Last updated on March 1st, 2023 at 10:41 am
by Antonella Pisani, Eyeful Media
Content marketing is nothing new to B2B companies, but how do you prioritize topics and keywords for SEO? Here are a few ideas to get you started.
Leverage Paid Search CPC Data
One thing I’ve always factored in when planning for B2B writing is paid search CPCs.
The reason for this? I believe that the CPC is correlated to intent, and since many B2B purchases have high AOVs, keywords that are likely to yield conversions tend to be higher priced.
Paid search marketers will bid up keywords that are turning into qualified leads or transactions, so you can generally make the assumption that the higher the CPC in a given sector, the higher the propensity to drive high AOV purchases, quality or conversion.
Leveraging this data also allows you to quickly weed out consumer-oriented keywords that may attract traffic but probably won’t bring your site or client any leads.
The best way to see this strategy come to life is with an example. In this case, the site in question sells fleet tracking equipment. When asking their team what to target, they said “gps tracker” for vehicles.
A simple search using an SEO tool like Ahrefs would tell you that the keyword “gps tracker” has a lot of volume – about 3,700 searches per month. However, a peek at the cost per click reveals that it’s only about $3.50.
A competent SEO professional would look at the SERP for a keyword like that and see that the results are mostly consumer oriented. But that can be a slow process if you’re combing through thousands of keywords at once. So how do I scale the process? Use CPC as a filter.
Now go back into Ahrefs’ keyword research tool and search for “gps tracker” and filter results for anything with a paid search CPC over $10 or more. The results are going to have lower volume than a head term, but are more likely to be relevant to your B2B visitors.
The same search with the filter applied helps identify terms like “gps tracker fleet vehicles.” That may only have 60 searches per month, but with a $30 CPC, it is likely to reach an audience that is much more relevant.
Segment Informational Terms
Using this process also allows you to filter out informational terms. For example, people may be looking for cross-category products like fitness trackers, or doing broad research.
If you’re doing keyword research and see terms that have particularly low CPCs, they may not be directly leading to conversions even if they are relevant to your B2B business.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t target informational terms, but if you’re looking for keywords that are more likely to have a propensity to convert, using CPC as a filter can be a big help.
Create a benchmark
A good way to create a relative benchmark for yourself is to check the CPC on a head term that is very relevant to their business – for example, “fleet tracking.” A quick check on that reveals that the CPC is $50. Now you know that when you see a keyword for 1/10th of that price, you can probably assume that it isn’t a high-converting B2B term.
Once you have exported your list of higher-CPC keywords as part of your keyword research, you can use keyword clustering to come up with variants and topics for content.
Audit Internal Search Queries to Find Valuable B2B Keywords
Another way to find great keywords is to look at what your site’s visitors are already asking about.
What are the most popular internal search bar queries on your B2B website? Do you have SEO-optimized website pages designed to rank organically for those keywords?
If not, that could be an excellent place to find new B2B keywords that your target audience cares about to add to your list.
These internal website searches are from visitors already engaging with your brand. Chances are good other potential customers would be entering similar queries.
You can find this data in Google Analytics so long as you’ve configured the Site Search Tracking setting.
Find Long Tail Modifying Keywords That Convert
Identifying the long tail keyword modifiers that lead to the most valuable inbound conversions is another way to build on what is working and improve your B2B website’s keyword list.
When your site is integrated with platforms like HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce, and others, your analytics team could help marketing identify, for example, which downloadable assets lead to the best customers.
With this in mind, your SEO campaign can target long tail keywords visitors are searching for to arrive organically at that landing page, driving the best conversions.
For example, we had a B2B client who offered 10+ solutions. We found that the primary keyword modified by “use cases” for one solution led to the most qualified leads during the quarter for one sales scenario.
Our SEO team at Eyeful Media then added the primary keyword + use cases to our B2B client’s keyword list for other 10+ solutions and found similar success in the campaign.
About Antonella Pisani
Antonella Pisani is the founder and CEO of Dallas-based Eyeful Media, a digital marketing and consulting firm focused on performance marketing and digital strategy for mid-market companies.
Founded in 2017, the company has experienced exponential growth fueled exclusively through word-of-mouth referrals. As a result, Eyeful Media has ranked in the top 11% on the Inc. 5000 list for the past two years as one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in America, scaled at a 1178% growth rate. They ranked #17 in Dallas, #37 in Texas, and #38 in all Advertising & Marketing companies. Eyeful Media was also named to the 2022 Adweek list of fastest-growing agencies ranking number 13 on list overall and number 5 in the West/Southwest. Eyeful Media has also been
announced as a member of the Dallas 100 for 2022.
Antonella places a special emphasis on giving back to the community, giving back 5% of Eyeful Media’s profits to organizations such as Community Partners of Dallas, Dwell with Dignity, the Birthday Party Project, Michael J Fox Foundation, the Trevor Project, and The North Texas Food Bank. She serves as a member of The North Texas Food Bank Advisory Council and the Dwell with Dignity Board of Directors.
Also important to Antonella is Eyeful Media’s intellectually stimulating environment that allows for team members a balanced life and social responsibility. Eyeful Media brings expertise to their clients from a fully-remote, 40% minority team with employees spanning across 16 states and 23 cities. The company brings a fresh approach by hiring only proven experienced marketers and eliminating layers often found in digital marketing agencies. This has helped the company scale quickly, as has quality work and technical expertise.
Antonella has more than 25 years of marketing and digital experience. Prior to starting Eyeful, she held VP and SVP roles at companies including Proflowers, Guitar Center, JCPenney, and Fossil where she managed annual marketing budgets up to $100 Million. For more information, please visit https://www.eyefulmedia.com/.
