We all know how important it is to have high SEO rankings, but with over 200 search engine ranking factors in Google’s search engine algorithm alone, it can feel a little overwhelming knowing which factors are the most critical for a successful online marketing strategy.
One question we are frequently asked by our clients is “how can we improve SEO on our B2B website?” This might sound like a simple question but producing the desired results for your B2B website requires establishing and maintaining a complex series of strategies and tactics.
In this blog post, we’ll highlight the key search engine ranking factors you should be integrating to improve SEO.
Keyword Research Is Essential to Improve SEO
Keyword research is ESSENTIAL to improve SEO strategy and practice.
There are various FREE and paid tools for keyword research, which can be helpful to gain a better understanding of a keyword. We recommend you take the time to evaluate the demand and competition of the keywords you are targeting and think about how someone would search for relevant information based on the specific product or service you are offering.
It’s also worth bearing in mind how competitive a keyword is. If you need to focus on building more authority on your B2B site, try targeting less competitive words until you have built a stronger foundation for your site.
Once you’ve researched and chosen your keywords it’s time to plan relevant and high-quality content around these keywords, BUT make sure it sounds natural and avoid using too many.
How to Improve SEO With Content Marketing
Producing high-quality content is crucial to increasing your rankings, but DON’T forget about old content once it’s up on your site. Your content needs to be relevant and up to date, so make sure you are reviewing and updating existing content regularly.
This is a fantastic way to signal to visitors that your website contains fresh, exciting, and accurate information. It will also likely increase the amount of time people spend on your site, also known as your dwell time, which can significantly improve SEO.
When reviewing existing content ask questions like, does my content demonstrate expertise, authority, and trustworthiness? Google’s ranking factor “E-A-T” (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) is used to measure just this.
While search engines want to ensure users are getting high-quality content, they also want to know that users are acquiring accurate and trustworthy information from your content.
Focus on Technical Elements to Improve SEO
Improving the technical SEO of your site is more important than you might think, so you want to ensure your site is compatible with the standards set by search engines, as this will significantly influence your ranking.
We recognize there are a lot of different aspects to technical SEO, so to make things easier we’ve highlighted some key points for you to focus on:
- XML sitemaps – make sure to use an XML sitemap, as this shows search engines your website URLs and allows them to see what content is available and how to reach it.
- Site structure – have an organized and flat structure that shows your site’s pages are only a few links away from one another. This also helps search engines to access and “crawl” all of your pages easily.
- URL structure – a consistent and logical URL structure provides a better user experience and helps users understand how to move around your site.
- Linking – internal links direct users to other relevant pages on your site, which increases your authority as well as your dwell time. It also helps search engines to “crawl” more of your site’s pages.
- Duplicate & thin content – avoid duplicate content or providing thin content with little or no value to the user. We recommend using a social audit tool to help you find and remove duplicate content on your site.
- Canonical Tags – canonical URLs help you manage similar content on your site and helps specify the exact URL you want visitors to see in search results.
- Rich snippets – a type of markup that enables you to include additional information on your pages, making them more noticeable in search results. This will naturally increase organic traffic to your site.
- 404 pages & 301 redirects – you want to show search engines that all of your links are live, so make sure you don’t have any broken links and use 301 redirects to redirect users if you’ve restructured your site.
- HTTPS – make sure to use HTTPS, an encrypted version of HTTP that will improve the security of your site for visitors by encrypting the data between your browser and server.
Offer an Optimal User Experience to Improve SEO
Evaluating your site for page performance is key to ensuring visitors have an optimal user experience on your page, whether on a desktop or mobile device. This will not only improve SEO but also increase organic web traffic. What’s more, with the increase of mobile browsing, it’s more important than ever to have a mobile-friendly user experience and a fast-loading speed.
Arriving in 2021 is Core Web Vitals, Google’s latest ranking factor. With this new factor, your search ranking will be measured by the user’s experience on your site – we’re talking about the speed of your site when it loads, page performance and mobile experience.
Algorithm updates can have a big impact on your rankings, as well as traffic to your site, so it’s important to stay ahead of them. Here are a few points that will help you understand how to prepare your B2B website for Core Web Vitals:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) – how long does it take for the largest piece of content on your site to load? Whether it’s a video, an image, some text, on your desktop or on your mobile, your ranking will be influenced by the loading speed of that content.
- Cumulative layout shift (CLS) – is used to measure the stability of your site. Think about whether a user may experience an unexpected layout shift when they go to click a button.
- First Input Delay (FID) – how fast can your site start to process and produce a result when a user clicks on something?
Remember, this is all about providing an optimal user experience, so make sure your site offers an easy, accessible and fast experience for visitors.
Improve SEO with High Quality Backlinks
It’s important to build high-quality backlinks by linking to authoritative and trustworthy sites that are relevant to your subject matter. Backlinks not only demonstrate subject matter expertise, but they also build your own authority and trustworthiness.
Take the time to link your content only with relevant and high-quality backlinks and make sure not to include too many.
Grow your Social Signals
Social shares may not be a direct ranking factor but getting more social shares to your site can really help your search engine ranking. There are two key reasons for this:
- More social shares help to increase organic traffic to your site.
- More social shares mean there are greater opportunities for your content to build backlinks.
What’s more using platforms such as Google My Business (GMB) and Bing Places for Business is a fantastic way to improve your B2B business ranking. There is a long list of benefits for local businesses, such as increased customer trust, expanded search engine real estate, increased website traffic and one-click accurate business information for customers.
It’s Possible to Improve SEO!
As we mentioned earlier, the question “how to improve SEO on our B2B website?” is a simple one to a complex series of strategies, tactics, and execution planning, but by following this resourceful guide you too can improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your B2B website.
Have further questions or would like hands-on guidance applying these strategies and tactics?
Get in touch at maven@mavencollectivemarketing.com to learn how our expert team can improve your SEO and drive measurable results.
