Ao what does this mean? Consumer driven websites may get more daily searches from prospective customers, but B2B sites get a fair share of potential businesses, strategic partners, and even shareholders who are on the Internet using certain key words to search and find B2B solutions.
Here are just a few of the steps to ensure that B2B client websites are organized into the most logical, user-friendly architecture that responds to organic searches. That means, a search that comes up on the first page of Google, and not the sponsored ads on the top or right hand side of the page. These steps include:
1) Benefits of SEO. So many companies and individuals are swarming the Internet posting websites, blogs, and posting to social media sites, so the search engines are running out of bandwidth. What used to take a company just two to three months to be ranked by Google and other search engines for keywords that people are using, may now take eight months or longer. The longer you wait to do the proper SEO for your B2B site, the longer it will take to become ranked. The proof is that we can take a look at your competitors today, and in three or six months, we'll tell you how your SEO compares as they become better and better ranked.
2) The Keyword Analysis. No matter whether you're are a B2C or B2B company, the first step is still a keyword analysis. BUT the differences are that a B2B company should not make keyword judgments, but rather create the gross list that is as inclusive as possible of the potential terms their actual prospects might use - and this would include vertical markets, potential strategic partners, the government in some cases, and even shareholders. As SEO experts, we then focus on generic keywords based on what these potential customers call things. You also need to think about whether or not searches will be about a problem they're experiencing, or the type of company potentially offering solutions? And often times geography may play a role in words people are using.
3) Popularity of B2B Keywords. Once you've created the gross list of potential keywords, we will determine the relative popularity of these search terms to give us some idea of which search terms are used more often than others. The actual raw number of searches for a given search term does not matter.
4) Value of Website Optimization. You can now figure out the search terms by which your site will be optimized. For each B2B solution, there will be one or two relevant search terms that rank highly, three to five more that place as seconds, and many others that also have good potential. Include terms with lower search volume because for B2B, these may yield less search volume or not as much traffic, but more likely it will yield a more serious potential partner. Website optimization is where most webmasters make their biggest mistakes such as universal tagging, repeating the company name, or NOT using key words in Meta, Alt and Description tagging. This requires a true and experienced SEO consultant. 5) Content for Extra Search Terms. B2B companies often have sparse website content, so they will need to find a home for all of the terms people use to find them. Each page of content should focus on a specific search term. In other words, where else on your site can you create a credible landing page that is going to respond well to organic searches?
5) Internal and External Link Building Strategy. Some of the pages might be directly accessible through your site's primary navigation, other pages may be in the sub-navigation, and others may only be accessible through text links in the body copy of pages. Always keep the landing pages for the most popular search terms closest to the home page. Never go more than three layers deep, or the engines won't look there. Go for the least amount of clicks possible to get to the landing pages with the best key words. Website landing pages related to less popular, more obscure terms, also known as longtail keywords,can be deeper in your website.
6) Interlinking Between Related Search Terms. If there are three landing pages for a given product page, a case study page, and a blog posting-make sure that the site visitor can easily get from the landing page to the other website pages.
7) Create Content and External Inbound Links. Articles, blog posts from external blogs, videos posted to YouTube or Google and the hundreds of other video sites, and bookmarks on Social Media websites must be created so there is activity generated TO your website from other places on the Internet. And this does NOT mean recripricol links, but just one way inbound links. This will help get your site ranked faster than anything. AND while we build these links, we can also add other versions of this same content with your keywords to pages of your website, so the search engines have a better chance of finding your B2B company. The bottom line is the faster you accomplish all of the above steps while continuing to build content and links, the better your ranking will be in the search engines. The goal is to stay in the first page of Google, and the other search engines.
While there is no way of knowing exactly how many additional search-generated leads you could be capturing, remember this: If you're not getting those leads, your competitors are! If your marketing and sales departments are looking for more qualified leads, then search engine marketing is an inexpensive way to find them. In recent years, search engine marketing has grown in popularity as a cost effective tool used to generate additional sales leads. What was once little more than an afterthought in the website design process has become the best kept secret of savvy B2B marketers.
This article provides a five step process that will help fill your pipeline with a steady flow of sales leads. In the article, I'll also share some secrets of how to coordinate search engine marketing efforts with other sales and marketing tools.
If you are responsible for B2B sales, marketing, or your company's website, then you should assess your current pipeline and determine how many leads (or how much revenue) can be directly attributed to traffic referred to your site from search engines. While there is no way of knowing exactly how many additional search-generated leads you could be capturing, remember this: If you're not getting those leads, your competitors are!
Quick Primer
For anyone who isn't familiar with search engine marketing, it's simply the art and science of ensuring that your website appears prominently in the results of search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, when people look for products and services similar to the ones you sell.
Step One: Make Sure You Can Be Found!
These web surfers and potential customers will never get into your pipeline if they can't find you! There are dozens of phrases that a qualified prospect might use for a search that, ideally, should lead straight to you. At an absolute minimum, you want your company name and the trade names of your product or service to be represented on the search engines, but think bigger! You also want to be found for the product or service category and phrases related to your products or services. In addition, be sure to include phrases related to the problems or issues that your product or service addresses before your prospect has a solution in mind. Not all of your prospects are at the tail end of the buying cycle! Capture them early in the process and you'll have your foot in the door. Determining and then prioritizing the list of search phrases that would yield the highest quality and quantity of sales leads is critical to your overall success and should not be taken lightly. Once you've compiled this list, your website needs to go through a process called "search engine optimization". During this process, the entire website, including the source code and content are reworked (or "optimized") so that your site is preferred by search engines for the key phrases you have selected.
Step Two: Hook Them or Lose Them
If you've done a good job of optimizing your website, then your search engine positions will gradually improve, and within six months the site will start appearing frequently near the top of search engine results for your chosen phrases. At this point, it would be easy to sit back and relax, but your pipeline won't get filled by merely improving your website's search positions! The next challenge is to hook the visitor and reel them into your website. Once a search visitor hits your site, you have about five seconds to convince them that you can satisfy their needs. After all, remember that this is a search visitor. They are looking for something and won't think twice about hitting the back button if you don't give them a reason to stay.
For this reason, it is critical to make sure that all of your traditional sales and marketing principles are being utilized effectively on your web pages. Clearly communicating your unique selling proposition, or simply why they should stay, is necessary if you want to ensure that your hard work in step one wasn't in vain. You'll lose a lot of visitors regardless of what you say or do, and that's fine. We're only focusing on your true prospects. Let the rest of them go because they'll just clog up your pipeline anyway!
Step Three: Offer Something for Everyone That's Interested
In step one, you attracted lots of relevant traffic. In step two, you targeted your message to ideal prospects and weeded out the rest. In step three, it's time to get generous. Create two offers and promote them throughout your website.
The first offer is a teaser giveaway that your true prospects will find of value. It could be a whitepaper, free information guide, case study, self assessment quiz, etc. This offer is for prospects in the early stages of the buying cycle that are not yet ready or willing to engage in a dialog. Don't require anything more than an e-mail address in exchange, so you don't scare them away. You'll be amazed how many C-level executives request these sorts of offers from home with their personal e-mail accounts.
The second offer is for something more substantial that requires significant information and indicates a serious interest on the part of the prospect. This offer may be a consultation, onsite demo, trial offer, etc. Depending on your sales team's bandwidth and the health of your pipeline, you can raise or lower the number of fields you require. This change helps you to control the number of leads the offer generates.
Step Four: Manage the Entire Pipeline!
It would astonish you if you knew how many companies follow steps one through three only to let most of their "first offer" leads slip away into oblivion while spending the majority of their time with the "second offer" leads. While this strategy may produce greater short term gains, it neglects a much bigger lead pool that could become a group of serious buyers in the long term. Many B2B sales departments have learned that their highest win rate is with prospects that are still early in the buying process. If you ignore them, then they'll seek help in the arms of your competition. That's why it's a good idea to come up with a lead management strategy to handle, sort, and respond to all of the inquiries. There are many software solutions that will automate this process with incredible flexibility and efficiency.
Step Five: Measure, Adjust, and Improve.
Each step in this process can be easily measured, analyzed, and improved. Make sure that you have measurement tools in place and continually improve the step that is your weakest link. Perhaps it's your search engine positions. Maybe it's your message and design. It could be your offers, or the manner in which you handle the leads. Regardless, continuous small improvements in one or more areas will make your website pipeline more efficient and lucrative.
Surprise! This Process Works Equally Well in Reverse
You can reverse the order of these five steps and the process would be just as effective. Maybe even more so! If your company has done a good job of offline sales, then you probably already have the foundations for the latter steps in place. If so, you're way ahead of the game. The most interesting thing about getting more targeted traffic to your website is that it only magnifies the strengths and weaknesses in your site design, message, offer, and selling process. Follow these five steps and you'll overcome your weaknesses, leverage your strengths, and fill that pipeline!
Both Kristin Gabriel & Todd Miechiels are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Kristin Gabriel has sinced written about articles on various topics from Cure Anxiety, Heart Diseases and Aging Problems. A writer and social media marketing professional, Kristin Gabriel founded a . Her company also handles marketing, public relations, and online adve. Kristin Gabriel's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.
Todd Miechiels has sinced written about articles on various topics from Search Engine Marketing, Copywriting and Ad Tracking. Todd Miechiels is a who helps executives of mid-sized companies generate sales opportunities. Visit. Todd Miechiels's top article generates over 5400 views. to your Favourites.