I’m Sagar Pradhan, with over 4 years of work experience in the digital marketing space, especially in Search Engine Optimization. I have worked for several brands across various segments and sizes and I believe the journey of SEO begins with understanding your audience, competition, market, and brand offering before initiating the work.
Before we discuss keyword planning for B2B vs. B2C types of keywords, I’ll quickly share an overview of the keyword variations along with some other essential things to consider while performing keyword research.
The Keyword Variations:
There are three main types of keywords in SEO - short, medium and long tail keywords. Depending on your business objectives and brand goals, one should define the keyword variations as mentioned in the table below :
Things to consider: Keyword research in SEO:
Now, you might wonder how one should perform keyword research in SEO. Well, the answer is simple - your keyword strategy for SEO should depend on your business goal & brand objective.
I’ve observed that many beginner SEO professionals do not consider all the relevant aspects while planning a keyword strategy for the brands they work for. Here's a few tips for planning your keywords list :
- 1. Keep the user/buyer in mind.
- 2. Conduct customer surveys & involve your team.
- 3. Know your product in detail.
- 4. Perform competitor research.
- 5. Use suggestions from the search engine.
- 6. Include LSI keywords.
Things to know: B2B vs. B2C SEO Keyword Guide
Before getting into the details of keywords for both these domains, it is vital to know the differences between B2B & B2C Marketing.
Creating a keyword strategy for SEO will not be effective without understanding the marketing approach and the buyer behavior for B2B vs. B2C. A robust SEO keyword strategy should always revolve around these aspects.
Hence, understanding the following factors is a must for B2B & B2C marketing :
The above table is essential to understand before you begin to research your brand and start looking for keyword suggestions.
If, as an SEO professional, you fail to understand the market, the audience, the competition, the product, and the category offering - it would be very difficult for you to achieve the expected results in your SEO work. Therefore, spending quality time ensuring you have all the basics right matters a lot.
Also, your entire content and SEO work approach depends on whether the keywords for your business are identified. If keyword planning for SEO is not focused or targeted enough, your might not get the SEO results you desired.
Taking assistance and guidance from the brand manager/ business owner is vital during the initial weeks of your SEO activity unless you have a fair and detailed understanding of your brand and its various aspects.
On average, an SEO professional must spend a good 2 weeks to understand the brand, competition, market, industry insights, and news before starting the actual keyword research. Planning keyword suggestions can thereafter take 4-6 days. But when it comes to digital agencies, where new clients keep coming in and an SEO deck is a must share with them, this schedule will be compromised.
To better understand things let's take an example - Imagine a leading tech brand that is selling laptops and data centered products. Here, selling laptops focuses on the B2C audience, whereas data centered products focus on the B2B ones.
Both these product have a different set of buyers, therefore, the content and SEO strategy should vary based on the various points discussed above. The keyword set for buying laptops will not be similar to those looking for data centered products.
To elaborate this further, let's look at some actual keyword suggestions an SEO professional might consider for both categories :
B2C Laptops:
- - buy best laptops online
- - Lenovo laptops under 40k
- - Latest Lenovo legion laptops Mumbai
- - Legion 5i Intel processor 2021 model
B2B Data Centre Products:
- - Providers for data centered products
- - Database solutions for organizations
- - Business applications for companies
- - Best services for data security online
Of course, several other aspects like the search volumes, competition for the keyword, brand preference, and competition keyword use have to be considered here. The above-used keyword suggestions are for explanatory purposes only. But they help us understand the difference between B2B & B2C keyword types.
To Sum Up
Be it B2B or B2C keyword research, always keep your ideal user/ customer base in mind. Study your product well, understand the market, know your competition, and then start working on the keyword list according to the category by jotting all of them down and following the various techniques discussed in this article. Spend good time on it, read it, and then start the selection process. You cannot take 50 or 100 keywords for your SEO work as one needs to narrow it down based on your goals and website pages.
Perform your keyword research covering the various aspects required for your brand and write awesome content taking assistance from your team’s content writer on the keywords your target audience likes. Do not forget to emphasize long-tail keywords as well.
The entire SEO work strategy will revolve around the finalized set of keywords you wish to use for the brand. Hence keyword planning is considered one of the core steps in SEO work. At least involving the entire marketing team & the critical decision-makers for a final keyword review is essential.
Disclaimer: The thoughts, opinions, suggestions and advice shared in the blog are purely based on the personal work experience of the SEO professional. Any resemblance or coincidence in any manner should be considered void. The content piece in any manner does not disrespect any other profession at all. The writer advises to take prior subject knowledge and acquire the required skills before working on any SEO project. In SEO, things are subjective to change in terms of Google algorithm updates. The person writing the blog is an SEO professional and not a content expert.
