The way we navigate the internet evolves constantly. More importantly, search engines present the information we seek according to awesome technology that tailors the experience to us.
Search engines process 40,000 queries every second and over 3.5 billion every day. Your B2B SEO can’t afford to get lost in the noise.
Artificial intelligence (called RankBrain) gauges a variety of factors while crawling the web and compiling your search results, including:
So while a search like “grocery stores near me” would’ve been kinda spotty half a decade ago, the same search today would yield a plethora of options, directions, reviews, AND PAID ADS. Figure out how to stand out in the SEO world, and even the smallest B2B companies can compete with giants. There’s no shame in finding an experienced inbound marketing agency to fill the gaps.
A breakout session at Inbound 2017 titled “Getting Found Again After [Not Provided]” detailed the contemporary art of SEO. Here are some affordable SEO insights (heck, these are free).
People search how they talk. A 14-year-old boy is more likely to search “how to make my skateboard run better” than “recreational ball-bearing units”; a 45-year-old teacher is more likely to search “classroom technology tools” than “make my students learn better.”
The new recipe for SEO requires a dash of educational guesswork, a pinch of instinct, a cup of organization, and carton of kickass keywords.
Blogging was once incredibly sexy in SEO terms. Is it still? Of course. The more pages indexing in search engines, the better. That’s now only half the battle, though.
Now you need content organization and customization. Familiarize yourself with pillar content and cluster content.
Consider a long-form piece of ungated website content. Give a high-level overview of a topic pertinent to your industry. You still need premium content - a lead-conversion opportunity compelling and specific enough for buyers to willingly give their contact info. But this pillar should lay the foundation for other related subtopics.
These are typically blogs and other content stemming from your pillar content. They should be based on a longtail keyword and organized into subtopics:
Hyperlinks tie the clusters within and among each other, allowing ample opportunities for compounding traffic to interact with your CTAs. Build other conversion opportunities into your site’s blogs, sidebars, and navs.
You must validate your topics and establish domain authority. What’s that? It’s a search engine ranking score that predicts how highly your whole web domain will show up in SERPs (don’t mix this up with individual page authority).
Uncover topics relevant to your buyer personas with a little research and organization:
Tie cluster content to the bottom line and group their pain points into your topics. Then it’s up to you to solve that pain.