A B2B website that does not drive traffic, promote the brand, deliver
company messaging or convert users into customers represents a waste of
online marketing investments. A good B2B website should help build a
strong brand while educating relevant users on industry topics and
promoting products and services.
Fully integrating all SEM tactics with website strategies will help
the website achieve optimal results. This involves combining analytics,
content marketing, SEO, conversion optimization and website maintenance
into one large, overarching website strategy where all website changes
are influenced or powered by data and testing rather than someone’s
opinion.
Aligning website strategies results in continuous website improvement
Analytics
Analytics is the centerpiece of this integrated strategy. Combining
analytics data with heatmapping and user testing will uncover areas of
the website in need of improvement, from design changes to content
needs. Analytics is also the best tool for monitoring search and
conversion performance.
If traffic isn’t growing or bounce rates are high, this may indicate
an improperly optimized website and a need for better content targeting.
If traffic is growing, but conversions are not, then use heatmapping to
learn how users are interacting with the content.
When users do not interact with conversion elements or are not
engaged with the page’s content, there may need to be content or design
adjustments. User testing by means of surveys and focus groups can also
help uncover areas in need of improvement.
Content Marketing
Content is king when it comes to search and user optimization. The
B2B market tends to consist of more educated and engaged users than B2C,
so having engaging and informative content along with thought
leadership is key to B2B website success.
Content freshness and quality also have a direct correlation with
search performance. Creating and altering content based on opinion will
create a lot of waste in budget spends. The topics and type of content
to be created should be based on user needs and SEO opportunities.
Look at the keywords people are using to find the website and how
users are using the site search feature. These two metrics will help
uncover user content needs that your website may not be providing.
Keyword research around thought leadership subjects will also help you
discover new content opportunities and the keywords to optimize around.
And of course, always use social media, email marketing and offline strategies to help promote thought leadership.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is a very powerful marketing tool for websites which affects most
website strategy areas. SEO needs feed into keyword and content
targeting for the content marketing piece. SEO is also a major factor in
getting relevant users into the conversion funnel for conversion
optimization. And of course, SEO is a primary factor in site traffic
growth.
For content, the SEO piece should provide keywords and topics to
target as well as have a strong influence in writing headings and the
use of images. For CRO, SEO strategies should be geared toward
conversion first and traffic growth second.
For example, if you have two keywords, one with 10 visits per month
and one with 100, and the keyword with 10 visits is much more targeted,
the SEO specialist should make a keyword decision based on which of the
two keywords will result in more conversions. This idea may sound crazy,
but it does work.
I had a client once whose keywords were fairly relevant, but I made a
decision to drop their organic search traffic by 20% to drive in more
relevant audiences. This resulted in twice as many conversions and a 30%
reduction in bounce rate.
The traffic eventually returned as thought leadership was developed
around the less-relevant keywords. The bounce rate reduction also built
more trust with search engines, which increased organic search rankings
for the new keywords.
Conversion Optimization
Relevant users that do not convert are lost opportunities. CRO is the
next step after the initial SEO program is in place. Now that relevant
users are coming in as a result of SEO strategies, you’ll need to
maximize the opportunities for users to convert.
Clear conversion paths are vital to any website. However, users on
B2B sites rarely convert on the first visit. Most users land on the
website for the first time to get an overview of the company and its
offerings, as well as to download thought leadership material. In many
cases, I have found that they come back within three days to convert.
This makes it important to measure both thought leadership downloads and
form completions as success metrics.
CRO strategies should revolve around both making clear conversion
paths and putting thought leadership materials in easily accessible
locations. Heatmapping will show exactly how users are interacting with
the site. Look at where you want attention to be drawn vs. where the
users attention actually is drawn. A good analyst paired with a good UX
designer will be able to put attention-grabbing content and conversion
elements in places where user engagement takes place.
Any design or content changes to the site should also be A/B tested
before being made permanent. One of the biggest flaws of full site
redesigns is that they may cause an increase or drop in conversions or
SEO placements without any knowledge of what caused the spikes. So many
things change on a site during a redesign that it would be impossible to
pinpoint what is working and what is not in the new design compared to
the old design.
It’s important to make design changes to a website to conform to user
behavior changes, which can be done through continuous website
improvement. This involves constant changes to the site backed by data
and testing to always achieve optimal results and conform to user
behavior changes.
Website Maintenance
How well a site is maintained has a direct correlation with usability
and search performance. Site and server speeds, site health and
crawlability directly impact how users and search engines will interact
with the site. Websites should be updated periodically to use newer
technologies, which will increase the capabilities of the site.
Monitoring site and server speed metrics in analytics is an important
factor in site maintenance.
If a website has a slow loading speed, search engines will look at it
as a quality issue, and the chance of user conversions will decrease.
Making sure there are no broken links, JavaScript errors, URL looping
issues, and markup errors will have a major impact on SEO and usability.
Raven offers a great tool as part of their platform called Site Auditor, which automatically crawls the website for these kinds of issues. The W3 markup validator along with Screaming Frog are also a great tools for manually checking these issues.
Conclusion
Stop wasting money on content development and website work that does
not benefit users or search engines. Align your website strategies with
SEM to continuously improve the website for search engines, users and
conversions. Base website change decisions on data and testing rather
than opinion. Analytics should be the centerpiece for all website work,
and all other website work should be fully integrated.
Websites are a powerful marketing tool in the B2B sector, so make
sure you are leveraging it to its fullest potential instead of wasting
cyberspace with a site that serves little purpose for users.
Image courtesy of Harrison Jones, used with permission.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Resource Link : http://searchengineland.com/aligning-website-strategies-with-sem-for-b2b-sites-175829?utm_source=marketo&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_content=scap&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRonv6TOZKXonjHpfsX67e8oWKWxlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4FScdkI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFTbLCMbpx37gNXxU%3D
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