SEO FYI: 5 B2B SEO Mistakes to Avoid
If you’re a B2B marketer and want to improve your website traffic, inbound marketing should be a required component of your marketing plan and budget in the upcoming year. As the costs of paid search continue to rise, now is the time to strategically improve your organic search results with search engine optimization (SEO). Avoid these common mistakes that could cripple your SEO initiative from the start.
1. Disregarding your competition
Although you may be annoyed by your competitors’ websites and second-rate products and services, they can be an important resource for building your SEO plan.
Before plotting your own strategy, take the time to review how your main competitors websites function. Ask these questions:
- What keywords are they using?
- Should your content contain those keywords as well?
- How active and successful are their blogs?
- How compelling are their calls to action and landing pages?
- What makes their website a great resource for prospects?
- What is their website lacking that your B2B business can use to your advantage?
Emulate their best practices and avoid obvious blunders.
2. Not considering your website visitors
Sometimes, B2B marketers can get so concerned with SEO structure that they forget the best optimization is content that people enjoy. What does your target audience want to read about? What interests them? Spend time building out a target B2B buyer persona profiles and designing your site and content to be tailored to fit the aggregate crowd. No matter who your target audience is, they won’t enjoy reading keyword-stuffed content that has been written for search engines instead of your website visitors’ benefit.
3. Taking the short cut to inbound links
In B2B inbound marketing, purchasing inbound links (or back links) from a discount or directory-type service is unwise and potentially harmful to SEO. The power of low quality inbound links is over and you may receive a harsh penalty due to Googles Penguin update last May. One key aspect of Googles update was an algorithm dedicated solely to improving link detection to punish sites that pay for back links.
Although, the quantity of inbound links on your site is important, the quality is much more impactful. Attract high quality, authoritative inbound links with consistent and compelling content on your B2B website. Engage your target persona on social media to spread the reach of your content and awareness of your B2B brand. Offer to guest blog on other sites relevant to your product, service or audience. Inbound links will steadily build with consistent well-rounded content creation and sharing tactics.
4. Not having analytics set up
Having a tracking system set up to analyze B2B SEO is crucial to determining the relative success or failure of keywords, traffic, and inbound links. Metrics like tracking keyword rankings is a good start to determining campaign performance. Beyond keywords, having Google Analytics or another platform, like HubSpot, set up can give you the data you need to properly measure success. Check your analytics often to compare data over time and measure your site’s performance.
5. Giving up too soon
A strong SEO strategy takes time to develop and grow. One month of update efforts will not be enough time to see significant results. Progression with your SEO and content strategy should start sometime after six months of consistent work.
If you’re a B2B marketer looking to get involved with inbound marketing in the new year, take note of these instructions and continue learning and researching the best practices for SEO.
