SEO Best Practices For B2B And B2C

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices for Business to Business (B2B) and Business to Customer (B2C) may vary depending on a wide variety of factors. As a business owner, you need to get it right to leverage your competition and ensure you realize maximum profits within your niche. In comparison, SEO for B2B and B2C varies depending on the buying process, the products and services offered, the size of the market, the ordering scale, the language used, and site goals. Employing SEO best practices for your business will, therefore, ensure you effectively interact with your market; whether it is another business or a distributed clientele base.

As a business owner, you may wonder what need there is to employ sound strategies and keep reviewing them frequently. The truth is if you don’t perfect it, you risk becoming irrelevant to your market; a recipe for unprecedented losses. SEO strategies keep changing due to updates in ranking algorithms, consumer behaviour, and emerging trends within the market. It is, therefore, worthwhile to ensure you stay up-to-date with all that may be going on around you at all times.

An example of a B2B scenario is where you sell directly to other businesses or organizations. The buying process in this case is very different from when you are selling to a customer in a B2C setting. For B2B, there is a need to be more specific with your keywords. The use of long-tail keywords is therefore of key consideration. (We have more detailed posts on keyword research and how to rank for your queries)

Target keywords are just one area to look at, let us examine other areas you need to grasp for SEO best practices.

Market research

For B2C market research is very much diversified. When researching what they want relative to what you offer, there are a lot of considerations you need to take into consideration. These may include age, culture, language, economic status, etc. Your research will also take a lot of time, which is worth it, and involve experiments if need be. The competition is also of importance when doing market research for B2C.

For B2B, your target market is more specialized, less diversified and there may be much less competition as compared to the case of B2C. All you have to do is identify a niche and fill it. As described above, long-tail keywords will do the trick. You will need to identify what your target market is searching for and tailor your products towards meeting that. For instance, if you want to supply office equipment, you first need to identify where there is an acute need for the equipment and set up shop. This could range from electronics like computers to furniture and wifi installations. Companies and businesses will order from you in large quantities. All you have to do is ensure you are well stocked to meet their every need.

Site content

For B2C, your site content will need to be appealing and search-friendly. It needs to be satisfactory to a wide variety of market elements. The key is ensuring you speak their language and measure your success through their eyes. You can engage them through social media to know how effective your products are.
For B2B, site content needs to be more descriptive and with plenty of details. If you are selling office computers, the price might not be the most important thing, as may be the case in B2C. Businesses will want to know how to install them, how to keep them in good shape, and how to solve minor technical issues. Imagery, product videos, and updated descriptions come in handy. Prospective clients who need to contact you directly must also do so easily. Your website needs to be organized in a way that will facilitate that.

Search terms

Different industries have different kinds of technical language used to identify or describe products and services. Like I mentioned earlier, you need to do adequate keyword research but also take a moment to find out what people are searching for to find certain products. The good thing is that we have plenty of keyword research tools today that you can easily use to find out what your prospective market is searching. For instance, you may want to supply furniture to organizations within your locality. Assuming that ‘furniture’ is the best search query to be found for maybe a mistake. Take time to interact with your prospects and find out what search terms they use. For example, people may be searching ‘tables and chairs’ instead of ‘furniture’ which you believe is your best shot.
The difficulty of the search term is also an important consideration. If you operate within an industry that uses too much jargon like a pharmaceutical outlet or a manufacturing plant, always aim to leverage the use of jargon with more customer-friendly words.

Site structure

Your site’s structure needs to reflect your noble intentions for your customers. Regardless of what you offer, always ensure your site is tailored to well on all devices. Your customers and your prospects must be able to navigate your site with ease and find the information they are looking for. Create quality landing pages to appeal to your targets and convert leads into sales.

SEO for businesses is like an investment with assured returns. You need to find ways of employing the best SEO practices and ensuring you update and review them as changes take effect. There is nothing worse for a business than making losses when you can easily turn around your fortunes by following the simple tips above.