How B2B companies can improve SEO one page at a time

Creating search engine-optimized (SEO) content for B2B companies is inherently challenging. Odds are, your business serves a very specific audience with a general scarcity of high-volume, industry-specific keywords. But finding those terms is only half the battle.

Even if you’re lucky enough to identify the right keywords, sprinkling those terms across your site in title tags and alt-image texts is no longer enough to earn you a page-one ranking. No, if you want your company to appear on those page-one snippets while earning enough organic traffic to justify your efforts, you have to put in focused effort, one page at a time.

Why Title Tags and Meta Descriptions Won’t Solve SEO Problems

It’s true. Regardless of what the internet’s self-proclaimed digital marketing gurus will tell you, your meta data alone isn’t what’s separating you from the companies dominating search results. If you’re only focused on the HTML tags that appear in search engine results pages, you’re not considering how that content got there in the first place.

Today, search engines like Google and Bing are looking for authoritative content that earns clicks in search results pages and retains users over time. Yes, placing industry-specific keywords in title tags and meta descriptions can improve click-through rates in search engine results — but primarily because searchers will see those terms reflected in your metadata and think “Hey, this is exactly what I’m looking for!”

But that’s only half the battle. If the content on the other side of that meta-data isn’t created with the intent to address specific search queries, your content is unlikely to engage visitors, and unlikely to retain high search engine results.

Ranking Well — Without Sacrificing Brand Messaging

Your company website needs to tell your story in order to create an effective user experience. Effectively communicating your value to prospects should always be the site’s first priority – not ranking for industry specific keywords (especially if those keywords only average 60 searches per month.) But there are still ways to boost your organic traffic without sacrificing your brand’s messaging.

Placing keywords in SEO-positive locations is always worth the effort, but your company’s contact us page probably isn’t the optimal spot to infuse keywords. That’s because the content of your site’s core pages – specifically, the pages in your main nav – aren’t created to address search queries about your industry: they’re meant to tell prospects how your business addresses their unique concerns.

If you’re able to identify a keyword worth ranking for, create a page that explains that keyword at its core. This shouldn’t be an about page. Instead, you should be creating an authoritative piece of content that explains the who, what, when, where, why and how of your chosen keyword in a way that reads like a textbook. This is the content that typically ranks well in Google.

Try it for your B2B business. Narrow down your industry to its most essential keywords and Google them. More often than not, page one of the search engine results is comprised of content that provides a high-level explanation of your search. And yes, the title tag and meta description probably include those keywords as well, along with a few other key locations. Tr

B2B SEO Keyword Checklist

I know I went on and on about not treating keyword placements like a grocery list, but there are some placements for keywords that at the very least ensure you are following best practices for SEO:

• In the page url (with words separated by dashes, not underscores)
• In H1 tags/headlines
• In H2 tags/subheadlines
• In paragraphs
• In alt-image text (If keyword is relevant to the image)
• In title tags
• In Meta descriptions

And while you are peppering your content with keywords, be sure not to jam keywords into irrelevant or unnatural places. This is called keyword stuffing and could negatively impact your search results.

With all of this in mind, you can start creating keyword-rich content that actually performs in search engines.