In short
SEO helps B2C marketers achieve many important goals with their content marketing, including brand visibility, building trust, enhancing customer loyalty and boosting conversion.
B2C marketers should apply best practices for on-page and off-page SEO, including keyword optimisation, improving page load speed, optimising for mobile, leveraging social media and local SEO.
Above all, SEO content must be helpful and user-focused, so be sure to cater your content to your audiences’ interests and needs.
Imagine that your brand would be the first thing that customers think about when they enter the market looking for products like yours. For B2C marketers, that would be a dream come true. And that’s exactly the point of search engine optimisation (SEO): making your brand immediately visible every time a customer searches the internet for the type of products you sell.
If you’re an experienced digital marketer working in the B2C space, SEO is probably an important topic in your daily work.
But as new technologies like search engine chatbots, including Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience, start changing how people access information online in the months ahead, it’s important to take a moment to reflect on your current B2C SEO strategy. Are you sure you’re still using the latest tactics and insights at your disposal?
This complete guide walks you through the best practices of B2C SEO and provides practical guidance to make sure your brand stays ranking high now and in the future.
The benefits of B2C SEO
No matter which segment of the B2C market your brand is operating in, online visibility doesn’t just happen on its own.
That’s why study after study shows that around three quarters of marketers invest time and budget in SEO, with nearly 8 out of 10 saying they use keyword research (a crucial SEO tactic) when developing their content.
In fact, 61% of marketers say SEO is one of their top priorities.
If you’re not yet fully tapping into the power of SEO to reach your marketing goals, let’s start by looking at the top benefits of SEO for B2C brands:
- Driving sales: In crowded, competitive markets, simply making it easy for your customers to find your brand online is one of the most effective things you can do to cater to customer preferences and raise sales.
- Cheaper than ads – with a better ROI: SEO-driven content marketing is 41% cheaper than paid search advertising on average and delivers a far better return on investment in the long term, because you can keep updating and optimising your own content, as opposed to ad campaigns which appear for a limited time, at a high price.
- Building trust and reputation: Appearing higher on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) makes your brand look more reputable and trustworthy. It has a similar effect to operating a real-life store in a prime location.
- Fostering customer loyalty: Highly visible content (for example, engaging social media posts) enriches the customer relationship, builds a loyal community around your brand and increases your customers’ lifetime value by encouraging repeat business.
- Offering a better experience: Many modern SEO tactics (see below) are focused on offering customers a better shopping experience. This is crucial to driving sales as well, since nearly 9 out of 10 consumers say they will not return to an online store after just one negative user experience.
As you can see, B2C SEO is not just about climbing search rankings. It’s just as much about creating an optimal user experience, boosting your brand’s image and driving conversions.
These are all powerful reasons for your B2C brand to implement effective SEO strategies, so you can gain a competitive edge and be the first brand your customers see when they search online for product categories or specific products you offer.
Best SEO practices for B2C brands
With the benefits of SEO in mind, let’s look now at the best SEO practices you can use to put a future-proof SEO strategy in place.
High-quality content
Google has repeatedly emphasised over the years that its algorithms are increasingly focused on finding high-quality, user-focused content that answers people’s real questions.
The number-one best practice for ranking high on Google is always to create helpful, original content, whether it’s your company’s blog posts, tutorials, FAQs, landing pages or product pages.
Keyword research
Part of creating helpful, high-quality content means knowing which words your potential customers use when searching for products like yours. That’s what keyword research is about in a nutshell.
Fortunately, in the age of AI, digital marketers have a wide range of powerful AI-driven keyword research tools at our disposal. Tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner give you current insights into popular and competitive keywords that you can incorporate into your content.
Here are some useful features to look for in a keyword research tool:
- Keyword overviews: All the useful details about keywords at a glance, including search volume, difficulty (competitiveness), cost per click (CPC) and variations.
- Position monitoring: The ability to track how well your site is ranking compared to competitors on a daily basis.
- Organic traffic monitoring: Track which keywords are actually driving traffic to your site.
Many keyword research tools are available in free (trial) versions, usually with limited functionality. Investing in a licence to a full-service keyword research tool is usually a smart choice for B2C brands that want to take their SEO to the next level. Alternatively, look for an external SEO partner to do the keyword research for you.
On-page optimisation
On-page SEO refers to everything you can do to optimise each page of your website for better findability and performance on SERPs. So, this can include optimising the content itself, but it also involves more technical, “behind-the-scenes” aspects that improve your page’s performance.
Here are the best on-page SEO practices you can use to boost findability and offer an optimal user experience:
- Always optimise for mobile. Google has announced that it practises “mobile-first indexing” which means mobile optimisation is one of the top decisive factors for high SERP ranking.
- Align your content with search intent. That means implementing keywords and designing content to address your customers’ real questions, concerns and interests.
- Update your content frequently. Once a page is published, monitor its performance regularly and continue to optimise it over time to ensure it’s still aligned with popular keywords and new customer preferences.
- Make your design visually appealing. Include a combination of text, high-quality (but compressed) images and videos. If you’re using longer-form content, like blog posts, make sure the text is divided into sections with clear headings to make it easily skimmable.
- Include keywords in your page’s title tags and meta descriptions. This makes your content more visible to search engines.
- Use short, descriptive URLs. Include natural language (including the main keyword) in your URLs, use hyphens to separate words and use lower-case letters.
- Avoid generic anchor text for internal links. Instead of using the words “click here” as the anchor text for an internal link, use anchor text that clearly describes what the reader will find when they click the link.
- Add alt text to all images. This makes your non-text content easier for search engines to understand and correctly match with search intent.
- Compress images. Compressing the size of your images increases your page’s load speed, which is crucial to offering a positive customer experience and, thus, ranking high on SERPs. All images on a single page should take up no more than 500 KB.
- Integrate schema markup into your page’s code. This one is a bit more technical, but it is also important for making your content more visible to Google. Using the linked data format JSON-LD (preferred by Google), you can incorporate markup into your page’s code to incorporate elements like star ratings, price information, availability, photos or other product details.
Off-page optimisation
So, what’s the opposite of on-page SEO? You guessed it: off-page SEO. As the name implies, off-page SEO covers all the tactics you can use outside of an actual web page to help attract traffic to that web page.
For B2C brands, this especially refers to your social media channels. Here are just a few examples:
- Tutorials: Try posting a quick tutorial on Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, or a longer “how-to” video on YouTube to showcase one of your products in action and inspire your customers.
- Giveaways: Hosting a giveaway on TikTok is a great way to boost engagement and appeal to new customers. Basically, everyone loves free stuff.
- Earned media: Many brands work with PR partners to earn media placement for their brands. This could include editorial-style blog posts or new articles that refer to your brand or products, or features on popular media sites.
- Influencer marketing: Partnering with a popular social media influencer brings instant visibility to your brand, with the potential to drive high volumes of traffic towards your shop and social media channels.
- User-generated content (UGC): Earning powerful UGC like testimonials and user reviews is a great way to build trust and drive traffic towards your shop. Studies show that nearly half of consumers trust user reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations and that products with reviews are 270% more likely to be purchased than products without. This is why it’s a good idea to encourage your customers to leave reviews (for example, by sending email review requests 7 to 21 days after the customer receives their order.
Local SEO
If your company operates brick-and-mortar stores in addition to your online shop, local SEO is essential for attracting customers to your locations. Local SEO makes your businesses easily findable online whenever people search for a type or store or product near them.
It’s crucial to be as visible as possible to those customers, because Google’s local search statistics show that 76% of people who perform a local business search actually visit a local business on the same day, and 28% make a purchase on the same day.
Here are the best ways to ensure your locations show up when people perform a local search:
- Optimise your Google My Business account: Google offers businesses the option to create a free business profile which appears when people perform a search. This is crucial for any business that wants to cater to modern consumers’ preferences. Always ensure that your Google Business profile is up to date and contains as much detail as possible.
- Post content updates on Google My Business: In addition to your profile, you can also post updates on Google My Business. For example, use this channel to announce a special offer or sale.
- Use a localised social media approach: Maintain separate social media channels for key locations, so your local stores can reach out and engage specifically with local audiences.
Tools and techniques for monitor and track B2C SEO results
Tracking the results of your SEO activities is crucial for ensuring a stronger ROI and discovering where to invest more attention, so you can continually optimise your SEO performance.
Many of the same tools that enable you to perform keyword research can also help you track your SEO performance. These tools include SEMrush, Ahrefs, SE Ranking and Moz. Since you may already be considering investing in a keyword research solution, you might also consider looking for an all-in-one SEO platform like the ones listed above, which can give you more insight into your performance.
Common mistakes to avoid in B2C SEO
Now that we’ve covered the best B2C SEO practices, let’s look at a few common mistakes that you’ll want to avoid:
- Low-quality content. Badly executed content not only reflects poorly on your brand, it also harms your SERP performance. Google’s algorithms are increasingly sophisticated when it comes to identifying content quality. Content that is plagiarised, overly generic or simply not catered to customers’ actual preferences is not even worth publishing.
- Keyword stuffing. Google also frowns upon keyword stuffing, because this practice is not user-friendly and it is not helpful to consumers.
- Desktop-only design. Today’s internet is mobile-first. Always optimise every piece of content and every page of your site for seamless display on mobile devices.
- Single-channel approach. The best SEO performance relies on multiple channels that cater to different customers’ preferences. Be sure to integrate content from your social media channels, website and third-party websites for the best results.
Content marketing for B2C SEO
Of course, if you want to reap the benefits of SEO for your B2C brand, you’re going to need a strong content marketing strategy to begin with. After all (as mentioned above) the quality and helpfulness of your content are truly the deciding factors for how well it will rank on Google.
B2C brands must design their content so that it stands out from competitors and drive sales within relatively short buyer journeys. Below are some of our top recommended tips for how you can achieve that.
Best practices for creating content for B2C SEO
Use the right formats: Choose a mix of formats that appeal most to your users. B2C content marketing can benefit from user-focused content like these:
- Tutorial blog posts and videos
- Inspirational, lifestyle-focused blog posts and social media posts
- Features in influencer posts or lifestyle media
- Interactive content, like quizzes, sweepstakes, giveaways or games
- Informative FAQs, product descriptions and demos
Align your content with search intent: Tailor your content to match your customers’ search intent. It’s a good idea to structure text so that it explicitly answers common questions. For example, use headings in your content like “What is …” or “What is the difference between…” or “Where can I find…”
Showcase your products: Although content marketing is generally less sales-focused than advertising, you’ll still want to put your products or brand in the spotlight with every piece of content you publish. This is especially important for B2C brands, as consumers tend to make faster purchase decisions and move through shorter customer journeys than business customers (B2B).
Persuasive title tags and meta descriptions: These are the first thing your potential customers will see when your content appears in their search results, so it’s important for them to be compelling. Craft enticing tags that encourage clicks and accurately describe your content.
Mobile-friendly website design: Make sure your content (in addition to your website’s overall appearance) is optimised for mobile viewing. That means using mobile-friendly sizes for text, images and buttons, but also structuring content so that it’s easily scrollable, skimmable and shareable.
Optimise images and page speed: Anything you can do to make your page load faster will boost the user experience and make your content instantly more likeable – especially for people searching on mobile devices, who may not have the fastest internet connections while they’re on the move.
Killer content is killer SEO: Invest time in developing content ideas that truly cater to your audience’s wishes. Always work with professional content creators who know how to emotionalise your brand’s narrative and make the best impact with your audiences.
Publish long-form content: While B2C shoppers may be less interested in flipping through your company’s annual reports or reading a white paper about industry trends, you can still improve your SEO performance by publishing longer-form content. Focus on user-friendly formats like blog posts and editorial/lifestyle-type articles. These are great formats for enriching the customer relationship with helpful, informative and entertaining content. They also help you capture long-tail keywords.
Use long-tail keywords: Target specific, longer phrases to capture niche search queries. These keywords are less competitive and often more valuable, as people searching for very specific solutions are usually close to making a purchase.
Borrow ideas from the competition: Analyse your competitors’ keyword focus and content strategies to find inspiration and identify any gaps in your own content strategy. Just remember to put your brand’s original spin on any topics or format ideas you decide to borrow.
Internal linking: Interconnect related content on your website using internal links. This makes your content more interactive and encourages your customers to spend more time on your site, getting to know your brand and its products.
Include keywords in URLs: Incorporating keywords into your URLs enhances your SEO performance, but it also makes your content more easily identifiable to customers. Short, concise URLs are also more shareable and simply look better, especially on a mobile device.
Focus on obtaining authoritative backlinks: Gaining backlinks or mentions on popular lifestyle blogs or influencer channels is a powerful way to attract more traffic to your own content.
Improve user experience: Take a product design approach to your content: think of it as an experience and design it in a way that optimally caters to your customers’ expectations, needs and preferences.
Analyse your performance: Keep an eye on your content’s performance based on key metrics like page views, click-through rates and conversion rates, so you can continually optimise your content strategy. If a specific topic or format has gained a lot of traffic in the past, it’s likely that you can repeat that strategy from time to time to attract new customers.
Constantly improve where necessary: Accurate, up-to-date content is always more valuable to customers. Continually audit and update your content on a regular basis to make sure it reflects the latest customer preferences, industry trends and keywords.
Integrating social media into your B2C SEO
Social media plays a very prominent role in B2C SEO and overall brand presence online. Most B2C brands regularly post content on multiple social media channels. Influencer marketing is also an increasingly popular option for attracting large audiences to your brand.
As with any SEO or content-related topic, you’ll want to start by knowing your audience. Which channels are most likely to appeal to them? Understand your market’s demographics and media preferences and plan your social media strategy accordingly.
Analysing the competitors’ strategies
As mentioned above, your competitors’ content can be a goldmine of inspiration and ideas to help expand your own content strategy. Closely monitor what your competitors are posting on social media and which topics and formats are earning the most engagement.
You can also use SEO tools like SEMrush and Similarweb to analyse your competitors’ web content in detail. This enables you to uncover their keyword focus, so you can compete with them head on or choose better keywords.
Tips for improving your conversion rate with B2C SEO
At the end of the day, we all want our SEO content to help build our brands by attracting more sales. While content marketing is usually not as directly sales-driven as advertising, you can still rely on it to support customers in their decision-making processes. Effective SEO has been shown to increase conversion by 2.4% on average across all industries, and, in many cases, SEO content can be sales-focused. Here are some examples of SEO and content marketing techniques that drive sales:
- Promoting special offers or sales: Use your social media channels and Google My Business profile to promote special limited-time offers and sales.
- Using internal links to offer related products: Always include a “Customers also bought…” or similar section for recommending alternative or additional products based on a customer’s search.
- Make mobile shoppers feel at home: 60% of e-commerce sales now take place on a mobile device, so ensure that your website’s content is fully optimised for easy, user-friendly navigation on smartphones.
Grow your business with the right B2C SEO approach
As online search preferences and technologies continue to evolve, it’s more important than ever for marketers to stay on top of the latest B2C SEO trends and best practices.
By implementing the tactics above, you’ll not only improve your search rankings but attract new business and build lasting connections with your target audiences. Just remember, the key to success is always to offer valuable, relevant and engaging content that adds value for your customers.
If you or your team needs any assistance regarding SEO, please don’t hesitate to contact our content consultants, we are here to help!
FAQ
Why is SEO important for B2C companies?
SEO enhances your online visibility, so you’re able to attract more customers to your brand. It also builds trust by showing that your brand is professional and reputable. All of these factors help support consumers in their decision-making process, which drives sales for your brand.
What are the popular SEO strategies for B2C companies?
The top SEO strategies for B2C brands are high-quality content creation, keyword optimisation, backlink building, omnichannel content marketing, social media marketing and local SEO.
How can I improve my content’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERP)?
Apply best practices for on-page and off-page optimisation, ensure your content is helpful and user-focused, and continually monitor and optimise your strategies.
What is the difference between B2B SEO and B2C SEO?
What are the differences between B2B SEO and B2C SEO? B2B SEO targets businesses and professionals, focusing on industry-related keywords and longer sales cycles. B2C SEO targets consumers and emphasises user intent, emotions and quicker conversions.
