While SEO is definitely important for all kinds of businesses and especially B2B companies, there are several things that make SEO for tech companies unique.
First, in the tech market, most if not all your competitors have strong online presence, and they might have done their SEO homework earlier (and better) than you. Second, the tech industry audience is also relatively unique in their technicalities. As a result, most of the tech industry professionals are looking for contents that are highly specialized and complex with a unique vocabulary.
So, SEO implementation for tech companies will need unique approaches, and in this guide, we will share several tips to help you get started on the right track.
Without further ado, let us begin.
1.Understanding Your Audience And Keywords
As with SEO for other industries, knowing your audience in the form of buyer persona is essential. You will need to understand their behavior, as well as what they are actually searching for.
In relation to SEO, the main purpose here is to understand the needs of your audience, so that you can tailor your content to answer those needs.
As mentioned above, generally the tech audience is looking for information that are detailed, specific, and highly technical.
Build a keyword list based on what you’ve learned about your audience. Keyword research can make or break the whole SEO strategy for your business, so do your homework, use all the available tools, and do this step as well as possible.
A huge part of keyword research is competitive analysis (link to previous guide), as you will need to always keep tabs on what your competitors are doing.
2. Develop Your Contents
Since as mentioned, the general audience of the tech market demands unique, highly technical content, you will need a dedicated marketer or content writer with solid experience with tech industry, tech companies, and /or the SAAS industry.Another option is to outsource to on SEO agency with those experiences.
It is always wise to plan an editorial calendar up front for at least 3 months. If you can, develop a 12-month editorial calendar covering topics based on your keyword research.
Regularly producing contents have many benefits, both inside and outside of the SEO spectrum. First, it does send signals to Google that your website is active, while also slowly building authority and relevancy of your site. Contents are also one of your biggest promotional assets, and can effectively increase conversion.
Publish technical and informative articles as much as you can, but you can also publish ‘regular’ posts such as:
- current trends in the industry
- statistical articles
- ‘behind-the-scenes’ posts, such as thoughts pieces of your team members or executives
- analysis of current events in your industry
Content marketing doesn’t stop with developing and publishing your content. You will also need to promote your contents actively(link to Content Promotion guide) and leverage them to increase their value to your business.
3. Optimizing Technical Factors
Google do take your site’s load speed and the overall user experience into account for your ranking.
The first thing you should focus on is improving the load speed, as it will directly impact the bounce rate, a major ranking signal.Visitors nowadays(probably including you and me) are very demanding regarding load speed, and on average will expect just three seconds of load time before they’ll move on.
Thanks to Google RankBrain (link to previous article), Google is now getting smarter in detecting this bounce rate, and can downgrade your rank when it is too high. Of course, other factors can determine bounce rate and dwell time, such as your content quality and overall user experience.
So, run SEO and site performance tests regularly, and see where improvements can be made. There are a lot of tools available to help you with this, but Google’s free tool is a good place to start.
Mobile-friendly responsive design is also a must nowadays, another major ranking signal.Use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test Tool to test your site.
There are other technical areas that can improve your SEO progress such as Metadata, HTML tags and length, and your overall site architecture. This guide by DMN3 will help you get started.
4. Schema Markup (Structured Data)
Structured data implementation is often downplayed by many SEO practitioners, but yet it is a very effective way to boost both your ranking and traffic.
Considering the tech industry is highly competitive, with just about all of your competitors have strong online presence and SEO capabilities, structured data might just be the way to get ahead. Considering less than 20% of SEO marketers are implementing structured data optimization, you are already ahead of the pack by doing this.
So, what is structured data and Schema markup? Schema.org is a collaboration between the four biggest search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Yandex, which is basically a property or attribute microdata that allows the search engines to parse the information on your website better.
Think of this as giving name tags to your site, so that Google will recognize it better. There are many benefits from implementing structured data besides more relevance and authority: you can get rich search results which is absolutely beneficial in getting more traffic.
Discussing structured data implementation here won’t give it much justice, as it is a pretty broad area by itself. Refer to our previous guide on structured data implementation for SEO here. (link)
- Go Local
Local SEO used to be a thing exclusive to brick-and-mortar businesses, but with more than 20% of Google searches are now tied to location, we can no longer neglect this huge potential market.
At the very least, optimize your site in areas which your company has offices or areas where you have a lot of customers. Check out our previous guide to local SEO to help you get started (link)
- Off-Site Seo
Beyond optimizing what’s on your site, there is another aspect of SEO, which is building your off-site relevancy and credibility.
In general, the principle of off-site SEO is getting your contents out there in front of a bigger audience. This way, you get two valuable assets in the form of reputation/authority and backlinks.
Make connections with other authority sites, journalists, and influencers in your industry. You can try to contribute to industry publications and platforms like Medium or LinkedIn Pulse while linking back to your site.
Utilizing your social media channels is also a good way to build authority, although there are several principles you should consider to ensure the best social media practices:
Post With a Purpose, and Be Informative
People will be annoyed if you are always talking about your products or services all the time. Instead, encourage conversations, share contents that are not from you, but still belong in your industry. Often times, some of them will return the favor and give you that valuable backlink.
Use Hashtags Properly
Don’t just use random hashtag, but instead research for the best hashtags in your industry, and use them. Also, don’t use too many hashtags in one post, just two at a time is enough.
Use Proper Company Accounts
Seemingly obvious, but this is often neglected by many. Create proper accounts for your company, and always start your promotions using these official accounts.
7. Understand That SEO is A Long Term Process
SEO is a long game, and you should expect to invest at least 6 months before seeing any mentionable results, with 8-12 months being a more realistic timeframe.While this is true for any industry, arguably this is even truer in the tech industry, simply because of its highly competitive nature regarding SEO.
So, be patient and consistent while always monitoring your progress. Use all the available analytics tool, with the free and trusty Google Analytics being a really good place to start.
End Words
Implementing SEO for tech companies might be a more complicated process than most other industries. However, it is definitely doable with enough persistence and consistency. The keys are to always adhere to SEO best practices, doing your competitive analysis homework, and tracking your progress regularly.
Remember that content is your most valuable asset, not only for the sake of SEO but also to drive more traffic and conversion. Following the tips we have shared above is a good place to start improving your SEO.Check out our other guides on other specific tactics for SEO, and stay tuned for more guides in the very near future.
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