Most B2B product-focused websites are arranged in a pyramid structure: a page about widgets, leading “down” to separate pages about blue and red widgets, leading “down” further to separate pages about fast blue widgets, slow blue widgets, fast red widgets, slow red widgets… you know the score. This is fine, but the middle level is often neglected when it comes to content-driven search engine optimisation. And this is a problem, because it’s often that middle level where there are a lot of searches being underexploited.
Obviously, the further down the pyramid you go, the fewer searches there will be. So at the top, there are loads of searches on “widgets”. However, competition is enormous, and it’s even possible that you might not be that concerned with ranking highly, as the widgets field may be far broader than your own specialisation.
At the bottom, your pages may well be finely crafted to rank well on searches for fast blue widgets or slow red widgets. Lots of great content on the page, and everything else we know about SEO thrown in. Unfortunately, many prospects won’t be searching to that level of precision.
The first search most prospects make is probably at the middle level: the red widgets or blue widgets pages. And in their haste to provide website visitors with a slick experience, many companies cut this page down to the bare essentials: “click on this big picture to see our slow red widgets” and “click on this big picture to see our fast red widgets”. That’s all very well, but bang goes your chance to be considered to have an authority page on red widgets. A couple of images does not grab the top spot on Google.
This is an ideal place to include lots of original background text about red widgets. It needn’t get in the way of getting visitors smartly to your bottom-level product pages, but it could get you a whole lot more visitors from the search engines.