Search Engine Optimization is the driving force behind inbound and content marketing. In B2B, you need to provide value in order to build relationships with leads, before reaching a sale. However, your content can be extremely valuable, but provide limited results without the right SEO topics to provide good Google search rankings.
Around 60% of European companies are currently implementing an inbound marketing strategy. Of those companies, 75% believe that inbound marketing is an effective strategy for lead generation.
Inbound marketing has the potential to build long-term relationships with leads and customers, but it needs the right SEO topics in order to reach relevant buyers. B2B marketers need to build their content strategy around SEO, and use the latest market tools to guide their content topics.
How do you get started with the right SEO topics for maximum website traffic? Create a clear process for researching keywords and understanding your customer’s journey.
Context for SEO Topics
Just because an SEO topic has a large number of searches, it doesn’t mean it’s the right topic for your business. Your choice of topics and keywords need to be targeted, ensuring that you reach the right buyers with your valuable content. Understanding your business and your customer is critical to finding the right keywords.
Persona
Pay attention to your buyer’s persona. Consider what their pain points are, or what problems they are looking to solve. Your chosen keywords and topics should suit their search queries.
This will take some educated guessing, as you there’s no way to fully know what keywords they are using. However, you need to ensure your content is top of the list when your buyer is looking for answers.
Competition
Out strategizing and matching your competition is key to business growth. Your solution needs to compete with theirs, and prove its superior value.
Analyze the content posted by your competitors, especially content that is performing well. SEO tools can identify the keywords that they are ranking on, and where they are generating their traffic. Consider utilizing these keywords and compete in the search rankings.
You might also find some topics where they are falling short. Ensure your content is filling the gaps.
Value Proposition
Your solution should have a specific purpose, or solve a specific problem, for a select group of people. Your value proposition should be used to guide your choice of SEO topics.
Begin by outlining topic ideas that you believe your solution can address, or questions that your solution aims to answer. What are your buyers searching for that should naturally lead them to your business and your solution? These topics are intended to demonstrate your value as a business.
Tools for SEO Topics
Many marketing platforms offer SEO tools to help you identify good keywords and topics. CRMs like Hubspot come with tools that can help you build an SEO strategy. Or, there are tools that are tailor-made to SEO and improving your metrics.
SEMrush is an industry favorite. The platform hosts a variety of tools to help you analyze competitors, identify good keywords, make keyword suggestions, build content plans, and more. Here are just a few of the tools that SEMrush has to offer:
Keyword Magic Tool
This tool is ideal for identifying related keywords, and finding the exact terms that your customers are actually searching. The keyword magic tool can take your chosen topic, and identify any keywords that are similar, but with higher search numbers. Take one topic idea and turn it into multiple blogs or cornerstone titles with this tool.
Position Tracking
Position tracking provides information on topics you’re already ranking for. You can see where your content is performing, and where you can boost your SEO. For instance, if you’re ranking well for one keyword, you might be able to compete on keywords that are related.
SEO Content Template
The SEO content template tool can provide more insights for improved SEO on your topic. Once you have a chosen keyword, this tool identifies relevant keywords to use within that piece of content, in order to boost its ranking. The tool will also provide suggested lengths, and related links.
Site Audit
Take an overall look at your website SEO performance with the site audit tool. This feature crawls your entire website, finds potential problems, and suggests fixes, in order to improve overall technical SEO. Technical SEO is just as important as SEO topics, so ensure your content has the best opportunity to perform.
Keyword Volume and Difficulty
Needless to say, there are some vital metrics that you will need to understand in order to verify the viability of SEO topics. The best keywords aren’t just based on pure guesswork, you need to know how many people are searching for them, and whether ranking is achievable.
Keyword Volume:
This is exactly what it says on the tin. The keyword volume metric shows how many searches each search term is getting every month. In B2B marketing, niche is good. But there’s no use writing content for keywords that no one is interested in. Generally, try to target keywords with no less than 100 in volume.
Keyword Difficulty:
As the name suggests, keyword difficulty identifies how challenging it would be to rank for a certain keyword. Typically, this is ranked out of 100%. Anything above 70% is effectively unachievable, and that keyword should be set aside for paid campaigns. 50-60% is still relatively challenging, but doable with good backlinks. Below 50% with a high volume is a good keyword.
There are a few elements that go into this figure, including how many websites are competing for keywords, and whether those websites have high domain authority. High authority websites are well-established sites, like news sources, government websites, and information sites like Wikipedia. If your SEO topics are already covered by content on these websites, it is going to be challenging to rank above them. Consider finding an alternative that still resonates with your audience.
Use Google as a Guide
Keywords don’t make a blog title. You need to understand what question or solution your buyer is looking for using that search term. What were they hoping to find?
Google is a great tool for help identifying blog and cornerstone ideas related to your chosen SEO topics. Google’s autocomplete and suggested search function shows how people have been using keywords in their search.
Simply typing in your search term will show content that is already ranking for your topic. Consider competing with your own blog or cornerstone pages. Once you know what your buyers are specifically looking for, you can provide them with high-value content.
Nituno is an SEO-driven marketing agency. Our SEO experts can help identify relevant SEO topics to improve your ranking and drive traffic to your website. Increase lead generation with strategic content plans, outbound marketing, and paid ads. For help boosting your marketing performance, get in touch with us today.
