If you have experience positioning eBooks in google for online sales (B2C), it does not necessarily make you an expert in positioning hydraulic presses in search of qualified leads that will require a long and dedicated sales process (B2B). Each sector is different, B2B is not the same as B2C, and Hydraulic Presses are not the same as eBooks. Fortunately, over the years, EC Center has become quite an expert in many different sectors, and when evaluating the potential SEO benefits for a new customer, we start off with some very simple questions to know which area of Google we will be dealing with.
Before we even begin Sectorial SEO, we need to define our SEO strategy. We split our strategies into B2B, B2C, and Wiki. Based on our customers' business requirements, the keywords they are interested in positioning for, and the feedback we get from the Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP), we help guide the customer to the best strategy to achieve their end goal.
Many of our customers insist that the end goal, the maximum KPI is to position a certain keyword or keyphrase on the first page of google. And we have helped many customers achieve this, but in reality, what every customer REALLY wants is financial success, and having a "preconceived" golden keyword on the first page of Google does not guarantee contacts and leads. This "keyword on the first page" obsession comes from SEM (Search Engine Marketing), and many of our customers apply SEM logic to SEO which is an error.
Remember:
- In SEM: YOU TELL GOOGLE the keywords you want to have on the First Page (because you are paying)
- In SEO: GOOGLE TELLS YOU the keywords that your web can potentially have on the first page
So to define the SEO strategy for a customer, we listen to the CUSTOMER who can give us a long list of potential keywords, and
MOST IMPORTANTLY, we also listen to GOOGLE by analyzing the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Wiki SEO Strategy
If the keywords the customer provides return many "informative" results such as Wikipedia or "what is xxx?" or help guides or dictionaries, you know you are in the WIKI space. EC Center generally does NOT generate webs in this space as ALL our customers are in the business of making money (B2B and B2C). By virtue of the fact that you see Wikipedia and dictionaries in the results for your preferred search term, you can safely assume that a very high percentage of the people that are seeing your google entry ("impressions") and that are clicking on your google entry ("clicks") are on a didactic voyage, learning more about the topic related to your keyword but not necessarily interested in paying money for your products or services. So you will invest a lot of effort for a lot of impressions and clicks, which will probably not result in monetary gain.
A good example of this would be the keyword "
SEO". This web, the EC Center web, is actually using a Wiki SEO Strategy, and it is one of the very few EC Center webs that employ this strategy. This web aims to disseminate information about SEO (Search Engine Optimization and Search Experience Optimization). We also hope you decide to work with us and we can share a fruitful SEO journey together, but if all we achieve is to pique your interest in SEO and help you understand that it is NOT the same as SEM, that it is another science completely, then we have met our objective.
B2C SEO Strategy
If your preferred search terms return Amazon, Aliexpress, Shopify stores, and local shopping directories in your search results, then you know you are in the B2C space. If you aim to sell products online to the end user, then this is your correct strategy. But if you are a manufacturer and your aim is to sell in large quantities (MOQ), then you may need to adjust your target keywords. "Solar Panels" will put you in the B2C space, whereas "Solar Panel Manufacturers" will immediately put you in the B2B space.
If B2C is your strategy, then pay attention to where Amazon is. Amazon is a very powerful competitor, and it is technically excellent as a platform. It has a huge quantity of relevant pages and is a trusted domain, so for short-tailed keywords, you will need quantity and quality. Our strategy is to try and surpass Amazon, which is usually easier when there are already other B2C stores (.com shops) above the Amazon listing. In this case, we choose the weakest of the .com stores and try to surpass it.
B2C is very competitive, and you may not always beat amazon and get to page 1 for short-tailed keywords but don't worry. If the target keywords look too competitive, we drill down a little more until we find perhaps juicier and better-performing SEO keywords and where we can realistically aim for a first-page listing.
B2B SEO Strategy
If your ideal search terms return Alibaba, Made in China or Indiamart, you know you are in the B2B space. This space is easy to find if you add the word "manufacturer" or "in China" to the end of your query. In 2015, the B2B area of google was dominated by Alibaba, followed by Made in China. Over the years, Alibaba has stagnated, and Made in China made advances.
In 2018-2019 Made in China would consistently rank higher than Alibaba, and around this time, Indiamart became very prevalent. By 2020, with the appearance of DirectIndustry, the ranking order was invariable between DI and Indiamart, followed by an ever-dropping Made in China, and finally, Alibaba. Alibaba and Made In China gave India Mart and Direct Industry their opportunity by remaining stagnated for the last 5-10 years.
Recently Direct Industry seems to be faltering, but Indiamart is consistently in the top positions.
Our B2B strategy is to look for Alibaba (as the weakest member of the herd), knowing we can always compete with and usually beat it. However, this does not guarantee a page one listing, as Alibaba is rarely on page 1 for competitive SEO keywords. In those cases, we must aim higher than Alibaba and try to identify a "weak" independent website above Alibaba to try and surpass.
The advantage of Alibaba is the enormous quantity of pages it contains and it's longevity in Google as a trusted domain. Alibaba is hard to beat on some competitive keywords if your B2B website cannot compete on quantity, but we should always exceed Alibaba in quality.
Apply Sectorial SEO to your Strategy
So we have a strategy and a list of the customer's "preferred" keywords, which we have adapted to the strategy we have chosen (B2B, B2C, Wiki). Now we need to start drilling down into the sector of the customer and identify the competitors, identify the weak competitors and identify what our initial key phrases (keywords) will be. In SEM, customers tend to list 100's of keywords. In SEO, we keep it to 3-4 key phrases. That is what will dictate the initial direction of the web and the SEO strategy.
Using Sectorial SEO, we now start to build up a huge amount of keyword-rich content around those initial money phrases knowing that over the coming months, Google will start to tell us what keywords he likes and what keywords he thinks we should be optimizing for.
In SEO, we cannot TELL Google the keywords we want. We can only plant the seeds and wait and see which ones Google chooses to nurture. By using Sectorial SEO, we are guaranteed that the seeds we sow, and the keywords we use, are of the correct type. If we sell apples but sow some potatoes by mistake, getting to page one for potatoes is useless. Sectorial SEO means we only sow apple seeds, and we sow lots.
