B2B companies make up the core of our digital marketing clients. Over the years, our B2B clients have recognized that the shift in B2C purchasing is also taking place in B2B. While personal relationships will always be an important part of the B2B landscape, there is a shift to using the internet as a key purchasing & research tool.
Websites can serve several different purposes for our B2B clients along the sales spectrum:
- Lead generation
- E-commerce
- Sale team support
For our business to business clients, the websites serve one or all of these objectives. Knowing the role of digital marketing and the websites allows us to guide our clients and provide effective SEO and paid advertising.
It is best to discuss specific tactics based on the unique situation of our clients. But, here are some of the areas we push on and how it’s helped our clients:
Improving Domain Authority
When the search engines rank pages on a website, one of the factors is the quality of the page and website. One (not the only) indicator of the quality is the Domain Authority. This is, in part, a measure of the number and quality of other sites that link to the clients’ site. Whether our clients start with low or mid range Domain Authority (DA), we increase the DA as part of the overall organic site traffic growth.
To encourage links, we help our clients develop new content and improve the visibility of existing content.
The adage “build it and they will come” does not apply to websites. Gaining links to your website requires time and effort to connect with other websites to encourage new content or links within existing content. This activity not only takes time to execute, but the impact may take months to be evident.
In the below case, link building activities were taking place for many months before they started to register, and search results started to reflect this.
Ultimately, your objective is more business. Through increases in relevant site traffic, more on-site lead generation, or more e-commerce, we demonstrate growth for our clients.
A word about keyword tracking
Tracking keywords can be useful and we do it. However, keyword positioning is not the objective. Gaining more business is the objective.
Users will search for products or services with a large number of permutations of the product names; this is particularly true in B2B. From differences in the way they refer to a product to use of model numbers or attributes, the way you and your products are found extend way beyond any group of keywords.
We have clients come to us with strong rankings on keywords and yet the business is not growing. Too much emphasis on keyword rankings and not enough on total performance puts SEO and digital programs at risk of failure. So, while we track keyword rankings, they are not the core focus of our SEO programs.
Working with a digital agency
SEO is a long haul opportunity. While any good agency will not lock clients into long term contracts (we have 30-day outs), there should be an expectation that SEO activities may not bear fruit for more than 6 months. While we all like the quick hits, gaining and retaining organic search traffic take time. To help your agency help you, you can do the following:
- Maintain your core goals. SEO is cumulative. If you change your focus, you often reset to the baseline. Seek the long term objectives.
- Expect ups and downs. Search engines change, competition changes, so your results change too.
- Focus on results above keyword rankings. De-emphasizing keyword rankings may seem odd for an SEO, but strong results come from overall site health and improvement, not just a few keywords.
If you are interested in talking with us about your SEO or digital marketing program, please fill out the form or give us a call.