B2B Marketers Must Focus on Usability and Content, Not Link Building
B2B marketers who were taken by surprise by the punishment that Google’s Penguin 2.0 algorithm update got what they deserved, and those who are continuing in their quest of building spammy links need to wake up and smell the proverbial coffee.
“I’ve been working in the B2B space for years now, and I’ve learned over the last few years that building links should not even be among your top priorities,” writes Harrison Jones in a post for Search Engine Land. Jones, a Chicago-based “SEM geek,” and SEO and Web analyst at The Mx Group, adds that while link building is still important, it gets too much emphasis, especially as Google is clearly turning in a new direction.
The solution is for B2B marketers to focus on building high-quality websites with superior usability and content. Jones breaks down suggested tactics into short-term and long-term strategies. The former includes looking at competitor’s backlinks, getting links from a parent company, building blog relationships and using relevant directories; the latter includes creating linkable assets (e.g., white papers, videos, webinars), starting a blog and building a “link-building machine.”
In a recent roundup, we heard from a number of experts that content is a key part of overcoming difficulties in generating B2B leads
