In competitive B2B industries, securing and maintaining a place on the first page of Google’s search results is challenging. Most companies lack the resources to compete for every commercially valuable keyword, so refining every aspect of SEO strategy and execution is key to effectively using SEO for lead generation.
In this article, I will outline the 5 best practices for B2B SEO that I’ve found to work in terms of increasing rankings and generating qualified leads. They are:
- Target Keywords Based on Search Intent
- Organize Around Topical Pillars
- Publish and Update High-Quality Content
- Conversion Optimize the Website
- Implement Proper Lead Tracking Systems
B2B SEO Best Practice #1: Target Keywords Based on Search Intent
B2B marketers need to be intentional about the keywords they target to attract an audience that has a real interest in their product. Targeting more general, information keywords is often tempting because of their high search volume, but these keywords are highly competitive and attract searchers who are just learning about the topic. Ranking for these keywords is difficult and can be ultimately fruitless; instead your team’s time and effort are best spent targeting transactional keywords.
As an example, let’s say the company produces equipment for small-scale manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCBs). One keyword they might consider is “small-scale PCB manufacturing,” but many searchers will instead be looking for a company like VSE which provides PCB manufacturing services, resulting in lower conversion rates.
The key factor here is the search intent of each keyword: in other words, the why behind a search. For this phrase, “small scale PCB manufacturing”, there are two likely possibilities:
- One possibility is that the searcher is trying to understand what the concept means. But since it’s both specific (“small scale”) and easy to understand (“manufacturing”), it’s doubtful this is a definitional search.
- More likely, the searcher is interested in buying small-scale pcb manufacturing services. Someone seeking this type of service might also search for a keyword with minor variations (e.g., small scale pcb manufacturing services, low volume pcb manufacturing services).
In neither case would either of these searchers looking for small scale pcb manufacturing equipment, which means this keyword misses the target audience and can be safely discarded.
One way to validate this analysis is to examine the current keyword landscape. A quick peek at the actual Google results for this keyword confirm our conclusion: these results are geared toward companies looking for a PCB manufacturer to outsource work to, and not companies who wish to purchase their own equipment.
Targeting what feels like a more accurate phrase, such as “small scale pcb manufacturing equipment,” may yield more positive results. Indeed, Google appears to be allowing other sellers of small-scale pcb manufacturing equipment (i.e. competitors) to rank.
These results target businesses with the correct search intent: owners and decision-makers who want to manufacture their own PCBs and are actively looking for equipment to buy.
Note, however, that you should still employ your own keyword analysis. Sometimes, your competitors will have uniformly misidentified the true search intent of a keyword, and publishing a page that responds to searchers’ actual intent will enable you to rank and convert significantly better than their pages. Finding these gaps is extremely rewarding in a B2B SEO campaign. The most effective SEO strategies will rely on a thorough understanding of search intent: 2-3 minutes of thinking per keyword will result in finding significantly more transactional, high-conversion-rate keywords on which to focus your website’s pages.
B2B SEO Best Practice #2: Organize Around Topical Pillars
An effective keyword strategy relies on grouping and structuring keywords around topical “pillars”: foundational core keywords that cover wide swaths of what the company does. Publishing content according to this model achieves two ends:
- It presents the writer/company as an authority on that subject. Publishing multiple pages around a single keyword can communicate to Google that the website is a niche expert—allowing it to rank more highly than generalist websites with higher domain authority. In turn, this results in pages ranking more quickly, leading to faster return on investment.
- It makes publishing content easier to schedule and implement. Publishing multiple pages on a single subject in a short period of time allows content teams to focus on a single aspect of the company at a time, making for more efficient content creation.
Structuring pages around a pillar necessitates developing several keywords that fit within the pillar. Often, these keywords will actually include the keyword itself, but this isn’t always necessary so long as the keyword is very closely related to the pillar’s topic. For example, a “pcb manufacturing equipment” pillar might include the keyword “pcb manufacturing tools” due to its close relation to the root pillar topic.
Each keyword in a pillar will be most suited for content that falls into one of three categories: blog articles, landing pages, and (more rarely) specialized content. The table below provides an overview of each:
Categories of SEO Content
| Category | Types | Notes |
| Blog Articles | Comparison Blogs | Blog articles represent top to mid-funnel stage content, typically serving the purpose of drawing in prospective clients through targeted articles meant to satisfy more exploratory search intents. As such, blog articles typically take a more neutral tone that conveys authority. |
| Metrics Blog | ||
| Problem/Solution Blogs | ||
| Analysis/Advice Blog | ||
| Landing Pages | Product Page | Landing pages serve the purpose of advertising the product or services in a more direct manner than blog articles typically serve. As such, they often serve as lower-funnel content that drives already interested leads closer to a conversion. |
| Service Page | ||
| Industry Page | ||
| Client Testimonials | ||
| Specialized Content | White Paper | Specialized content consists of bottom-funnel content meant to give leads considering a purchase that last push by granting them access to exclusive/gated content that demonstrates the product’s value. The SEO value of specialized content is often secondary to their conversion value, but it is an important part of the conversion funnel. |
| Case Study |
Generally, each pillar will contain 1-3 landing pages and 1-2 pieces of specialized content, with blog articles making up the rest of content. Campaign strategy will then be organized so that SEO teams can fully complete one pillar before moving onto the next.
B2B SEO Best Practice #3: Publish and Update High-Quality Content
Google tries to connect searchers with the best page on the internet for any given search, making high-quality content the key to ranking on the first page of the search results. There are three elements to creating content that ranks well:
- Precision: How well the content responds to the search intent of the keyword, both in length and level of detail
- Personalization: How well the content uses the searchers’ expectations for jargon and examples to convey that it was written by an expert in their field
- Portion Size: How well the time that a searcher will need to spend on the content to satisfy their search intent matches the time they want to spend satisfying said search intent
By creating content that executes on all three elements, you align your interests with the philosophy behind Google’s algorithm updates, ensuring that any rankings you secure are long-lasting. Contrast this approach with grey hat SEO techniques like keyword stuffing or link buying that seek to find exploits in Google’s algorithm: while they may result in decent rankings for less effort, those rankings are much less stable and often disappear entirely as Google continues to refine their algorithm. High quality content, particularly metrics pieces, will also attract backlinks from high domain authority websites and help establish Google trust much more than low quality backlinks—in addition to converting more visitors to leads.
Once published, your pages will need to be regularly updated as Google prioritizes newly published and recently updated content. Fortunately, these updates are much less time-consuming than creating brand new articles, and these updates can even be more impactful as well—forming the basis for the Corpus of Content model of SEO.
B2B SEO Best Practice #4: Conversion Optimize the Website
Creating a B2B website to generate leads is a lot like wrapping a gift. What’s inside is important, but so is the overall presentation. UI and graphics are the very first things visitors see and interact with when they click on a link, so they have to be inviting to achieve a high conversion rate. To that end, a B2B website should be:
- Simple and consistent in design
- Easy to navigate and read
- Strategic in its use of color, graphic placement, and font to move readers down the page and encourage clicking
Teams can optimize their website to generate leads in different ways. Here are two examples of successful UIs that look very different but both follow each of the rules above.
This first example is a direct sales landing page. It’s designed to drive leads from financial executives seeking an anti-fraud / identity verification system for their customers:
The page works because the UI follows a logical flow. The main graphic instantly hooks visitors in while simultaneously giving them an overview of how Cognito’s services work. The next thing visitors will look at is the large text to the left of the graphic. This explains in more detail what Cognito does. Lastly, visitors will look at the bold Get Started buttons that encourage them to move down the conversion funnel. Everything is laid out clearly and no element feels gratuitous. That makes for a great user experience.
The second example is a more researcher-targeted (as opposed to buyer-targeted) sales page meant to move executives along in the conversion funnel who are in the exploratory phase of thinking about customer service platforms.
There’s a balance here between simple graphics and detailed descriptions. The most important information is right up at the top, and this information grows more detailed as the reader’s eye moves down the page. Breaking information into bite-sized pieces like this is a great way to help visitors digest what the page is trying to say.
Include Clear CTAs
In addition to UI optimization, you should include at least one CTA on the side of every page and at the end of every blog post. Visitors should know exactly where to click to move down the content marketing funnel with minimal effort.
The sidebar call-to-action is fairly common and works best when it travels down the page with the visitor rather than remaining static at the top of the page. It’s the end-of-page CTA that companies often get wrong. Below is a good example of what not to do: Notice how the CTA appears abruptly at the end of the page, disconnected from the content of the article. In that way, it comes across like banner advertising, which gets automatically ignored.
A CTA at the end of a blog post should blend organically with the article’s content, feeling like a natural conclusion to the piece. Here’s an example from a company that offers plastic pallet rental to grocery supply chains. The article is a comparison between two different ways of obtaining pallets—exchange and rental—that comes to the conclusion that rental is the best option.
Within landing pages, button CTAs work particularly well because they’re eye-catching. They should also logically flow from the text surrounding them. Here is an example of a colorful and interesting graphical box on a manufacturing company’s website that has a nicely contrasting CTA button:
Finally, it can be a good option for landing pages to have a form right on the bottom or side of the page so visitors don’t even have to click to a new page to start the conversion process.
The value of an easily findable CTA cannot be understated in a sales environment as easy to exit as a website.
B2B SEO Best Practice #5: Implement Proper Lead Tracking Systems
When they’ve completed the tasks of conducting thorough keyword research, producing content, positioning CTAs strategically, and designing a user-friendly UI, they have essentially crafted an automated SEO system dedicated to lead generation. Nonetheless, it is imperative for teams to establish lead-tracking systems to confirm their efficacy.
Before getting into tracking strategies, it’s important for the team to be aligned on what constitutes a conversion. Our teams operate using the distinctions below”
SEO Conversion Types and Examples
| Conversion Type | Definition | Examples |
| Conversions | Times referred to as macro conversions, conversions are any actions taken by visitors to your website that indicate a strong interest in your services or product. | Purchase |
| Demo Signup | ||
| Click to Call | ||
| Contact Form Fill | ||
| Creating an Account | ||
| Micro Conversions | Micro conversions reflect a reader’s interest in your product or services despite not necessarily being ready for purchase. These conversions are often more minute, suggesting or implying what is more concrete with hard conversions. | 2+ visits in a week |
| Webinar Sign up | ||
| Download eBook | ||
| Visiting the Contact Page | ||
| Visit 5+ Pages | ||
| Watch a Product Video | ||
| Email click link | ||
| Email subscribe |
There are two core methods of tracking and measuring your progress in an SEO campaign: quantitative tracking, which focuses on metrics KPIs and benchmarks, and qualitative tracking, which analyzes metrics surrounding the interactions between prospective/existing customers and the company. The sections below cover both quantitative and qualitative tracking.
Quantitative Tracking
This system relates quantifiable information like:
| Metrics | Formula | Benchmark |
| Bounce Rate | (Single Page Sessions ÷ Total Sessions) ×100 | 36% |
| Average Session Duration | Total Duration of All Sessions ÷ Total Number of Sessions | 3:36 |
| Pages Per Session | Total Page Views ÷ Total Sessions | 2.2 |
| Conversion Rate (visitor-to-lead) | (Number of Leads ÷ Total Visitors)×100 | 2.4% |
In addition, it examines what pages visitors land on when they first visit the site and what actions they take once they arrive. This approach helps teams establish and improve the overall customer conversion path toward an eventual purchase.
I recommend looking at the provenance of the marketing platform as a good best practice to start. Tools that have large user bases and reliable customer support are ideal. Any choice in marketing platform should also provide teams with accurate and actionable insights. Google Analytics and HubSpot are both viable quantitative marketing platforms.
Qualitative Tracking
Qualitative tracking refers to customer relationship management (CRM) software. This tool analyzes how the company interacts with customers and includes data like:
- Customer retention rates
- Customer preferences
- Lead routing and workflow
This isn’t just about how many leads the company gets, but how effectively it handles those leads. The best practice for choosing the right tool for this task is to look for a software that offers predictive tools and automated tasks. HubSpot and Salesforce are both excellent options.
Maximizing All Five B2B SEO Best Practices
These B2B SEO best practices aren’t a secret or even difficult to understand. They simply take a great deal of time, effort, and skill to implement correctly. For example, companies in highly competitive industries will find it difficult to identify keywords their site can realistically rank for, while companies more technical industries may struggle to create effective content.
Often, the best way to solve these problems is by outsourcing your SEO needs. Our agency has been specializing in B2B SEO best practices for more than 15 years, providing clients with full-service teams that provide all aspects of a high-performance SEO campaign. Contact us to discuss a partnership.
