SEO is the unsung hero of B2B marketing and more specifically ABM. As the leading B2B SEO Agency in North America, we integrate decades of SEO experience into best in class ABM campaigns to drive a 9x ROI
Strategic B2B SEO By Stages of the ABM Funnel
1. SEO for Awareness
Getting in front of the buying committee at the very beginning of the research process is crucial. Over 70% of every B2B buyer’s journey begins with a general search. So by utilizing best SEO practices for B2B, you ensure that when your target accounts begin research around topics related to your offerings, they find thought leadership content ranking on page 1 of Google.
2. SEO for Consideration
Organic search can be extremely cost-effective at the consideration stage of your funnel. Typically CPC is highest at consideration and validation stages, so SEO can make big impact on your ROI. Having a B2B SEO agency that are also experts in PPC and ABM is critical to achieving a 9x ROI on your ABM campaigns. The issue is no ABM platforms and almost zero ABM agencies can deliver best in class B2B SEO services.
Long story short: Organic and paid search can result in a very high ROI if they’re utilized correctly.
3. SEO for Validation
If your B2B SEO agency can’t deliver superior organic visibility for Validation stage keywords, you’re going to spend a lot more on PPC and you’re missing a TON of search volume. 85% of Googles traffic is going to click on organic search results, so no matter how much you spend on paid, you’re missing MOST of the traffic. It’s simple: A buyer searches for exactly what they want to read, consume, or engage with.
As a B2B company, you want your potential clients to engage with quality content that resonates with their particular industry and pain points. SEO-related keywords change as the buyer moves through the sales funnel, so content should change with them—whether the content lives on your website or it’s part of your larger inbound or outbound marketing.
SEO for Evaluation
SEO is vital to generating organic traffic and leads for your business. In fact, 71% of B2B researchers and stakeholders start their buying journey with a generic internet search. More importantly, 77% of B2B purchasers won’t even speak to a salesperson before performing their own due diligence.
That means in order for buyers to consider your business as an option, you must show up during their initial industry research—we’re talking the first or second page of search engine results. Ranking that high, however, can only occur by utilizing proper SEO strategies that position your company and marketing assets in front of your target audience at the very beginning of the buyer’s journey.
B2B SEO Strategies for SaaS, FinTech, MedTech, Manufacturing & Supply Chain
Organic traffic generates more leads than any other marketing strategy for the majority of B2B companies, and SEO leads have a “14.6% close rate, compared to only 1.7% for outbound leads” (Search Engine Journal). For B2B organizations, search engine optimization increases the reach and impact of marketing assets and builds long-term rapport with the target audience because it establishes your brand as a trustworthy industry authority.
Creating a highly successful SEO strategy, though, can be difficult; often, it requires an expert in search engine optimization to fully optimize your site and assets. If you don’t have an SEO analyst in-house and you plan to hire a third-party SEO agency, it’s crucial to be well-versed on the fundamentals of SEO strategy in order to understand where SEO needs improvement and what an agency can do to help.
How To Know If Your B2B SEO Strategies are Working.
So how do you know if your SEO strategy is actually working? Luckily, there are two simple metrics to look at to determine success: keyword ranking and organic traffic.
Keyword ranking refers to where your brand’s relevant keywords rank in Google’s search results. While there are plenty of free and paid tools—like SEMRush—that give you insight into keyword rankings, Google offers its Keyword Planner entirely for free. Keyword Planner provides data on where specific keywords ranking in Google’s SERPs. You can search by keywords and refine your search with various categories in order to understand how keywords rank in your industry and which keywords your competitors use. If you neglect to optimize your assets with the highest-ranking keywords, you risk missing out on engaging with your target audience during relevant industry research.
More important than keyword ranking, even, is whether or not your company has experienced an increase in organic traffic. If your SEO strategies are paying off, your business will see a definitive increase in organic traffic over time while a decrease in organic traffic is a sign that your SEO strategies need to be revisited. Ideally, if your business has created a successful SEO strategy, you will see your keywords ranking higher in Google’s search results and an increase in organic traffic to your website.
Where Does SEO Fit in the Sales Funnel?
In SaaS, FinTech, MedTech, and other industries with longer sales cycles, understanding where search engine optimization fits into each stage of the funnel is crucial for crafting an effective SEO strategy as the needs (and search terms) of target accounts and prospective customers change as they move down the pipeline.
At the awareness stage of the funnel, buyers understand they have a problem and are starting their initial research to find a solution. The importance of getting in front of your target audience as early in their search as possible cannot be stressed enough. At this point, for example, a storage facilities manager looking for a new customer relationship management (CRM) platform may perform a simple Google search for “CRM for storage facility.” In an idea situation, you’ll be aware of these industry keywords and terms ahead of time and create content centered around answering the most relevant queries—leading to your website ranking well on SERPs.
In the middle of the funnel, the consideration and validation stages, target accounts will be more serious about making a purchase; they’ll begin searching for specific products, services, and businesses. At this stage in the funnel, the warehouse owner will perform more specific searches such as “best CRM for refrigerated storage facilities” or “best CRMs for refrigerated storage facilities in Georgia.” The objective of your assets in the middle of the funnel is to inform your audience without trying to directly sell your product or service; standing out as a reputable resource in your industry increases the likelihood that those engaging with your website at these stages will continue to move down the funnel.
At the evaluation stage of the sales funnel, your target audience is aware of your brand and they have expressed a clear interest in your product or service with intent to purchase.
The storage facilities manager, at this point, has narrowed down their search, understands their needs and pain points, and is now performing much more specific search queries, including searching for reviews on specific CRM platforms as well as comparisons between the few platforms they are considering. Here, it’s important to create unique assets that answer more specific questions and outrank your competitors in the search results. SEO strategies can be used to optimize case studies, client testimonials, product reviews, and product comparisons to rank higher in SERPs.
Why You Need a B2B SEO Agency
In order to achieve the best possible results, you’ll need a B2B digital marketing partner with decades of SEO experience in-house. In the context of B2B marketing, SEO can be one of your strongest performing channels, as 70 to 80% of end-users searching on Google will click on organic rather than paid results.
The ABM Agency is also a B2B SEO agency with over 25 years of combined experience, our expertise in SEO for B2B marketing goes far beyond the basics and best practices. In order to make sure your business climbs the search engine ladder, our analysts and content creators do the following:
- Evaluate your current site. What isn’t working? What can be done within the current structure to increase organic visits?
- Optimize your website’s ability to be crawled by the search engine’s archiving tools—including keyword research and SEO training
- Brainstorm and create valuable, SEO-friendly content to increase your website’s authority in your industry
- Keep your team up-to-date on recent search changes or Google preferences
- Build a profitable, symbiotic relationship between SEO, paid search, and content marketing in order to increase ROI, number of site visits, and overall awareness
Unfortunately, many agencies and B2B marketing tools leave SEO out of their overall marketing efforts because B2B SEO takes a team of dedicated experts.
We think that’s a huge mistake. B2B SEO should be considered and implemented at every stage of your B2B marketing campaign.
The Basics: What Is SEO?
For those unfamiliar, search engine optimization—or SEO—is a digital marketing tactic that focuses on increasing organic website traffic by optimizing websites and web pages to appear more frequently during relevant searches. The goal of SEO is to increase unpaid user traffic to your website in order to fill your funnel with high-quality prospects. SEO increases organic traffic by demonstrating to search engines that your content is the best result for the topic at hand.
There are many aspects that go into search engine optimization, thus affecting your ranking:
Website Health: Your links work, your backend code is up to date, your site is indexed properly, and you optimized your structured data.
Content Relevance: Your content is the perfect combination of user keyword search, intent, and context.
Online Authority: How trusted your brand is across the internet? This is affected by who shares your content and how often your content is shared.
Competition: Your competitors in search engines may not always be your competitors in industry; it’s important to be able to distinguish between the two.
Usability: Your website and web pages load quickly and function seamlessly on all devices.
Want to learn more about how our SEO strategies can help your B2B company hit its goals and KPIs? Read case studies from our former and current clients:
1. How a Multi-Location Career College Dramatically Increased Applications and Enrollments During the COVID-19 Pandemic
2. Increasing Visibility and Volume for a Top Staffing Agency in the Southeast
Interested in how The ABM Agency can help you achieve your goals and KPIs?
