Having strong search engine optimization (SEO) performance as a B2B organization is an increasing priority.
There was a time when word of mouth, sales reps and over the counter sales were the main channels for B2B businesses. That’s now changed.
More and more B2B companies are generating leads digitally and moving their B2B customers online.
Is your website truly optimized for SEO? Could you do more?
Make your site address secure
Secure HTTPS websites are given preference over non-secure ones. If your website has an address which begins ‘HTTP’ it will affect your search results and rankings. If people select your site they’ll receive a warning about its security. To meet security requirements, you’ll need an SSL certificate on your website.
Keep your keywords relevant
SEO and keywords go hand in hand. It can be tempting to ‘stuff’ or overload your site with seemingly relevant terms but this isn’t a good tactic.
The first step is to create keyword-friendly URLs that help search engines understand what each page on your site is about. This means the unique information which identifies your page should include words that indicate its contents.
However, it’s also important to keep your URL as simple as possible. For example, you might sell chocolate bars in bulk to other businesses. Don’t make your URL for the page ‘/cheap-chocolate-bars-great-prices-B2B-fantastic’. Try to keep it as simple as ‘/chocolate/bars/’. Search engines also check the headings on your page so make sure your main heading (H1) includes ‘chocolate bars’ as well as a couple of your H2 tags.
In a B2B setting searches are likely to be for product types rather than specific products or brand names. You can also consider varying keywords and phrases to include B2B terms like ‘wholesale’ and ‘bulk’. This can increase the likelihood your website will appear for the right people in search results.
Optimize for mobile
Google’s mobile first indexing is now nearly complete, after almost seven years. This means your site is assessed for its quality and usability from the perspective of people using mobile devices. To perform well in search engine results (crawling, indexing and ranking) you must optimize your site for mobile devices.
You can also consider optimizing your keywords based on search intent and device. For example, a B2B decision-maker might use a smartphone or tablet device to carry out product research. Then they might go to your website using their desktop PC to place an order. By optimizing keywords for different contexts, you can increase the likelihood potential customers will find your site and make purchases.
Create high quality content
Good SEO relies on understanding your customers, what they’re looking for, their challenges and their needs.
Before purchasing from you online they’ll want to know you’re a reliable and trustworthy organization. In many cases, as long as you successfully meet their needs, they’ll continue to place orders with you.
By making your content as informative as you can, your site will appear in relevant search results. This helps B2B buyers find you and also shows you understand them and can meet their needs. They are busy people, so keep things simple and focus on:
- what you’re selling
- discounts you offer
- delivery options
- business-specific information.
B2B customers also value personalized content backed up by data and analysis. This helps them simplify their research and speed up their purchases.
Share blogs regularly
Blog posting helps your site by adding new and relevant keywords in informative ways.
If done correctly, regular blogs can contribute to your SEO results. Google favors content-rich sites as long as they are high quality and informative. Blogging demonstrates your expertise in a certain field. It can increase your chances in results for search queries about your subject area. Use target keywords that are highly relevant and have good search volumes. Try to focus on two or three terms that directly match the intent of your ideal reader.
As well as adding new and relevant content you can include internal links to other pages on your website. This will encourage visitors to stay longer and explore more pages.
Regular blogging also helps with link building which adds to your site’s authority. Creating high-quality content that answers questions, features relevant links and provides useful information means other trustworthy sites will link to it.
Improve site speed
The time it takes to load some or all of the content on a website page also affects search engine performance. Making sure you have a B2B ecommerce platform that delivers fast page load times is another essential SEO ingredient.
Cloudfy is a software as a service (SaaS) B2B ecommerce solution in the cloud. All your SEO requirements are easily managed from a single dashboard.
Cloudfy’s tools to boost SEO for your site include:
- meta descriptions for product pages, product categories and content pages
- meta titles and keywords on content pages
- page H1 tags handled automatically
- image alt tags handled manually on product pages and automatically everywhere else
- custom text content on product category pages and static content pages
- custom description content on product pages
- SEO friendly canonicalization of filter and dynamic URLs
- bulk export/import for product and category information, meta data and titles.
Cloudfy also makes it easy to use GA4 analytics and tracking, ecommerce tracking and Facebook pixel tracking.
To discuss how Cloudfy can help your B2B business improve search engine performance, get in touch with us today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Meta data is ‘data about data’. It tells search engines about the information provided on your website’s pages. You can provide different types of meta tags to help the right people find pages about you, your products and services. The most useful are
- the page title tag
- page and product meta descriptions
- meta robots, including 'noindex' and 'nofollow' tags.
SEO helps your B2B website and pages rank higher in results from search engines like Google and Bing. Digital marketing has grown significantly recently as companies focus on SEO and work with experts to improve performance.
Without an SEO strategy you will lose out to your competitors.
SEO drives organic traffic to your B2B ecommerce site. Many companies use it alongside paid search to attract new customers and increase sales. It’s important to check the SEO tools an ecommerce platform offers. Some offer only basic options based on retail (B2C) sales and don’t have the in-depth tools you need. You could miss valuable opportunities to deliver the right results for your B2B buyers. Cloudfy’s user-friendly content management system allows you to create and publish all the content you need as part of your B2B SEO strategy.
