Beyond SEO: The Brave New World of B2B Search Engine Marketing

Traditional SEO is no longer the secret weapon it once was for marketers. Keywords, backlinks, and meta descriptions still matter, but they're just the beginning. To up your B2B search engine marketing game, you must consider how customers research and discover solutions.

The modern B2B buyer is well-informed, self-directed, and increasingly guided by AI-powered search engines, recommendation systems, and app marketplaces. To capture their attention, you must go beyond Google search results.

Is your brand searchable and discoverable in places where decision-makers seek insights and solutions? Let’s explore how you can boost the impact of your B2B search engine marketing strategy by showing up where modern buyers are.

Build a Foundation of Trust with Google’s EEAT

While appearing on relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) isn’t the be-all-end-all, it’s still a critical component of any B2B search engine marketing strategy. However, high ranking doesn’t hinge solely upon nailing the best search terms.

Google’s EEAT framework emphasizes Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Adhering to the guidelines helps you earn credibility from both search engines and discerning B2B buyers, accelerating the sales cycle.

Here are some practical ways to optimize your content for this key B2B search engine marketing requirement:

• Showcase expertise through authorship. Leverage earned media and use bylines to highlight your executive’s real-world credentials in industry publications.

• Publish thought leadership content. Create research-backed articles, webinars, industry commentary, and detailed how-to guides to share original insights.

• Incorporate third-party validation. Feature customer testimonials, partner endorsements, media mentions, certifications, and analyst reports.

• Boost visibility with a content ecosystem. Contribute to authority sites, speak at events, and get interviewed on reputable podcasts to earn backlinks.

• Enhance your website’s trust signal. Implement HTTPS, improve page load speed, and remove broken links to signal credibility to search engines.

Improve Discoverability with an App Store Optimization Strategy

B2B buyers increasingly turn to curated marketplaces like Microsoft AppSource, Salesforce AppExchange, AWS Marketplace, Google Workspace Marketplace, etc., to find tools to solve specific problems. And you must show up where they are.

App store optimization (ASO) works like SEO but within enterprise ecosystems’ walled gardens. The practice optimizes your app or software listings to strengthen your presence, helps you rank higher in search results, and drives more downloads or installs.

Here's how to leverage an app store optimization strategy to support B2B search engine marketing:

• Refine titles and keywords. Use ASO tools to identify high-value keywords with good search volume and low competition.

• Craft benefit-focused descriptions. Highlight the challenges your app solves and how it helps users achieve outcomes.

• Add trust signals. Include customer logos, testimonials, use cases, and key integration capabilities in your listings.

• Use high-quality visuals. Reinforce your value proposition and show how your solution works with screenshots, demo videos, and diagrams.

• Gather ratings and reviews. Ask happy customers to write a review to boost credibility and ranking.

• Update your listing regularly. Highlight recent feature releases, security updates, or partner integrations to keep the listing fresh and relevant.

Win Position Zero with Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)

People are increasingly turning to voice assistants (e.g., Siri, Alexa) and AI-powered answer engines like Google’s Featured Snippets, Bing Chat, and ChatGPT for quick, context-rich answers. So, how can you ensure these answers incorporate or cite your content?

Answer engine optimization, also called ask engine optimization, is the practice of structuring content so machines can easily extract and serve it as a direct answer to a user’s query. It’s the key to getting onto Google SERPs’ position zero, the coveted spot above traditional search results for maximum visibility.

These answer engine optimization best practices can help you capture prospects’ attention and build brand recognition:

• Target question-based queries. Get inspiration from Google’s “People Also Ask” section to identify common questions and create dedicated content to answer them.

• Write concise summaries. Include a short, 40- to 60-word paragraph for each question to increase the likelihood that it’ll get pulled into a featured snippet.

• Create scannable content. Use headings, bullets, numbered lists, and short paragraphs to make your posts easy for algorithms to parse and humans to skim.

• Use schema markup. Provide a structure to help search engines understand the intent and organization of your content and website.

• Build authority and credibility. Combine AEO with EEAT principles to position your website as a reputable, expert source.

Stay Ahead with Language Model Optimization

From ChatGPT and Claude to Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, many B2B buyers turn to large language models (LLMs) when seeking information, inspiration, or solutions.

Writing content with language model optimization (LMO) in mind helps get it included in training data, retrieval results, or plugin integrations used by generative AI tools so that LLMs can accurately interpret, surface, and cite it. LMO takes AEO a step further: It positions your content as the source AI references when answering a user’s question.

LMO is a fast-evolving B2B search engine marketing discipline, and staying current with the latest developments is essential for success. Here’s how to get started:

• Write with clarity and context. LLMs favor well-structured, unambiguous information. Avoid jargon, define acronyms, and use clean formatting to improve machine readability.

• Use Q&A formats for your content. Question-answer pairs help LLMs identify the most relevant content. Incorporate FAQs, explainer content, and glossary-style pages to answer specific queries.

• Publish on high-quality, crawlable domains. LLMs reference trusted, accessible sources. Leverage public relations tactics to get your content featured on reputable, well-indexed sites.

• Cite trusted sources and use structured data. References and schema markup increase your content's perceived trustworthiness, informing LLMs’ future attribution models.

Make Your Brand the Voice in Tomorrow’s Conversation

In a world where buyers ask AI for advice before talking to vendors, your B2B search engine marketing strategy must go beyond visibility to influence buying decisions. Brands that invest in producing original content, highlighting their expertise, and building trust with their audience will shape tomorrow’s buyer experience and customer journey.

Companies must, therefore, address changing algorithms and buyer behaviors. Implementing the latest best practices for EEAT, ASO, AEO, and LMO (and the next new things in this alphabet soup) not only helps your content rank. It also injects your brand as an authoritative voice on topics your audience cares about.

Book a meeting to see how we can future-proof your B2B search engine marketing strategy to help you stay relevant and competitive.