B2B SEO in a corporate environment is very different from building a few links to a small website. First, bigger companies have different goals. A conversion may be someone buying from a supplier (which is harder to measure), or it might just be someone emailing for more information.
- Be there at every stage of the cycle. Through the research stage up to the evaluation stage. You and your brand need to be available.
- Promote your brand as one that customers can trust. Trust, as far as SEO goes, comes from two areas. First, show what you know and make sure your website covers industry trends, changes in the market etc. Second, get other media outlets to show that you know your stuff.
- Make it easy for the customer to take action.
In order to promote your business with SEO, you can start by asking suppliers and retailers to promote your main website, as a source of information. It is against the Google rules to insist on preferential pricing for links, but you could ask for promotion.
You could spent a few hundred dollars sponsoring local sporting clubs, business groups or meetings, in return for a link to specific deep product pages on their websites AND in their newsletters.
Also, you could create a new website for an industry event and invite suppliers, retailers and a few prominant bloggers. The event might only cost a few hundred dollars (restaurant hire, food, drinks), and focus on industry changes. You could get everyone to link to the new website, and then have links back to the main industry players. This tactic is VERY common in highly competitive industrial sectors.
Using the media is an important part of SEO. Make sure you have regular press releases that are going out on the major wires like NewsMaker. Having a good relationship with the media is important too. Not only can the media have an important part to play with getting your message out, but they can also be a valuable source of promotion of your site.
Business SEO success is based on conversions. First you need to define your conversions, then you need to make sure they are being tracked in Analytics. You might be able to have a white paper on your website, where you goal is to get people to leave their email and download that. Then you can put together a quarterly newsletter to send to those people, and feature retailers for a price.