Business to business (B2B) companies are different from business to customer (B2C) companies, so it makes sense that their marketing, advertising, website design, etc. will be different from B2C versions. Yet, themes are something that will be important for both types of companies.
Themes play an important roll in the organization and design of B2B websites, just like they do for B2C websites. A thematically relevant approach can make a difference with SEO, conversions, and more.
Read below to learn more about how to use themes for B2B branding and how focusing on themes can boost the rankings for virtually any website.
Diversity Of Sales For B2B Companies
Most of the time, B2C companies focus on one specific section of the market, with many of their customers looking for the same thing. B2B companies, on the other hand, often sell to a more diverse range of marketplaces.
With a B2C company, the focus is on selling one type of product that certain customers might need. A legal office, for example, will only be selling services in the legal marketplace. All of their customers are looking for legal assistance.
Retail stores will focus on their niche, with all of their customers looking for the type of products they sell.
B2B companies, on the other hand, often sell to other companies in a variety of different marketplaces. A company that sells accounting software, for instance, might sell to construction companies, law firms, medical companies, retail stores, and a lot more.
They don’t sell to one type of company, but to a wide variety who are focused on different needs. This is crucial to be aware of when designing a website and focusing on a theme for the overall website.
Deciding On A Theme For A B2B Website
The broad focus of a B2B website should be on their overall theme. An accounting software company, then, will focus on the overall theme of accounting on their website. This theme helps provide the basis of the organization of the website, helps the website rank higher through thematic relevance, and helps businesses know what to expect when they view the website.
The theme can be anything that the business focuses on, but other topics they cover should fall under the broad theme. Most companies will be able to find a base theme easily for their business and then can start thinking about narrowing the focus.
The goal here is to just think of a broad phrase or keyword that describes the business that can then be narrowed down to focus on the various components of the business and the marketplaces to which they cater.
Narrowing The Focus On Websites
The main theme will be the first level of the website, all descending levels will be subsequently narrower. In the next level, B2B companies can start focusing on each of the marketplaces they serve and start organizing the content accordingly.
This is the main architecture of the website, which helps organize the pages so that it’s easier to navigate. This structure also contributes to thematic relevancy.
Each of the marketplaces will have its own theme, all relevant to the broader theme of the company’s overall purpose. These themes all include relevant keywords, which range from broad keywords to more specific ones.
In other words, they include short-tail and long-tail phrases. The themes can be broken down for larger marketplaces to help narrow down the keywords further or to create more long-tail keywords relevant to the business.
How This Helps With SEO
Organizing the website in this way helps with optimization through thematic relevance. Thematic relevance is a way to create an overall broad theme with more specific themes on lower levels, all of which reinforce the main theme for the website.
This is done to help the main keywords rank higher, as it shows search engines that the whole website, and its addressing of many smaller themes, is focused on the broader theme.
This sends a signal that these carefully arranged pages are useful for any internet users who need information about the broader theme as well as more specific topics.
As the website is being created, the proper organization is accommodating for search engine algorithms and AI systems that crawl and rank content. In turn, this makes it easier to gain a higher place in the rankings, especially over content that is not as clearly organized.
Search engines are very responsive to thematic relevance, and they will rank websites higher when thematic relevance is in use. The proper organization can make a huge difference for companies wanting to rank higher for their overall theme and it can help them rank for the smaller, more specialized themes as well.
How Companies Might Organize Based On Thematic Relevance
An accounting software company starts to create their website. Using thematic relevance, their overall theme is accounting software. This is what they’d like to rank for and what the overall theme of their company is.
They will make accounting software and more general information about it the focus of the main page of the website. Next, the company will create pages for each of the marketplaces and how that software specifically applies to their unique needs.
For this example, that might be law firms, medical offices, retail stores, and more.
Each of the pages focusing on a specific marketplace will include keywords for that marketplace as well as for the types of capabilities that are most relevant to a marketplace or customer type. This keeps the pages relevant to the whole theme and helps keep them organized.
Each of these pages can then be split down further into different topics. A retail store’s page may have pages below it for different types of retail establishments that can use accounting software.
Each of these pages will connect back to the more general retail stores page and then back to the overall accounting software theme.
By doing this, the website is organized and intuitive to explore. It’s also more relevant to individual customer types. It’s easier for visitors to find the information they need, easier for search engines to determine what content is valuable to specific search terms.
Lastly, it’s easier for the website owner to keep it all organized and scaleable, so their website content can more easily accommodate growth and new markets served.
How All Of This Helps User Engagement And Conversion
Along with helping optimize the site and assisting with the overall organization of the website, focusing on the main theme fosters user engagement and conversion. In B2B markets, engaged visitors are far more likely to purchase the product or service, just as in a B2C marketplace. When the information is arranged through thematic relevance, it makes it easier for businesses to find what they need to know.
Someone shopping online, whether it’s a business owner or an individual, does not want to spend a ton of time searching for what they need across multiple pages. Instead, they want to find relevant and focused information that speaks to their sensibilities.
They’ll be able to get the details they need easily and put them in a context that resonates with their experience, which will encourage them to stay and follow a path to conversion—whether that be making a purchase, scheduling a consultation, or submitting a quote request.
Options To Help Create And Use Themes
Focusing on themes can seem like an easy way to organize the website and find keywords, but seeing its value and bringing it to fruition on your own website are two different things. It can be difficult to fully understand thematic relevance and how it applies to specific offerings and the marketplaces that will find those offerings most relevant.
For B2B businesses, it may be better to work with a professional service or agency to get help with this. There are SEO specialists and agencies that provide thematically relevant website development and content production.
These professionals will be able to help create an overall theme, determine marketplaces to focus on, and develop keywords and content for increasingly narrow themes to help organize and structure the website, and ultimately gain higher rankings.
Working with a professional will better ensure the website is organized appropriately, thereby fostering a stronger SEO strategy that is easy to scale and maintain. Additionally, professional assistance can help boost user engagement and conversions, leading to more sales and conversion.
This removes the time, pressure, and guesswork in learning how to implement all of this without professional assistance, and the cost of inevitably getting things wrong along the way.
If you’re working on creating a B2B website or your website needs to be redesigned due to lacking rankings, traffic, engagement, and sales, then implementing a thematically relevant content strategy can be an excellent solution. You’ll want to make sure the website is structured properly, so it accommodates search engines and visitors alike.
When this is done properly, the results are higher SEO rankings, a clearer path for customer conversion, and the ability to scale up to serve more marketplaces. For many B2B companies, it’s an investment that quickly justifies itself.
