5 Ways to Use Search as a Growth Channel for B2B in 2021

Unlike B2C brands, B2B businesses are often characterized by:

low search volumes on Google.
high competition on scarcely available keywords.

And there’s evidence to support this — usually, where a seven-year-old B2C company is getting 500K visitors per month from SEO, a B2B brand the same age could be seeing only 15K visitors per month. (This is assuming all other things are equal.)

Check out the example below comparing Zola.com (a B2C brand) and Yiedify.com (B2B):

These two sites were founded around the same time (2013) and have been publishing lots of content. Yet, the difference in their traffic numbers makes it look like Yieldify hasn’t been doing much SEO, but that’s not the case.

For instance, when I used the MozBar to analyze the on-page optimization they did on their article about trust badges, I could tell they’re at least following basic SEO principles, like having focus keywords in their URL, page titles, headers, and meta descriptions:

I’d say they’ve not been terrible at optimizing their content for SEO — if they do optimize all their content like they did this one on trust badges.

My point here is: B2C and e-commerce businesses (usually) have way more opportunities in SEO than B2B, especially in terms of search traffic.

But while that is true, it’s also true that no matter how few the search visits, there are still a lot of opportunities in SEO for B2B businesses.

Most of the time, what B2B brands lose in search traffic, they make up in revenue — since their products/services are usually more expensive than those in B2C.

Long story short: there are opportunities for B2B companies in search, and here’s how to capitalize on them in the year ahead.

1. Start from bottom (not top) of funnel

Every funnel begins at the top, but if you want to generate results as quickly as possible, you should kick off your B2B SEO strategy targeting customers at the bottom of the funnel.

Ready-to-buy customers are already at the bottom of the funnel (BoFu), searching for information that’ll help them make a purchase decision. They’re often searching with keywords like:

“[industry] software”
“[industry] tools”
“[competitor] alternatives”
“Is [competitor] a good product/service?”

As a smart marketer, your strategy should be to prioritize reaching them with the bottom of funnel content they’re looking for.

You probably know what BoFu content looks like, but just so we’re on the same page as to what it really is, see these examples of BoFu content from SocialPilot ranking on page one:

I’m not affiliated with SocialPilot, so I don’t know if they kicked off their SEO content marketing with these BoFu topics (search terms).

But if they did, chances are they experienced quick success (in terms of relevant product awareness and sign-ups), since the articles are ranking on Google’s front page for searchers looking for “Buffer alternatives”.

Bottom line is, as a B2B brand, you’ll be better off prioritizing BoFu topics in your SEO strategy. It’s a much better approach than starting all the way at the top …read more

Source:: Moz Blog