As a small business owner, you have many responsibilities. You must complete daily tasks, monitor competitors' strategies, and watch industry news sources. One of the least important things is SEO strategies for B2B small businesses.
And that makes sense. You might not have time to read how SEO is adapting to Google's new update, not to mention what keywords your competitors rank for.
But why is an SEO strategy so important for B2B businesses? According to 2019 data from Think with Google by HubSpot, 49% of users answered that they use Google to discover and search for new products and products.
Prospective customers are searching Google for solutions that meet their business needs. Websites that don't have useful information are missing out on revenue. So, with limited time and resources, where do you get started?
Let's focus on the 3 basic steps required for a B2B small business SEO strategy.
The first step to a successful SEO strategy is researching what the buyer persona is searching for online. Don't worry about it. I'm not going to tell you to buy fancy software and spend hours entering keyword data.
To help small businesses stand in the shoes of buyer personas, think about companies to target by industry or company size. What kind of conversations do they have online, such as LinkedIn, etc., and what are their challenges?
For example, let's say you're a software company that created financial applications. Perhaps one of the main points of the buyer persona is that when your financial documents aren't organized, you don't know where to start looking for an app to keep everything organized. You might post on LinkedIn and ask for recommendations, or search for “business finance apps” on Google.
We'll brainstorm a list of these types of practical keywords for various persona challenges. Next, type each one into the Google search bar and see what else comes up to further expand those keywords.
Now you can list ideas for keywords your persona might search for online in simple Excel.
You can also use the Google Ads keyword planner tool to search for terms related to products. Creating an account is free, but running an ad campaign is free. Add the keywords provided to the Excel spreadsheet. The tool used to tell you how many searches a keyword has received per month, but now it only shows the range.
You might be wondering “what keywords are driving users to your website?” This is a valid question, but unfortunately Google removed the option for site owners to browse that type of keyword data a few years ago.
If you want to learn more about how to thoroughly research SEO keywords, check out this guide.
The next step is to use Excel lists to create content that ranks for relevant and highly searchable keywords. Generally, if you're a small business, it's best to focus on keywords that aren't too difficult to rank for. With the free Google Trends tool, you can figure out how much interest your keywords are generating online.
For example, if you type “sports shoes,” search trends for the past 30 days will be displayed using the appropriate filters.
Highly competitive keywords have high interest and are harder for small businesses to rank. That's why it's important to find long-tail keywords that are relevant to your persona's search intent and are less competitive.
The best practice for B2B small businesses in 2021 is to have their own blog. It's your connection to the online world that provides valuable information to your target audience. Content within your blog may hint at your services, but it's not a place to over-advertise.
In fact, being too promotional might be one of the biggest mistakes clients make with their blogs.
Imagine walking out of the grocery store and throwing away all of your groceries. Imagine someone standing there shouting how great it would be to pick up groceries from the ground. You'll ignore them and start picking up fallen food. Then imagine someone coming over and helping you pick up your groceries without asking for payment or bragging.
You've come to appreciate that person, and if they give you a business card later, you might even be able to keep it.
This ridiculous situation is an example of someone coming to your website with a problem. They know the site is for describing your products and services, but they'll probably ignore it unless they're ready to buy it. But there's a blog page where you can find industry advice on how to solve challenges.
The goal of a B2B SEO strategy is to help buyer personas trust small businesses. Furthermore, it is possible to gain trust and build trust by providing valuable information not only about products and services, but also about customer issues. That way, customers are more likely to choose to buy from you when they're ready to buy. But of course, you first need to create a blog page.
WordPress is an easy-to-use platform for small businesses. It's free, and there are plenty of plugins available to help you customize your site. There are many different types of website building platforms to choose from to suit your budget.
Another popular option for small businesses is HubSpot, a leading sales and marketing software tool. There aren't any free options, but integrated sales, marketing, and CRM tools are extremely useful. If you have challenges or aren't sure if it's worth buying, talk to a HubSpot implementation expert.
It's important to use your company name as your brand domain for your blog. If the words are related to the persona's search intent, there will be a difference in organic traffic. One free tool is lead domain search. You can search for.com domains based on the keywords you enter.
Remember the keywords you've found that your buyer persona is most likely to search for? Please use these as references for blog titles and general content. You'll need to create content for each stage of the marketing funnel, but first create a blog post.
Also, consider outsourcing content creation work to inbound marketing experts. It takes less time than creating one yourself, but if your industry is technical, you might need to add your own expertise.
Now that you've written, revised, and published your first blog post, it's time to sit back and watch the data flow out. And of course, let's start planning our next content.
SEO and business blogging aren't marketing where results come out overnight. But these are critical to business. You can think of this as a snowball effect. The more time you spend focusing on content and the more useful content you create, the greater the impact.
Generally, when it comes to search engine rankings and website traffic, it can take at least a few months for the hard work to actually pay off.
To make these steps easy and successful, aim to optimize, create, and publish a single blog post on your website's blog. This is a great starting point for your small business SEO strategy. Once you start collecting data, you can determine which blog posts are bringing in organic website users that are actually converting.
An SEO strategy centered around supporting B2B businesses must be all about data. It's the only way to measure the results of content and keyword research activities.
Here are a few questions you should ask yourself when researching your SEO progress.
Most businesses use free tools like Google Analytics to reference accurate website traffic data. If you're using WordPress, you can install a plugin to measure and improve things like bounce rates and conversion rates. HubSpot uses dashboards to track clicks and conversions and record other valuable points of website data.
Once you've gathered answers to these questions, etc., you can begin optimizing your SEO process. If your small business is re-evaluating its buyer persona every year, focus on what new keywords they should target.
After reading this blog, you should have a rough idea of how to develop a simple SEO strategy for B2B businesses. The first step is to research the keywords that customers are searching for online. Then, use that information to solve customer challenges and create content that provides useful knowledge.
If you don't have a blog page to post useful knowledge, create one yesterday. Most websites these days have data tracking tools to monitor website content. This is one of the most valuable parts of a B2B SEO strategy. Never make small business marketing plan decisions unless they're backed by solid data.