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What do B2B buyers actually want from your website? What causes them to leave your website and not return? How many times do typical buyers return to your website before taking the next or final step in the buyer’s cycle? What kind of content is important to them? 

We looked at the results of the 2015 B2B Web Usability Survey and discovered what it would take for you as a B2B vendor to create credibility and trust. Spoiler alert: it’s not rocket science.

1) Buyers won’t give you a chance until they’ve seen legitimate identification

Vendors beware: Buyers judge your company’s credibility from their first impressions of your website. Before you panic, a winning introduction simply requires making the ABC’s available, right away. This includes: Complete contact information, an updated About section or company information, and a summary of the products and services your business offers. Interesting to note: They usually don’t want to see the pricing first.

Improve your credibility

• Design your website page templates with a built-in header and footer to feature your company’s physical address, contact information, quick links to your products and services page, and a summary of your About section.
• Stock images ring alarm bells for B2B buyers! Even if you and your employees can’t measure up to those stock photography models in the looks department, you’ll definitely trump them when it comes to trust and credibility. Hire a professional photographer for a day, but don’t stop at head shots for your about page. Employing banner images that picture your employees going about their daily tasks go a long way towards proving your company’s legitimacy. Also, this simple visual introduction can smooth over the awkwardness of that first personal consultation.

2) Buyers want to see the basics before getting in touch

Making a good first impression, however, is not enough motivation for your buyers to introduce themselves. While video tutorials, visual depictions, and audio descriptions are valuable tools for strengthening the relationship with buyers of different learning styles, respondents indicated that these wouldn’t dazzle them into submitting a contact request either.

In reality, for buyers who are leaning towards contacting you for a quote, the deciding factor is whether or not you have supplied them with the following basic content essentials: Product pricing, product reviews, lead/ship times, and details about technical support.

Improve your credibility

• Prioritise your content calendar! While not every buyer that visits your website will be ready to speak to a Sales representative right away, some inevitably will be. Make sure that you don’t miss out on these low-hanging fruit by fast-tracking content assets that buyers require before taking the step of reaching out to your sales team.
• Is your failure to display pricing information on your website losing you sales opportunities? A simple experiment can settle the issue: Add pricing information to your website for a trial period to compare the number of leads generated in both scenarios.
• Are you a software reseller or IT services company? Don’t make the mistake of assuming that your prospects and customers are as technically fluent and self-sufficient as you are! Data shows that providing your customers with direct access to technical support from your website will help you to build credibility and trust with prospects as well.

3) Blogging and Social Media alone won’t win you more than casual followers

B2B buyers have spoken, and the word is that they are seriously underwhelmed by vendors who don’t offer them educational content beyond the weekly blog and social posts. 

While both of these marketing channels are valuable for generating traffic and nurturing leads along their buyer’s journey, an effective content marketing strategy relies on a much wider range of assets.

Improve your Credibility

How are you supposed to know which content assets you need to establish yourself as a reputable vendor? Look no further than Science!

Here’s how you can apply the scientific method to your content creation process: Research, Test, Improve, Test, Repeat.

• Research your users’ content preferences. You can do this by interviewing your existing customers, sending them a survey, and evaluating your website’s user analytics to identify high and poor performing content assets.
• Test your assumptions! Create a content asset according to your research findings, put it out there and measure the results. How did you do?
• Improve. Are you getting closer or further away from your goal of engaging and educating your buyers? Unsure? Conduct an A/B test! Focus on one element at a time, (e.g. content format, title, marketing channel) and create multiple versions of the same offer to test the impact of the variable.

How do your buyers feel about your website’s credibility? Book a free website assessment now to find out.

4) Buyers don’t trust websites filled with distractions 

When it comes to establishing trust and credibility, clarity trumps the bells and whistles. B2B buyers have little patience for features that waste their time and obstruct them from getting down to business.

Website elements that annoy your users enough to make them leave right away include lack of contact information, intrusive live chat features, animated ads, popups, poor design or navigation, and video or audio that plays automatically. Almost half of respondents declared that they would ditch a vendor’s website simply because it fails to clearly communicate what the company does!

Improve your Credibility

Let’s talk about Growth-driven Design (GDD)! As opposed to traditional web design that is driven by your agency or company’s fancies, the GDD process is user-focussed from start to end.

The GDD design cycle entails user research (identifying the drivers, barriers, and hooks at work on your website), implementation of research, and measurement of results to deliver continuous improvement of user experience and conversion rates.

5) Buyers will fill out a form if it passes the cost vs. value test.

Your buyers’ personal contact information is a valuable commodity, and if you want it, you will have to earn it. Excessive form fields, invasive questions, and automatic email subscription are all factors that make your buyers flee from your forms.

Improve your credibility

Fear not, getting on first name basis with buyers is not an impossible feat, as they are more than willing to complete your forms when they meet the following criteria:

• Your forms pass the credibility test. Buyers indicate that the slightest oddity in design or copy could deter them from completing a form. Make sure your forms are sleek and professional by following conversion optimisation best practices on your landing pages, then user testing to identify any red flags.
• Clear and accurate expectations. Are you offering your prospect a free demo or a quote? Buyers’ past experiences of waiting in vain for a response has made them hesitant to submit your contact forms. Here too, clarity trumps persuasion; write your landing page copy to clearly state what buyers can expect once they’ve clicked that submit button. Should they expect to be contacted by a member of your technical support team, sales, or the business owner themselves? When can they expect to hear from you?
• A worthy trade. If you are form-gating your content, the asset on offer better be a value-add for your buyers! While an in-depth eBook would pass this test, spec sheets and product descriptions that blow your own horn should always be offered un-gated!

6) Buyers leave and return to your website multiple times

A prolonged and well-considered decision-making journey is typical of the B2B buyer cycle. In fact, buyers will visit your website up to 5 times before gathering up the courage to get in touch. 

During this period, prospects will be evaluating your competitors’ products and solutions, researching your ratings, and looking into feedback from your previous customers. What they find out about your company will determine if they return to your website at all and if you are trustworthy enough to approach for a quote.

Improve your Credibility

Build out a C & C portfolio (Credibility and Comparison) to distribute to your buyers in a marketing automation workflow that gets triggered the moment a buyer transitions to lifecycle stage: Sales Qualified Lead.

Content assets to distribute in this workflow could include:

• Charts and checklists that help your buyers to compare apples with apples as their weigh you up with competitors.
• Case studies of how you have helped other B2B buyers, just like them, to overcome various obstacles to achieve success.
• Credibility by association. Have any of your customers reviewed your business on an external site? Craft an email that shares links to existing reviews with your buyers, and set up a Google Alert to pick up on any new mentions of your company online.

7) A Mobile-friendly website matters 

When it comes to devices, 41% of buyers who own a smartphone or tablet are using it to search for B2B products. While most respondents indicated that lack of a mobile-friendly website would not put them off a vendor, a vast majority stated that they do expect your website to enable dialling your number automatically at a tap.

Improve your Credibility

While the look of a mobile unfriendly website might not put off your buyers, poor mobile functionality will result in conversion opportunities slipping through your fingers as well as a poor ranking in search engine results. 

While basic mobile-responsiveness ensures accessibility of digital assets (website, blog, CTA’s, forms, landing pages, content offers, emails), optimisation of your entire conversion path for mobile users is a worthwhile investment. 

Generating credibility and trust? Elementary, my dear B2B business owner!

Nobody said B2B marketing wasn’t hard work, and yet generating trust and credibility does not require you to produce ads that can compete in the Cannes Lions or video material worthy of a BAFTA.

Get to grips with the basics of inbound marketing, power it up with growth-driven design, and you can expect to see your website cranking up the traffic volumes, conversion rates, and new and recurring business.

If you are currently running a content marketing campaign, I’m sure that you have written and published a good amount of blogs. But are they bringing in traffic? You can publish a great piece of content, but if no one ever reads it your time and energy will have been for nothing. So what can you do about it? Get that post to rank well organically!

Before I get ahead of myself, not every post will have the potential to rank well. That’s why the first step to boosting a blog to the top of page 1, is to decide which blogs have the chance to succeed.

So which blog should do you boost?

First things first, Google the target keyword in your blog post title and assess the competition around that keyword/ topic. What kind of sites are ranking first? If the top position holders are high authority sites such as New York Times, Forbes, INC.com, or (generally speaking) websites with .edu or .gov urls, chances are your blog is not going to out rank them. Brian Dean at Backlinko explains it best: “All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority.”

With this in mind, try to choose a blog that has less competition around its target keyword. A great tip is to try ranking for a keyword that your competitor is already ranking for! Chances are, if they can rank for it so can you. For a more in depth look at how to choose keywords your competitor ranks for, check out this blog.

It’s also worth noting that you want to know where your blog is currently ranking. Bottom of page 1? Page 2? Page 3? You will want to focus on a blog that has already been indexed by Google in the first 2-3 pages. If a blog already ranks well, it’s easier to push it higher than pushing a blog that is not on Google’s radar.

How to boost a blog’s ranking

Now that you have chosen a blog that has the power to rank well, how do you boost your current ranking? To help supercharge your blog’s ranking, follow these 7 tips:

1) Increase blog ranking with optimization

As a good inbound (or otherwise) marketer, I know this is the most obvious tip when it comes to helping your blog rank organically. At the risk of sounding repetitive I will just list the basics:

• Keyword optimization – Focus on long-tail keywords, and use your keyword along with synonyms naturally throughout the blog. Do not stuff your blog with keywords!
• Title optimization – Include your keyword (as far left as possible) in the title, and keep it under 60 characters.
• Meta description optimization – Include your keyword, keep it under 160 characters and write a clear, engaging description of what your blog is about.
• URL optimization – Findings show shorter, keyword rich URLs rank higher.
• Image optimization – Don’t forget your images! Include alt text that includes keywords/ synonyms.
• Link optimization – Link internally when appropriate and use external links to back up research and help increase the authority of the article.

For more information and best practices on how to optimize a blog post click here.

2) Increase blog ranking with external links

External linking is something I touched on in Tip #1, but I would like to go into a little more depth. Although Google has somewhat denied that linking externally is a ranking signal, a study done by Reboot shows a correlation between a page’s external (outgoing) links and its search rankings. Since the study positively correlates high authority sites helping a page’s SEO, it’s important to include these links in the blog post you’re trying to boost rankings for.

3) Increase blog ranking with backlinks from authoritative sites

Keep in mind, backlinks that come from aged domains hold more power than those that come from new domains. For this reason, link outreach to authoritative sites is a great way to boost a blog post’s ranking. There are many ways in which you can get backlinks, but here are a few to keep in mind:

• Email outreach – Start an email outreach program that targets websites that relate to your blog topic and asks for a backlink.
• Social sharing outreach – Don’t have the contact information you need for an email? You can reach out to authoritative sites through social & blog commenting or messaging.
• Guest posting on authoritative industry sites – This may take some email outreach to inquire about guest posting, but is a great way to get a backlink.

4) Increase blog ranking with semantic keywords

Semantics is the study of meaning, and is how someone interprets a word. In today’s semantic search you need to have a database of keywords full of meaning that deciphers different contexts. So semantic keywords (aka LSI keywords), are keywords that relate to your main keyword.

For example imagine someone searched using the word “crash”. Do they mean an accident, a stock market drop, attend an event without an invitation, or a way to describe a sound?

As a part of Google’s algorithm, semantic search is used to allow Google to understand how to interpret a search based on the searcher’s intent. By using semantic keywords in your blog, you can help Google recognize what your content is about and if it relates to a search. These keywords may not have the highest search volume, like the keyword you chose to optimize your blog for, but they will help increase relevancy.

Example semantic keyword phrases to the search “avoid a car crash”:

5) Increase blog ranking with syndication

Content syndication is where a blog (or other piece of content) is featured on a popular website that relates to your industry. By syndicating your blog, you are able to get it out to a larger audience, one in which you may have never reached without syndication. There are many content syndication networks you can use, but it is up to you to find the best industry related websites in your field.

For example, I’m a contributor on the site business2community.com where my content reaches a greater audience than the subscribers on our agency blog. Remember, the blog you choose to syndicate should include a link that directs back to your website so not only will you get a backlink, but the traffic that goes along with it!

6) Increase blog ranking with social signals

As with most aspects of Google’s algorithm, the search giant has never come out and admitted that social signals are a ranking factor. So this one has always been debatable, however
case studies
have shown correlations with increased social signals and a jump in ranking. Not only did these case studies show higher ranking, but they also show an increase in traffic! That being said, promoting your blog on social media and getting likes, comments, retweets, plus 1’s etc. should be added to the to do list.

7) Increase blog ranking by Increasing Click Through Rate

Click through rate (CTR) is a user interaction signal that helps tell Google this blog is worth reading. So how do you help increase the organic CTR of your blog? One of the easiest changes you can make is to improve the blog title. After all, when it comes to the internet you can judge a book by it’s cover…or at least an article by it’s title. Update your title to something that will attract readers and make them want to click, while keeping it under 60 characters.

Did you notice my title “7 Amazing Tips to Help Boost a Blog’s Organic Ranking”? I’m sure some of you read it and thought “what makes these tips so amazing?” and clicked through to find out. This is the power of a great title!

Boost your blog today

There you have it, 7 amazing tips to boost your blog’s organic ranking. So what are you waiting for? Put those blog posts to use and generate more traffic today! For more SEO strategies that will help boost your inbound marketing results, download this FREE eBook “How to Use SEO to Boost Inbound Marketing Results”: