Search engine optimization or SEO may not be as pretty as Instagram or as flashy as TikTok. However, it is one of the most fundamental pieces of any B2B digital marketing strategy.
Not only is it one of the best ways to attract and bring new prospects to your B2B website, but it is also a strategy that’s proven to improve conversion. That said, SEO is constantly evolving. So, for B2B marketers to keep up with the ever-changing requirement of SEO, consider the following B2B SEO trends for 2022.
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1. AI Content Tools And Apps Become More Prevalent
Gone are the days of manual labor in creating every piece of B2B SEO content. Today, AI allows you to generate rank-worthy content ideas for your site, make SEO-friendly outlines and even automatically copy itself to hasten your SEO activities.
AI-powered content tools and apps for SEO copywriting will likely play a critical role in helping your marketing team churn out content more quickly since they can speed up the draft-writing and outlining stages of the content creation process.
They are nothing more than a starting point and supporting tool for your content marketing teams. Your content creators and marketers are the ones who will ensure that website content shines and effectively speak to your target audience and attain your marketing goals.
2. Content EAT Is The New Normal
In terms of SEO, one thing that will always be true is that high-quality content will get better rankings. In particular, for B2B SEO, if you’re not using the EAT framework for your content, you’re missing out a lot.
Short for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, EAT is all that Google and other search engines look for in content. All search engine algorithms follow this EAT principle. It means that only well-written and valuable content can truly stand the test of time.
Take note, however, that EAT doesn’t just apply to blog posts or web articles. It can also be a ranking factor for landing pages. So if your homepage or sales pages are not following the EAT principle, you may be missing out on those valuable prospects and potential customers.
3. Mobile-Optimized Website Is A Must
Did you know over 80% of the world’s population has a smartphone and uses it to get things done?
With over 6.6 billion smartphone users worldwide and most internet traffic coming from mobile users, you want to make sure that your website is compatible with mobile search.
Even Google emphasizes having a mobile-first website and use it as a ranking factor since March 2021. This shift from desktop to mobile means that poor-performing mobile websites or websites not optimized for mobile will harm your rankings.
So, make sure that your B2B website will work intuitively and responsively on any mobile screen.
4. Search Intent Advancement
Before, we saw advances in search engines that understand queries and page content better. One factor that made an impact on understanding search intent is BERT, or bidirectional encoder representations from transformers, in short.
BERT is now used in all queries and is helping Google in understating voice queries and responding accurately to provide better results.
So, to implement this trend on your B2B strategy, you need to optimize your keywords with search intent in mind. By knowing what your audience is trying to get out of a specific query, you can better tailor your content to fit their search.
5. The Passages Update
Last year, Google rolled out a new update known as the Passages Algorithm. As previously mentioned, Google is already good at finding answers to common queries in well-organized content that addresses the question.
But with this Passages update, Google now ranks long-form content that addresses a query in a passage within the context of a much broader topic. It also made Google wiser at ranking web content that isn’t well-organized.
In this case, it’s vital to optimize your B2B content for semantic search, search intent, and LSI keywords to help you rank your content passages rank higher.
6. Long-Tail Keywords Are Here To Stay
Statistics show that long-tail keywords account for more than 70% of all web searches. And yet, although this is one of the best ways to outrank your competitors, long-tail keywords are mostly underused.
Adding long-tail keywords can help add context to your content while supporting a better conversion rate and providing more value to your readers.
To use long-tail keywords, focus on questions, particularly the how-to questions. Google suggestions are a good source for long-tail keywords. You must also optimize your content for related questions or keywords and write content that provides valuable and genuine solutions for your readers.
7. Return To Performance
Last year, Google returned its focus to web performance with its Page Experience update. This update evaluates page experience based on a set of signals— safe browsing, mobile-friendliness, no intrusive interstitials, and the Core Web Vitals, which are the valuable aspect of this Page Experience update.
For those who don’t know, the Core Web Vitals include:
- Loading: This is the time it takes for the main content of a web page to load. The ideal loading time is 2.5 seconds or faster.
- Interactivity: This is the time it takes for a web page to become interactive. Ideally, it should be less than 100ms.
- Visual Stability: This is the amount of unexpected shifting in the visual layout of web pages. The ideal amount is less than 0.1.
Google will expand the SERPs and reward websites that utilize these standards. So, this is something you must capitalize on.
Take Away
And there you have it!
As technology advances and search engines like Google gets smarter, your B2B SEO tactics should also adapt to compete for the top organic search results. There’s no harm in trying the trends mentioned above to boost your SEO tactics to your advantage.
So, if SEO isn’t at the top of your 2022 B2B marketing strategy yet, start now and implement the above trends to bring your website higher in rankings, one step at a time.
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