Have Realistic B2B SEO Goals
Categorized in: B2B Digital Marketing, SEO
It’s necessary to take a strategic approach to B2B SEO. In the campaign planning process a business needs to determine what the goals of the campaign will be to measure the success of the campaign as it moves along. The important thing to remember when setting B2B SEO goals is that they need to be realistic and attainable. Setting realistic goals for an SEO campaign requires an understanding of the nature of SEO. It’s a long-term process and the competition in the online space plays a large role. If you are relatively new to the market and in a competitive niche, you aren’t going to skyrocket to the top position in the search engines for competitive keywords. In fact, you may never get to that top position. When it comes to setting goals for your B2B SEO campaign you need to think realistically.
Having unrealistic expectations is setting the campaign up to “fail” right from the start. Due to the nature of SEO it can be difficult to measure SEO success, especially at the beginning of the campaign, but there are specific goals to have. Meeting these goals means that the campaign is working. Here is a list of some of the realistic B2B Seo goals that you should shoot for:
Upward Trend in Visitors
Instead of focusing on rank position, B2Bs need to set their sights on visitor growth as the number one indicator of SEO success. Rankings fluctuate based on many factors. A more straightforward metric is the number of visitors that are coming to the site through organic search. If organic search traffic steadily improves (even if that improvement is minor) month to month, it means that the SEO campaign is on track. Of course, there may be dips here and there especially for businesses that operate on a seasonal basis, but the overall trend should point upward.
Increased Conversion Rates
Getting visitors the site is great, but ideally you want to generate traffic from the right visitors, the ones that are more likely to convert. Tying conversions to SEO is an even longer-term process than getting visitors to the site because there’s a good chance that a visitor isn’t going to convert the first time they land on the site. It could take many visits to the site to convert by filling out a lead form, calling the business, etc. and then it could take even longer for that website conversion to turn into a sale. The B2B sales cycle is long, but after a few years of SEO work, you should be able to tie conversions and sales back to website visitors that came in from organic search traffic.
Content For Every Phase of Your Sales Cycle
The most important part of SEO today is content generation and both your website and blog should have plenty of content that will satisfy your visitors. For B2B websites, this means that you should have information that goes along with each phase of your sales cycle as well as your existing customers. In this way, you will satisfy a wide range of users. This will not only increase traffic, but it also may increase conversions. If your sales cycle is particularly long, your content is a great way to keep your leads engaged with your brand. Once they are ready to close the sale, your company will be the first one they think of because they’ve been reading your blog all along!
More Traffic to Your Website
When your website has a lot of great content on it, you will likely end up with more traffic from both the search engines and social media. While it could take up to a year in order to receive an organic boost in traffic, you should experience an increase in engagement in social media, which will likely lead to a surge in traffic. Your first step is that you’ll want to create great content that people will want to read. This is one of the reasons why every B2B business needs a blog. Besides, once your blog gets more traffic, so will your website as a whole.
In order to measure B2B SEO success, it helps to have some realistic goals. While it can take some time for changes to translate into results, these goals will help keep your actions focused and consistent. When we execute a B2B SEO program for our clients, we understand that consistency is the key to getting results.
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