What Makes a B2B SEO Content Strategy Unique?

TopRank Marketing has worked with clients in both the B2B and B2C realms over the last two decades. In that time, we have definitely witnessed the much-discussed convergence of these two previously diametric categories; the so-called consumerization of B2B.

But we also fully recognize the enduring factors that distinguish successful marketing in B2B versus B2C. Even as brands rightfully embrace the humanity of professional audiences, it still must be acknowledged that buyers in B2B experience contrasting motivations, challenges and dynamics in their journeys compared to consumers. The information B2B buyers seek out in making decisions, and the ways they search for it, remain very different from the standard B2C purchase.

Crafting a B2B SEO content strategy that fully accounts for the unique intricacies of this buyer journey holds the key to long-term digital growth. 

Drawing the line between B2B and B2C SEO content

The defining difference between B2B and B2C is that one targets businesses and professionals, while the other targets individual consumers. A company’s SEO content strategy should be built around this core distinction. 

Compared to B2C strategies, B2B SEO focuses more on reaching specific audiences through niche keywords and topics. The approach is guided by personas, which often span verticals, functions, or buying committee roles. In B2B, marketing goals are often more granular and incremental compared to simply generating an instant sale, so measurement is nuanced.  

The content designed to fuel a B2B SEO strategy must then suit this purpose. It should be planned and crafted with these distinct priorities in mind.

5 critical cornerstones of a B2B SEO content strategy

Organic search traffic is immensely valuable to B2B companies, especially when their SEO strategy is designed to attract visitors based on search intent. These specialized B2B techniques will ensure you’re targeting the right keywords, attracting relevant traffic and driving valuable outcomes with your SEO content.

#1. Address the full funnel with your SEO content.

The 95-5 rule tells us that within any given B2B product category, only 5% of buyers are in-market and actively searching for a solution. That math may not be exact for every industry or niche, but the underlying premise is universal: No matter what you sell, a vast majority of your potential audience is not looking to buy at this moment.

Gaining visibility and familiarity with those who aren’t ready to make a purchase, but will be in the future, holds the key to sustainable long-term growth. Organic SEO content plays a powerful role in brand building, serving as perpetual magnets to attract visitors from the 95% out-market audience. 

Upper-funnel keywords tend to have higher volumes and broader reach, meaning more opportunities to get your brand and message in front of key audiences. This, in turn, will set up lower-funnel content to be more effective.

#2. Build topical authority to establish your expertise.

The complexity and stakes of making a B2B purchase means the research process tends to be lengthy and thorough. Each challenge you can help solve has many dimensions to be explored. Using a cluster-based approach to provide comprehensive topical coverage helps your website gain authority.

This approach offers many benefits, but chief among them is the ability to rank and dominate share of search for topics that matter to your business. “Many of Google’s algorithm updates and statements have reaffirmed its preference for trustworthy, knowledgeable, and experienced publishers,” explains Semrush. “In other words: It favors content creators with topical authority.”

#3. Target long-tail keywords to address specific search intent.

This goes part and parcel with a cluster-based SEO content approach. Long-tail keywords are characterized by specificity: They tend to include more words and detail, adding another layer of depth beyond the main keywords they branch out from. An example of this might look like:

• Head KW: “SEO strategy”
• Long-tail KW: “how to develop an SEO content strategy in B2B healthcare”

By nature, long-tail keywords have lower volume, but higher intent – people running these searches are filtering and qualifying themselves as more relevant to your brand based on the information they are seeking. 

A strong B2B SEO content strategy will feature a balance of head keywords and long-tail keywords to maximize both quantity and quality of organic search traffic.

#4. Focus on educational B2B SEO content and deliver value.

Google’s algorithm updates are openly intended to prioritize helpful content and provide satisfying experiences for users. Being too promotional or light on substance will impede your content’s ability to earn search rankings.

Because B2B purchases are so complex, there is ample room for education, and information is flowing at all times. Consider all the different roles and functions involved with a buying committee, and how much these stakeholders often have to educate one another. Your brand’s content can help greatly, building trust and relevance in the process. 

Put user value at the center of your B2B SEO content. Offer clear and compelling insights or takeaways to help your audience accomplish their goals.

#5. Optimize and measure for a diverse range of conversion outcomes.

Effective SEO isn’t just about generating web traffic. What really matters is driving valuable results with that traffic, which is why it pays to be thoughtful about your conversion and measurement strategies.

What are the desirable outcomes for visitors at different stages of your marketing funnel? These might range from signing up for a newsletter to downloading an asset to signing up for a demo. Make sure you’re always offering an action that aligns with the intent of their search. 

Strategic B2B marketing measurement accounts for all of the various conversion types, as part of the proven recipe for revenue and business growth. Marketing attribution can help you connect and weigh these different actions on the way to optimizing your efforts.

Organic SEO has a reputation for being difficult to connect to impact, but that’s only if you’re not taking the right steps to set up customized reporting and event tracking. 

Set your B2B SEO content strategy up for success

Through all the algorithm changes and technology shifts, the fundamental premise of B2B SEO (or B2C SEO, for that matter) remains the same: create quality content based on reliable data around your personas, keywords and industry.

From there, it’s all about optimizing around your buyer journey and meeting the unique needs of your audience. 

Learn about the many ways in which TopRank Marketing can help you step up your B2B SEO game.

 

The post What Makes a B2B SEO Content Strategy Unique? appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Should You Still Use Twitter (X) for B2B Marketing?

Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter and rebranded it “X,” it seems like a day can’t go by without the social media platform making headlines. 

In the wake of increasing controversies including a substantial rise in bot traffic and hate speech, scores of users and companies are reassessing their relationship with X. Most recently, more than 100 of X’s most prominent advertisers, including Airbnb, Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Netflix have indefinitely paused advertising after Musk posted an endorsement of an anti-semitic conspiracy theory.

Given how volatile the platform has become, it’s understandable if you’re reconsidering how you use X for your B2B marketing initiatives. Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. 

X can still be a valuable tool for B2B marketing under the right circumstances. Whether or not it still makes sense for you comes down to how you’re using the platform, what you’re promoting, and – most importantly – to whom you’re promoting it.

We may not be able to tell you whether it makes sense for you to keep using X outright, but we can help you figure it out for yourself. Try answering each of the following questions to determine whether the platform still has something to offer your B2B marketing.

Is your audience still active on X?

As with any channel you’re considering using, this is the most important question to ask. If your audience is sticking with X, then you probably should too.

You can first evaluate whether the platform is still driving significant traffic to your website and landing pages. If you run ads, are they delivering results?

Beyond metrics, the best way to figure out if your audience is still on X is to look up decision maker’s profiles. Check their activity on the platform to see how frequently they post and — even more importantly — how frequently they react and respond to other posts. You should also see how many of these decision makers already follow you. If you already have an audience on X, you shouldn’t give that up. 

If you’re not sure about whether relevant decision makers are still on X, consider recent X demographics as compiled by Pew Research Center. According to their findings:

• The most common age group of X users in the US is 18 to 29 years old (42% of respondents)
• More men use X than women (26% vs. 19% of respondents in the US)
• X users in the US are more likely to live in the suburbs (26%) or cities (25%) than in rural locations
• Adults with higher incomes use X at slightly higher rates

Reassess who you’re trying to connect with on X and why. If your goals still make sense and seem achievable based on who’s still active X, consider keeping your marketing on. Otherwise, ask yourself the rest of these questions:

Are your competitors still on X?

Are the brands you’re competing with still maintaining an active presence on X? Even more importantly: what are they using X for, exactly? If they’ve actively promoting their services, live tweeting news and events, and responding to other posts to start conversations, then chances are they’re still achieving their goals on the platform. 

If they’ve stopped posting as frequently and they rarely respond to other posts, however, then chances are they’re downscaling their involvement.

If your competition is still active on X, then you should strongly consider remaining there, as well. Even if X’s influence is waning, it is still a primary social media channel. Pulling out of a major channel while your competition remains there means ceding the share of voice that the channel provides to them. As your posts disappear and your competition’s continue, your audience will begin to associate your brand with your category less and start to think of your competition first instead.

Do you live-tweet events and breaking news?

For a long period, Twitter was the go-to social media platform for keeping up with news and events as they happened. In an October 2022 survey by Hootsuite, many more Twitter users said they use the platform to “keep up to date with news and current events” than for any other purpose (61.2% vs. 38% for the next most-popular usage).

The rapid-fire nature of tweeting made it easy and engaging to watch reactions to events and news as they unfolded, making Twitter especially popular during major cultural events such as the Super Bowl. This use of Twitter has largely continued following the X rebranding. That means using X to contribute to unfolding conversations about events and news as they occur could still be a very valuable application of the platform.

Of course, whether or not that matters to your brand depends on how valuable it would be for you to do this. Do you think your audience is interested in your brand live tweeting industry events and news? Do they follow industry hashtags and contribute to ongoing discussions? 

If you’ve ever benefited from being active on Twitter during a major industry event, then there’s reason to believe that you’ll continue to benefit from doing the same thing on X. If your audience isn’t engaged with ongoing news and events in your industry, however, this may not be a reason to stick around.

Can you use it to provide better customer service?

Thanks in large part to social media platforms like X, brands have never been more publicly and immediately available to consumers. 

These days, many customers aren’t interested in sending emails to support or going through an online portal to get answers to their questions and concerns. Instead, they might direct-message the brand on social media or even call them out publicly. Threatening as this may sound, it can also be a great opportunity.

Every time your B2B customers interact with your brand on social media, you have a chance to provide an excellent customer service experience. 

First, ask: do your customers reach out to you on X at all? Do you want them to? If your customers reach out with legitimate, good-faith questions and concerns, providing them quick help can be a great way to prove to your audience that you’re looking out for them. If you can’t help solve their problems, however, then responding might only make that clearer.

What is your budget and bandwidth? 

Finally, it’s worth considering how X fits into your social media marketing budget. If you’re already tight on money or time, then you should consider prioritizing only the most important social media platforms for achieving your goals — whether that’s X or not. 

If you have budget and bandwidth to spare, on the other hand, then it’s worth continuing to experiment with X. Try posting new things, interacting with your audience more frequently, and live tweeting events with their hashtags. If you don’t see any positive effects from your efforts, you can always scale back later — and then at least you’ll know.

Even amid its seemingly never-ending controversy, X can still be a valuable tool for B2B marketing for some brands. If your audience is there and you’ve got something to tell them, consider keeping the account active a little longer. Otherwise, it may be time to move on.

If you want help managing your social media — or any other aspect of your B2B marketing — the experts at TopRank Marketing are ready to help. 

The post Should You Still Use Twitter (X) for B2B Marketing? appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Age of SGE: How Will AI Affect Search Traffic in the Next Decade?

Ever since advancements in technology thrust generative AI into the public consciousness, it’s been the subject of unending controversy. Much of this controversy centers on its potential impact on the internet, with some news outlets and experts going so far as to describe it in near-apocalyptic terms. 

“AI is killing the internet” became a common refrain in those early days, speaking to the dread and apprehension being felt regarding its disruption to the way things have been done online.

Given all this concern, it’s not surprising that Google’s bold new foray into generative AI, Google Search Generative Experience (SGE) has elicited big reactions. With search engines and SEO being such a core aspect of digital marketing, there’s understandably a lot of attention being paid to the ripple effects of this evolution in search.

As a marketer, here’s what you need to know about Google SGE and the broader impact of AI on search.

What is Google SGE?

Google Search Generative Experience is Google’s new approach to incorporating generative AI into their search algorithm. When in use, SGE will provide an “AI-powered snapshot” of information requested in a query at the top of the resulting search engine results page (SERP). These snapshots will provide a quick overview of the topic, with information collected, composited, and arranged from top results by the generative AI.

The screenshot below, from Google’s overview of SGE, provides an example of what one of these AI-powered snapshots looks like:

Reactions to Google SGE

Google SGE has received significant attention and criticism, primarily focused on how the tool will disincentivize users from actually clicking through to the websites surfaced in the search.

The Atlantic, which says it gets up to 40% of its current traffic from Google, recently published an analysis on the subject and concluded: “75% of the time, the AI-powered search would likely provide a full answer to a user’s query.” As a result, Wall Street Journal reported that publishers expect to lose “between 20% and 40% of their Google-generated traffic” in a post-SGE landscape. 

Other publishers and SEO experts are less concerned. While Forrester Research Senior Analyst Nikhil Lai was recently quoted by Reuters saying SGE is “definitely going to decrease publishers’ organic traffic, and they’re going to have to think about a different way to measure the value of that content if not click-through rate,” he also said he believes appearing in the new SGE-provided summaries will help protect and enhance publisher reputation. 

Some SEO experts even believe that Google SGE could represent a new opportunity to rank for brands and publishers that may have previously lacked the authority to appear in the top 10.

How generative AI will affect search traffic in the next decade

There are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to Google SGE. As one publisher interviewed by Reuters shared: “The new AI section is a black box for us. We don’t know how to make sure we’re a part of it or the algorithm behind it.”  

The overarching reality: In the coming years, brands will likely see a collective decrease in traffic sourced to search engines. This owes in part to AI and changes to the makeup of SERPs, but it also relates to evolving habits of users (e.g. using TikTok for search). 

Even if overall search volume decreases to some degree in the coming years, that doesn’t mean SEO’s strategic role in digital marketing will be diminished. Google will remain a powerhouse driver and director of web traffic. Staying aligned with its guidelines and priorities will help you continue to grow your authority and attract high-quality visitors.

By referencing the history of Google algorithm updates, along with the ultimate goals and purpose of the search engine, we can start to chart a path forward for SEO in the age of AI. 

Ranking highly in SERPs will become even more important

As the screenshot above indicates, SGE summaries take top billing on SERPs, above even sponsored content. With less space to list organic rankings after sponsored content, some results that would have previously been on page one will slip to page two.

Given how few people navigate to page two of any SERP result, this means Google SGE will likely have a somewhat counterintuitive effect: it will make SEO even more important.

While SERP organic results may be receiving fewer clicks overall, the pages that are getting clicks will be on page one … and competition to appear on page one will be fiercer than ever. 

Meanwhile, Google SGE summary results are primarily useful for informational queries: users just looking to have a question answered may be able to get what they need from the AI-generated summary. For users with commercial intent, however — such as, individuals searching for complex information about B2B challenges and solutions — organic results will still be the place to look.  

Authoritative, in-depth content will gain demand

Google became the search engine juggernaut it is today precisely because it was able to provide the most relevant content for users. Each of its updates over the years has focused on refining the search engine’s algorithm to serve results in accordance with Google’s “E-E-A-T” rating guidelines: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. 

As Google assured in their overview of SGE, the search engine remains committed to these guidelines when providing all information on their SERPs — including and especially the information their generative AI model produces. Whatever ways in which Google updates Google SGE in the future, you can bet they’ll be focused on making sure it provides authoritative best answer information; their reputation hinges on it.

Embodying E-E-A-T principles in all your content will become all the more important. SEO techniques like link-building and utilizing semantically related keywords will be key to demonstrating authority and winning placements within AI summaries. 

Helpful, expert-sourced content will rise above the rest

Google SGE presents a unique opportunity for B2B creators. Compared to most B2C content, B2B content is more complex, niche, and difficult to summarize. AI will have a limited ability to offer adequate information to informed B2B audiences, especially if those audiences include buyers looking to make critical purchasing decisions.

As a result, there is reason to expect substantial, renewed demand for content that explores B2B topics in-depth from an expert point of view. As Google’s SGE provides only top-level summaries, audiences will crave deeper insights and guidance on topics that matter to them. They’ll likely spend more time using SGE’s new features to refine their searches while they look for information curated for them specifically. 

If you can provide this information, you can form stronger relationships with your audience faster, establishing yourself as a go-to source for reliable information in your business category. At TopRank Marketing, we often say that increased direct traffic is a great long-term outcome from successful SEO, because it can mean your audience starts bypassing searches (and AI results) to visit your website directly.

Know your audience and what they need

As the search landscape evolves with the rapid expansion of generative AI, we continue to believe that understanding and harnessing search intent holds the key to driving valuable organic traffic going forward. While Google SGE may be able to synthesize and summarize results on higher-level topics, your organization can differentiate with expert, in-depth content that speaks to your audience and their unique needs.

Additionally, make sure you’re continually exploring alternative channels as part of your marketing strategy. As search habits evolve, staying innovative will ensure your audience can continue to discover your content, whether that’s through Google, social media, email, trade publications, or paid media.

Download our guide, Marketing with Intent, to learn more about creating a future-proof SEO strategy within this framework.

The post Age of SGE: How Will AI Affect Search Traffic in the Next Decade? appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Why You Need a Keyword Strategy and How to Create One

Trying to build an SEO strategy without a keyword strategy is like trying to build a plane without wings. It’s going nowhere.

Expert-led keyword research and planning are foundational to successful SEO, no matter the business, industry, or audience. This multifaceted process sets the stage for your brand to grow its digital footprint, helping you understand exactly the topics, questions and pain points you need to address with your content. 

What is a keyword strategy in SEO?

Keywords are the terms, phrases and queries that users enter into search engines to surface relevant content. Brands and marketers use keyword strategies to gain a grasp of which keywords they should be focusing on, and how to earn visibility for them. 

Not only are keyword research and planning essential for informing your SEO strategy, they also provide crucial insights for your broader marketing and business development. Understanding how people search for your solutions, where search demand exists, and how keywords are trending has deeply valuable implications.

Why many keyword strategies are lacking

When SEO is not delivering results as a marketing team hopes, the core issues can often be traced back to a keyword strategy that isn’t quite right. Pursuing the wrong opportunities leads to a lot of waste and frustration. 

There are two prevalent challenges that brands encounter with their keyword strategies, in our experience:

1. Lack of specialized expertise. SEO is as much an art form as a science. While tools like Semrush, Moz and Google Keyword Planner are helpful, it takes real skill and experience to turn their capabilities into action and impact. High-caliber SEO specialists are in short supply.
2. Lack of maintenance and agility. Many companies are still operating with the same keyword list they developed years ago. That just doesn’t work in an environment where everything is changing, all the time. 

With so many organizations getting stuck in the mud at this critical step, it is no surprise one recent UK study found that two-thirds of businesses are unhappy with their SEO strategy. But the good news is that it’s never too late to revisit your keywords and get on track. 

Building an effective SEO keyword strategy

Identifying target keywords, contextualizing them, prioritizing them, and developing a clear plan to win (and maintain) rankings are all part of a full-fledged keyword strategy. At TopRank Marketing, we focus on these five core steps:

Keyword research

Keyword research sets the roadmap that your entire strategy will follow. The process involves identifying and analyzing keywords that will guide your planning. These phrases and queries all relate in some way to your buyer’s journey. To substantiate your best opportunities, you’ll want to gather data around search volumes, current rankings, keyword difficulty, SERP landscapes, and more.

The goal of keyword research is to understand the language and terms your target audience uses, allowing you to optimize your SEO content accordingly. 

Gap analysis is a key aspect of keyword research, offering a clear view of where your best untapped SEO opportunities lie. Learn about this and other SEO services from TopRank Marketing.

Competitive analysis

After selecting keywords and topics that your brand wants to show up for, the next step is to get a full view of what you’re up against. An expert dive into the data can tell you what keywords your competitors are targeting, which audiences they’re focusing on, and how you can gain an edge. 

Topical mapping

A topical map, as defined by Similarweb, “is a strategic map that outlines all the SEO content you need to cover the length and breadth of an entire topic. Your topical map doesn’t only include what content you need to create but also organizes it into a topic/subtopic hierarchy.”

An important thing to recognize about modern SEO is that “keyword” is a bit of a misnomer, lingering from the internet’s early days when single-word searches were common. Google is now much more concerned with semantic search, and serving results based on user intent and behavior. In many cases, a keyword will actually be a string of words aligning to specific prompts or questions entered by users. 

Topical maps branch out from head keywords into related semantic long-tails that explore sub-topics in further depth. Our agency uses this method to help clients build topical authority and earn rankings for their most valuable keyword clusters.

Search intent analysis

It’s helpful to gather as much intel as possible around keyword search intent so you can plan and craft content accordingly. Topical mapping plays a key role by illustrating how different keywords are connected and grouped by intent, but there are other valuable audience-centered insights to inform your keyword strategy.

For example, what is the user trying to accomplish by running a search for this keyword? From a marketing standpoint, search intent can fall into four different categories, aligning roughly to the funnel:

• Informational (upper funnel)
• Navigational (upper funnel)
• Commercial (mid funnel)
• Transactional (lower funnel)

Reporting and optimization

A lack of ongoing attention and proactivity is a major pitfall in many keyword strategies. Keeping a vigilant eye on your rankings and performance will help you stay on top of opportunities and minimize lapses as the landscape evolves.

Note that negative keyword trends don’t always (or even usually) mean you’re doing something wrong. All SEO strategies are at the whim of outside forces. In many cases, declines are driven by reduced search demand for specific keywords, algorithm changes, or dated content. You can spot these instances quickly with keyword reporting, and optimization can help you regain lost ground.

Modernize your SEO keyword strategy

The qualities of an effective keyword strategy have transformed over the past 10-15 years, from keyword stuffing to honoring user intent. As search engines become more sophisticated, we’re also moving from short, generic keywords to specific and semantic long-tails. Other trends like AI, local SEO and voice search are also impacting the way businesses approach their keyword strategies.

Expert oversight and continual maintenance will help ensure you’re targeting the right terms and taking the right steps to capture them. 

Learn more about the best practices of modern B2B search engine optimization.

 

The post Why You Need a Keyword Strategy and How to Create One appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

8 Content Marketing Services That Are In Demand for B2B Brands

It used to be that outsourcing your marketing meant finding the villager with the loudest voice and wittiest turn-of-phrase to walk the lanes hawking your wares.

Needless to say, marketing has evolved. And with that evolution, navigating the various services available for B2B marketing has become increasingly complex.

While the ultimate goal remains the same (being heard above the crowd), the path to reaching that goal requires strategically employing the right content marketing services. 

We’ve compiled a list of services ranging from content strategy to analytics to help you understand how each of these services works and how they help your brand be the loudest voice in the market. 

Why B2B companies need content marketing services

B2B buying cycles are long and involve a whole host of stakeholders. This means that B2B marketers have to map out and maintain ongoing relationships with buyers across a range of job titles and decision-making influences.This degree of in-depth engagement means utilizing an array of content types across several platforms and touchpoints to guide customers along the buying journey. If you think that sounds difficult, don’t worry – you’re not alone.

A joint study by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs identified the top challenges B2B marketers face when creating content – audience alignment, consistency, differentiation, SEO optimization and quality were among the leaders.

To accomplish all of these tasks effectively in today’s crowded digital marketplace requires a great deal of creative, analytical and strategic expertise.

And the best way to access that is by partnering with proven content marketing service providers.

Lightening the load

Nearly 60% of marketing teams cite a lack of resources as their biggest situational challenge when it comes to content creation.

Delegating activities to content marketing service providers can help lighten the load. Not only does this free up your team to focus on the big-picture strategy, but it also ensures that these tasks are being managed by dedicated marketers who are immersed in the latest trends, techniques and analytics within each specific area of content marketing.

This specialization leads to more effective and impactful marketing efforts, tailored to meet the unique needs and challenges of your B2B brand.  

Let’s explore some of the most popular content marketing services, and which of the challenges surfaced by the CMI/MarketingProfs study are alleviated by outsourcing these responsibilities.

8 popular B2B content marketing services

Content strategy

In B2B marketing, a well-defined content strategy is crucial because it aligns your content with your business’s objectives and the needs of your audience. It ensures that every piece of content – whether a blog post, a white paper or a social media update – serves a clear purpose.

Why it’s popular: Top-performing marketing teams cite having a documented content strategy among their top keys to success. 

A B2B marketing agency’s content strategy offerings may include:

• Audience research: Identifying and understanding the target audience, including their needs, challenges and content consumption behaviors.
• Content auditing and analysis: Reviewing existing content to determine what’s working and what’s not.
• Strategic planning: Developing a comprehensive plan that outlines the types of content to be created and identifying the business goals of each piece of content.
• SEO: Incorporating search engine optimization strategies into content creation to improve visibility in search engine results and attract organic traffic.

Competitive content analysis

A competitive content analysis evaluates what types of content are being published and what topics are being covered by your competitors. This enables you to identify trends and gaps in the content coverage within your industry.

Why it’s popular: A competitive content analysis helps marketers make data-backed decisions about content development and SEO strategies

A B2B marketing agency’s competitive content analysis offerings may include:

• Competitor identification: Determining who your direct and indirect competitors are.
• Content inventory: Cataloging and assessing the content of your competitors.
• Content performance evaluation: Measuring the engagement and performance of competitors’ content to understand what resonates with the audience.
• SEO assessment: Analyzing competitors’ content for SEO effectiveness and SERP rankings.
• Content gap analysis: Identifying topics and questions that competitors have not adequately covered.

Concept development

Effective concept development aligns with your overall business objectives, addresses the needs and challenges of your target audience, and differentiates your brand in the market.

Why it’s popular: This is the leading challenge cited by B2B marketers, with 57% reporting difficulty creating the right content for their audience.

A B2B marketing agency’s concept development offerings may include:

• Concept ideation: Developing a range of concept ideas, drawing from industry trends, audience needs, and business objectives.
• Strategic alignment: Ensuring that the developed concepts align with your brand’s values, voice, and business goals, as well as with the identified needs and preferences of your target audience.
• Content and campaign planning: Mapping out how the chosen concept will be executed across various types of content and marketing campaigns, ensuring a cohesive and integrated approach.

Content drafting

Quality content production is essential for building brand authority, engaging with potential customers, driving lead generation, and improving conversion rates. Skilled content drafting ensures content that is relevant, timely, and optimized for search engines and user experience.

Why it’s popular: Among the top challenges cited above, several tie back to content creation –creating content consistently (54%), differentiating content (54%), optimizing for SEO (45%), and creating quality content (44%).

A B2B marketing agency’s content production offerings may include:

• Content creation: Crafting well-researched and well-written content that addresses the specific interests and pain points of the target audience, while also aligning with the brand’s voice and objectives.
• SEO optimization: Integrating relevant keywords and meta tags to enhance content visibility in search engine results and drive organic traffic.
• Content formatting and styling: Ensuring that content is not only informative but also easy to read and visually appealing.
• Quality assurance: Conducting thorough editing and proofreading to ensure content is free from errors, factually accurate, and consistent with the brand’s messaging and standards.

Thought leadership and influencer content

This type of content allows for individual voices to inspire, educate, and challenge existing perspectives within your industry. Influencers and thought leaders can be from within your organization, or be that outside expertise that lends credibility to your brand. 

Why it’s popular: Thought leaders and influencers lend their unique voices and perspectives to your brand. 

A B2B marketing agency’s thought leadership and influencer content programs may include:

• Influencer partnerships: Identifying and partnering with influencers who have a strong following and credibility within your target market to co-create content, share content, or endorse your brand.
• Content creation and curation: Not every thought leader or influencer is an author, so partnering with a marketing service that has expertise in this arena can help your brand elevate the voice of the individual. 

Design services

Good design can significantly increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts by making your content more attractive, easier to understand, and more memorable. Design services help in establishing a brand’s visual identity, ensuring that all marketing materials are coherent, appealing, and aligned with the brand’s objectives.

Why it’s popular: A lack of resources is the number one challenge facing marketing teams today. Outsourcing design can ensure your content visually reflects the value of your brand.

A B2B marketing service’s design offerings may include:

• Brand identity design: Creating or refining the visual elements that make up a brand’s identity.
• Web and digital design: Developing the layout, visual appearance and usability of websites and digital platforms.
• Interactive and multimedia design: Creating interactive elements such as infographics, animations, and videos that can enhance storytelling and engage users more deeply with content.
• Content visualization: Transforming data and information into visual formats, such as charts, graphs, and diagrams.

Video content creation

Video content is highly engaging and can significantly increase the time visitors spend on your website, which can lead to higher conversion rates. Videos are also more likely to be shared across social media platforms, increasing brand visibility and reach.

Why it’s popular: Video is the number one place marketers would increase their investment. Outsourcing video production to a qualified service can greatly increase your ROI.

A B2B marketing agency’s video content creation offerings may include:

• Concept development and scripting: Crafting creative concepts and writing scripts that convey the brand’s message.
• Filming and production: Capturing high-quality video footage using industry best practices.
• Editing and post-production: Combining the footage with supporting audio and graphics to ensure it’s polished and aligns with the brand’s identity.
• SEO optimization: Incorporating relevant keywords, titles, descriptions, and tags to ensure the video is discoverable on search engines and video platforms.
• Distribution strategy: Planning how and where to distribute the video content to reach the target audience.

Content performance analytics

Content performance analytics helps marketers understand how well their content is resonating with their target audience and contributing to business objectives. This is also how marketers gather the data that proves the ROI of their marketing efforts.

Why it’s popular: Just under half of marketers report that they’re confident in their ability to measure content performance. This leaves a lot of room for improvement – and expert help!

A B2B marketing agency’s content performance analytics offerings may include:

• Metric tracking and reporting: Identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to the business’s goals and regularly tracking these metrics to monitor content performance over time.
• Audience analysis: Analyzing the behavior and preferences of the target audience, including how they interact with content, which topics are most appealing, and which formats generate the most engagement.
• Content optimization: Using data insights to recommend changes to existing content, such as updating or repurposing underperforming content, as well as guiding the development of new content that aligns with audience interests and business goals.
• Competitive benchmarking: Comparing content performance against industry benchmarks or competitors to identify areas for improvement and opportunities to differentiate in the market.
• ROI analysis: Measuring the return on investment of content marketing activities by linking content performance to business outcomes, such as lead generation, sales, and customer acquisition and retention.

Choosing the right content marketing service provider

Did reading through that list of services have you daydreaming about how much time and energy your marketing team could free up with a little outsourcing? 

Here are some best practices to follow when choosing a content marketing service provider.

Define your goals and needs: Start by clearly defining what you want to achieve with your content marketing. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or establish thought leadership? Understanding your objectives will help you identify the services that are most aligned with your goals.

Evaluate their content quality: Request samples of the agency’s work to evaluate the quality of their content. High-quality, engaging, and informative content is essential for a successful content marketing campaign.

Understand their analytics approach: A good content marketing service should have robust methods for measuring and reporting on the performance of your content. Ask about their metrics and reporting tools to ensure they can provide the insights you need.

Discuss communication and collaboration: Effective communication and collaboration are essential for a successful partnership. Discuss how they plan to communicate and collaborate with your team throughout the content marketing process.

Consider scalability: Choose a service that can scale with your business as it grows. They should be able to adapt to your changing needs and continue to deliver high-quality content as your business evolves.

Ask about SEO integration: Since SEO is a crucial element of successful content marketing, ensure that the service has a strong understanding of SEO best practices and can integrate these into your content strategy.

Interested in lightening your marketing team’s content load? We’re ready to help. Learn more about TopRank’s Content Marketing services.

The post 8 Content Marketing Services That Are In Demand for B2B Brands appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Key Challenges in an Enterprise SEO Audit

Wouldn’t it be nice if every single website had a perfect, clear SEO strategy from the very start? And every single page on that website was perfectly aligned with every aspect of that strategy, from its original inception through every update?

What a dream, right? Sadly, that’s rarely the reality of running a website – especially if you’re managing a huge enterprise one. Instead, too many cooks over too long a period of time end up stirring up a kind of Frankenstein’s site. It might work, but you may not even know how many pages it has, much less how each of those pages is contributing to your SEO strategy.

Enter the SEO audit. A professional SEO audit is the best way to check on the effectiveness of your website and get it back on track for fulfilling strategic objectives. And the larger and older the website, the more valuable an SEO audit can be – which is exactly what makes enterprise SEO audits so crucial, despite their many challenges.

What is an SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a comprehensive review and reassessment of a website’s SEO strategy. They evaluate how a website’s pages are currently performing in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) and why. In the process, SEO auditors identify any potential issues that may be preventing better performance and suggest ways to fix those issues and improve the site’s overall SEO strategy. 

An SEO audit has two main goals: 

1. To develop an informed and contextual understanding of how and why the site in question is ranking in SERPs the way it is. 
2. To define the next steps of an SEO strategy that will improve those rankings.

How does an SEO audit work?

Search engine algorithms like Google’s consider thousands of factors when determining which web pages to award top results in their SERPs. They even weigh these factors differently depending on the context of the subject matter and keyword. These factors include:

• Technical considerations, such as page load speed, mobile friendliness, site architecture, page crawlability, etc.
• On-page considerations, such as keyword placement and usage, page layout and structure (proper use of title tags, lists, etc.), use of semantically related keywords, page metadata, etc.
• Authority considerations, such as how many backlinks the page has, how well any related pages rank or how frequently they’re visited, etc.
• Content quality considerations, such as how well the content provides the information a visitor needs based on their search, the use of images and/or videos, length and readability, etc.
• Competitive considerations, which compare the SEO of the site to sites of similar subject matter and reach.

To achieve their two main goals, SEO auditors have to analyze these considerations for each page of the website they’re working on.

Most SEO auditors take a triage approach to finding and pointing out opportunities for SEO remediation. They’ll start with the biggest, most damaging SEO problems and work their way down to the elements that aren’t making as big an immediate difference. This helps them make the biggest difference they can to rankings right away.

For example, when Google or other search engines evaluate a web page for inclusion in a SERP, they “crawl” it, or quickly scan its structure and contents to find what they’re looking for. The faster and more easily they can do this, the more likely they are to consider the page a good fit. Therefore, a page’s “crawlability” is one of the first priorities for most SEO auditors. 

Improving a page’s crawlability can involve using proper title tags, strengthening internal linking structure, making sure the keyword appears in the title tags and meta information, and organizing content into easily indexed sections.

Strategic considerations

SEO audits won’t just tell you what you’re ranking for right now and how you could rank for it better; they’ll help you figure out what you should try to rank for and how you can begin to do so. Usually, this consists of a combination of pursuing existing keywords and trying new ones, updating old pages, and writing new content.

What makes an enterprise SEO audit different from a conventional audit?

SEO audits of big, enterprise business websites usually work the same way as any other kind. The major difference is the scale of the project. 

Enterprise businesses usually have large, complex websites. They may consist of dozens of domains with internationally localized pages, complex structures of subdomains and internal links, and thousands of pages. 

This can make manually evaluating every page of a website the way auditors might for a smaller SEO audit logistically impossible. It also presents several other unique challenges that require specialist SEO professionals to tackle effectively.

What makes an enterprise SEO audit so challenging?

These are a few of the major reasons why enterprise SEO auditing is considered a specialization within the world of SEO – and why it’s so important for enterprise businesses.

Sheer number of pages

Any enterprise SEO audit has hundreds or thousands of pages to contend with. Each of these pages should have a specific and well-defined strategic purpose while simultaneously accomplishing the role they need to play within the business’s website. 

An effective SEO audit of an enterprise website must find every page associated with the website, define exactly what they do and how they can best accomplish both their SEO and business objectives, and then remediate every page’s SEO to meet those goals.

Complexity of site architecture

Managing the thousands of individual pages associated with an enterprise website would be tough on its own, but most enterprise organizations naturally organize these pages into complex directories of subdomains and child pages. 

For example, many enterprise websites list hundreds of individual product pages or even product categories. Each of those pages requires a thoughtful approach to SEO, but they also need to devote most of their space to listing and linking to other products and pages. 

The first step of most enterprise SEO audits is a high-level review and analysis of a website’s architecture. SEO auditors will examine the organization from the top down, evaluating how everything connects to everything else, how easy it is to navigate to the pages any user may be looking for, and what role SEO can play in the process.

Complexity of strategy

The more complex the website, the more complex the SEO strategy has to be. This counts double for enterprise businesses, which usually have highly diversified interests and complex strategic goals for managing their brand’s participation along multiple vectors.

The only way any enterprise SEO audit can be effective is if the auditors develop an advanced understanding of these goals. This will ensure that auditors find the right competitors to cross-reference and the right keywords to pursue for each strategic goal.

International SEO considerations

International SEO is a whole next level of complexity, and most enterprise businesses will need to confront it. Sites that service multiple nations need to be structured for different regions and languages, meaning new subdomains or subdirectories, new hreflang tags, and, in all likelihood, a whole lot of new localized content. 

Speaking of localization, individual keywords themselves change significantly between different nations and even regions within a nation. Truly effective SEO strategies will have to account for these local idiosyncrasies by using the language and keywords the local populace will be most likely to search. “Wicked smart sneakers” will probably only show up on your Boston pages, but it could be a highly relevant keyword within that region.

High risk of content cannibalization

Content cannibalization is simply a redundancy of content. Without realizing it, enterprises may have multiple pages that accomplish essentially the same purpose. Maybe they list the same product twice, for example, or they wrote a blog about something they’d already addressed years ago.

For SEO considerations, content redundancy becomes a big problem when multiple site pages start competing for the same keywords. The enterprise winds up competing with itself for SERP results, and in the process, undermines the effectiveness of both pages and the whole SEO strategy.

Are enterprise SEO audits worth all the work?

Absolutely. The bigger the website, the greater its SEO opportunities. Once again, this counts double for enterprises, who are usually quite recognizable and authoritative in their spaces and have a lot of business to gain (or lose) on the strength of their SEO. 

An SEO audit isn’t just something big enterprises need to occasionally invest in for website maintenance; it’s a huge opportunity to optimize a business’s potential. An SEO audit by the right expert professionals makes every page of an enterprise site into a strategic asset, primed to win the right SERPs, attract the right audience, and direct them exactly where they need to go. 

If you’re interested in optimizing your site with an enterprise SEO audit, our experts are excited to help. Get in touch with TopRank Marketing to get started today.

The post Key Challenges in an Enterprise SEO Audit appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

The New Best Practices for B2B Social Media Marketing

Social media is entering its 20s.

No, really. LinkedIn was founded in 2003, Facebook in 2004. There are people in the workforce today who can’t remember life before social networking sites existed.

And like most 20-year-olds, social media is having a quarter life crisis: a questioning of purpose, a lack of cohesive identity, and uncertainty about the future.

All of which makes marketing on social media more challenging than ever. We’re not just contending with new channels, algorithm updates and pay-for-play (although all of those are at work, too). We’re contending with social sites defining and redefining themselves. And at the same time, people are re-evaluating how they use these sites, too. 

Amid all of these shifts, one thing remains certain: B2B brands need to be showing up for potential customers on social media.

Here are the latest B2B social media marketing best practices to help you reach your audience. 

B2B social media marketing best practices for 2024

These are helpful general guidelines for success on any social media channel. 

1. Show up on the right channels in the right context

It’s important to put your time and resources towards the channels where your audience is already spending time. For B2B, LinkedIn is a given. Your mileage may vary for the other channels, however. We have seen financial services and technology clients have great success on Facebook, for example — counterintuitive as it may seem. 

It’s really a case of knowing your audience demographics and how they overlap with the channel. Pew Research’s Social Media Fact Sheet is a great place to start.

Context is also key: While LinkedIn’s algorithm promotes multi-slide document posts, a wall of text will send Instagram screaming for the hills. Behind-the-scenes videos of office life or “day in the life” content could take off on TikTok, but might seem less relevant on LinkedIn.

Channel + context + great content is a good foundation for a successful social media strategy.

2. Tailor content to different audiences

B2B buying committees are made up of people at differing levels of seniority, in a wide variety of roles, each with their own pain points and questions. There’s no such thing as a single audience for your B2B social posts — one-size-fits-all messaging won’t fit anyone.

It’s important to understand your audiences, develop personas, and target content to each one.

Luckily, creating content for five different personas doesn’t mean 5x the workload. Imagine you have a PDF report that you’d like to share on LinkedIn: “The Comprehensive Guide to Our Industry.” Take that content, add 15-20% more new content targeted at a persona, and repost as “The IT Leader’s Comprehensive Guide to Our Industry,” and so on.

3. Balance and coordinate paid and organic strategies 

We’re long past the days when social media channels were good for purely organic reach. It takes a solid paid strategy to build a follower base. It even takes a strong paid strategy to get your content to your existing base.

Here are a few ways to integrate your paid and organic strategies:

• Focus paid budget on your lead-gen content.
• Augment your paid budget with organic posts that feature snippets of the lead-gen content.
• Post your most intriguing, engagement-worthy content organically.
• Amplify the posts that get the most engagement; they’re clearly resonating with your audience.
• Coordinate messaging between paid and organic for a consistent brand experience.

4. Go all in on multimedia

Social media algorithms are showing a marked preference for visual and video content. A recent report found that each image added to a LinkedIn post increases potential reach by 5%, for up to five images. Video on LinkedIn earns 3x the engagement of text posts. Even text-forward sites like X and Threads are getting in on the multimedia game.

Save the plain text posts for when you have a meaningful conversation-starter meant to drive engagement on the platform. Then make sure your brand keeps up its end of the conversation — respond to posts quickly and with enough material to keep the chat going.

5. Integrate influencers

This may shock some of you, but TopRank Marketing is pretty sold on B2B influencer marketing. Influencers and social media are a match made in heaven for brands. It’s an easy way to get your content in front of a relevant new audience.

Here are just a few ways you can add influencers to your social media strategy:

• Co-create content with influencers, post excerpts as images with quotes.
• Give influencers social media kits (image files, suggested text, hashtags, etc) to help promote co-created content.
• Enlist influencers for social-first content on your brand account.
• Sponsor a day-long account takeover for a high-profile influencer.

And remember, B2B influencers are those who can truly engage and persuade your audience, not just those with the biggest follower count. Look for people whose content gets engagement, resharing, and discussion.

Another often-overlooked source of influence: your employees. They have networks of their own, which they reach with authentic and personal voices. 

6. Explore new channels

New social media sites come and go — RIP Clubhouse and Blab — but it’s worth checking out some of the latest crop. BlueSky just opened their platform to the public. Mastodon and Discord are decentralized sites with private-run servers dedicated to different fandoms and topics. Reddit has been around for a while but is now actively courting brands.

For all of these channels, and whatever comes up next, keep these principles in mind: The right content, context and audience, promoted with paid and organic, featuring truly influential thought leaders.

Need help creating a social media strategy? Contact us today.

The post The New Best Practices for B2B Social Media Marketing appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Evaluating the Most Common SEO Website Analysis Tools

How good is the search engine optimization on every single page of your website? 

And how sure are you about your answer?

Most B2B brand sites have hundreds of pages. If yours includes a blog, that number could easily be in the thousands. 

You could analyze each of these pages manually, one by one. You could also use an eyedropper to drain a swimming pool. Neither are particularly good uses of your time.

SEO website analysis tools use superhuman speed to identify opportunities for optimization. They make the process quicker and easier, while also digging deeper into the data than a human analyst might. (Combined with the expertise of a human analyst, you can really cook up some great insights.)

Here are our agency’s favorite free, free + premium, and paid tools.

14 common SEO website analysis tools

There are dozens of tools that digital marketers can use for SEO. For this list, we’ll look at the ones you are most likely to get immediate utility out of. First, the tools that are free to use:

Free SEO website analysis tools

Google Analytics

Yes, Google Analytics has a paid tier, which by rights should put it in the next category. But it’s worth listing first because:

• It’s owned and operated by the world’s largest search engine
• It has enough utility in the free version to warrant its inclusion

Google Analytics makes it easy to analyze which pages are receiving the most organic traffic, how long people are spending on each page, bounce rates and more. All together, these metrics can identify your top performers and which pages need immediate attention.

Google Search Console

The first steps of a good SEO audit include checking that your site is properly indexed and checking for algorithm-stopping errors. Google Search Console can help with these tasks, as well as show which keywords your content is currently ranking for.

Google PageSpeed Insights

This simple tool offers quick and detailed analysis of what your actual site users experience.

Use it to discover how fast your page loads on both mobile and desktop, how accessible your site is, and an at-a-glance assessment of its SEO quality. It also includes diagnostics that offer actionable steps you can take to improve your scores.

Bing Webmaster Tools

Microsoft’s Bing runs a distant second to Google for search volume—it owns about 3%, compared to Google’s 83%. However, millions of searches run through Bing, including searches initiated in the Windows search bar, Microsoft Office, Skype, Teams, and beyond. 

Use Bing’s suite of tools to examine backlinks, perform keyword research, and audit your entire site for common SEO issues.

SEOquake

This browser-based free tool packs a serious punch. It features an SEO dashboard that gives a quick overview of any given page, including ranking in Google, Bing, and even voice search tools like Alexa. 

Siteliner

This browser-based tool offers a wealth of functionality for free. You can enter any domain URL in its search box and get an in-depth scan of up to 250 pages. The results include quick-look graphics, detailed lists, and even downloadable reports. Create a free account and login for up to 30,000 pages of analysis and the ability to view previous results.

SEO tools with free & premium tiers

Seolyzer

The big selling point of this tool is that it integrates its own crawler and analysis with Google Search Console to deliver what it calls “SEO Data Fusion.” The free tier offers analysis of a single site with up to 5,000 URLs, with more features unlocked across four additional tiers.

SEO PowerSuite

This tool offers a generous amount of functionality in its free tier. You can crawl and audit 500 URLs in a single site, track keywords, and audit backlinks. Paid tiers bring in more functionality, like the ability to schedule tasks and reports and export your data.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

In addition to having the most whimsical name in SEO, Screaming Frog’s SEO crawler is a lean but powerful tool for finding SEO issues on your site. The free tier offers up to 500 URLs, while the premium tool can crawl unlimited URLs, in addition to other features.

KWFinder

Part of the Mangools suite of tools, KWFinder offers quick and thorough analysis of keywords around a given topic. You’ll need a free account to take advantage of the tool, and a paid account for access to the entire suite.

Paid SEO tools

WooRank

The SEO tools that WooRank offers are part of a larger platform it calls a “total marketing solution.” It offers keyword tracking, SEO analysis, and customized reporting.

Ahrefs

The Ahrefs suite of tools has a long history of excellence and boasts clients including Adobe, IBM and LinkedIn. It offers automated site auditing, optimization, rank tracking, and keyword generation. Ahrefs even runs its own SEO bot, the most active web crawler of its kind. 

Moz Pro

While you can use some of Moz’s individual tools for free, the real value lies in using the whole suite you get with Moz Pro. Keyword research, rank tracking, site audits and link research are all included.

SEMrush

Semrush is another marketing platform with tools for SEO, content marketing, marketing research, PPC and social media. Their SEO workflow makes it easy to track your SERP rankings, monitor backlinks, run technical SEO audits, and more.

Start your journey to better SEO 

All of these tools can help you better optimize your website, identify common problems, and implement fixes. But each tool has its own learning curve, training regimen, and costs associated. If you don’t already have an SEO expert on your team, it’s worth bringing in outside help.

TopRank Marketing has over two decades of experience with SEO, and we’re up to date on the latest tools and trends, too. Need help getting started? Request a free SEO report card today.

 

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