How To Optimize Your B2B Blog for Engagement

Every B2B technology company wants to show up at the top of the search results page for keywords and convert a ton of leads. With so much competition and content on the internet, best practices are more important than ever!

Here’s the TL;DR list of must-haves for your blog to increase organic traffic, engagement, and conversion rates:

1. Create and optimize blog post calls-to-action (CTAs).
2. Format and readability matters, so pay attention to your typeface and design.
3. Embed interactive widgets on your blog pages.
4. Enhance engagement with video.
5. Use exit intent pop-ups.
6. Implement a chatbot on key blog posts.
7. List related resources.
8. Make it easy to subscribe to your newsletter.

We recommend you implement these things today! Here’s why and how.

1. Create and optimize blog post calls-to-action (CTAs).

Any marketer understands the value of SEO, even in the most niche B2B companies. Optimizing for search ensures the content you create attracts the desired audience for your brand.

But what if your audience isn’t looking for a product and you’re optimizing for top-of-funnel keywords? These posts contain content about general pain points, how-to articles that are product-agnostic, and general education about related topics. Like an article on optimizing your blog for traffic and engagement (See what we did there?).

Top-of-funnel content by its very nature isn’t likely to convert into a demo request. However, it doesn’t hurt to extend offers beyond high quality content to keep the relationship going. One way to do this is by offering contextual CTAs.

No, we’re not talking about a call to action at the bottom of the article to contact Airfleet for an SEO assessment or even a CTA in the first of eight recommended best practices stealthily added by a clever copywriter.

Contextual offers, or as we like to call it “companion content” offers are a fantastic way to provide value and tempt visitors into exchanging information for value. 

For example, if your visitor lands on a blog post titled “The Definitive Checklist for GDPR Compliance,” the checklist should live in the article and you should create a CTA to “Download our checklist for free.” Even stronger offers could include a signup for monthly compliance updates or a free resource on implementing GDPR best practices in HubSpot. 

Your blog post should provide value. That value should be compelling enough to build trust and open the door to additional communication via companion content. Some examples of easy-to-implement companion content include:

1. The same article in a more consumable format (a PDF download or a checklist in a spreadsheet).
2. More comprehensive information about the same topic in a longer form download.
3. A related but different resource the visitor will appreciate.
4. Subscribing for future updates regarding a topic (which could be delivered via your standard newsletter, a dedicated emails series about the topic, or a dedicated newsletter subscription for that topic).
5. A usable template that supports the article.

Does this all sound interesting but you’re not sure where to start? We’ve got your back:

1. Open GA4 and filter the top 5 blog posts on your website today based on organic traffic.
2. Brainstorm companion content for each article (you can outsource this work to freelancers quite easily).
3. Design a CTA that breaks up the flow of your blog post. Make it look as if it’s something the visitor must click on, not just another text link or the standard CTAs you already have on your site.
4. Experiment or A/B test your offering and CTAs. Wait a few weeks and keep the test version that performs best.

2. Format and readability matters.

The fundamental qualities required for people to spend time on your blog are:

1. Big, readable font. So many blogs are using tiny fonts that are impossible to read without making your eyes scream. So increase your font size and don’t get too fancy with the typeface.
2. Break your blogs into smaller subtopics using clear headings and summaries. Make it easy for the audience to skim the page or jump to the relevant section to get what they need. Do the opposite of every recipe blog on the internet. There’s no place for forced consumption in B2B technology.
3. If you did #2 correctly, it’ll be easy for you to add a table of contents. We use an automated table of contents based on the H2 subheadings, but you can create a manual list with anchor tags in a few minutes.
4. Use short titles that can stand alone. The reader should understand what the article is about without a summary paragraph. Strong titles make readers and Google happy. For example, if you’re writing about optimizing a blog, the title shouldn’t be “Top Widgets.” A better title would be, “Widgets that improve blog post conversions.”
5. Clearly credit your author and why they are qualified to write about the topic. For example, if you’re writing about B2B technology websites and have launched hundreds of B2B technology websites, it’s not a flex! It’s facts. And it will help you strengthen E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust) signals which will make Google like your content even more.
6. Include CTAs.
7. Use images, diagrams, videos, animations, and anything else to break up a wall of text. It’s not easy to create proper imagery for abstract ideas. I really like Tim Urban’s blog because it’s full of streamlined (often hilarious) illustrations that simplify complex concepts.
8. Widgets that improve blog post conversions (you knew that was coming, right?). We think of these as any element that is interactive and provides the reader with a useful shortcut (like our table of contents that is generated by H2 subtopics and links to those sections).
9. Use spacing creatively! Reading a blog post should be educational but it doesn’t need to feel like you’re stuck reading Dr. Newman’s 20 page writeup about bovine digestive biomes. Break up the monotony with a TL;DR, a list, an illustrated callout… 

If you can dream up something that makes your blog easier to consume, use it.

3. Embed widgets that improve blog post conversions.

While most of the widgets listed here may not increase conversions, they will increase engagement. Google cares a lot about engagement, which helps your rankings and increases traffic. And if you’re layering on our seven other recommendations, you should be in a great position to increase conversions. 

Feedback Widget

Collecting feedback from your visitors about articles helps everyone involved. You can use the feedback to personalize their experience, improve your content efforts (for example, they call out your copywriter for being annoying instead of funny and you finally had the data you needed to get them to be more professional), and increase engagement signals with your articles. It also offers a potential next step for your readers that doesn’t come with the commitment of providing their personal information.

Feedback widgets don’t require a comment section. It can be as simple as a prompt, such as “Did you find this article helpful?”, with a “Yes” and “No” button to choose from beneath the prompt. 

You don’t need a database or form fill to make the button clicks useful. Create a tag that logs the click as a key event in GA4. You can then generate segments and reports based on those clicks.

If you want to get really fancy, you can add the following logic to present a next step for the reader:

1. If they click “Yes” the article was helpful, you can offer a related article or downloadable asset. 
2. If they click “No” the article was not helpful, either offer them a different resource or give them the option to provide feedback on what they expected but did not find.

Table or Comparison Widget

Tables are underrated.

Who doesn’t want a simple, side-by-side comparison when shopping for a product? This is one of many things Amazon actually gets right. I just want to see which product is better and why.

A table doesn’t need to be complicated. However, you can improve usability by offering filters, sort options, and offering other ways to interact with the data – particularly if the information is plentiful.

Tables – particularly product comparisons – are also a great opportunity to offer assistance to help the visitor find the right product via a chatbot or simple form fill.

Interactive Wizards

Imagine a blog post about your audience’s core pain point. For example: “How can I generate more conversions from my blog?”

Instead of creating a blog post like this one, wouldn’t it be better to get a short assessment to tailor the content to offer exactly what you’re looking to improve? For example: 

1. How many visitors do you get from organic traffic?
2. What are the main traffic sources besides organic?
3. What is your current conversion rate from organic traffic?
4. What is the engagement rate on your blog posts?
5. ….

After this simple wizard, you would immediately receive the best strategy to improve the kind of conversions you’re looking for after providing your email address. It’s a win-win!

And if we hadn’t been in such a rush, we would be able to put this idea into action instead of just writing about it. 💩

4. Enhance your blog with videos.

We’ve started using video content more, but not as much as we’d like. They are a great way to increase time spent on a page and it’s a fantastic piece of content that can be chopped up and used on social media. 

In fact, most of our content starts with an expert interview (in-house or otherwise) and our copywriter runs with it by getting an AI-generated transcription and creating a blog post or video resource with transcription. 

An even better way to do this would be editing the video into clips – particularly if the long form content isn’t easy to consume as a standalone. Make the snippets punchy and embed them in the relevant parts of the article.

The adage “Do as I say and not as I do” is resonating right now for some reason.

People have short attention spans (clearly you’re special and the exception). Adding videos to your blog post increases engagement and improves the odds of conversion. Keep in mind that a “conversion” doesn’t need to be defined as a form fill. It could be an ungated resource download, a free trial, or a chatbot interaction.

If you have excellent how-to videos, those are valuable! Consider adding a stopping point that prompts the viewer to enter their email to receive future how-to videos. We’ve seen this used to gate the rest of the video, but that is an annoying bait-and-switch tactic we can’t recommend. 

5. Use exit intent pop-ups.

I know what you’re thinking. “Isn’t it annoying to present a popup if someone stalls or moves to exit the page? Or perhaps you thought, “If my content is good, I don’t need the exit intent.” 

Wrong! On both counts!

If your visitor gets the information they need, take advantage of the goodwill you created. Ask them for something in return. It can be a subscription to your newsletter, a prompt to follow your social page, or, even better, an amazing offer in exchange for their email address.

Exit intent pop-ups that are orchestrated well (in terms of timing and offering) are appreciated by some visitors. Those who don’t appreciate it were headed for the exit anyway, right? 

6. Implement a chatbot on your blog post.

We’ve all seen chatbots on core website pages like home, solutions, about us, etc. Your chatbot should behave differently on your blog. 

A blog playbook should help your visitor to find additional resources, ask questions about their pain points, and identify which persona they are (A simple “what’s your role” should do the trick).

If we threw up a chat message to “learn more about our services!” it wouldn’t be nearly as effective as “Looking for more ways to convert your audience?”

If you have enough organized content, I would create a tailored playbook for your most visited articles to increase engagement and conversions on those posts. Use the same strategy we outlined in “creating a companion content” and create a companion chatbot offering related content or help. It’s also easier to receive an email when it’s asked mid-conversation in a chatbot than a CTA form at the bottom of the article.

A chatbot can help describe a relevant case study, provide additional information about the topic, or send companion content via email. Since you got the conversational ball rolling, you could ask for more information or offer “Would you like to talk with one of our conversion rate optimization experts? It’s free.”

7. Make sure to list related resources

This tip is a tricky one to implement. If you have a lot of content out, presenting the latest content isn’t going to cut it. Even presenting the latest resource in the same category won’t get you an A+.

Related content should be reviewed and updated on a monthly basis. You should check your engagement rates and choose the blog posts that were actually read AND are related to the specific article based on persona, use case, or topic. Then manually pick your favorites.

If this sounds like too much work, there are great platforms that do this for you, such as Trendemon. Which will be happy to implement for you. Click here to read more about Trendemon.

At Airfleet we’re developing a mechanism to automate related resources based on GA4 analytics and key events. This will only work for blogs that attract enough visitors to create a statistically meaningful trend in consumption and conversions to draw from.

8. Make it easy to subscribe to your newsletter.

If your content is amazing, don’t assume your readers will convert through a different CTA. Offer them a simple email subscription form (and if you don’t have a newsletter, start now).

Unfortunately, we rarely get newsletter subscribers via organic traffic (it’s giving “the cobbler’s children have no shoes”). But that doesn’t mean you can’t and we obviously see enough value to keep trying. If you are an authority in your field and can add a lot of value to your readers, you have a fantastic edge. Our most common newsletter signup source is LinkedIn.

To get people to register to your newsletter, show them examples and offer a ton of value.

So what’s next?

Want a 30-minute free session with conversion rate optimization experts? Alistair Fairweather or Elad Hefetz (that’s me!) will meet with your team to review your blog and website to offer optimization tactics to implement immediately. 

If you don’t want to speak with us (for free), we’re not offended. Just follow the steps in this article and I guarantee you’ll see a positive change in traffic, engagement, and conversions.