B2B search engine marketing is an evolving creature. Sure, it can be frustrating, but if you can tame it, you can create an excellent user experience for your visitors and search engines. In an effort to share new trends and best practices in SEO, we garnered the feedback of two experts, Chris Sietsema and Tim Carter. Chris is a Digital Marketing Consultant and Owner of Teach To Fish Digital helping companies and organizations create, manage, and measure their own digital marketing campaigns. Tim is the owner of Pedrera, Inc. a web development firm that designs and develops websites, mobile apps, and web-based applications.

Here is a summary of what Chris and Tim had to say. If you’re interested in all their insights, then you can also download our free tip sheet to think more like a B2B SEO agency.

1). Search Engine Marketing is constantly evolving.

SEO has changed quite a bit over the last few decades, but oddly enough, it also hasn’t changed that much. Here are examples of how things have evolved:

• Good SEO experts still concentrate on making content accessible. They try to keep things searchable and digestible.
• But they don’t try to cheat the system. So they don’t stuff keywords or try to fool search engines.
• The “SEO Agencies” of 2007 are now “Content Marketing Agencies.” Good content drives search rankings now. 
• But they don’t try to maliciously duplicate content. Search engines have caught on to scammers trying to steal content.

2). There’s a whole new focus on technical SEO.

SEO has transformed to include a lot of technical steps to ensure that visitors can access your content easily. As the digital web has become more powerful, so have search engines. 

Search engines are focused on serving up relevant, quality content. So by catering to their rules and best practices, you can help increase your search traffic. Here are key technical considerations in SEO:

• Site Speed: Google has declared this to be a ranking factor.
• Mobile Friendliness: Your site needs to be responsive.
• Secure Site Status: Browsers are starting to show alerts if something isn’t secure and this will affect conversion rates.
• Internal Linking: Be sure to put links on your pages that direct users to other parts of your site.
• 301 Redirects: Where a webpage URL has changed and the original page was indexed by Google, this will tell search engines “we moved and here is our new address.”
• Google Search Console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools): This free software will check for 404s (error pages) that you want to avoid having on your site.

3). Inbound links can help drive search traffic and credibility. 

In the mid-2000s, Google decided the number of sites linking to your site will factor into your site’s credibility, and thus how they rank your site against other content. Consider each link to your site as a ‘vote’ for your site – the more votes you get from authoritative sources, the better! Here are sources that can help you build credibility. Generating links to your site from these sources can tell search engines that you’re the real deal:

• Social media
• LinkedIn
• Anywhere you are promoting content
• Any organization you belong to, or the Better Business Bureau
• Any reputable industry-specific publication that you have been published in

4). Don’t get too hung up on SEO metrics.

Don’t get too hung up on rankings, but rather on if you are seeing growth, and if so, where. Metrics are important to tell you what happened, but they are more important in determining what you are going to do next.

• Traffic trends: Ask yourself, are we seeing growth from SEO and if so, where?
• Page indexing: Be sure all your pages are indexed otherwise Google can’t see them to rank them.
• Sales, Leads & Revenue: From an SEO perspective, these are considered very important metrics.
• Qualitative metrics: Spend significant time on qualitative metrics. They include things like Time Spent on Site, Pages Per Visit, Bounce Rate – basically anything that is indicative of engagement.

B2B Search Engine Marketing Summary

Remember, SEO is a marathon not a sprint. There is no “quick fix” when it comes to optimizing your site for search engines. But you can work over time to improve your rankings and increase your traffic. If you’re interested in learning more about B2B search engine marketing, then download our free tip sheet by clicking the button below!

Image credit: Flickr New WindowMy cat… by Flickr New WindowIker Cortabarria, New WindowCC BY-SA 2.0

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