Seven Copywriting Tips for B2B SEO
The prospect of writing successful, engaging business-to-business content is enough to make even professional copywriters quake with fear. How do you eloquently explain the finer technical processes of your business while simultaneously marketing your creative savvy? Add SEO into the mix and it's even more challenging. Fortunately, our staff here at Corporate Performance Artists have compiled a few pointers to help you write outstanding B2B copy:
Keep your page copy focused
Search engines will attempt to discern the topical focus of a page, so it is best not to confuse them. Keep the content of any given page focused on the page’s keyword strategy. If you have multiple topics, it is better to create separate landing pages than trying to use a single page to go after numerous unrelated keywords.
Don't over brand yourself
Make sure to use generic terms on the page. In most cases, B2B searchers are more likely to search generically for a product or service than use a brand name. Proprietary brand names tend to be unusual, so searchers Googling for one of your brand names will likely find your site quite easily. Go ahead and use the brand name in copy, but make sure you also include the generic terms just as much, if not more.
Watch singular and plural usage
Choosing to employ a keyword or phrase in your copy in the singular or the plural form makes a huge difference: search engines treat both forms as separate and distinct search terms. Research which forms to go after in your keyword strategy to determine which is likely to produce better results, and use this form in your copy.
Word order matters
In some cases, word order doesn’t matter for PPC. In SEO, however, word order matters a lot. Obviously, you don’t want to create stilted copy, but if your keyword research shows that changing a particular word order is more popular than another, it will help your results to use the more popular word order more prevalently in your copy.
Use page headers
Creative, engaging, keyword-rich B2B headlines are tough to write, even for the best B2B copywriters. If you’ve got a creative, engaging, persuasive headline, but it isn’t keyword-rich, make sure to compensate by using other strategies on the page. In some cases, you may want to stylize the creative headline and put it in an image. If so, write keyword-rich ALT text for this headline image, and put the “generic” headline somewhere else on the page and code it with an H1 tag. The site visitor will get the impact of the visual headline, and the search engine will get the right idea about the content and focus of the page.
Include captions for images
Text-based captions are a great way to get more keyword-rich copy on the page. Many consumer products don’t require captions, relying strictly on the product image or logo. The nature of business-to-business products, however, is typically not readily apparent simply from a picture. Whether it’s a single line or a short paragraph, write a caption for your image. Make sure you include keywords in the captions, and that those keywords match the keyword strategy of each page. Good B2B copywriting uses captions as another opportunity to precision market as well as influence search results.
Write with anchor text in mind
Linking to other pages on your website can increase your rankings as well as provide many opportunities for keywords and tags. Before starting to write content, figure out the relevant pages on your site you can link to, then determine what the optimal anchor text should be for each link. Once you figure out your optimal anchor text, you can incorporate it seamlessly into your copy. If you wait until the site is done to do text-based internal linking, you’ll have to edit the copy you previously wrote. Good B2B copywriting flows seamlessly through the desired anchor text.
