What Should Your SEO Strategy Look Like in 2023?
In 2023, more than 90% of online experiences start with search—including for B2B customers seeking out new solutions and providers. Having a solid B2B SEO strategy can make or break a brand’s ability to attract, engage, and convert new customers on a regular basis.
The thing is, SEO best practices are continually evolving. What worked a few years ago may not be as effective today in light of continually-advancing new technologies and updates to Google features and algorithms. So what should your SEO strategy look like in 2023?
In this article, we’ll give you answers. The sections that follow will define SEO as it’s executed in modern B2B landscapes, plus cover 5 actionable tips for creating an SEO strategy that wins in today’s competitive digital marketing environment.
Quick Takeaways:
- SEO is the process of optimizing websites and content to rank highly on search engines.
- It’s what ensures search engine content aligns highly with user needs and intent.
- SEO has evolved over the years from simple keyword tactics to complex, data-driven, and AI-powered strategies.
- Today, SEO success requires diverse content and the leveraging of AI to augment efforts.
- Long-tail keywords now account for nearly three-quarters of search traffic.
- It’s critical to keep up with new Google features and update SEO strategies accordingly.
SEO Strategy: What It Is and How It’s Evolving
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the cornerstone of effective digital marketing. It’s the process of optimizing websites and content so that it appears higher on search engine results pages (SERPs), thus driving more organic traffic to a website.
Today, this is one of the most primary ways businesses attract and convert leads into their pipelines, and SEO content is even a factor in helping B2B prospects make final purchase decisions.
The thing about SEO, however, is that its best practices have changed over the years as digital marketing technologies, Google algorithms, and customer preferences have evolved. Here’s a quick look back at some of the main stages of this evolution over the past decade or so:
- The Early Days: Initially, SEO was all about stuffing a page with relevant keywords. The algorithms used by search engines were relatively simple, making it easier for websites to game the system.
- The Rise of Quality Content: As algorithms became more sophisticated, they started prioritizing websites that provided valuable content to users. This brought on the age of content marketing, where quality quickly trumped quantity.
- Mobile Revolution: With the rise of smartphones and tablets, mobile search skyrocketed. Responsive design became crucial, and mobile SEO, focusing on speed and user experience, took center stage.
- Voice and Visual Search: As smart speakers and visual search capabilities gained popularity, the SEO world had to adapt once more. Optimizing for natural language queries and visual elements became imperative.
- AI and Machine Learning: Search engines, especially Google, started utilizing AI and machine learning to better understand user intent and deliver more personalized search results.
If there’s one way to summarize the trajectory of SEO over the past several years and its trajectory for the future, it’s toward a continually greater focus on and alignment with the buyer/customer. SEO results must be accurately, intentionally aligned with target audiences to deliver value themselves—not just drive them toward marketing or sales teams who can deliver value later.
Further, SEO strategies must be agile enough to keep up with changing trends and technologies, quickly adopting new capabilities and best practices to be most effective.
Let’s look at 5 of the most effective ways to create a B2B SEO strategy that can help your brand win in the rest of 2023 and beyond.
5 Tips for Creating a B2B SEO Strategy that Wins
Diversify Your Content Library
B2B audiences look for diverse content that can address their unique challenges. This means going beyond standard blog posts. Incorporate whitepapers, e-books, case studies, videos, podcasts, and other types of content that fulfill different types of search intent across channels.
Publishing different types of content not only caters to diverse audience preferences but also enhances your brand authority in your industry.
Emphasize Video Content
Video is the most-preferred type of content for B2B audiences, increasing engagement and retention for across markets. Publishing video on popular platforms such as YouTube helps boost its SEO performance, as do important steps like keyword-rich titles, accurate tagging, quality thumbnails, video captions, and mobile-friendly formats.
Leverage AI to Augment (Not Replace) Human Efforts
AI in SEO can refine keyword research, content optimization, and search intent understanding. Machine learning algorithms analyze vast amounts of data, offering insights for content strategies tailored to user behavior and search engine algorithms. AI tools can also help to identify SEO errors or site performance issues, ensuring that websites and content are truly optimized for search.
Generative AI tools can even help with content creation, allowing brands to scale content efforts more efficiently than was possible before.
Today, more than 80% of brands are using AI in their business strategies, and SEO is no exception. It’s best practice to incorporate AI into marketing strategies to level up insights sophistication and execute a smarter strategy.
The important thing to remember as you adopt AI into your strategy is that AI should augment—not replace—human intelligence in SEO, which is needed to make authentic connections and build prospect relationships through content.
Prioritize Long-Tail
As the digital marketing landscape at large, and SERPs in particular, become more saturated, long-tail keywords are becoming a prime way for brands to stand out. Long-tail keywords match detailed queries from B2B audiences who know exactly what they’re looking for. These audiences want to forego more general SEO results to get straight to the content they need.
Today, as users get better at creating accurate queries, long-tail keywords are accounting for up to 70% of all traffic on Google and other top search engines.
While it can feel counterintuitive to target more specific keywords that don’t cast as wide a net, long-tail content does a better job of reaching and converting target customers through SEO.
Align with Google Feature and Updates
Google continually updates its algorithms and introduces new features. For example, Featured Snippets became a significant SEO advantage a few years ago. Today, Google is experimenting with incorporating generative AI to enhance the SERP experience.
To keep your B2B SEO strategy fresh and effective, it’s critical to stay on top of evolving Google trends and capabilities, and update your strategy accordingly.
Over to You
A solid SEO strategy is a critical part of every B2B brand’s overarching lead generation and engagement effort. But to get the very best results, companies must complement their inbound SEO plan with effective outbound prospecting and sales. The smartest brands leverage SEO content to enhance their outbound messaging and engage prospects most likely to convert to paying customers.
At RevBoss, we help clients reach their target audiences with smart, streamlined, data-driven outbound tactics. Our platform and services are custom-built for SaaS companies, marketing agencies, startups, and other high-growth B2B organizations. Get in touch with our team today to learn more about how we can help you grow.