Optimized Content a Struggle for B2B Websites

MarketingSherpa promotes a Chart of the Week every Tuesday. Today they posted an interesting chart on digital marketing agencies and consultants perspective on how well B2B websites are managed. The brief evaluation of this data (no info on how many people were polled or for what size websites/companies) signals that SEO is an area that company’s are not managing so well e.g not optimizing content for search engines.

In my recent experience as a digital marketing consultant and project manager working with companies such as Microsoft, often little effort or thought would be given to content as it relates to SEO. It was always a struggle, and not just for Microsoft, but for most companies to understand the importance of content in relation to SEO. Typically so much time and money is spent on messaging frameworks in relation to the brand and the customer, that by the time the SEO team has input, the content is pretty much hard wired with little or no time or dollars left for another review cycle. (Besides, everyone is exhausted at this point and just glad to have the framework approved.)

Therefore, a simple solution is to have an SEO strategy conversation while the messaging is being developed. And, communicate to the sponsors and stakeholders that the messaging/content should be reviewed frequently based on data gathered from SEO and web analytics reports.