For B2B companies, SEO remains the most important and sustainable channel for customer acquisition. Indeed, strong organic visibility at every stage of the buying cycle is a sure way – and sometimes the least expensive way – to accelerate growth.
Developing organic growth as part of a B2B company's SEO strategy has many differences from B2C. Understanding how to approach the SERPs with these differences in mind is the key to success.
What characterizes a B2B from a B2C in an SEO approach?
A successful B2B SEO strategy positions your company's website in the search results of people who are actively looking for your services or products.
A more complex search process:
Whether B2B or B2C, the principle is the same: an individual buys a good or a service from another individual. The difference is that in B2B, the individual buys products or professional services on behalf of a company.
Clearly, the process of buying a pair of shoes is different from buying fleet management software. The latter is much more complex.
It is generally the case for B2B companies that the conversion funnel depends on a set of circumstances that must be taken into account. Therefore, the target audience must be well-known and must be tracked from the first contact to the conclusion of the sale.
From an SEO point of view, this complexity is seen as an opportunity to receive targeted traffic on the site.
Low traffic keywords:
All SEO specialists will tell you: in B2B, the search potential of B2B keywords is very often lower than that of B2C keywords, and for good reason. The complexity of the conversion funnel means that several keywords are typed for the same need, hence the low volume.
The key is to dig deep to identify the keywords that match your target audience's buying intent at every stage of the process.
The low volume of conversions:
We are talking about "sales" conversions here: admittedly, this volume is relatively small compared to the sales of products intended for mass consumption. Nevertheless, these "sales", when they occur, are of a much higher value than when an ordinary consumer good is involved. Your challenge is to attract your target, even for small volumes, to focus on the value you provide and on what differentiates you from the competition – and that's it.
How can you stand out in B2B?
Your success depends on your understanding of your target audience and, above all, on your ability to convince them. Understanding: Note that B2B buyers want to be sure, even before contacting you, that they are talking to a company that is capable of meeting their needs. During the search process, they need to be reassured that they are contacting the right company, the one that will find the right solution to their problem.
Conviction :
Your role is to prove your expertise to reassure your buyers that they are making the right choice, which means raising their awareness at a very early stage of the funnel.
To achieve this, you must create content that highlights your experts: Blog articles, podcasts, LinkedIn marketing, marketing videos, press relations, conferences or webinars, etc. All means are good, and even complementary, for having your employees recognized as experts in your sector.
Nevertheless, you will have to be patient. The content strategy that you are going to implement, which will involve your entire content hub, will have the primary objective of ranking in the SERPs in relation to your prospects' queries. But the sale is unlikely to be made until several months later.
Five points of focus for a successful B2C SEO strategy
In summary, to succeed in your B2C SEO strategy, you must pay attention to these five aspects:
- Good identification of buyer personas and a good understanding of the conversion funnel
- An in-depth study of the keywords to target at each stage of the funnel
- The creation and optimization of landing pages specific to each product or service
- The implementation of a content strategy (involving your entire content hub) that will allow you to rank in the SERPs around prospects' queries.
- Food promotion of your content to gain backlinks
