Understanding the Challenge for B2B Companies
Business-to-business (B2B) companies encounter unique marketing hurdles. They often struggle with:
- Standing out from the competition
- Navigating complex sales funnels
- Managing long sales cycles
- Connecting with their target audiences in meaningful ways
- Creating content that effectively guides prospects through their sales journey
These challenges can seem daunting, but there’s a powerful marketing strategy that can tackle them effectively: Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). It’s no surprise that SEO has become the top method for B2B companies to promote their products and services.
According to Sagefrog’s 2023 Marketing Mix Report, SEO is the most popular marketing tactic among B2B marketers. This case study illustrates why SEO, particularly through link outreach, can yield remarkable results.
Meet the Client: A PDF Generation Library for Developers
Our client operates a PDF library designed for web developers using the C# programming language. This toolkit allows developers to generate, read, edit, sign, and save PDF files within the .NET framework.
Despite offering a high-quality service, they found themselves overshadowed by competitors in search engine results. They needed a way to enhance their online visibility and establish a strong presence in the PDF library market. They believed that SEO was the key to achieving these goals.
After researching online, they discovered our positive reviews and decided to reach out to our team. This was back in late 2018, and we have been collaborating with them for an impressive 67 months.
During our initial consultation, the client shared their situation:
- They were producing excellent blog content, but it wasn’t attracting enough traffic.
- Their website desperately needed high-authority backlinks from reputable industry sites.
- They weren’t ranking for essential industry keywords.
Given their diverse objectives, complex sales funnel, and lengthy sales cycle, we proposed a Clout X campaign.
Setting Up a Clout X Campaign
Clout X is our managed service where we take charge of every aspect of a client’s SEO strategy. Each client is paired with a dedicated campaign manager who creates a long-term plan for success.
Clients appreciate Clout X because it’s a hands-off service. We manage their SEO, allowing them to focus on running their business, which was exactly what our B2B client needed. With their focus on maintaining their PDF library and creating top-quality blog content, they entrusted us with their SEO.
Our Clout X campaigns typically utilise a mix of our SEO products, but in this case, we determined that link outreach was the only product necessary to help them dominate search results.
Since they were already generating outstanding blog content regularly, we didn’t need to provide any additional content. Their website was already well-structured, so we didn’t need to optimise their copy. The main focus was on building high-quality backlinks.
The campaign lasted 67 months, which is approximately five and a half years. Each month, the client ordered a 14-pack of link outreach, resulting in substantial link-building efforts.
Why Backlinks Matter for Google Rankings
Before diving deeper, let’s discuss why backlinks are crucial for ranking on Google. A backlink is a link from an external website that directs back to your site.
In Google’s eyes, backlinks serve as ‘votes of confidence’ for the quality of your content. It’s similar to how academic papers cite reputable journals to support their claims. If trusted websites link to your content, Google views it as trustworthy and high-quality.
This is why building backlinks positively impacts a website’s search rankings. The more backlinks you receive from high-quality, relevant websites, the more Google will consider your content worthy of higher rankings.
Often, if a client is being outranked by a competitor, it’s because the competitor has stronger backlinks. The goal then becomes to close the gap by acquiring more high-quality backlinks than the competition.
Conducting an SEO Audit
Every Clout X campaign begins with a comprehensive SEO audit, and there’s a good reason for this. Rushing into SEO can lead to overlooking foundational mistakes that can undermine your efforts.
For example, if we skip the audit and start building backlinks to a crucial blog post without realising that two versions of the blog exist (a situation known as duplicate content), it confuses Google’s algorithm. This confusion can cause both versions to disappear from search results entirely.
Thus, it’s essential to begin every SEO campaign with a thorough audit, regardless of the goals.
What Happens During an SEO Audit?
During the audit, we analyse:
- On-page SEO factors like keyword usage, placement, and metadata
- Technical SEO elements like page loading speed, broken links, and duplicate content
- Site architecture and URL structure
- The website’s backlink profile and its quality
- The keywords they currently rank for and their positions
- The amount of organic traffic they generate and its sources
We utilise several tools during the audit process, most notably Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics. GSC allows us to examine a website’s keyword rankings, organic traffic, and clicks/impressions, while Google Analytics helps us analyse user demographics and identify the main sites directing traffic to the client’s site.
Identifying Quick-Win Keyword Opportunities
Once we’ve addressed the technical and user experience issues, we look for quick-win keyword opportunities.
Quick-win opportunities are keywords that the client’s site already ranks for, albeit not very high. The good news is that with some optimisations, it’s relatively easy to boost these keywords’ rankings, sometimes even into the top three.
We focus on quick-win keywords because they provide speedy results, which is crucial for maintaining client satisfaction during the campaign.
The Impact of Quick-Win Keywords
Our B2B client had several quick-win keywords that we eagerly capitalised on. Their active blog covered topics relevant to their target audience, which meant they were likely to rank for web developer-related keywords due to their blogging efforts.
We targeted keywords ranking between positions 4 and 30, which are ideal quick-win opportunities.
What Optimisations Did We Make?
The optimisations we implemented were straightforward yet effective:
- Adding the target keyword to the title tag, H1 header, metadata, and first 100 words of the content
- Ensuring image alt text included target keywords
- Enhancing pages with thin content (less than 1,000 words)
- Adding internal links to pages with the most backlinks to pass on link authority
Campaign Strategy: Focusing on Link Outreach
Once the audit was complete, it was time to begin building links aggressively. As mentioned, the client ordered 14-packs of Link Outreach every month.
What Does Link Outreach Involve?
Unlike other SEO agencies that rely on generic cold outreach emails, we adopt a more personalised approach. We are selective about the websites we target for backlinks, which is a key reason our product delivers such impressive results.
For each backlink opportunity, we assess the website’s:
- Domain Authority (DA): A metric developed by Moz that estimates a domain’s likelihood of ranking in Google’s search results based on its backlink profile and overall SEO performance.
- Domain Rating (DR): A metric from Ahrefs that measures the strength of a domain’s backlink profile.
By evaluating both DA and DR scores, we ensure that the backlinks we pursue are valuable.
Building Relationships in the Web Development Space
In addition to our careful vetting of backlink opportunities, we aim to build long-lasting relationships with relevant bloggers, media outlets, and website owners. Establishing positive relationships can lead to multiple backlinks and other marketing opportunities.
To foster these relationships, we engage in personalised outreach. For our B2B client, we conducted in-depth research into key players in their industry. We read their posts, examined their LinkedIn profiles, and identified common ground.
From there, we crafted highly personalised emails that showcased our understanding of the prospect’s website and content. We often engaged with potential backlink sources for months before suggesting the idea of adding a backlink on their site. This strategy paid off, resulting in numerous relationships with influencers in the web development sector, leading to valuable backlinks for our client.
The Results: Remarkable Organic Traffic Growth
The effort we put into outreach yielded incredible results, boosting the client’s organic traffic by an astonishing 787%.
Notably, we observed a rapid increase in traffic and keyword generation within just a year and a half. Here’s a snapshot of their organic traffic and keyword performance in January 2023:
- Organic Traffic: 2,045 visitors
- Keywords in Top 3: 378
By June 2024, their organic traffic had skyrocketed to 18,151 visitors and continued to grow!
This campaign exemplified how our services complemented the client’s successful content creation efforts. Our link outreach was the perfect addition to their detailed blog content, finally giving them the recognition and traffic they deserved.
Leveraging B2B SEO to Excel in Your Niche
The success of our client’s website demonstrates the power of SEO in driving organic traffic and securing top rankings in search results. By focusing on effective link outreach and optimising existing content, businesses can achieve remarkable growth and visibility in their respective industries.
