Your B2B website is one of the most powerful tools to have in your marketing arsenal. But we know that the internet is a crowded and noisy place. With all your effort in creating an outstanding B2B website, you want to make sure it’s visible for the billions of users active on the World Wide Web.
In order to keep your B2B website from going to waste, make sure your site isn’t making any of these common SEO mistakes below.
Poor User Experience
While there are many factors that can negatively affect your SEO, a poor user experience is one of the most obvious factors for a low-ranking website. If users are unable to find the information they are looking for quickly, distracted by your design or find it hard to use, they bounce… right back to the search engine results. And a high bounce rate kills your SEO.
To ensure that Google considers your B2B website trustworthy and credible, take the time to look over your design, navigation structure and call-to-action placement. Double check that your content is relevant to the users you want to attract and lays out a clear path for further engagement.
Not Optimized for Conversions
Increased traffic doesn’t necessarily equal increased leads or sales. If your site isn’t properly optimized for conversions, all you’re doing is sending users to your site without an end goal. When you don’t have a goal for your visitors, they become confused on what to do next.
This is all the reason for properly placed calls-to-action, high-quality designed landing pages, and relevant, gated content offers that will encourage your site visitors to continue making action through your site.
Poor Quality Content
As a B2B, your company is filled with a talented team of industry thought leaders and experienced professionals. It’s a shame to not fully utilize all that quality information you have right at your hands. Website users want to be educated and informed on how you can solve their problems. Your content is the best way to do just that.
Google’s goal is to provide value to searchers and they know the user’s intent when entering search queries. If the content on your B2B website is thin, irrelevant or keyword-stuffed, Google will know and in turn, will provide searchers with results that provide value.
Not Creating New Content
When you consistently produce fresh, quality content, search engines will index your site more frequently. The more indexed your site is, the more credible your B2B website will seem to both search engines and online users, as they both know your content is up-to-date.
Making frequent tweaks to your site pages with any updated information or removing any outdated claims is an easy way to keep your content fresh. Blogging is also an invaluable way to add new content to your site and create more opportunities to drive quality traffic to your site. It also allows for more chances to take advantage of your keyword strategy.
Low-quality Backlinks
Back in the day, many SEO strategies consistently heavily on purchasing backlinks and leveraging low-quality backlinks. Fast forward to 2016 and we know that all links aren’t created equal.
As an attempt to decrease the amount of sites spamming search results, Google’s Penguin algorithm now penalizes sites that buy links or obtain spammy links from link farms. To stay in the good graces of Google, focus on the inbound links to your website and avoid questionable link building tactics.
Ignoring the Bigger Picture
SEO is not a siloed activity. If you keep your narrow too focused, you miss many opportunities to increase your SEO efforts. Aside from the factors on your B2B website – coding, content, keywords, meta tags, alt-text and link structure – be sure to consider your off-site factors as well.
These factors include things like your social media engagement, guest posting, press releases, and reputation management and they all have an affect on your B2B website’s SEO success. Keeping your overall strategy in mind when publishing content off site will only help further your efforts.
Not Utilizing Social Media
By sharing your company’s original content on your social media accounts, any engagement the posts receive can send “social signals” to search engines that will benefit your SEO.
This is another reason why blogs are so beneficial to your B2B website and overall SEO strategy. These posts send referral traffic to your site and expand the reach of your site’s visibility.
