How can businesses grow their search rankings in 2021?

As experienced players (or marketers) will tell you, initial moves in SEO make all the difference to a company’s online performance, brand recognition and overall reach. As we approach Q2 of 2021, and with more companies tapping into SEO than ever before, we’ve outlined our top 5 key strategies when it comes to using search as a growth channel for B2B.

B2B businesses are often characterised by:

• low search volumes on Google.
• high competition on scarcely available keywords.

1. Start at the bottom of the content marketing funnel

Bottom funnel content is a blend of product marketing and sales—it should be created in partnership with the product and sales teams to ensure its effectiveness. Bottom of the funnel should always be measured differently compared to top of funnel content. Measuring traffic alone, for example, will lead you to believe that bottom of the funnel content isn’t useful. However, this is not the case. Although every funnel begins at the top, if you want to generate results asap, you should start your B2B SEO strategy by targeting customers at the bottom of the funnel.

Moreover, ready-to-buy customers are already at the bottom of the funnel and they’re already searching for information to help them make purchase decisions. They will be searching using keywords such as:

• “[industry] software”
• “[industry] tools”
• “[competitor] alternatives”
• “Is [competitor] a good product/service?”

2. Level up your t-shaped content

T-shaped content describes the type of content that performs two functions at the same time:

• It provides real value to your ideal prospects.

• It generates relevant organic traffic, demand, and quality leads for your business.

Creating and ranking with t-shaped content will help achieve two objectives:

• Build a brand that people trust.
• Create awareness and generate leads for your product.

3. Don’t just rank content — rank “from-field-experience” content

As a B2B marketer, you don’t just want to meet Google’s requirements and rank on page one. You need your content to rank as well as impress your audience enough to convert them into leads. To do this you need to get into the mind frame of a professional, write like you are a professional who is speaking to other professionals.

Usually, this means doing your research and finding out what other industry professionals are saying or have published on any given topic. Then you need to spell out the following:

• What you agree with
• What you disagree with
• What you want to change about how something is currently done
• How you want it to change it

And when you’re creating content based on your original opinions, experience, thoughts, or convictions, you eliminate the chances of sounding like everyone else. This will ensure that your content stands out from the crowd. Even if it’s similar to other competitors’ content, it’ll still have your original idea and opinions.

4. Avoid covering too many basic topics

Ideal B2B buyers are often experienced professionals. Therefore, most of the time, they don’t need content on the basic topics that other entry-level employees might. The best approach is to cover off more important and sophisticated topics. During your keyword research phase, it’s easy to get distracted by high search volume keywords that your target audience barely ever searches for on Google. Avoid this distraction, and be sure to focus on creating content for keywords your target buyers need content on — even if those keywords have low search volumes.

5. Always remember to take care of your technical SEO

Don’t forget about the technical side.

You need to pay attention to technical SEO as well, as it can make or break companies:

With this in mind, here are the most important parts of tech SEO that you should make sure you’re in the habit of checking:

• HTML tags: HTML tags help search engines understand and comprehend what’s on your website page.
• Meta descriptions: These descriptions help search engines understand the content of your web pages even more. In short, it’s a summary of your content, showing searchers and search engines a quick precis of what’s on your web pages.
• SEO-friendly URL: Make sure you optimise your URLs to make them SEO-friendly. This means you need to make sure they contain the target keywords you’re trying to rank for on any page.
• User experience (UX): This includes site speed, navigation, accessibility plus anything else that makes your content and web pages easy to use for searchers. Google’s algorithm has been constructed to ensure its powerful enough to determine which pages have good UX, so you need to make sure your pages are easy to use, navigate, and access.
• Backlinks: This one is relatively simple – the more backlinks you get, the stronger your chances of ranking well will be.

Looking ahead

Despite the search volumes often being low, there are a lot of opportunities in SEO for B2B companies. Remember to kick-off your SEO and content marketing by targeting bottom funnel prospects. And it’s just as vital to make your content T-shaped as this will benefit both your audience and business simultaneously. Whatever you do, avoid covering too many basic topics, especially when your target buyers are experienced professionals. Finally, pay attention to the technical side of SEO, as this can make or break a business.

Whether you’re starting from scratch and want to optimise your new website, or you want to get your current website performing better for SEO, get in touch with our Search Engine Optimisation Agency London on 020 7100 0726.