B2B SEO: A Complete Guide to SEO Strategy for B2B Companies in 2024

For B2B companies, your brand is your most significant unique selling proposition (USP).

As a B2B business owner, you should invest more in branding your business organically to generate a constant flow of B2B leads.
About 61% of B2B customers start their purchase journey with a web search on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

A successful B2B marketing strategy places your business website in front of people looking to buy your products.

SEO for B2B can also help to establish your company as a thought leader in its industry, which can help to build trust and credibility with potential customers.

This business-to-business SEO guide will improve your business’ digital visibility in SERPs to help you reach out to new customers, partners, and suppliers through organic marketing.

Let’s begin!

What is B2B SEO?

B2B or business-to-business search engine optimization, is optimizing a site to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) for key phrases related to a B2B company’s products or services.

The goal of B2B SEOs is to increase visibility and drive more qualified traffic to a company’s website, leading to more leads and sales.

SEO is responsible for producing 34% of all qualified leads.

There are various elements of optimizing a B2B site, and each one is equally important to get organic traffic and high organic rankings. The four significant kinds of SEO that you need to focus more on are:

• On-page SEO: This includes optimization of your website’s elements such as meta description, title tag, alt text, images, and videos to provide a smooth user experience.

Related content: UX & SEO: Best Practices

• Off-page SEO: It includes acquiring backlinks from high-quality pages based on the relevancy of your content.

• Technical SEO: It covers areas such as optimization of an XML sitemap, page load speed, indexed pages, and user-friendly design.
• Content SEO: This includes creating, modifying, and optimizing your site’s content based on customers’ needs and user intent.

Difference Between B2B and B2C SEO

Here are the critical differences between B2B and B2C SEO:

1. More Complex and Longer Sales Funnels

B2B sales funnels are often more complex than B2C (business-to-consumer) customer funnels because B2B sales typically involve a longer buying process and multiple decision-makers.

In contrast, B2C purchase funnels are shorter and involve a single decision-maker (the consumer).

2. Targets Low-Volume Keywords

Business-to-business SEO often involves optimizing for longer, more complex key phrases and phrases, whereas B2C SEO may focus on more short, direct keywords.

Here are some examples of key phrases that might be used in B2B marketing:

• Enterprise resource planning software
• industrial automation solutions
• supply chain management software
• business intelligence tools for hotels

Here are some examples of key phrases that might be used in B2C marketing:

• Handbags
• Laptops
• Travel deals
• Beauty products
• Fitness equipment

3. Low Conversion Rates

Conversion rates are lower in business-to-business SEO than in B2C SEO because business-to-business transactions often involve a larger budget, which may require more research and consideration before making a purchase.

Besides, B2B products and services are often more complex and require more technical knowledge, which may slow the decision-making process.

In contrast, B2C sales create a sense of urgency and appeal to a customer’s desire for a product or service, making it easier to convert a customer.

4. Content for Decision Makers

B2B content marketing involves creating different types of content, such as webinars, and research reports, whereas B2C content marketing may include formats such as videos, infographics, and social media posts.

Approximately 70% of internet users educate themselves through content before making a purchase.

Besides, business-to-business content marketing often uses a more formal and professional tone, whereas B2C content marketing may use a more casual and friendly tone.

5. Marketing Communications

B2B brands require to connect with customers deeply since the sales cycle is longer as compared to B2C. The information exchanged should be more profound and elaborative.

Optimized emails and social media posts, long-form blogs, how-to guides, and tutorials are the best marketing communication options for B2B brands as they provide solutions to customers’ problems in-depth and, at the same time, improve your brand awareness.

Whereas the customers of B2C brands are impulsive decision-makers and are more attracted to concise and eye-catching marketing communications such as social media stories and posts, push notifications, text messaging, and banner ads.

Importance of the Impact of B2B SEO on Business Visibility

Competition in the B2B sector is tremendous. There are more than 3 million B2B companies in the US, including small startups and multinational corporations. 

Strategic SEO practices can greatly benefit B2B businesses by increasing brand awareness, reaching potential B2B customers, and raising conversions. 

More than 70% of B2B decision-makers prefer digital communication and services. Hence, effective B2B selling requires the modern approach of reaching key prospects via people-friendly search engine optimization strategies for business-to-business companies. 

Moreover, 57% of B2B marketers have claimed SEO as the top driver of lead generation, outperforming other marketing initiatives.

SEO for B2B companies ensures your business is discoverable by search engines and potential clients by ranking your website for relevant search queries for each stage of the B2B sales cycle to attract qualified leads and clients. For example, you can read about how SEO affects cybersecurity companies here.

How to Build a Successful B2B SEO Strategy in 2024

A successful B2B organic marketing strategy includes careful research, planning, and optimization.

Conduct surveys and social media polls to analyze your target audience’s demographics better.

Understand the language and terminology used by your target audience and identify the search strings and phrases they are searching for.

Use the researched keywords in your landing pages to optimize your content. Develop informative, educational content tailored to the specific needs of your target audience.

You can use different formats, such as blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, and webinars, to add value to your audience.

Once you have your target landing pages ready, you should start acquiring links to your site. This can be achieved by creating great content, writing guest posts, and participating in industry forums and communities.

Additionally, use structured data and schema markup to make it easier for search engines to understand your website’s content.

Finally, use tools such as Google Analytics to track your website’s traffic, bounce rate, and conversion rate. Use this data to understand what is working and not, and adjust your strategy as needed.

Build relationships with other businesses and influencers in your industry and participate in industry events and networking.

The goal is to create a comprehensive business-to-business SEO strategy to help you achieve your business goals and increase your visibility in the local and global results.

Optimized content pages drive these customers to be associated with your brand due to the relevancy and information you offer.

Enhance your B2B SEO Strategy with Data-Driven Adjustments

You should revise your B2B SEO strategy yearly based on your competitor’s tactics to outperform them. 

Applying data-driven SEO adjustments to your organic marketing tactics results in better returns on investment, can significantly boost your brand visibility, and attract qualified B2B leads. 

You should perform keyword, content, and backlink gap analysis to determine what works best for your business rivals. By proactive competitor monitoring, you can identify new keywords your competitors are using, the content styles they are adopting, and the links they build, helping them rank higher in search engines. 

Data-driven SEO involves data analysis to inform and refine your SEO marketing strategy. It leverages quantitative and qualitative information to make informed decisions that enhance search engine performance. 

By gathering and examining existing data, you can identify successful past methods and forecast future successes, allowing for more precise targeting and web optimization. 

Data-driven approaches also extend to link building strategies and enhancing user experience by analyzing engagement metrics, ensuring your website remains competitive in organic search rankings.

10 Steps For an Effective SEO B2B Strategy in 2024

Here is a step-by-step guide to creating an effective B2B marketing strategy:

1. Explore the Buyer Persona

Creating a B2B buyer persona involves researching and identifying your target customer’s characteristics, needs, and behaviors.

Before creating a buyer persona, you should be clear about what section you need to target as an audience.

Begin with conducting deep market research about what your target audience’s pain points are and how your product can solve their problem of satisfying their final buyers.

Determine the industries and companies for your products or services that are most relevant.

Gather information about your target market through surveys, interviews, and online research.

Look for patterns and common characteristics among the individuals in your target market.

Use the information you’ve gathered to create a detailed profile of your ideal customer, including demographics, job titles, pain points, and goals.

Share your buyer persona with sales and marketing teams and test it with real prospects and customers to ensure it’s accurate and useful.

2. Understand Your Sales Funnel

The sales funnel represents your customer’s purchasing journey that starts with awareness and ends with action.

Before beginning your keyword analysis, you must understand how your sales cycle works. You should dive deep into your sales analysis to get a clearer idea of how your customers find your brand.

Connect with your sales team and ask customers about the most successful touch points or the best and worst-performing products.

You also need to analyze the key performance indicators of your sales funnel before moving forward with optimization.

Grab vital statistics like average purchase time, churn rate, bounce rate, retention rate, and conversion rate, as it will help you create a better strategy for keywords.

3. Research Keywords and Their Intent

Around 39% of b2b marketers believe that keyword analysis is one of the most challenging tasks in search engine optimization.

Follow the below steps to do effective B2B keyword research:

• Start with a list of seed words: Based on your target audience persona and sales funnel stages, start with a list of relevant primary keywords you want to target.
• Use keyword analysis tools: Use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, and Answer The Public to find relevant search strings for your topics.
• Analyze search volume and keyword difficulty: Look at each keyword’s search volume and difficulty to determine which search strings are most likely to drive traffic to your site.
• Look for long-tail keywords: Focus on targeting the low-volume long-tail keywords as they tend to be more specific, and people searching with intent-specific keywords are more likely to convert into customers.
• Compile a keyword list: Group the key phrases you’ve found into a list by segmenting them by topic and relevance.

4. Build Your Website Structure According to Keyword Clustering

Keyword clustering refers to grouping similar and relevant customer search terms. This strategy provides a clean and well-structured website to the audience and web crawlers.

Since Google rolled out its Hummingbird update, where the crawlers focused on phrases instead of single keywords, it has become a common practice for brands to include keyword clustering in their SEO strategy.

Here are the steps to build a clean website structure using keyword clustering:

• Segment the search strings you have in your list. Group your key phrases based on synonyms, similar words, phrases, or subtopics. Focus on clustering 3-5 keywords.
• The number of clusters you build becomes a deciding factor in how many landing pages you create. Ideally, you should have at least one landing page per cluster.
• Match your keyword cluster to a particular page based on theme and topic. Create and optimize your existing and new content based on this strategy.

Review the clusters and refine them as necessary, merging or splitting them as needed to ensure that the keywords are organized in the most logical and meaningful way.

5. Conduct a Full Technical SEO Audit

Performing technical SEO audits help you identify website issues that restrict your site’s organic visibility.

Here are the steps to conduct a technical site audit:

• Identify the crawl errors: Use tools such as Google Search Console to identify and fix any crawl errors, such as broken links, that may prevent search engines from properly indexing your site.
• Optimize page load speed, and core web vitals score: Optimize images, reduce excessive coding, and use a content delivery network (CDN) to improve page load speed. Also, check the core web vitals score using Google Search Console and take steps to fix it.
• Use structured data: Use schema markup to help web crawlers understand the content and organization of your site.
• Check for mobile-friendliness: Ensure your site is mobile-friendly and properly optimized for mobile devices.
• Use a sitemap: Create and submit a sitemap to help web crawlers discover and crawl your website’s pages.
• Use 301 redirects: Use 301 redirects to redirect traffic from old or removed pages to relevant new pages, to prevent 404 errors, and to pass link equity.
• Check for duplicate content: Use tools such as Siteliner to identify and resolve duplicate content issues on your site.
• Check for broken links: Use tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush to identify and fix any broken links on your site.
• Check for security: Ensure that your site has a valid SSL certificate and is properly secured to protect your website from hacking and other security threats.
• Check for page titles and meta descriptions: Verify that all pages on your website have unique, relevant, and compelling meta titles and meta descriptions.
• Check for hreflang tags: If your website targets multiple languages or regions, you should use hreflang tags to signal to web crawlers which language or regional version of a page they should show to users.

6. Optimize Your Product and Services Pages

You should have a relevant and intent-specific product and service landing page to rank your B2B website higher on search engines and drive organic traffic. The product page keeps your prospective customers engaged and leads to more sales.

Here are the tips to optimize the product page of your b2b website effectively:

• Create strong branding: Include your brand’s logo wherever relevant. Strong branding makes it easier for customers to identify and remember your company, products, or services.
• Use a clear and compelling headline: Use a headline that clearly and concisely communicates the product’s main benefit.
• Include detailed product information: Provide detailed information about the product, including features, specifications, and any certifications or accreditations.
• Use high-quality images and videos: Use original images and videos to present the product, including different angles and features. Also, include accurate image alt tags to help the web crawlers understand the content of the images.
• Include customer testimonials: Use customer testimonials to build trust and credibility for the product. Make it easy to contact sales:
• Include a clear call-to-action (CTA): A compelling CTA makes it easy for visitors to contact sales for more information or to request a quote.
• Make it easy to compare products: Include a comparison table or chart that allows visitors to compare the product with similar products.
• Use breadcrumb navigation: Use breadcrumb navigation to help visitors understand where they are on the website and how to navigate to other relevant pages.
• Optimize the URL format: Adding product categories and product names because it helps web crawlers and users understand your content better. For example, use: http://www.yoursite.com/product-category/product-name instead of http://www.yoursite.com/Item/123456.
• Optimize for SEO: Optimize the page for web crawlers by including relevant keywords in the page title, meta description, headings, and throughout the content.
• Make it easy to share: Include social media sharing buttons that make it easy for visitors to share the product page on social media platforms.
• Use transparent pricing: Display the product’s price, including any discounts or special offers that may be available. Following these steps, you can optimize your B2B product pages to provide a positive user experience, increase conversions, and drive more sales.
• Add customer testimonials: Encourage customers to rate your product and services honestly. You should share customer reviews and testimonials on your b2b website as it builds trust and credibility among prospective customers.

7. Use Internal Links to Improve Your B2B SEO

People focus more on acquiring backlinks from various authoritative websites, but they often don’t realize that even internal linking can help them earn a high ranking on search engines.

Here are some ways to ensure an effective internal linking structure:

• Use descriptive and relevant anchor text: Use descriptive and relevant text for your internal links, which will make it clear to users and web crawlers what the linked page is about.
• Create a logical hierarchy: Organize your internal links in a logical manner, with the most important pages linked to your homepage and the less essential pages linked from those pages. Here is an example:
• Link to deep pages: In addition to linking to your homepage and main category pages, link to deeper pages within your site to help web crawlers crawl and index more of your content.
• Use contextually relevant links: When linking to other pages within your site, ensure that the links are contextually relevant to the page’s content. This will make the links more valuable to users and search engines.
• Regularly update and maintain internal links: Regularly update and maintain your internal links, removing broken links and updating links to ensure they are still relevant and accurate.

By following these tips, you can create effective internal links that will help users navigate your site and help web crawlers understand the structure and importance of your content.

8. Use Structured Data

Structured data is a type of code to help web crawlers understand the content of your site. It uses a standardized format, such as schema.org, to provide information about different types of content, such as products, reviews, events, and more.

The top three types of structured data are:

• Microdata: A set of tags that are added to the HTML of a web page to provide additional information about the content.
• JSON-LD: A script that can be added to the head of a web page to provide additional information about the content in the form of a JSON object.
• RDFa: A set of attributes that can be added to the HTML of a web page to provide additional information about the content.

Use structured data to enhance the appearance of your website in organic results, such as by adding rich snippets, which can increase click-through rates.

Use Google’s structured data testing tool to ensure that your structured data is properly implemented and free of errors.

9. Create an Expert B2B Blog

Writing and publishing original and engaging blogs can help you acquire high organic traffic and backlinks.

Here are top blogging optimization tactics you can adopt to turn your blog into a lead generation machine:

• Think about what your target audience is interested in and their problems. Consider what keywords people’s search queries are in relation to your industry, and try to include them in your blog topic.
• If your customers are asking questions to your customer support, it means they are interested in that topic, so take inspiration from those questions and create a blog post to answer them.
• Choose a timely topic that addresses current trends or issues in the industry.
• You can publish case studies, whitepapers, ebooks, webinars, infographics, how-to guides, and research reports to provide value to potential customers and position your company as a helpful resource.
• Don’t make your prospective customers hunt for information. Include a search button on your blog to enable site visitors to find the information they are looking for easily.
• Add high-quality images and infographics to help readers visualize your message for better engagement.
• Include a clear and prominent CTA at the end of each blog post, such as “Sign up for our newsletter” to acquire more potential leads.
• Use a chatbot to converse with your visitors and guide them to give them their contact information.

B2B companies with a blog generate about 67% more leads than those without.

10. Elevate Your B2B SEO with Powerful Link Building Methods

Backlinks play a massive role in your organic rankings. The more quality and authoritative backlinks you have, the higher the chances of ranking at the top of the organic results.

Here are the steps to earn valuable backlinks:

• Submit Site to B2B Listings with Full Descriptions and Reviews: List your B2B website on reputable business review and feedback platforms like The Manifest, Trustpilot, Crunchbase, G2, Capterra, Clutch, GoodFirms, Glassdoor, UpCity, and DesignRush to significantly boost your online presence. Additionally, use automated citation-building SEO tools like BrightLocal to optimize the process of submitting and managing your listings in top business directories, ensuring consistency and saving time. 
• Order Theme-Related Guest Posts: Publishing quality guest posts on authoritative industry blogs boosts your domain reputation and enhances your SEO. Guest blogs build backlinks and are seen by business partners in your sphere. It’s a great way to establish your expertise, grow your business partnerships, and drive more qualified B2B traffic to your site.
• Link insertion: Another popular backlink strategy is link insertion. It is a form of off-page SEO that involves adding a link to your B2B website within an existing article on another website. Link insertion is highly effective because it leverages the domain reputation of the host website, improving your B2B website’s link authority and search engine ranking. 
• Collaborate with Journalists: Collaborating with journalists can significantly boost a business’s digital visibility and credibility. Journalist networks like Help a Reporter Out (HARO), Qwoted, and ProfNet connect journalists with industry experts for commentary and insights, offering businesses opportunities to showcase their expertise and get featured in news articles and publications. Other platforms such as SourceBottle, Muck Rack, and ResponseSource also facilitate connections between journalists and businesses. They provide valuable PR opportunities by facilitating media announcements and enhancing a business’s authority in its field.
• Create and Distribute Press Releases: It’s important to optimize your press releases for Google and other search engines and include relevant backlinks to your website. To distribute a press release effectively, craft a newsworthy one with a compelling headline, informative lead paragraph, and relevant quotes. Include multimedia elements like images or videos to enhance the visual appeal. Distribute them through reputable networks and industry-specific outlets, like PR Newswire and Prowly, to gain backlinks when published.

Key B2B SEO Trends in 2024

Here are the top optimization trends for B2B websites to look forward to and adopt in 2024:  

• Interaction to Next Paint: INP is a new metric Google’s Chrome Team introduced in March 2024 as part of the Core Web Vitals. It measures responsiveness, replacing the First Input Delay (FID) metric. INP focuses on addressing the limitations of FID, providing a more effective measure of user experience quality on web pages. A low INP results in quick responses to user interactions, enhancing user experience, while a slow INP can lead to higher bounce rates as frustrated users may leave.
• E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness): Google prefers content created for people and can assess the helpfulness of content on a page-level and site-level basis. Your website content should be useful and original, and the author should have experience and expertise. E-E-A-T is a crucial component of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. 
• Passage Ranking: With the new passage ranking algorithm, Google can now understand why a particular page is much more relevant to a specific query than a broader page. Google AI-powered document analysis systems can now highlight a featured snippet and how it ranks web pages. B2B companies can create in-depth content that targets specific queries, benefiting from Google’s improved passage understanding. Implementing rich snippets can help highlight key information, and using video content with well-defined segments can enhance user experience. 
• Generative AI: Google’s integration of generative AI into Search means Google now returns direct answers to most search queries. With AI-driven capabilities, search queries can yield more precise and contextually rich information. The AI snapshots provide quick, informative overviews, reducing the effort needed to sift through search results. Enhanced product descriptions and reviews also aid B2B buyers in making informed decisions, further streamlining the customer journey from search to conversion. To leverage Google’s generative AI capabilities, B2B websites should create high-quality, comprehensive content that answers specific questions and provides detailed information supported by structured data to enhance understanding. 

Future of B2B SEO

In 2024, the landscape of business-to-business SEO is drastically shifting with the advent of AI, particularly Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE). This innovative AI-powered search feature aims to deliver comprehensive answers directly on the SERP, reducing the need for users to click through to websites. 

Consequently, businesses can expect a potential decrease in overall traffic from traditional search engines. To overcome this search behavior limitation, you should optimize for featured snippets, crafting high-quality, concise content that directly addresses user queries and tailoring content for conversational and natural language. 

Leveraging AI technology for keyword research, content creation, and data modeling can give you a competitive edge.

VIB conducted a survey to measure AI’s impact on different marketing areas. 

The results?

• 55% of B2B marketers see a strong potential for AI to create content assets (blogs, guides, etc). 
• 50% feel that personalizing content with AI is great for reaching your target market and audience. 
• 25% consider the role of AI in optimizing customer engagement and retention. 

Hence, AI will impact business-to-business SEO in both positive and negative ways. 

Despite these changes, fundamental B2B SEO strategies such as optimizing website architecture, focusing on content pillars, and enhancing user experience remain pivotal for successful B2B search engine optimization in 2024.

Next-Level B2B SEO: Ninja Promo’s Comprehensive Strategy

You need quality B2B search engine optimization services for the sustainable expansion of your B2B company. 

Our organic growth managers prepare ideal customer persona-based SEO strategy for B2B companies for faster and stronger organic growth. 

We unlock exponential SEO success by finding intent-driven keywords for each funnel stage, performing competitor gap analysis, crafting helpful and buyer-specific content, mastering technical SEO, and acquiring white hat backlinks.  

Our range of B2B SEO solutions includes on-page and off-page optimizations, technical audits, conversion rate optimization, international and local SEO, earned media collaboration, voice, app, and video optimization, and organic reputation management.

Our SEO specialists keep things transparent by informing you about the tasks and results. We share honest analytics reports with accurate performance data to help you track the progress of your B2B SEO campaigns.

Reach out to our experts to craft the best SEO plan with long-term results. We have expert knowledge of the latest Google Helpful Content update, topical relevance, E-E-A-T-focused content, and white hat backlinks to ensure sustainable success. 

Conclusion

Business-to-business SEO is challenging for businesses because of longer sales cycles. Besides, B2B sites are often more complex and have more technical requirements, making it more challenging to ensure that all the on-page and technical SEO elements are in place.

However, when you know the right tactics to promote your B2B site, you can overcome these challenges and achieve the best results.

Start optimizing your B2B site by leveraging the top B2B organic marketing tactics discussed in this guide. Doing so can drive targeted traffic to a site, which can lead to increased conversions and sales.

Adopting the tactics and strategies from this article in your marketing funnel will convince search engines that your content and website are relevant and valuable for the users. If done correctly, these SEO practices will take your b2b business to the next level, helping you gain a wider audience reach with maximum ROI.