B2B marketing is not like B2C marketing. Several stakeholders are involved in B2B marketing. The consumers are well informed. And you have to make sure there are no glitches. For online Business to Business organizations, finding the right target audience is the key to a prosperous growth, and to keep a competitive edge. 

For having a successful B2B approach, you need to know the right keywords which will help bring in traffic to the website. Thus, your primary focus should be on finding the most appropriate, suitable and relevant keywords for your business.

B2B keyword research

Keyword search is the first step in internet search. It is therefore, a significant part of a marketer’s search optimization strategy. However, Business to Business SEO keywords do not work in the conventional way. The language and psychology is quite different for people dealing in B2B transactions. Therefore, the keyword strategy followed, is different as well.

The website Mondovo has found an interesting set of B2B keywords that are most searched

Mondovo has put together an interesting list of some of the most searched and most popular B2B keywords:

• “b2b marketing” (27,100 global monthly searches)
• “b2b banking” (12,100 global monthly searches)
• “What is supply chain management” (12,100 global monthly searches)
• “What is supply chain” (5,400 global monthly searches)
• “what is b2b sales” (2,400 global monthly searches)
• “What does b2b means” (2,400 monthly searches)

Reviewing your Content

Online businesses rely on content. For B2B marketing the value of content is undeniable. Review the content you will post on your website, understand where you want to go. Start with the homepage. Assess the information you have mentioned there. Such as: How are you describing yourself to the audience? What edge does your business have over competition? 

If you are really committed, you can dig deeper. Check the About Us page. What material have you given on that page?  Communicate in a way that people understand your brand and your goals. 

In one of my blogs, I have mentioned the need for blogs in B2B marketing. Blogs can provide the essential data about your product or services that otherwise you might not be able to communicate. It can apprise the audience of the nitty-gritty of your company.

As you are going through the website’s content, keep a pad and pen with you. It will be a form of brain storming session for you. The content will help in generating ideas about the keywords that you can use for your website. 

Collect the Seed List

A seed list is a list of test email addresses. The list is created for monitoring where the messages will land once sent. While you are developing your keyword search for your customers, the smart thing is to gather a seed list. Once that is collected, talk to your existing clients. Understand what they care about, what their needs are, and what are they looking for in a particular product. This will give you an understanding of how you should design your keywords. 

Determine your rankings

You should know where you stand. How will that help? Well, you need to know your performance to make the required tweaks accordingly. For instance, you rankings might be high, but you can always work on making it even higher. There are several tools available that can determine your rankings. Search console is one of the most widely used and renowned tools. Others that you can use include Ahrefs, Moz, SpyFu and SEMrush, among others. These tools will provide you with a wide array of lists. They can range from a few dozen to a thousand. You can filter them down if you want. 

 Conduct a Research on the Competition

We live in a competitive world. Businesses have inundated the World Wide Web. New businesses are adding up on a regular basis. It can get a bit tiring to keep up, but it is essential to know what your competition is up to. You need to assess your own competencies to leverage your keyword search. However, you can assess the competition’s keyword research as well, to know where they stand. 

Use their content and keywords as a frame work for determining the areas you need to work on. You can identify the general perception of your competition and how they speak to their customers as a bench mark for your own business.

Gather Metrics

Marketing is all about making informed decisions. The same applies on the keyword optimization. By gathering metrics you can determine your progress and performance of your business. You can look at search volume through tools such as Moz and SpyFu etc. 

However, you can also dig down further and collect metrics about your ranking as compared to others, and your organic CTR, etc. It allows you to contextualize the information you have to get you a step closer to your keywords. 

Select Target Keywords

By now you must have jotted down a hundred or two keywords. This is good, but is hard to optimize. It will take you years to optimize these hundreds of keyword variations.
So what should you do? Skim through the list. Focus on a few dozen keywords. Narrow down the content to the most relevant keywords. Compare these keywords with your product, with your website and the content you have posted. It is a step by step process, and can be really fun if you have it all assembled. Along the way, you might come up with new keywords. 

So the process will include a lot of adding and subtracting, eventually coming down to may be 20 to 30 essential keywords.

Tools for B2B Keywords Research

There are several tools and software that you can employ to conduct a B2B keywords research. Here is a brief description of our top picks.

SEMRush

• SEMRush is an efficient tool that you can use to get a detailed list of the questions and terms present in its own database.
• It has a database of more than 40 million phrase and is constantly updating and adding new phrases to the list.
• It also tracks the rankings of a page, and the terms used by those pages.

Ahrefs

Ahref uses the Google API (application program interface) to:

• Analyze a website’s backlink profile.
• Review the keyword rankings.
• Conduct keyword research.
• Analyze content.

SerpStat

• SerpStat provides you with a detailed list of phrases.
• It has extensive filters to help you narrow down your options.
• It also provides a metric for keyword difficulty.
• Also has the option of autocomplete for long keywords and phrases.
• It provides you with a list of missing keywords.
• It is not afraid of getting creative.

Summary

B2B marketing demands informed decisions. Informed decisions need research and information. Keyword research has become an important part of digital marketing, and therefore, it is up to you to come up with the most relevant keywords and phrases for your business’s growth. Here is how you can achieve your B2B keywords goal:

Review your content

Collect a seed list

Know where you stand

Gather metrics

Select target keywords.

You can also use tools to conduct a detailed research and come up with the most suitable keywords for your business.