SEO for B2C Marketing
Learn about the technical solutions to grow your organic search channel and increase qualified lead generation
The Importance of SEO for B2C Businesses
Because of advances in digital technology in recent decades, there has been a significant shift in B2C marketing strategy from physical retail to e-commerce. Marketing messages can be channeled through search engine optimization (SEO) now. Customers are spending most of their time on the internet, which means search engines are the starting and ending point for most buyer’s journeys.
Given the number of sites, the amount of content, and the ubiquity of advertisements, the biggest challenge in B2C marketing these days is reaching and engaging your customers. Attention is the asset. Your target audiences are doing everything they can to break through the noise and distraction to find reliable sources of good information that solve their problems faster and more effectively.
SEO is partly built on comprehensive market research and the opportunity to get to know the search intent of your customers based on data from the keywords they utilize and the types of content they prefer to consume. This means you can engage with them at the right time with perfectly tailored, personalized messages that serve to educate, generate further demand for your brand, and ultimate yield conversions for your line of products and services.
Structured Data Markup Opportunities
Structured data is the preferred language of communication between internet content and Google’s Search Bots. When websites markup their content with this machine-to-machine learning language, Google rewards this action with a new organic search experience called rich results which embed features like FAQs, How-Tos, Ratings, and Reviews directly in the search results alongside the standard blue link. There are currently over 30 rich result types and almost all of them are applicable and valuable to B2C businesses.
Layering your website content with structured data markup and qualifying for rich results is one of the best ways to stand out from the competition in search results. These enhanced features help make your business the preferred option for customers to shop because you are effectively satisfying their queries faster and accomplishing more of the research and purchasing phases of their customer journeys directly on the results page.
Think about the value of showing smarter content like a list of frequently asked questions or product pricing and availability embedded below the blue link. Think of the benefit of capitalizing on user-generated content that does the marketing for you like ratings and reviews positioned similarly on the search results page. These enhancements significantly distinguish your results from other links that customers are scrolling through, generate more impressions, and encourage more click-throughs to your site.
B2C Marketing SEO Statistics
Companies Using Huckabuy's B2C Marketing Solution
Here are just a few of the companies that are growing their organic search channels with our software products and services.
B2C Marketing Example
Invited Home is a vacation rental company focusing on winter getaway destinations in the mountain west. They are a great example of a company leveraging SEO to improve their marketing.
When you visit the Invited Home website, one of the elements that really stands out is their header and dropdown navigation. It is very descriptive, robust, and intuitive to follow. It reflects the terminology their customers use when making searches.
If you hover over the section on Vail, as shown in the screenshot, you can view vacation homes for rent organized by neighborhood, as well as a long list of things to do in town during your stay.
Their team has done an excellent job mapping out this element of the site and building content that generates demand from their target market.
They have also done an excellent job targeting and claiming high search volume, featured snippet-applicable keywords and phrases their target market is using in search. As a result, for searches like “weekend in Lake Tahoe”, “Park City day trips”, and “vrbo vs Airbnb” they have captured position zero and positioned themselves prominently at the top of the funnel for these winter vacation-related topics.
They have also taken important steps to align with Google’s most important technical SEO initiatives. For example, they have leveraged structured data markup on property level content to qualify for rich results like ratings and reviews that help drive click engagement and conversions.
The E-Commerce Case for Structured Data Markup
Marking up content with structured data is one of the “low-hanging fruit” SEO tactics every e-commerce business should adopt. Structured data qualifies your content for rich results which eliminate friction in the customer journey and significantly distinguish your organic listings from the competition. This is critical in e-commerce settings where most shoppers have visual preferences and websites need to display as much imagery and interactive content as possible in the search results to increase the quantity and quality of traffic to their pages. Rich results help improve business credibility, set up user expectations, clearly identify the remaining content on the website, and resolve various questions and pain points in the buying process faster than ever before.
Shown below are excerpts of a test of Invited Home’s Property Management page using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool and the associated markup types that have qualified for rich results in search.
Invited Home indicates to Google the customer reviews that are present on their property management page.
Invited Home tells Google everything it needs to know about the property management service it offers.
E-Commerce schema is a specific class of structured data markup that informs Search Bots about all the important e-commerce-related details on a webpage and qualifies that content for rich results in search, which give shoppers the ability to research, rate, compare, and even purchase products and services directly on the results page. It is a serious competitive advantage for your business. Think about. If a customer is scanning the search results page and sees your blue link enhanced by ratings, reviews, product information, and pricing while the following link for your competitor is generic, which one are they more likely to click-in to?
E-Commerce schema encompasses a number of different structured data markup types including product, ratings, reviews, pricing, availability, logo, business name, address, and description among other elements. You want to be exhaustive in accounting for all of this information and including it in your markup to secure Google’s understanding of your website and to qualify for as many applicable rich results as possible as shown below.
Applicable Markup Types
- Product markup. Markup as much of your product content as possible to show information like dimensions, size, color, photos, and other applicable elements directly on the search results page.
- Ratings and Review markup. Selling a product without reviews and ratings online is difficult. Incorporating ratings and reviews in the search results signals quality and a good reputation.
- Pricing markup. Most customers are comparison shoppers determining what they want at the best possible price point. Prominently displaying this information in the search results demonstrates good faith and satisfies related queries faster.
- Video markup. Not everyone likes to read. That’s why it’s important to have videos showing tutorials, product or service demonstrations, and explainers directly on the search results page.
- FAQ markup. Having answers to the questions of your target audience readily available on the search results page raises your topical authority and increases qualified traffic to your website.
- Local Knowledge Panel Features. Elements like phone number, hours, address, maps, reservations, ordering, and photos of the business can be listed directly on the search results page. In today’s fast-paced world, displaying all of that information on the search results page offers instant visibility to your brand and obscures ads that would otherwise populate on the right-hand side of the page.
Frequently Asked Questions
A: The strategies and tactics businesses use to promote products and services to individual people. One of the most important elements of a B2C marketing strategy is the use of search engine optimization (SEO) to reach, communicate with, and convert your target audience into customers.
A: In B2C marketing, there are fewer decision-makers involved, the sales cycle is typically much shorter if not spontaneous, the products and services tend to be less expensive, and customers are often seeking solutions to immediate needs. Overall, there is a smaller window to influence consumer behavior.
