For B2B companies, SEO is a sustainable and effective way of generating leads, creating an audience, and closing in on customers. According to research, more than 70% of B2B customers admit to using generic searches online to make purchases. Despite the competition, SEO remains one of the few strategies that become increasingly effective over time. However, does the desire to reach global audiences cause B2B businesses to miss out on local opportunities?

Nearly 46% of Google search queries are now local with around 78% local mobile searches resulting in a purchase on the same day! This trend does not exclude B2B businesses that must now adjust their strategies to incorporate local SEO efforts.

In this blog, we take a look at a few local SEO tips for B2B marketers.

Local Pages

B2B marketing and local SEO can incorporate link building into their local pages especially if the business plays an active role in the community. In a pursuit to reach wider audiences, B2B organizations miss out on opportunities to develop a strong and genuine online presence that includes links from different businesses.

If you encounter difficulty in link building with local websites due to a lack of interest in your business, assess your involvement with the community and determine the areas where your business could be mentioned. For example, if your business sponsors non-profit organizations at different events or as part of its policy, it could find a mention on its website. Similarly, being located near a park, hospital or mall could have you placed on the website of a local real estate developer.

Mobile Optimization

Ever since Google rolled out its mobile-first indexing, mobile has become a crucial area for B2B digital marketing efforts. Enhanced smartphone capabilities have even pushed B2B decision makers to utilize their smartphone for research and purchasing purposes.

Research shows that 70% of all B2B queries will be done through smartphones by 2020. The B2B landscape is currently undergoing rapid change and businesses need to adapt in order to remain relevant.

According to eMarketer, 84% of millennials in the B2B workforce believe smartphones are an essential tool to carry out their work-related tasks.

Now that we know how crucial mobile search queries are to local B2B SEO, companies must optimize their website for mobile. The importance of which is further highlighted by the fact that the Google search engine is more likely to list a webpage that is mobile-friendly and has plenty of local information. Google’s own research states that 82% of all smartphone users rely on search engines when attempting to locate local businesses.

B2B companies that wish to stand out from the competition must hire skilled web development services that enhance user experience. This involves decreasing webpage load times and making it accessible across all software platforms.

Review Pages

Review pages are an aspect of local SEO that is still largely ignored or undervalued by most B2B organizations. Many simply assume (and wrongfully so!) that their customers are not present on social media pages or review sites. Businesses must establish a presence on a number of review sites such as Facebook which auto-generate a page on your behalf if you haven’t already created one. The same goes for Bing and Yelp, both of which are not traditionally used for B2B listing but are pulled in by other platforms.

Even though these platforms are commonly used by B2C businesses, they are still valuable to B2B organizations because they provide insights into potential customers that review your pages and other analytical data.

Quality Content

High-quality content is the backbone of any B2B SEO strategy. However, creating and pushing out a large number of irrelevant blog posts won’t assist SEO efforts no matter how well they’re written. This is why more businesses are adopting a “hub and spoke” model in regards to their content. The model basically refers to a single page (referred to as a hub) that contains numerous links to relevant content (the spokes).

The strategy is effective for ranking competitive keywords because it combines strong internal linking, optimization, high-quality content, and sends positive signals to Google. The key to creating great content lies in creativity and providing solutions that are unique and not found on competitors’ web pages. This can be done by using recent and relevant data that requires premium access, incorporating opinions of industry leaders, and sharing information from expert practitioners.

Publishing the content must be accompanied by the promotion of posts and getting other websites to link to your content. Research has indicated that links still remain as the most important factor in influencing Google rankings.

As you continue to publish content, you’ll begin to notice certain topics bringing in more traffic than others. However, these new visitors won’t be generating any sales. This is your queue to incorporate a few effective steps to convert visitors into customers starting with the occasional offer to subscribe to your mailing list. At this point, it is important to build relationships with customers and try to earn their trust.

Businesses that have high amounts of traffic but fail to convert them into sales must also incorporate checklists, whitepapers, and other downloadable material known as “content upgrades”. The end-goal is to convince customers of your ability to provide effective solutions.

Effective local SEO strategies also involve creating content about local events and news on your website. Even if your business wasn’t part of the event, you can still cover local news that helps bring in qualified leads. The latest local SEO approach involves mentioning how your products or services are used by local businesses.

Every satisfied customer creates a pulling force to other local business that will soon turn to your offerings. While this idea may seem less appealing to businesses that deal with nationwide or international clients, it’s still beneficial and might be the reason for bringing in high-value customers that happen to be in your vicinity.

These are a few local SEO tips that’ll hopefully help your business gain access to increased traffic and eventually sales. Devebyte is a digital marketing agency in Edmonton, Alberta that provides effective SEO services. Contact us today for more information.