It’s hard to remember a time when the answer to any given question wasn’t “Let me Google it.” Search engines are an integral part of our lives, and that goes for marketing too.

 

At this point, it’s been that way for some time. Yet there are still many marketers who struggle with using search engine marketing to its full potential, and others who haven’t realized that it’s changed recently, as well.

 

Let’s take a look at the state of SEM, and how to make it work for your B2B marketing.

 

How to Make the Most of Your B2B Search Engine Marketing

 

When it comes to B2B purchases, the vast majority of customers found their vendor, not the other way around. Part of that is because of how incredibly popular inbound marketing has become, with outbound marketing falling by the wayside.

 

Another part of it is that with the entire internet at their fingertips, buyers are doing in-depth research and examining a wide range of options before ever making contact with a vendor.

 

Whatever the reason, the fact is that if you don’t have your SEM game on point, you’re leaving leads at the door.

 

So what is SEM?

 

First, a technical, if dry, definition: it’s the process of attracting high-quality leads to your website by maximizing your site’s presence and rank in search engine results.

 

It’s half art, half science, with a generous portion of luck thrown in the mix too. On the one hand, you need an instinctive understanding for what your target audience is looking for, and how to deliver it. On the other hand, there’s plenty of data you can use to support or disprove your theories.

 

And luck comes in from two angles: you need people to actually search for the keywords and terms you’ve decided to pursue, and you never know when Google is going to drop an update that totally overturns much of your hard work.

 

We’re going to address the two major aspects of SEM: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

 

 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is, in a nutshell, using a set of techniques to help you improve your website’s rankings in search engines, primarily Google.

 

The biggest problem with SEO is that in the end, the entire practice is little more than an educated shot in the dark. Google is notoriously tight-lipped about what drives its ranking algorithm, and it seems like as soon as we’ve got a decent grip on it, they push an update that changes it.

 

80% of B2B purchases start with a Google search. The goal with SEO is to be the result that search delivers.

 

Google’s only real comment on how to make that happen is to write high-quality content that people like to engage with and share. That’s certainly good advice, but it doesn’t really help in any concrete way.

 

There are, of course, established best practices around SEO that seem to work at least semi-reliably. The quality of your content and how much engagement it generates is still arguably the most important factor, but you can definitely increase your chances with some well-thought-out SEO techniques.

 

• Check your website copy. Your website copy should be organically keyword-rich. That means that it should be natural-sounding, but still use your most important keywords relatively frequently. You can test how naturally it flows by reading it out loud, or having a colleague read it out loud to you. Anything that sounds too stuffy or unnatural should get fixed.
• Use headlines. Specifically, you should have one H1-type headline on each page, and it should include the keyword you’re trying to rank for with that page. Again, this should sound organic. You’ll get bonus points for using the keyword as close to the start of the headline as possible, but that should be secondary to a natural sound.
• Don’t overuse keywords. It may sound counterintuitive, but if you use your keywords too much, your rank will be hurt, not helped. Google doesn’t like people trying to game its algorithms, so err on the side of caution.
• Use internal links and relevant anchor text. If you’re linking from your pricing page to a blog post, for example, don’t create a link with the text “click here”. Use the keyword you’re trying to rank for with that blog post as the anchor text.
• Build backlinks. This one’s a bit harder. Google likes it when people link back to you – that shows them your page is seen as valuable. However, Google will penalize you if your backlinks come from sites that are just spam or exist solely to generate backlinks. Again, they don’t like it when you try to game the system. Keep an eye on who’s linking to you, and have those links removed or add them to Google’s Disavow tool to avoid issues.
• Write for your readers, not for Google. With all that said, don’t forget that the only piece of advice that actually comes from Google is to write content that people engage with and share. That means you should craft your pages for SEO, but craft your content for your readers.

 

There’s also some more technical things you can do to your website itself, not just the content, that are known to help SEO:

 

• Include your keywords in your page’s title tags. The title tag is what’s displayed in the tab section of a web browser. Search engines value title tags very highly, so make sure every single page on your site has a good one. It’s also the text that becomes the “title” in search results – the big blue clickable text.
• Don’t neglect meta description tags. Meta descriptions are text that become the preview you see in Google results. Think of it as a call-to-action to entice people to click the result. It’s important for engagement, and search engines value it highly as well, so make sure it has your most important keywords for that page. Plus the ever-important natural-sounding language.
• Include keywords in image alt tags. Search engine crawlers can’t actually “see” images, but you can append descriptive tags to the images on your site, and those are readable and indexable. Only include keywords in an image’s alt tags that are relevant to both the image itself and the page it’s on.

 

If you’re not using some of these techniques, implement them ASAP and you’ll see a lift in your results and rankings.

 

Pay-per-Click is Powerful and Quick

SEO is a long-term gain. It can take months to see the impact of your improvements and optimizations, let alone the lead generation from it.

 

PPC, on the other hand, kicks in as soon as you launch your campaigns. Here are some of the benefits of PPC:

• Immediate results. Your ads will start showing almost as soon as you finish creating and launching them. There’s a brief period of waiting while your ads get checked and approved, but that usually doesn’t take more than a few minutes.
• It’s pay per click, not per impression. That means that every time you pay, you have an opportunity to get a conversion.
• It’s extremely data–driven. You get deep access to metrics and reports, so you can drill down and see exactly what’s working and what isn’t, enabling you to make smart and informed decisions.
• Easily scalable. Seeing good results? Great, you can raise your campaign budgets and get even more clicks. Reached 100% impression rate? Impressive, now you can raise your bids and get your ads serving in higher spots. Got them serving almost all impressions in the top spot? Add more keywords!

The biggest issue with B2B PPC is the tendency to add too many keywords. Start small, with the sort of keywords you see doing well for your inbound efforts. Scale up gradually, monitoring what’s working and what isn’t.

 

If after a couple months a keyword is costing you more than you’re getting back from it in leads, don’t be afraid to disable it. Let your budget flow to more profitable keywords.

 

There are a number of bidding strategies you can use. Here’s what we recommend:

• Enhanced Cost-Per-Click: This is a manual, hands-on bid strategy that lets you control approximately how much you want to bid for a click for each individual keyword. The “approximately” comes from the “enhanced” feature, enabling Google to bid higher for clicks that its algorithms think will more likely result in a conversion. This is a double-edged sword; it’s useful because you don’t need to be hyper-specific in your bidding and can let Google do some of the work, but it can also lead to sudden spikes in cost. You can turn off the “enhanced” feature if you want to prevent it from adjusting bids dynamically like that.
• Target CPA: If you want to just “let Google handle it”, you can use this option. Set your target cost per acquisition (i.e. conversion), and Google will do its best to get you as many conversions as possible while keeping the cost per conversion as close to your target as it can.

There are others, such as maximize conversions, which will take every bit of budget you give it and spend all of it in an effort to, well, maximize your conversions. It can get good results, but it will spend your whole budget every time. Try target CPA first – it’s a lot less rough on the wallet, so to speak.

 

Keep a close eye on your keywords and how they’re spending and performing. If you find that you’re spending a lot more per conversion than you’d like, go through and disable the keywords that are spending but not converting.

 

Then disable the ones that are spending and only converting a little.

 

Pare it down to a point where you’re only running keywords that are generating cost-effective leads. If you have one or two that generate a lot of leads but at a high-ish cost, that’s okay – the lower CPL of the other keywords can offset that.

 

Keep your overall average CPL around or below your goal and you’re golden.

 

Conclusion

Search engine marketing is a must for B2Bs. It’s powerful for both brand building and lead generation, but it does require some time investment to get it right. And that’s okay.

 

Just ensure you’re following best practices, and keep up with shifts in the landscape.