content to serve as landing pages for key search terms.

On the Francis SEO site, we recently added to the series of white papers on B2B search engine optimization strategies. The next white paper in the series, How to Quickly Create B2B Content Optimized for Search Engines, focuses on how to efficiently leverage what you may already have to build high-ranking optimized landing pages for organic search.

On the Francis SEO site, we recently started a series of white papers on B2B search engine optimization strategies.

The first white paper, Differences Between B2C and B2B SEO, covers some of the unique issues relating to business-to-business search engine optimization and their implication for B2B companies. The second white paper, Driving Conversion in B2B SEO, focuses on how to approach and accelerate conversion in the business-to-business realm while capturing lead information.

So many search engine optimization efforts (and SEO practitioners for that matter) seem to be focused solely on ranking. Companies and practitioners alike seem to be happy with good ranking in the search results. But that’s just the beginning. Searchers don’t click every search result. They choose which ones offer the most promise…and only a portion of those links clicked on will ultimately be considered as a potential source for a B2B purchase.

Good B2B search engine optimization has vital components beyond ranking. First, getting the searcher to click on your search result. And second, making sure you deliver on the expectations of the searcher after they click through to your site.
(more…)

As Told by a Lonely, Un-optimized Website

The frustrating thing is, I’m such a darned nice looking site. But it feels so helpless, buried by so many pages in those all-important Google results. Will ANYONE ever FIND me here? I’ve seen some research that says it’s not very likely. If most people won’t scan more than three pages, what chance do those of us on page 13 have?
(more…)

Most B2B companies aren’t e-commerce driven. Obviously, SEO is very important to e-commerce companies; getting found means getting more sales. And good SEO results are quickly seen in the form of increased revenue. The vast majority of B2B companies, however, don’t offer products and services you can order on the web, place in a shopping cart, and pay for with your bankcard.

So why should B2B companies bother with SEO? For a business-to-business company, ranking highly in the search engine results won’t drive immediate sales, but I would argue that SEO for B2B is just as important, perhaps even more so. You have to remember the role of search in a B2B purchase. The average purchase cycle in the business-to-business transaction is several months, sometimes a year or two, depending on the nature of the purchase. That’s because the risks are higher and the implications (good and bad) of the decision of what to buy and from whom to buy it can last many years. Therefore, purchase decisions are highly researched and scrutinized.

Also, the typical behavior of a B2B buyer is not to broadcast the buyer’s intent to purchase and invite countless suppliers to pitch for the business. Once the intent to possibly make a purchase is formed, the research begins. Who sells what we need? Who else has bought from them? Do they seem like a potential fit? Who should we be talking to? Search engines are the first place potential buyers go to begin to find answers to these questions, long before they tell anyone that they’re in the market to make a purchase. And that’s when you want to be sure they find your company.
(more…)