B2B leaders tend to focus on only a handful of marketing and lead generation tactics due to the nature of the industry – when you’re marketing to other businesses, personal contact and recommendations matter. Many of us in the B2B field know that one of the best ways to sell our service is to open a direct line of communication with a decision-maker in another company, but if we only rely on personal connections and emails, we are wasting ample marketing and CRO opportunities. If you want to excel at B2B marketing, you need to focus on the best digital marketing practices, and that means investing in local SEO.

Local SEO puts your business on the digital map, builds brand authority and trust in your local market, and allows you to attract those decision makers you’ve been so desperately trying to get in contact with. Search engine optimization is imperative for online success for B2B companies, so today we are going to explore the best practices that will take your brand forward in 2021 and beyond. 

Build brand reputation through online reviews

Digital presence management is a broad term used to describe all the actions you take to portray your brand in the best possible light in the online world. What you might not have known, is that by managing your digital presence, and most importantly, your online reputation, you will effectively boost your ranking in the search results. 

Why? Because Google is determined to give users the best possible browsing experience, and that means prioritizing reputable businesses on its results pages. To boost your standing in the search results, you need to manage your online reviews on third-party sites. You can do this by claiming the following review pages:

• Google Business Page
• Your Facebook Page
• Bing Places
• Yelp Page

Make sure to have an account on these platforms where you can quickly respond to all reviews, thank people for the positive ones, and resolve any issues to turn negative reviews into success stories. This will show the local business leaders that your business can be trusted, prompting them to reach out. 

Earn backlinks on authoritative local websites

Building a localized backlink portfolio is another powerful way to give your B2B company an SEO boost in the local market. Google wants to see that other prominent and authoritative websites trust you enough to publish a do-follow link on one of their pages that leads back to your domain, so the more quality backlinks you can earn from local businesses, the better.

That said, you need to approach this task with the right mindset, because backlinking can only work in the long-term with white-hat techniques. You can reach out to companies and ask to contribute to their blog page with a story of your own, and if it’s good enough, you will earn yourself a link on that page. This is not only a great way to build your B2B marketing strategy, but also your employer brand. You can also get a link and a shout-out as a non-profit sponsor, through press releases and interviews, on local community websites and career forums, and more. 

Localize your content marketing strategy 

Content marketing is still, and always will be, one of the most important elements of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. When it comes to SEO, though, producing regular, well-optimized content will be the key to better and more consistent ranking in the relevant search results. The goal of your content strategy should be to rank you higher in the local search results, but also help build brand authority and appeal to other business leaders.

This makes all the difference when you’re operating in those competitive markets like Australia, with its saturated local markets like Melbourne and Sydney. Something that B2B leaders in such a market should always do is to create a localized Sydney SEO strategy that focuses heavily on regular content output, boasting the right structure and the right keywords that will put the business on the local map. 

Make sure to use this best practice in your own SEO strategy no matter the market you operate in, and start publishing localized content with relevant local keywords that will get your company noticed by other local leaders. 

Optimize your digital presence for mobile users

Google loves mobile-friendly websites, which is your cue to start optimizing your digital presence for seamless mobile browsing. In the B2B field, decision-makers are constantly searching for lucrative opportunities and are researching products and services on their mobile phones, so you have to make sure that your website can load quickly and properly on all handheld devices.

You can also invest in mobile app development down the road, but if you want to boost your local SEO, your priority should be on building a mobile-friendly website. The key here is to reduce customer effort as much as possible, or in B2B terms, to make it easy for tech-savvy decision-makers to see what you’re all about and get in touch via mobile. 

Make the necessary on-site technical optimizations

Mobile optimization is a big part of on-site SEO, but there are some other techniques you should implement in order to rank higher in the local search results. To help your pages rank high in the local SERPs (search engine results pages), be sure to:

• Optimize each page with the right, local keywords.
• Optimize pages with the right structure, using headings, subheadings, a meta description, and alt-text for all images.
• Optimize the loading speed for every page with the right hosting plan, content caching, and by downsizing cumbersome visual elements. 
• Boost security and thus your SEO with an SSL security certificate.

Over to you

Local SEO is crucial for B2B marketing, especially if your goal is to capitalize on the local market and the lucrative opportunities within. By all means, continue using word-of-mouth and your personal contacts to generate leads, but make sure to invest in local SEO as well in order to open new avenues of success for your company in 2021.