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 take a moment to take a deep breath. It’s all good, it’s all okay, and take it one step at a time. And you know, don’t get overwhelmed by that.

Christian Klepp  06:31

Okay, okay. And what else should they be avoiding? Should they be avoiding the traffic trap, as they call it?

Nicholle Stacey  06:40

Yeah, you want to be avoiding the traffic trap like you want to make sure that your traffic is, you know, quality traffic over quantity. There are certain things that you can do to ensure that you’re getting real quality traffic. One of the things that comes to mind is always make sure that you’re using, for example, reCAPTCHA, which is just basically a plugin that you use on your site, where, when users fill out a contact form, you can segregate from, you know, bot intakes versus real human intakes. So simple things like that can be a good practice to avoid falling into, you know, false numbers, so to speak.

Christian Klepp  07:23

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, there’s this, there’s this obsession about, like, numbers, right? Like, okay, like, look how much traffic we have versus, or what you actually should be focusing on is the quality of that traffic. Like, are there quality leads there coming to the website? Right? 

Nicholle Stacey  07:39

Exactly. And that’s one thing too, that I would add, is before you even start implementing SEO like out of the gate, you should, as a bare minimum, be tracking these metrics from the get co just so you see where you’re at before you even address anything. So then you can look back at the metrics and see what’s really driving progress and getting you to where you’re looking to be. 

Christian Klepp  08:07

Yeah. No, absolutely, absolutely. 

Nicholle Stacey  08:09

Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  08:10

This next question is, while we can go down a really deep rabbit hole with this one, but let’s keep it down. Let’s keep it top level. Talk to us about what has changed in the world of SEO and why marketers should be paying attention to that.

Nicholle Stacey  08:23

A big hot topic right now in the world of marketing and SEO specifically, is, you know, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), or whatever acronym you want to use. It’s essentially just, you know, answer engine optimization or AI snippet overviews. The reason I encourage people to pay attention to this is there’s a lot of noise, and you need to, you know, break through the noise to understand what’s really going on here. I’ve done a lot of education and research on this myself, and at the bottom of it all, it’s essentially, SEO is not dead. That’s what everyone keeps saying. SEO is dead. It’s really not at the basis to rank for AEO, you still need to implement the foundational practices of SEO. You know, even Google’s own people, I think it was last month came out and said, you know, you don’t need to be doing all of these, you know, jumping through hoops to rank on AEO or have AI snippet overviews happen. You just really need to practice the foundations of SEO. 

Nicholle Stacey  09:34

The one thing I will say, though, is you do need to pivot how you’re practicing SEO. And an example of that is you can’t just, you know, write blogs how we were writing blogs before, or, you know, doing what I call a bad practice where you’re having AI write your blog. That’s a whole another a can of worms that I can get into. But you really wanna think of intent, so only user intent, but AI intent. So when you’re writing your blogs, you want to be answering questions that people are asking into search engines, but you also want to format and write your comment in a way where AI is more likely to reference your content as well. So looking at things in a simple way, such as how you structure the content it could be, you know, these are the top five things to look for when you’re searching for an SEO agency as an example. And having that structured of, you know, five points, and having the question answered or asked in the content, and then answering a very firm answer, like, this is the answer, and here’s the points as to why. That’s just going to better position you for those a answer engine optimization overviews, and also keep you in the game for SEO as well.

Christian Klepp  10:58

Absolutely, absolutely. How do you, how do you explain that what you’ve just mentioned, how do you explain that to business owners or the well, the senior management, if it’s like a bigger organization, what you’ve just mentioned about, like, how much AI has changed, and why it’s in their interest to adapt to these changes. Like, how would you go about explaining that?

Nicholle Stacey  11:24

Yeah, it’s a good question. Um, I again, I always like to look at the data like, I like to show you know, this is the fact. And the matter of fact is, yes, people are still do conducting searches on Google as an example, but people are also conducting searches and AI, so I would, you know, just share that data and education on here’s how people are conducting searches, and that is essentially the reason why we need to integrate the practice of, you know, making sure that we’re writing content for AEO and making sure that we’re also still practicing fundamental SEO and pivoting how we do SEO. So just having that conversation around that, and then I’m also a big analogy person too, so I like throwing in analogies that someone might relate to and understand. So that’s another way as well.

Christian Klepp  12:20

Yeah, I would almost say it’s, it’s kind of like you need to inject a little bit of, I don’t know if you want to call it FOMO (Fear of Missing Out ), but if they’re not buying into this whole like, we need to adapt, because SEO has evolved with AI, if they don’t buy into that, you could say something to the effect of, well, if you’re not doing it, I can guarantee you that your competitors are.

Christian Klepp  12:50

Okay. So, because we talked about this before, please provide examples of how B2B companies can increase web traffic from scratch. So specifically, what steps should they take, and what are the key components that need to be in that process?

Nicholle Stacey  13:00

Totally Yeah, definitely. 

Nicholle Stacey  13:05

Yeah, a few initial things that come to mind is always look at the technical aspect of your website. This is super important, because Google and other search engines want to make sure that they’re referring credible and trustworthy content to the users. So doing something as simple as conducting a website audit to look at where you stand from a technical standpoint, you want to find any gaps, any issues, and address those. 

Nicholle Stacey  13:34

The second thing you can do is look at who your ideal client profile is, really hone in on on what problem they’re trying to solve, what pain point they might have, and what words or phrases might they be typing into Google or or, you know, AI search engines to find a result for what they’re looking for. Really look into that, and you can run analysis too, on you know, how frequent those terms or words are typed in, and what’s the competition like for ranking and resonating with that amongst your competitors. When you find what I call the sweet spot of, you know, High search volume, low competition, you can start integrating content and keywords into your website that really resonates, and also just touching base, again, on really having a answer based content, where you’re answering and touching on topics that people are really interested in within your industry. By doing that, you’re more likely going to bring that organic traffic and that quality traffic of your ideal client profile to your website. 

Nicholle Stacey  14:44

Last but not least, I always say this is an easy one to overlook, but really look at the user navigation experience of your website. It’s one thing to get the traffic to your website. It’s another thing to keep it and have it engage on your website. I’ve seen use cases before where people did like a DIY SEO, which no hard feelings against that. I totally respect people who take on SEO themselves. They got traffic coming to their website, but they weren’t getting the conversions. And when I ran a deep look into this, what I was seeing is that their website was not performing well. Their navigation was really bad. It wasn’t clear how to get from a specific area on their website to another or how to contact or connect with the business owner. So by addressing that, we essentially closed the gap, so that the traffic that was coming eventually started converting into connections and business for them. So I would say those are the three things to look at.

Christian Klepp  15:54

Okay, fantastic, fantastic. Yeah, I’m totally with you on that one. We had a call earlier today with a client, and they’re going through the same challenges with their website, where it’s, you know, it’s difficult to navigate. And I, I can’t claim to have, like, created this phrase, but people have to burn calories to find information, right? Yeah. Like, scroll, scroll, scroll, click, click, click, click, and then sometimes the there were issues with the clicking and the actual, the value, the valuable information that those, those golden nuggets, as we like to call them, they were buried deep down and at the bottom of the page somewhere, so things of that nature, right? 

Nicholle Stacey  16:37

Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  16:38

Yeah. What? Would you say in terms of content, right? Like, because, you know, when we’re talking about SEO and we’re talking about website traffic, we’re also talking about, like, the quality of the content that’s on the website, from your own experience, and perhaps also based on the recommendations you would give to clients. What kind of content would you suggest they create that would help to increase this traffic. I suppose the immediate answer would be, it depends. But over to you.

Nicholle Stacey  17:07

Yeah, I again, it would all be industry relative, but at a high level, again, you really want to resonate with what questions is your ideal client asking? You also want to look into incorporating, you know, visual appealing things, whether it’s, you know, a dynamic graphic, really cool infographics, things like that, to really keep people engaged and keep their eyes moving along. But yeah, just really, when it comes down to it, it’s quality content. I always emphasize it’s quality over quantity, and you really want to resonate with the hot topics of your client profile.

Christian Klepp  17:54

Fantastic, but now I’m going to play the devil’s advocate, right? Because same quality content is almost like somebody on LinkedIn saying you’ve got to add value to your target audience. Define, define quality content like. Well, from your experience, what does quality content look like?

Nicholle Stacey  18:12

Yeah, quality content is really well researched, references, other data points, shows, the homework, so to speak, it’s really well structured. And again, it all comes back to touching on those topics that the ideal client profile is looking for, like, what questions are they asking? What information are they looking for? So really taking the time to to have your your tone of voice, have your, you know, branding in it, including those data points like I mentioned, just really putting that work towards having a well rounded, detailed piece of content go out that is quality to me, versus on the quantity side, just trying to pump, you know, blogs out once a week, or however frequent, just for the sake of saying that you’ve done it, and for trying to get more traffic again, like I’ve seen it with my clients, where it’s we focus on quality, and you really see the traffic come from that.

Christian Klepp  19:21

Fantastic, fantastic. Okay, so we get to the point in the conversation where we’re talking about actionable tips, and Nicholle, you’ve given us quite a handful already. 

Nicholle Stacey  19:30

Yes. 

Christian Klepp  19:31

Let’s just assume. Let’s assume there’s somebody out there that’s listening to this interview when it comes out, and that person is either an owner of a B2B Company, or the marketing team of SaaS company, and you want them to take action on what you’ve recommended, like right now, not in 12 months, not in six months, like right now. So what are the three? It’s. Almost like summarizing or recapping what you’ve been saying in the past couple of minutes. But what are like, three to five things that you would recommend they do right now to, like, start increasing the web traffic from scratch.

Nicholle Stacey  20:13

Again, like I would say, point one, look at where you’re at right now. Make sure you’re tracking metrics. If you’re not a good, you know, freebie to use that I always recommend is, you know, use Google Search Console. Use Google Analytics. Sync that up to your website so you have that data. You know, really identify who your ideal client profile is and what your goals are with your website. Once you have that, then you can look at the technical side of the website. Build that domain authority, domain trust by addressing technical issues so that Google is more likely to show you as a search engine resolve. And then just look at the user navigation experience. So once we get that traffic to the website you want to, again, make sure that users are staying engaged on your website. They know where to go to go back to a specific page. They know where to go to connect with you. And then again, that quality content, I would say those are my well rounded considerations to action right away to really make some great progress. And again, like SEO, it does take time, so you want to make sure that you’re committed and you’re consistent with what you do, and you really watch those metrics to see, you know, what is driving traffic at the end of the day, is there a specific blog that was on a specific topic that really resonated. Perhaps we can have a part two or a sub blog of that blog to continue on that topic.

Christian Klepp  21:53

Yeah, like a series, right? 

Nicholle Stacey  21:54

Exactly, yeah. 

Christian Klepp  21:55

Yeah, yeah, that the blog article doesn’t end, that the content doesn’t end with that specific article, that it has a bit more longevity, right? That you can chop it. 

Nicholle Stacey  22:07

Exactly, yeah, yeah. 

Christian Klepp  22:08

Okay, fantastic, fantastic. I’m going to go back to something that you said, and I want to, I want to, like, expand it and then massage that a little bit, if you will, because on the question of domain authority. A lot of people have heard about it. Some people might even know what it is. 

Nicholle Stacey  22:26

Yes. 

Christian Klepp  22:28

And I would hazard a guess that it’s pretty important to know. All right, so two prong question, number one is, for the benefit of the audience that doesn’t know what it is, please explain what domain authority is. And number two is, how can a company, if they’re already working on increasing their web traffic, how can they take some small steps to improving their domain authority? Because, again, from my understanding, is that takes time as well.

Nicholle Stacey  22:57

Yes, so one what is domain authority. It’s essentially a score or metric that Google and other search engines use to look at your overall trustworthiness, so to speak. So it’s a graded score based on different aspects of your website. So things that Google and other search engines look at to give this domain authority score, is they’re looking at your content, are you relevant? Your credibility, are you trustworthy? And they’re looking at things like your backlink profile as well, like who is your website associated with? Are you associated with well known websites or blogs? Are they referring to you? It’s kind of like, I always like to say. It’s almost like a street cred, like, oh so and so knows you. Okay, I trust you. It’s kind of like that. So at a super high level, that’s basically what domain authority is. 

Nicholle Stacey  24:03

How you can improve your domain authority is looking at, you know, again, what kind of content are you writing? Is it credible? Is it trustworthy? That’s where you know, referencing data points and linking to data points and things like that is super helpful looking at websites that you refer to and websites that refer to you. So conducting a link audit in the event that you have links that are referring to you that are quote, unquote toxic, meaning they have very poor domain score, they’re essentially bringing you down. And you want to make sure that you address that and let Google know, like, hey, we don’t know these people. We actually have no association with them, and get rid of that. And then on the flip side, you want to conduct research and reach out to find those net new healthy backlink opportunities. Opportunity. So it could be something like a guest blogging opportunity. It could be, you know, an interview that you do through like a reputable agency, that you’re an, you know, they’re interviewing you on an industry expert opinion on something. So by doing little things like that, you can improve your your domain authority, and then Google, when it’s looking for, you know, who am I going to show as a search result for this specific person’s question? If you have better domain authority than your competitor, then Google’s going to show you as the result versus your competitor?

Christian Klepp  25:38

Yeah, no, absolutely. That’s definitely a good place to start. We can’t talk about we can’t avoid the topic of metrics. I should say, when we talk about SEO, and again, I know we can go down a deep rabbit hole with this one. Just give us some top level metrics. Right? What are some if a B2B Company and its marketing team is trying to improve website traffic from scratch. What are some of those key metrics that the team should be paying attention to?

Nicholle Stacey  26:09

Yeah, I always like to use the overall health score. So there’s a lot of different applications that you can use, like SEMrush, Ahrefs, SE ranking, etc. There’s a bunch out there. You can get your overall website health score. It’s just an overall good indicator of where you’re at. Other ones that I like to watch and recommend people watch is looking at the organic traffic, seeing, you know, even the data on where that traffic is coming from, from a geographical perspective as well. You know, looking at that, looking at the conversions, you can even use heat maps on your website as well to see recorded sessions of users on your website, like, where are they clicking? And you can do like, an analysis on your overall user navigation experience through that as well. Yeah, just, just things like that. I always say, at a basic bare minimum, always look at Google Search Console and Google Analytics. They have great metrics in there that you should be paying attention to. And Google is the real time, you know, like they’re the internet gods, so to speak.

Christian Klepp  27:22

Yeah, that’s certainly one way of putting it, yeah, for sure. All right, no, fantastic. We’re gonna move on to what I call the soapbox question. And I know that you’ve got an opinion about this, right, but what’s the status quo in your area of expertise, SEO, that you passionately disagree with and why?

Nicholle Stacey  27:45

Yeah, a status quo that I run into quite a bit is people are like, Oh, we don’t need SEO. We touched base on this a little bit before. But I I’m of the opinion that if you’re not investing in SEO, you’re missing out on huge market share, especially depending on your industry. Some industries, the market share, you know, it might be 1% but in some industries, it can be huge. So if you’re not investing in SEO, you are missing out. That is my strong opinion. I know I’m biased, but I have, I’m all about the data. I have the data, and I’m shouting from the soapbox, it’s a good investment.

Christian Klepp  28:28

Yep, yep. Well, absolutely, I completely agree with that. So I’m in the B2B branding space, and so I guess what irks me is when people say, like, now we don’t need branding. We’re good. We’ve got a logo on our website, and I’m like, and therein lies the problem. Yes, the fact that you say that already shows that you don’t understand what branding is, right? Yeah. So before you, before you start revamping your website, and before you, like, invest in SEO, like, you have to actually understand how you want to be positioned in the market and what you want to convey to your target audience. And when I say convey, it’s not like we have proprietary technology and we’re award winning with so many rounds of funding. That’s not what I mean.

Nicholle Stacey  29:16

Yeah, like, what is the end goal? And like, if you’re a service industry or you’re selling a product, like, is there a specific service that you’re trying to promote, or a specific product based off of all of the products? And then you can even, you can shift and pivot your SEO strategy based off of that too, right? So… 

Christian Klepp  29:35

Exactly. 

Nicholle Stacey  29:36

You really gotta put pen to paper, so to speak, or open your laptop and really make you know what are, what is the goal here, and what is the strategy?

Christian Klepp  29:45

Yeah, exactly. I mean, like, the misconception and branding is basically like, oh, okay, let’s, let’s obsess over the logo design. 

Nicholle Stacey  29:52

Or the colors. 

Christian Klepp  29:53

Or the colors, right? And that certainly is part of branding, but that’s the end result. 

Nicholle Stacey  29:58

Yeah. Yeah. 

Christian Klepp  29:59

And I would hazard a guess that in SEO, there’s also this misconception with all it’s just stuff as many keywords in this as possible, right? Okay, so here comes the bonus question. So rumor has it that you’re, you’re kind of like a Canadian version of Mary condo, right? Like you like to clean, and you like to clean and organize stuff. 

Nicholle Stacey  30:24

Yeah, I do, yeah. 

Christian Klepp  30:26

So and which probably tells me that you’re a very structured person, right? Like you, you thrive on, you thrive on having some, some kind of structure. Or as a British colleague, ex colleague of mine, used to say you’re a fan of older. 

Nicholle Stacey  30:41

Yes, yeah. 

Christian Klepp  30:43

So the question is, like, what is it about cleaning and organizing? I suppose it’s too pronged again, sorry, what is it about cleaning and organizing that you find therapeutic? And number two, how has that impacted you, personally and professionally?

Nicholle Stacey  31:01

It’s a good question. Um, I guess, like, cleaning and organizing has always been therapeutic for me, because I am a big believer in your environment impacts you, like the Feng Shui and like the clutter, like a cluttered room is a cluttered mind. How they say, right? I’m a big believer of that. And I just find it therapeutic to just, you know, if there’s a mess, just clean it up and then you feel better. I don’t know. It’s just very rewarding to me. So I, yeah, I find that very rewarding. And sorry. What was the second part of the question?

Christian Klepp  31:40

The second part of the question is, how is that sense of the need for cleanliness and order? How has that influenced you personally and professionally? Like, how has it impacted the way that you work? How has it impacted the way that you interact with other people?

Nicholle Stacey  31:55

Yeah, I would say it definitely translates and impacts how I work. I’m going to sound really nerdy when I say this, but I get a kick out of seeing my audit reports improve. So when I see like, overall health scores improve and they go from the red to the green, I’m just like, Yes, we did it, it’s such a sense of satisfaction. And that’s where my a type side comes out. Like I’d like you say I love order, I love structure, I love seeing that before and after of positive progress. And it definitely translates and resonates in how I work and even day to day, how I structure my day and my to do’s so it’s, yeah, very transferable and in personal and professional side of life.

Christian Klepp  32:42

Fantastic, fantastic, and you’re all the better for it.

Nicholle Stacey  32:46

I think so. 

Christian Klepp  32:48

Fantastic. Nicholle, this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much for coming on and for sharing your experience and your expertise with the listeners. Please quick introduction to yourself and how folks out there can get another show you.

Nicholle Stacey  33:03

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me so. My name is Nicholle. My firm Altitude B2B is a fractional marketing firm based out of Toronto, Ontario. Myself and my team work together fractionally towards cohesive goals for our clients. We essentially address their pain points and their issues when it comes to digital marketing, and essentially, more often than not, that means that we’re turning their website into a 24/7 sales rep for them. People can find me on LinkedIn or my website, https://www.altitudeb2b.com/ Yeah, just connect with me on there or message me via my website, and I’m happy to chat. 

Christian Klepp  33:03

Fantastic, fantastic. All right, so once again, thanks for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon. 

Nicholle Stacey  33:50

Thank you so much. 

Christian Klepp  33:52

All right. Bye for now.