Christian Klepp  00:00

Many companies struggle with generating the right traffic to their website. They obsess over quantity rather than quality. The key lies in understanding your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), what they’re looking for and developing the right content to answer their questions. So how can B2B companies start getting their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) right and increase their web traffic from scratch. Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in the Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp. Today, I’ll be talking to Nicholle Stacey, who will be answering this question. She’s the Chief Marketing Officer at altitude B2B who helps B2B companies to improve their SEO. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B marketers mission is. 

Christian Klepp  00:41

And off we go. Nicholle Stacey, welcome to the show. 

Nicholle Stacey  00:50

Thank you. 

Christian Klepp  00:51

Great to have you on the show, and it’s great to chat with a fellow Canadian and a fellow Torontonian. I’m just gonna try not to talk about the traffic and the road works, and then we’ll be fine. Like, fantastic. So, um, if it’s all the same to you, let’s just jump right in, because I think this is a topic that man, B2B companies and their marketing teams should be paying attention to this stuff, if they’re not already, right? 

Nicholle Stacey  01:19

Yes. 

Christian Klepp  01:20

So I’m gonna say that you’re on a mission to help B2B companies elevate their online presence with SEO and Expert blog content. For this conversation, I would like to focus on the following topic, which is how B2B companies can increase web traffic from scratch. And that sounds like a pretty big deal, and it probably is, to a certain extent, right? But that’s why we’re here, right? Where we’re here to, like, break it all down, and we’re here to tell people that it’s not impossible, but it does require work. So let’s kick off the conversation with two questions, all right, and I’m happy to repeat them. So the first question is, what is it about SEO that you wish more B2B companies understood? And the second question is, where do you see B2B companies and their marketing teams struggle regarding the above?

Nicholle Stacey  02:11

So for B2B SEO to make some progress on their own, first and foremost, I would say, take an audit, just see where your website’s performing. Look at your metrics. What is your traffic like? What type of traffic are you getting? Are you resonating with your ideal client profile? If not? Look at the audit, look at the technical fixes and look at your content. Are you answering questions that your ideal client might be asking into search engines, you really want to make sure that you’re positioning yourself in a manner where you’re that response and on the flip side, you want to address all of those technical issues and make sure that your domain health is really elevated so that Google sees you as trustworthy, credible, and is willing to show you as a search result to those users. And then I’m going to ask you to remind me the second question, please.

Christian Klepp  03:11

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. Where do you see a lot of B2B marketing teams struggle regarding SEO.

Nicholle Stacey  03:19

The biggest struggle is they don’t understand, or fully comprehend, the power that SEO has in regard to their marketing and investment in marketing. I’ve seen time and time again with B2B businesses where they don’t take digital marketing seriously. In this day and age. It’s so fundamental, and it’s so important, because if you’re not doing that, you’re missing a big portion of the market share, depending on the industry that you’re in. If you can get even, you know, 1% more market share, that’s huge return on investment that you’ll get just from SEO. So it’s super important. And you know, they just need to realize that it’s a true value.

Christian Klepp  04:05

From a marketers point of view. All the things that you’ve said make total sense. But as we all know, there are business owners out there, or, if it’s a larger organization, there are people in the senior management that let us say they don’t quite understand what SEO is. And B, I think something that’s even more dangerous is out of sight, out of mind. If I don’t know about it, then it means it’s not that important. And that couldn’t be any further from the truth, right? 

Christian Klepp  04:35

So you’ve probably run into the situation before, so that’s what I’m going to ask you. But how do you get buy in from those types of folks to invest in SEO?

Nicholle Stacey  04:42

Yeah. 

Nicholle Stacey  04:46

Yeah, it’s so true. Like, out of sight, out of mind, you just pretend it’s not there, and you don’t address it. But the reality is, like I said, like, if you look at specific industries, you can look at the data. And I always say numbers don’t lie. Okay, I have my own data from my own clientele that I’ve worked with as well, where you really see the value in investing in SEO. So for people who are business owners, who, you know, they may not understand, or they’re just like, You know what, I really don’t need this, I would say, Well, who doesn’t want more market share. Who doesn’t want to connect with more clients? Is that what you’re telling me? Because if that’s the case, then Are you really serious about doing business? And if you do want that, then SEO is the way to go. And again, the numbers don’t lie.

Christian Klepp  05:35

Absolutely, absolutely. I’m gonna segue to the next question, or move us on to the next question rather, which is about like key pitfalls to avoid. And so again, we’re on the topic of building up your web traffic from scratch. So one of these key pitfalls that B2B marketers should avoid, and what should they be doing instead?

Nicholle Stacey  05:56

Yeah, I would say just don’t get overwhelmed. Take it one thing at a time. With SEO, there’s a lot of technical jargon that gets thrown around, and I always like to educate my clients on like what specific things mean and why they’re important and why we need to address that. So when you’re running an audit and you’re getting overwhelmed. Just really