If you’re working within a B2B technology company, you’ve likely heard the phrase ‘SEO’ before. But what actually is it? And why is it so important to your technology company’s success? We’re here to break down everything to do with SEO for B2B technology companies so you can get your site rankings and the leads coming in.
What Is SEO For B2B Technology Companies? (And Why You Should Care.)
SEO stands for ‘Search Engine Optimisation.’ Essentially, it’s the process of tailoring your site’s content so that the page will rank at the top of search results (like Google, Bing and Yahoo.) The higher your pages rank, the more visibility it will get, and the more users you’ll have on your site. The more users you have on your site, the more potential leads you’ll have, which means your company can sell more of their products or services.
If you’re not convinced, take a look at these statistics. Over 3.5 million searches are being made daily. And over 71% of those searches are B2B researchers begin their research with generic Google searches. It’s essential that you optimise your pages for SEO because 75% of internet users never scroll past the first page of search engines. If you’re not within those first 10 rankings, the amount of traffic you’ll be getting will steeply drop off.
It’s clear that SEO is important for any kind of business, but SEO for B2B technology companies is even more essential. As a technology company, your competitors likely fully utilise their SEO in every aspect of their content and already have a headstart. You’re in the big leagues when you’re dealing with SEO for B2B technology companies so it’s important that you get to work right away.
When you’re a technology company, it’s likely your prospective leads will be quite tech-savvy too. They’ll see right through any more dubious ranking methods and automatically think negatively about your brand. When your content isn’t genuinely well optimised, they’ll run straight to the competitors that have put the work in.
How Do Search Engines Work?
Every search engine that you use (be that Google or Bing or anything else) has a collection of bots called crawlers. These crawlers go from site to site and make an index of every page on the internet. That index is then used whenever a user makes a query. It’s a bit like a library. Every book (web page) is contained within the library (the index) and the librarians (crawlers) are there to make sure you can easily find whatever you’re looking for.
Then, an algorithm analyses the page for a range of different factors (that we’ll get onto a bit later) to figure out where the page should rank in the search results. The most important thing to keep in mind is that, although we don’t know the ins and outs of the search engines’ algorithms, (we’d be able to retire and close up shop if we did!) your page will always rank well if it meets user intent.
User intent is an extension of user experience (otherwise known as UX.) If a user is happy with the content on the page and if it’s helped to answer their query, the search engine’s algorithm recognises that and the page will rank higher.
Keeping Your SEO Tactics Clean.
There’s no way to cheat the algorithm either. Two infamous updates cracked down hard on the SEO cheaters and doled out severe punishments for any websites using dirty tactics.
The Panda update, launched in 2011, punished low-quality websites like content farms and promoted high-quality sites. Google kindly provided a long checklist of questions to assess if your site is of high quality, so you can avoid being labelled as a low-quality site. There are a few definite methods that’ll get your site smacked down by the Panda update, such as:
- Thin content – A thin page provides no value or insight to the reader. Generally, this means pages with a low word count.
- Duplicate content – Every page on your site should have original content. That means it can’t be copied from your own site or anyone else’s (like a competitor’s, for example.)
- Low-quality content – Check the list from Google in the link above for more information on what determines a page’s quality.
The Penguin update was released in 2012 and focused on link acquisition. The overall goal of the update was to reduce the amount of authority that multiple ‘unnatural’ links provided to a site.
A genuine link is like a vote of confidence in your site. It’s like a recommendation. If a small business without much authority links to your site, it’s not going to count for very much. But if a huge company (like a newspaper or one of the heavy hitters in the tech industry) links back to your site, it’ll provide huge amounts of authority to your domain.
People were able to manipulate the algorithm by using anchor text. Like, if we created multiple anchor texts for ‘SEO blogs’, our blog would likely pop up in search engines whenever someone searched for ‘SEO blogs’ – it was really that easy! Penguin cracked down on that kind of self-made, low-quality links.
If a site is caught using these low-quality tactics, it’ll affect its ability to rank in search engines. There are some squeaky clean ways to build SEO for B2B technology companies, some more dubious ways to build SEO for B2B technology companies, and a few techniques that live in between the two. They’re called…
White Hat, Black Hat, And Grey Hat SEO For Technology Companies.
When referring to SEO practices, they’re often grouped into different ‘hat’ categories. This comes from old Western films where ‘bad guys’ would wear black hats and the ‘good guys’ would wear white hats.
White Hat SEO is a term used to describe SEO techniques that are completely in line with major search engines’ terms of service. These techniques will boost your site’s standings in search engines whilst maintaining the integrity of your site and without breaking the terms of service of Google (or other search engines.) You can utilise White Hat SEO by making sure your site has:
- High-quality content.
- Fast page loading times (especially on mobile devices.)
- Having keyword dense copy and meta.
- Ensuring your site is easy to navigate and has great UX.
As the opposite of White Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO is a term used to describe SEO techniques that break the major search engines’ terms of service. These techniques are disapproved but will still increase your website’s SEO. You can generally gauge whether or not its a dubious practice if you ask yourself: ‘Am I genuinely adding value to a user and answering their question? Or am I just trying to rank highly in search engines?’ Some key Black Hat SEO practices are:
- Keyword stuffing.
- Misleading redirects.
- Low-quality content.
- Link farming.
Grey Hat SEO, as the name suggests, is the grey area between White Hat and Black Hat SEO. Whilst these practices aren’t exactly outlawed, they’re still operating within the shadows of search engines’ terms of service. Using one or two of these techniques, whilst not recommended, should just be fine (but can’t be guaranteed.) Some of the main Grey Hat SEO practices are:
- Cloaking.
- Buying followers.
- Buying links.
- Minimal duplicate content.
- Buying old domains.
Now that you’re up to date on the different shades of SEO, it’s time to get acquainted with the three different kinds of SEO that you can implement onto your B2B technology company’s website.
On-page, Off-page and Technical SEO For B2B Technology Companies
On-page optimisation (as its name suggests) focused on the site pages and the content within them. This is especially important for SEO for B2B technology companies, as 57% of marketing executives say on-page content development was the most effective SEO tactic, and SEO is essential for lead generation. Some key aspects to consider when optimising your on-page SEO, like:
- Title tags.
- Meta descriptions.
- Headers.
- URLs (and breadcrumbs.)
- Alt-tags.
- Long & short-tail keywords.
- Keyword density.
Off-page optimisation focuses on all the SEO work that exists outside of the site’s pages. It’s main focus is to build the credibility of your site (and by extension your brand) through SEO for B2B technology companies. This can be done in a number of ways, such as:
- Link acquisition.
- Guest blogging.
- Social media.
- PPC (Pay Per Click.)
- Local SEO (EG, ‘Software company near me.’)
Technical optimisation focuses on the actual website and serve and how efficiently it runs. Whilst this aspect of SEO is often neglected in favour of the other two, it’s so vital to get it right – especially for a technology company! Users will wait for a few seconds for your webpage to load before they’re off and looking at one of your competitors. A few key aspects of technical SEO for B2B technology companies would be:
- Fast site speeds (especially on mobile devices.)
- Browser optimisation.
- Mobile compatibility.
- Domain security.
- Image compression.
And that’s all you need to know to get going! With our brief overview, you’ll be able to identify where your B2B technology company can improve their SEO and start making strides towards the top of search engines. If you are looking for more help with other areas of digital marketing, be sure to check out our ultimate guide to SEO here.
Ready to progress to the next step? Boss Digital has over 10 years of experience in SEO, so contact us today for a free consultation.
