Is SEO an effective enough strategy for generating high quality B2B leads? Businesses are unsure as the growing competition in the space makes generating B2B leads through content a tough challenge.
In this article, we will explore how businesses can generate good B2B leads using SEO by overcoming the challenges surrounding it.
Let’s begin by asking What is B2B SEO?
B2B or Business to Business SEO refers to the use of SEO techniques by websites or companies involved in the B2B industry.
While we are on the subject, B2B is the exchange of goods and services between two or more businesses. The differentiation between B2B and other types of exchange models like B2C is necessary because what works for B2C may not necessarily be as effective for B2B.
Is B2B SEO Effective?
The simple answer: Yes.
Contrary to popular belief, achieving success with SEO is possible, though it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very difficult path riddled with obstacles. There are many challenges to overcome, which gives B2B SEO its less than stellar reputation.
What matters to some people in the end though, is the fact, that it SEO is successful in generating leads through content.
It is important to understand that this kind of success in terms of high-quality leads won’t happen overnight. Benefits of SEO accumulate over time. When you continue to create content and employ SEO strategies, you will ultimately start getting organic traffic.
In contrast to Paid searches or other such methods, SEO is the most cost effective strategy of driving sales.
Always keep the following criteria in mind for SEO success:
- High-quality content
No matter what lengths you go to and irrespective of the hook and crook you employ, failure is inevitable without high-quality content. Your goal is to be considered as a reliable source of information for your specific field or industry. So, your content must be informative and valuable.
- Link building
Link Building is the process of getting other web pages to link to your website. A good link building campaign is necessary to reach out to many people.
- Outreach
SEO Outreach is a type of link building strategy the purpose of which is to create backlinks from other websites to your website. This strategy is the strongest factor affecting a website’s rank in Google’s search algorithm.
The aforementioned items will understandable will cost you a lot of time, energy and money but the return on these investments will be worth it, especially if they aren’t inclined to invest in a good SEO campaign.
Following are the SEO strategies that we promised to deliver early on in the article:
- Keyword Research
It doesn’t matter if you have a new website or an old one that needs upgrading, keyword research is very important. It’s the fundamental aspect of an SEO strategy. Understanding how keywords evolve and affect the lead generation process will help you in the long run.
Following are some of the many basic tools that can help you come up with good and effective keywords:
- List the common terms that your customers use to describe your product or service.
- Reach out to the customers and pay attention to how they talk about topics you are going to write about. Sites like Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Quora are great places to start.
- Brainstorm with your employees.
- Keep an eye on the discussion boards and forums relevant to your industry.
- Use Google Autocomplete. Type a word generally associated with your business, but don’t hit Enter. See the suggested results and write them down.
- You may also look at the “related searches” section at the bottom of the search results page.
- There are also professional keyword search tools that you can make use of, such as SEMrush and Ahrefs. These tools will eat up a portion of your budget but they have proven to be effective in identifying keywords.
Topic Clusters Instead of Single Terms
Search engines nowadays can perfectly understand the relationship between different keywords. The effect of this evolution is that you can create informative content that targets a group of terms such as:
- B2B lead generation
- Lead generation tools
- Lead generation process
- Lead marketing
- Marketing leads
- Business to Business lead generation
- Qualified leads
Keyword Intent
Another part of search engine evolution is its ability to understand the intention behind every search. For instance, when you perform a search on “lead generation process”, the first two pages of the search result will give you an idea as to the intent of people who have searched the same keywords.
If the results are commonly informational pieces or how-to guides on lead generation process, then this tells you the intent of the people who searched for it is to learn more information about the said topic.
On the other hand, if you see on the results page a lot of books or products for sale that are relevant to our sample keyword “lead generation process”, then this tells you that the intent of the searchers is commercial in nature.
As a Digital Entrepreneur, this intent behind keywords should be at the core of your content plan so as to create an effective SEO strategy.
Keyword Prioritization
After conducting a keyword research, you may end up with a substantially long list of keywords related to your business. It is important that you rank these by their importance. Determine which keywords should be prioritized in order for you to know how to allocate your resources properly.
There are two criteria that you should look at in prioritizing the keywords: difficulty and search volume.
When a keyword has a high search volume, it means that a lot of websites are targeting it. So, if you produce content targeting this keyword, it will make it harder to appear on the first page of the search results. If this is the case, it is better to move on to other less-competitive but still relevant keywords.
- Content Creation
We have stressed it a lot, and now we will stress it again: You need to produce high-quality, useful content. Your content must set you apart in the industry, and be difficult to duplicate or rewrite.
Here are a few tips on coming up with great content:
- Interview well-known experts related to the topic at hand and create a piece around it.
For instance, if your website is about digital marketing, you can reach out to a digital marketing expert and ask him or her a few questions.
- When writing about a specific topic or issue, ask for the opinion of industry players and quote them in your article.
- Use the latest data and information relevant to the issue. People will seek out your content when they know that they can get accurate and recent information from your website.
- Check and double check spellings and grammar before publishing your content. Any mistakes in this regard can quickly plummet the credibility of your content.
- Promotion
Now that you have found the most effective keywords and created fresh, brilliant an informative content targeting it, it is time to promote your posts and website, as a whole.
So you know the most effective keyword and have created an error-free and informative content that targets it. The work does not stop there though. You need to promote your posts and your website as a whole.
For this, you can build links from other sites into your own web pages because links are crucial to building a website’s ranking on Google.
- Content Upgrade
When your content starts driving traffic to your site, the next step is to turn the visitors into leads. Your goal should be to get these visitors to share their email addresses with you so that you start building a relationship with them.
One way of doing this is by leveraging your most viewed content and offering upgrades in the form of downloadable checklists, whitepaper or specifications.
Once you have their email addresses, you can start sending out informative and helpful emails before pitching a sale. Apart from using email, chat-bots and analytics can help you to identify consistent readers and convert them into leads.
Some of the visitors may not want to become your customers and that’s okay. The only customer worth anything to your business is a willing customer.
SEO for B2B Effective as ever
We had started this article by posing a question at SEO’s relevancy and usefulness in generating good B2B leads. And although some marketers have even switched to different approaches, we believe that there are ways to make B2B SEO work.
You need to invest time in researching for keywords and create high-quality content that adds value. Primarily, in an age where we are bombarded with so much information, valuable, helpful and up-to-date content is always appreciated.
When you will be seen as a value-adding company, businesses will ultimately want to be a part of your network.