Selling to a business compared to selling to an individual is a very different story. For B2B companies, you’re not going to find your customers in the same places consumers hang out. So, why is it that so many businesses use a repackaged B2C SEO strategy for their websites? The problem starts with understanding the inherent differences between SEO for consumers and SEO for businesses.
The majority of the information you’ll find on the Internet will be geared toward consumers. After all, there are over 7.5 billion people on the planet, but businesses—particularly your specific subset of clients—represent a much smaller customer base. However, that doesn’t mean your SEO strategy is less important.
Just as Walmart has an SEO strategy to reach their consumer base, you can create an SEO strategy to reach yours; it’s just going to be a bit different. The key to a successful B2B SEO strategy is creating a customer profile for your businesses that represents your average customer. So, how do you get started?
Well, you could spend the next few hours, days, weeks, and even months scouring the Internet and researching best SEO practices. You could even dig through informative blog posts such as The 10 Most Damaging B2B SEO Mistakes to Avoid and 6 B2B Marketing Strategies Shaping 2017. But, even then, you’re going to have a lot of work ahead of you, including endless trial and error to get your B2B SEO strategy just right.
Or, you could implement the number one most effective B2B SEO solution right now, and then sit back, relax, and watch it work. What is this effective solution? It’s simple: hire an agency that has the expertise and knowledge necessary to implement a comprehensive B2B SEO strategy.
This solution removes all the guesswork, takes the pressure off, and ensures that your SEO is a success from day one. Why is hiring an agency the most effective SEO solution?
1. Instant Professional Team
Working with an agency instantly provides you with professional manpower and a team of SEO experts. Instead of sorting through resumes and conducting endless interviews, which costs you time you don’t have and requires you to gain knowledge on a subject you don't know enough about, you can rely on the agency to help you solve your SEO problems with skill and experience. This not only offers a significant cost savings but also helps you get your SEO campaign off the ground more quickly.
An experienced agency has also seen the full gamut of issues, idiosyncrasies, and problems that can occur. They’ve dealt with it all—from A to Z—so you benefit from their hundreds of successes (and failures) without having to go through the painful trial and error process yourself. No matter how dedicated your in-house marketing team might be, they won’t have the breadth of experience a professional agency has.
2.Proven Expertise
A proven SEO firm will have a reputable track record and case studies to demonstrate their expertise. For example, just take a look at how Panoramic Power increased their sales by 537% after just seven months with KeyScouts. It’s highly doubtful that your internal team will be able to prove this type of success, especially if you’re implementing an SEO strategy for the first time.
Agencies are also always investing in their employee's knowledge. This means that you benefit from the latest research, most up-to-date technologies, and cutting edge know-how. Staying on top of SEO best practices is a full-time job in and of itself, and an agency makes sure this is a part of their business. Your own team would have to divide their time between implementation and SEO research, and all the rest of their duties.
3. Network of Professional Connections
If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times, “A powerful network is invaluable.” And that’s exactly what you get when working with a marketing agency. As soon as you partner with an agency, you’ll gain access to an already established network of professional SEO connections and collaborators. These individuals are experts in their area, and they know the right people to help you succeed.
One of the most important aspects of an SEO strategy is link-building, where you reach out to authoritative websites in your industry and attempt to get your content linked to on their site. The more high quality websites link to your content, the higher your own website will rank in search engines. A professional agency has years of experience building quality links for their clients and has already established relationships with major industry websites. Working with an agency means being able to take advantage of all these relationships to build quality links at a fraction of the time it would have taken you to build these relationships on your own.
4. Performance Driven
There’s no better motivation than the desire to see your customers succeed. Professional agencies are performance driven because they know that positive results are what will cause your business to thrive and grow. Additionally, if your B2B SEO campaigns are successful, then the agency knows you’ll be a happy customer and a positive referral.
This means that with an agency, you’ll have an SEO partner who will continuously review and adjust your campaign for optimal performance. They’ll send you regular status reports, so together, you can determine if things are going well. Your own internal team won’t have this same kind of urgency, particularly since their attention will be divided between a wide range of marketing tasks.
Where to go from here?
You could spend your time and money to develop an internal SEO strategy based on Internet research and cross your fingers, hoping, that you got it right. Or you could use the a proven B2B SEO solution and realize that your marketing efforts are better left in the hands of true experts.
KeyScouts has been working with B2B companies for more than a decade, which means that they know exactly what you need to be successful. They’ve seen and done it all and they’re ready to lend that expertise to you. Schedule a free consultation today and see how KeyScouts can help your business rank higher.
