Developing a keyword research strategy is a powerful way to amplify your SEO strategy for your B2B business. Leveraging the right keywords can promote your overall brand awareness and help you to gain visibility in front of key prospects, investors, and stakeholders. There are many elements to consider when developing this strategy, which you can optimize to resonate in the B2B space. In this blog, we discuss the best practices for keyword research for your B2B business and the benefits of employing this type of strategy in your SEO process.
Keyword research in the B2B space
Organic visibility is an essential element to help your B2B business get the audience it needs to boost your conversion rates. Optimizing your keyword research habits can be simple and extremely rewarding when you use these best practices:
Create keywords and content around pain points
This is one of the most helpful strategies that you can use in your content marketing strategy to boost your reach and guide your content creation. You can create both long and short strings of keywords and phrases around what your potential prospects may be searching for. Establishing yourself as an authority in the space after the initial search can come down to creating helpful blogs and other resources around those keywords.
For example, if your company was an app that addressed employee retention and attrition, you could create content around tips and tricks that businesses can use to better connect with their employees and enrich their benefits. Keywords around these needs would be easy to differentiate and create.
Use justification-based keyword strings
With so many different B2B products in all spaces available on the market today, you’ll often find searches asking the public if things are “worth it.” For example, you may find:
- Is Google or Bing better?
- Asana vs. Monday.com Benefits
- Is Hubspot worth it?
These are all examples of higher-ranking business members trying to create and establish systems, platforms, and common practices in their businesses, which is where you can take the time to refine your justification-based keywords. This helps you to boost relevant content that highlights all the benefits of your offer — and what sets your business apart from the others in the space.
Create clear keyword strategies with your audience in mind
When developing your keyword strategy, it can be easy to slip into more of a B2C mindset and try to target engaging phrases that are focused on the purchase only. Instead, it’s important to refocus and design your strategy with content and keywords that will resonate and address questions from key stakeholders. Often in the B2B space, members to reach that you should keep in mind include:
- CFO’s
- CEO’s
- CMO’s
- Operations Officers and Department Heads
- Logistics Officers Department Heads
- Human Resources Department Heads
- Supervisors and Managers
- Development Officers
Working collaboratively with your team to discern your ideal audience for each cluster of content and keywords can help you to create more effective and compelling content.
Variate your keyword types
When developing your keyword strategies, it’s essential to maintain a varied group of both long and short-form keywords. Doing this can help you to rank higher for different types of keywords and audiences. It’s important to note that long keywords have actually risen in popularity. These types of phrases have been found to have a 3-5% higher click-through rate with proper usage and formatting. Long-form keywords are also important additions thanks to the specificity that they offer in comparison to other keywords. This can be especially useful in the B2B space, as you are trying to narrow your audience to core purchasers and decision-makers.
Do your research on your competing brands
While it’s important to preserve your unique brand voice and tone within your content, you can leverage the strategies of your competitors to reach new and relevant audiences. Periodically reviewing their content marketing content to get a grasp on who they are targeting and how, as well as phraseology, can fuel your own strategy and keyword research efforts. It is important to cross-reference this with your bottom-funnel understanding of who your key purchasers and prospects are to ensure that the types of keywords that you plan to use or be inspired by from your competitors will remain relevant to your brand and offerings.
Upgrade your tech stack for B2B keyword research
When optimizing your content and developing a keyword research strategy, consider updating your tech stack with tools that can help you to do this effectively. For example, Google Ads is one of the best tools that you can use to develop and create new keyword strategies. When evaluating your next tech or software investment, there’s a variety of factors to consider, such as the ability of the tool to create clear reporting and live-time analytics, as well as offer insight into the competitive landscape of each keyword or phrase.
