People have been saying ‘SEO is dead’ since even before the industry really found its feet. In fact, throughout the entire time I have been in the industry people have been saying ‘SEO is dead.’ They don't understand the Importance of SEO for B2B.
The second is, the facts don’t bear that out. Brands are increasing their spend on SEO. It’s become one of the most important marketing strategies for businesses up and down the country. More and more consumers are using the search engines to find products and services, and the vast majority use the organic search results rather than paid adverts. The need for good SEO practices to ensure people find good, relevant websites when they search has never been more important.
A more accurate headline would have been ‘SEO has got harder’. Google’s algorithm changes have meant that many previously successful SEO techniques no longer work. Specifically, certain types of link building practices no longer work. But this hasn’t killed SEO, just meant that some of the shortcuts have gone.
Another possible headline could have been ‘Bad SEO is dead’. Or ‘SEO spam is dead’. SEO is a much-misunderstood topic. Many people think it’s like a kind of black magic or voodoo. And while it is true that it is not an exact science, it IS a science. It is the process of understanding a complex computer program (Google) and knowing how to ensure that websites comply with this computer program to help searchers find great results.
There ARE people who have had bad experiences with SEO companies, but SEO is a young industry and that’s to be expected. These cases are in a small minority, and as the industry matures the charlatans and cowboys will slowly be driven out leaving just the talented, customer and ROI focussed agencies left.
Good SEO is a professional service which deserves its place alongside other services like accountancy, legal advice and consultancy. It combines IT and technical skills with marketing, design, public relations, copywriting, data analysis, planning and forecasting. And, quite frankly, the world needs SEO. Here’s why:
Consumers need SEO
When you search for a product or service in Google, you want to find what you searched for. The job of the SEO agency is to help make sure that happens. One of the first questions we’ll ask when working with a website is ‘who wants what you have to offer?’ If you were a client of ours, our job would be to make sure the people that want your products or services find them – that way they’ll buy them, pay for them and you’ll make a profit. This is where the Importance of SEO for B2B comes into play.
We don’t want rankings for the sake of rankings, or traffic for the sake of traffic. When the right people find your site they’ll be happy, they’ll buy, and you’ll then be happy that you invested in SEO, and you’ll continue to do it.
Search engines need SEO
Google relies on links as its primary way of determining how useful a website is, and in many industries, it’s just not that effective without SEO companies working with the businesses that feel they have something to offer the consumer. As someone at a recent search conference said, ‘People just don’t link to websites about ladders’.
Google is also getting very sophisticated – and is looking to continuously improve the search experience for you and I. For example, it wants to develop ‘semantic search’ – which means going beyond ‘keywords’ to a point where it really understands what a person means when they type in a search. In order to provide the right search results, Google will need to understand the information on a website on a deeper level than it does at the moment. In order to make that possible, website content will need to be marked up and coded in a way that goes way beyond ‘meta tags’. This will not happen on a large scale without SEO companies.
Young people need SEO
At a time when university graduates are still unemployed and living with their parents for years after getting their degrees, SEO is one of the few industries that is recruiting young people. And it’s not just graduates getting these opportunities – for example at JDR we have taken on school leavers as apprentices and have trained them to become confident, ambitious digital marketers. A career in SEO gives young people a chance to quickly learn and progress in a way that just isn’t possible in many other industries.
The UK economy needs SEO
The SEO industry is still growing very quickly, in fact it’s one of the success stories of the UK economy. But for the economy to grow, people have to buy things – kitchens, cars, clothes, food, holidays etc . By helping businesses connect with customers in Google in a quick and easy way, we boost growth in the businesses we work with. This means they make more profit, can afford to pay their staff higher wages, shareholders get better returns, pension funds perform better and the government raises more tax revenue.
So while ‘Why the world needs SEO’ may not be as attention grabbing as ‘SEO is dead’, hopefully you’ll agree there’s a lot more validity in it.
How To Choose the Right Keywords
Over 98% of the UK population have access to the internet and 93% of these users use Google when searching for products and services.
Every day millions of potential customers are going onto the internet and looking for various products and services, so the benefits of being found by ‘ready to buy customers’ through Google are huge.
A question that should be asked is ‘How do I want these customers to find my business?’ It would be natural for you to assume that you need to be found for what ‘you’ believe is the most popular search term, i.e. ‘Builder’....‘Plumber’.......‘Accountant’..... and so on.
But what you feel are the most popular searches may not always be the kind of searches that instigate an enquiry.
How to Choose the Right Keywords for SEO
Lots of business owners use The Google Keyword Planner to help them decide which keywords they believe are most popular; it is the use of ads that appear when people search for phrases related to your offering as “sponsored links” either at the top of the search results in a light orange box or down the right hand side of the search results). As part of this service, Google allows you to look at the number of searches a particular keyword gets each month, which gives you a great insight into just how many people are searching for a keyword/search term each month. But the most popular search terms are not always the best, and here's why...
Long Tail Keywords Vs. Short Tail Keywords
When it comes to keywords, there are two types; 'long tail' and 'short tail'. Short tail keywords are typically 1-3 words, and often have high search volumes. Long tail keywords are typically longer in length and have less search volumes. Even though they are typically more specific, they also usually account for the majority of search traffic, which is an extremely important statistic.
Example of Long Tail Keywords and Short Tail Keywords
Let’s take the key-phrase ‘Samsung TV.’
This gets around 40,000 searches each month, and as I’m sure you can imagine it is naturally a competitive keyword. This is an example of a ‘short tail' keyword, and it has a lower conversion possibility (chance of someone making a purchase or enquiry after typing this into Google). Why? because there are many different models of Samsung TV with many different options, so the person doing this search has not yet decided exactly what they are looking for yet -so they are probably not yet ready to buy.
The phrase ‘Samsung 40 inch TV,’ on the other hand has around 2400 searches each month.
This is an example of a 'long tail' keyword, and it has a better chance of converting because it is a more specific search term. The person doing this search has a clear idea of what they want, meaning they are more likely to make a purchase - as long as the page that they land on has a good offering.
Being found for lots of long tail keywords can often be better than being found for a few shorter tail keywords - because long tail keywords convert.
Research Keywords Vs. Buying Keywords
The typical journey of someone looking for a product or service, starts off with the ‘realisation’ that they have a need, they then move on to ‘research’ mode (which is looking at what is available out there on the internet), once they have finished research, they will typically move on to ‘evaluation’ (which is when they assess how appropriate or relevant what they have found, is to them). The final stage is the ‘decision’ stage - do I choose company/product A or B?
Short tail keywords often fall into the ‘research’ category. This is when a particular keyword can be described as the type of keyword that could be used by someone researching - in other words “not in a buying state of mind” - not ideal if you are hoping for them to do business with you!
Let’s imagine you own a steel fabrication company. Naturally you would want potential customers to find you on the internet, but how?
We’ll also imagine that the word ‘steel fabrication’ has 2900 people searching for this each month, whereas the keyword ‘stainless steel sink fabricators’ has 20 searches per month.
It would be fair to assume that half of the 'steel fabrication' searches could be people ‘looking into’ steel fabrication or finding out what is involved - they could be students researching what steel fabrication is, for example.
On the other hand, it would be safe to assume that the vast majority of people searching using the phrase 'stainless steel sink fabricators' are closer to a “ready-to-do-business” state of mind (they have a better intent).
How to choose your keywords
When it comes to deciding what keywords you would ideally like your company to be found by, it’s important to first understand the nature of the types of enquiries you would like to get.
Whilst 'research' keywords can be very good, particularly with their often high search volumes, it’s important to strike a balance. My recommendation is to have a system that mixes both long-tail keywords and short-tail keywords to get the best of both worlds - high traffic and high conversions.
What Next?
We hope you now understand more about the importance of SEO for B2B. To get the best results from your keyword strategy, consider partnering with JDR Group. We specialise in helping small and medium businesses achieve digital prosperity by driving more leads and sales through the effective use of targeted keywords. Contact us to learn more about how we can help!
