We’re guessing you’re here because you own or work within a B2B business. If this is the case, you might be wondering how to get your fantastic services in front of as many customers as possible.
This is where B2B SEO takes centre stage. In today’s digital world, where competition is fierce, developing a foolproof B2B SEO strategy is absolutely crucial to succeed. Simply targeting keywords is no longer enough to reach your audience and secure conversions.
Research carried out by GrowFusely found that 34% of B2B marketers said that SEO was responsible for most of their leads and sales and they also discovered that 41% of B2B buyers go through at least three websites before approaching for sales.
In this guide we’ll cover what exactly B2B SEO is, how it differs from B2C SEO, and finish with a simple but effective strategy for you – you’re welcome.
What exactly is B2B SEO…?
So, let’s start with the B2B part. B2B is the name for a business offering goods, services or softwares to other businesses (like we do here at Cedarwood Digital). This isn’t limited to Marketing agencies though; a B2B company is everything from a back office solution provider , to shipping companies like Fedex, even through to platforms like LinkedIn.
B2B SEO then, stands for business-to-business search engine optimisation This is the process of creating and optimising pages on your company’s website to answer your audience’s questions and match user intent to subsequently aim to rank for keywords on search engines like Google. It includes a variety of techniques, related to both the actual content on the website, and the technical layout of the site.
The aim is to appeal to your intended audience and provide helpful, unique information as industry experts. By doing this, you are more likely to fall in line with Google’s ranking algorithms and Quality Rater Guidelines. Not only will this improve the quality of your site but it could lead to an increase in organic visibility and better positioning in relevant SERPs. The best case scenario is that when people search for terms related to your business, they’ll see your site right at the top, and visit to learn more about your brand.
SEO for B2B companies differs slightly from B2C (business-to-customer), and we’re going to get into these differences now…
Is B2B SEO all that different from B2C SEO?
Plot twist, it’s actually not! While the target audience may be different – an audience of executives and managers, rather than the general public – the process is pretty similar. In both cases, you’re going to want to develop an SEO strategy involving the fundamentals of keyword and user intent research, content optimisation, and link-building.
However, the different audiences of B2B and B2C does make the specifics of SEO strategy a bit different. Whilst people are at the heart of both strategies, when it comes to B2B, they have different expectations and a more complex approval process. In contrast to Business-to-Customer marketing, where individuals often make the purchasing decisions, B2B transactions usually involve multiple stakeholders.
We’ve drawn up a little table for you here to make things easier:
| B2B SEO | B2C SEO |
| Publishes content aimed at decision makers, and senior team members/managers | Publishes content aimed at a broad demographic group like ‘first-time buyers’ or ‘pregnant women’ |
| Therefore, stick to your lower volume keywords, that key decision-makers within companies search for while at work. These might only be getting 50 searches a month but are important for us | Therefore, target high-volume keywords (the ones that thousands of people are searching for each month) |
| Content is very tactical | Content can be fun, friendly and emotional – to appeal to the general public |
| Social media marketing doesn’t make much sense in B2B, you’re going to want to stick closer to things like blogging | Focus on social media marketing because your audience is more likely to find what they’re looking for through a TikTok video |
A strategy for B2B SEO
We’ve done the hard work for you and pulled together a nice comprehensive plan to get your B2B business soaring up those SERPs. Let’s take a look at this step-by-step guide…
Research the keywords your target customers are searching for
As said, when it comes to B2B SEO, we really want to drill down on the low-volume or ‘bottom of the funnel’ keywords that company executives are looking for. But how do we go about finding them? Well, good keyword research is the difference between getting a smashing ROI, and wasting time and money.
The simplest starting point is to start with ‘seed keywords’. Have a good old brainstorm about what you think your customers might be searching for. For example, if you sell software that helps business owners create website designs, you might start with keywords like ‘website builder’ ‘graphic design’ ‘ecommerce site developer’.
This is also the point at which it’s worth scouting out your competitors’ keyword usage. Find competitors specifically invested in SEO and research the keywords that they are ranking for.
You’re then going to want to plug all these keywords into a keyword explorer software. (We’d recommend something like Ahrefs or Semrush).Using these tools, you can then see a list of all the keywords that your competitors’ websites rank for, but your website does not. This is called your website’s ‘content gap’.
Based on this information, you can then add these keywords to your list of potentials to target. It will also be worth creating a list of low importance keywords, and link building keywords (ones that receive a lot of natural links, e.g. statistical keywords).
For further insight into the best keywords for your B2B business, here’s a couple top tips from the Cedarwood team:
📌Make use of CPC rates – a high CPC signifies that this might be a potentially high-profit keyword to target
📌Google Autocomplete suggestions will really help you out with finding long-tail keywords. This is super easy – just start typing a relevant term into Google and check out the suggested keywords that come up below.
It’s now time to optimise your content
You want to optimise each page around the keywords that you found in step 1. This is where you’re really going to get tactical with your on-page SEO, here are a few things we’d suggest implementing:
- Make your content unique
Your pages won’t rank if they’re duplicate. Write it organically, and feel free to use an AI assistant for help researching, but don’t let them write the whole thing! I know it takes time and can be tricky, but it’ll be worth it I promise.
- Beef up your pages
Fill out your key landing pages and blogs with over 1000 words of content. Take a look at this research from BacklinkO, which claims the best content length for SEO in 2023 is bang on the 1,500 word mark.
Source: BacklinkO
- Be smart with your keyword usage
Don’t keyword-stuff, but include the target keyword several times on your landing page. Mention it in your page’s H1 title, title tag, and page URL. Also, use synonyms and variations of your main keyword, and try to include your keyword in the first 50 words of each page.
- Don’t skip out on the blogging
Having a blog or insights folder on your B2B site will help establish your company as a helpful resource in your industry, and will build trust with your target audience. Making these blogs high quality will also help you out because people will want to link back to it. But more on backlinks later.
Go for the shoulder topics, writing only articles about your specific services is a mistake. For example, here at Cedarwood, we write blogs about everything from the latest Artificial Intelligence assistants to our experience at an SEO conference.
Lastly, think about your writing style – professionality doesn’t have to mean dry, stiff writing. An executive is more likely to want to work with you if you can come across as approachable, even whilst getting your services across succinctly. In B2B we still want to create content that people want to read.
Outreach and Link-building
A backlink is a link from another website pointing to a page on yours, and once your new and improved pages are published, you want to try and build as many links to these as you can. This is one of the best ways to tell Google your content is worthy of organic traffic. (Your content must be good if all these people are willing to send their readers over to another site!)
There are numerous ways to build links. Here are some of our favourite tried-and-tested methods at Cedarwood:
>Thought leadership – this provides a great opportunity to increase referral traffic, and to establish your business as an authority
>Conduct original research and publish statistics—these are the things that journalists and bloggers love to link to!
>Digital PR: in B2B your goal should be industry blogs and news sites. At Cedarwood for example, we would try and target marketing publications that we know our prospective clients will be reading.
To Sum Up
You should now be in the know on how SEO can be utilised for B2B, and why it is so important. We hope this guide has given you some inspiration to get started on your own strategy.
Looking for a head-start? Our team of SEO experts at Cedarwood have a wealth of experience implementing effective SEO for a wide range of medium-sized, multinational, and even international B2B companies. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can drive your business’ visibility.
