SEO is one of the most important channels in any B2B marketing strategy but is often overlooked. Despite its track record in virtually every industry, B2B marketers can feel overwhelmed with the amount of work that goes into ranking your business in the results pages of Google (and Bing etc). When you first starting out with your SEO strategy you need to research keywords, identify your target keywords, write the content, generate links and even after all that you still may not appear in the SERPs due to Google's reluctance to tell anyone how it actually works. Which is why SEO remains a unique challenge for B2B marketers.
But if you get it right you may find that Traffic Generation is less of an issue and you need to focus on turning that traffic into leads and sales.
Interestingly, on the topic of SEO goals, research from DemandWave found that 50% of the respondents saw 'Search Rankings' as the most important goal for an effective SEO strategy. I find it concerning that Search Ranking featured so high. While your position on the search engine results page is obviously important it can be misleading. For example, if you rank #7 for say 'Umbrella' which gets over 450,000 searches a month you are going to generate more traffic to your side than ranking #1 for 'umbrella with red spots' with under 100
Finally, for any marketing channel, the ultimate goal should always be lead conversion and sales revenue, particularly for SEO. The fact that only 33% see the channel as a revenue driver is astonishing.
With an effective SEO strategy in place, you will find that it will become one of your highest revenue generating channels in your digital marketing strategy.
By Patrick Kelly
I have spent many years working with both B2B and B2C brands to implement data-driven marketing strategies covering paid search, SEO, Social media and marketing automation. You will also find me catching up on the latest Marvel releases or playing the latest RPG.
Turbocharge your results with this toolkit containing 7 resources
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) toolkit contains:
Start your Digital Marketing Plan today with our Free membership.
Recommended Blog Posts
Keyword research data reveals the SEO CTR rewards for top of SERP rankings in Google. Inform your SEO marketing strategy with the latest trends in 2024 You often hear company owners saying “I want to rank top” for their target …..
Google Search Console Insights combines Google Search Console and Google Analytics to introduce a new SEO platform for content marketers If you regularly use Google Analytics and/or Google Search Console tools to evaluate and optimize your marketing (and if you …..
Monitoring the right KPIs is the best way to avoid spending time and money on something that isn’t driving the expected profit Is your SEO strategy effective enough? How can you ensure your efforts drive tangible results? What can you …..
