Search engine optimisation or SEO is the practice of making your business visible to human (and search engine) visitors when they go looking for suppliers like you.
There are a number of ways of securing profile, both natural and illicit. As Google and other search engines continually update their algorithms, (especially lately when it came to Google Panda / Penguin), we prefer the ethical route.
At BDB, we think it’s important to get your website in the best possible shape before taking advantage of the Internet from an indexing and link building perspective. In this blog post, we’ll share twelve top tips to successfully optimising your b2b website for search.
Keywords are critical as they drive your messaging, content and success in search marketing. It’s important that there is a relationship between how your site is written and what browsers are looking for but it is very common for businesses to either do too little or too much which leads to keyword stuffing.
Research and selection
1. Use a keyword analysis tool: Free tools like the Google Adword tool are perfect for initial research and help to establish the relative relevance and value of keywords, giving an indication of searches over time and refining selection by region.
2. Pick a primary keyword for each page: Consider using a small number of keywords across your website to start. Using too many on a page will dilute the impact of individual words and mean the page has little authority when assessed by search engines.
3. Assess the competition: What is the competition doing with keywords and are some more prevalent than others? A simple right click and View > Source will display the company’s keywords included in their meta data. Consider though, that they may have their business, products or services positioned incorrectly for the audience. In an online environment, your competition becomes those sites that are vying for rankings for the same keyword phrase.
Implementation
4. The first 200 words are critical: Make sure the keywords for your page are placed in the first few sentences and also in the first heading (H1) tag on the page. In the example below, we can see global compressor experts Atlas Copco have used this technique to promote keyword positioning on compressors, mining and construction. If you look at the link, these words are consistently referenced throughout.
5. Check keyword density and distribution: You don’t want to use keywords too much in your displayed ‘on page’ content, but you do want to make sure they are used at least twice in the body copy as an absolute minimum. Reference needs to be natural and within context. A keyword in every sentence looks forced.
6. Include keywords in meta data: If your meta description is longer than 150 characters, search engines may omit some of the characters. Keep the summary brief and loaded with your most relevant and important keywords to give readers a sense of what they’ll find on the page. Keep in mind that the purpose of the meta description is to set the visitor’s expectations about what can be found on that page. This makes meta descriptions for every page a requirement.
7. Use them in URL page titles and title tags: Title tags tell both the search engines and the users what the page is about and is critical in search engine result pages. Title tags should obviously include the important keywords for that phrase. The number of characters used becomes central here. You can see below in the case of BOC how there is a character cutoff in Google — meaning the entire title and description will not display to the user. At 319 characters it is quite a bit longer than the 70 characters recommended.
8. Reuse the page title in the meta description: Adding the page title to your meta description and embellishing it with further information increases relevance in the eyes of human and search engine visitors.
9. Use them in H1 tags H1are the first headings that are contained on a website pages. In the HTML version of a website they need to be set up in the following format <h1>Headline Text</h1>. Within that headline text, it is advisable to include the keywords you want the page to rank for in search.
10. Use them as image alt tags It goes without saying that websites should contain images. To support SEO indexing and the displaying of information when they are loading problems, images should have a text-based alternative (alt tag). Alt tags are text that is written to display whenever the image isn’t able to load, to confirm with and enhance accessibility requirements and to benefit search engine bots who refer to them to. Optimising the image also offers an additional way for that web page to be found, because images are a part of Google’s Image Search results and wider search result pages. Be careful of keyword stuffing and instead use the file name and the text surrounding the image (such as a caption). Only if the image is relevant to the keywords for the page include them.
11. Use them in link anchor text: Internal and inbound links are critical to helping people to find content online. When it comes to search, the text that is hyperlinked, also known as “Anchor Text,” is just as important. Search engines use anchor text to help determine what is covered on the page that it’s linking to. This applies for all pages within a site but also as part of an external strategy to use other sites to offer links back a particular site.
12. Use them in calls-to-action (CTAs) CTAs may not be the top priority when optimising a website for search but think about it, why spend so much time getting visitors if you’re not then going to get as many of them as possible to then take an action?
These are some of the more important ways to get the most from your keywords and begin to improve your visibility through on page optmisation. There are, of course, many others.
In upcoming digital marketing blog posts, we’ll explore off page search engine optimisation techniques and considerations for international businesses using multi-language regional websites.
Get in touch with our digital team today to discuss your SEO and wider web requirements.
The views, opinions and positions expressed within any BDB blog posts are those of the author alone. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. For guest posts, authors retain copyright and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
