How B2B and SaaS Marketers Can Use Google’s New Search Features for SEO in 2022

On September 29, 2021, Google announced a fleet of new search features powered by their advancing AI which included: 

• MUM – Multitask Unified Model
• “Things to know” feature
• “Refine this search” and “Broaden this search”
• “About The Result” panel
• “Things to Know” 
• Visual Inspiration 
• “In Stock” filter in shopping results pages
• Google Lens to instantly shop what you see on a page

These new search features will revolutionize the way consumers search, shop, and find further information. The landscape of the search results will completely transform with a redesigned search page. With new features like the “in stock” filter and the Google Lens in the shopping results,l retailers will be able to tap into bigger and better audiences now, more than ever before. 

New Search Features for B2B and SaaS SEO Strategies

Though these new features make consumers, SEOs, and retailers giddy, B2B and SaaS marketers are left wondering how these features could be of any value to the SEO strategies. After all, you can’t exactly take a photo of a cloud-based product or assign inventory to a B2B service. 

Fear not. With a bit of planning, creativity, and data-driven content, there’s still hope for B2B and SaaS marketers. Here’s how you can use Google’s new search features for your B2B or SaaS SEO marketing strategy in 2022. 

Adopt a topic clustering strategy for your content.

New search features such as “Things to know,” “Refine this search,” and “Broaden this search” will allow users to explore additional topics after their initial query. Soon, users will see suggested, related subtopics as well as refine or broaden their search. These upcoming search features will make topic clustering an integral part of any SEO or content marketing strategy.

“Things to know” is a new feature launching in coming months allowing you to explore topics by seeing related subtopics. For example, acrylic painting shows subtopic of “Using household items” & selecting that connects you to helpful content on the web: https://t.co/gAI2iLqkok pic.twitter.com/v5P1MSFf1T

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) September 29, 2021

If you haven’t already adopted a topic clustering strategy for your content, you’re missing out. Aside from developing content with an internal linking strategy, topic clustering creates a series of content around one common subject with several different, related ideas. 

Let’s use a cloud-based storage SaaS company, for example. A topic cluster may be cloud security, starting with a general blog about cloud security. The cluster would then spur off into blogs about the benefits of having cloud security or safely store files with sensitive data. 

Internally linking between the topic and its offspring topics will create a lovely internal linking system. However, this linking between related subtopics will also provide greater context to search engines, increasing your likelihood of ranking for the “Things to know,” “Refine this search,” and “Broaden this search” features.

Optimize Your Company’s About Page 

All too often are the About pages thrown to the wayside. Some marketers even opting to remove them altogether. But, as Google pushes to only rank the most reliable, trustworthy quality results, this information is crucial to enhancing your visibility and credibility with search engines. Companies with little or no information about their business or credibility could suffer significantly in the coming months. 

Earlier this year, Google released the “About This Result” feature that gives searches more insight into the website’s credibility and whether or not the site is secure. In a few weeks, Google will expand the “About This Result” panel. It will include additional information about the source, including a snippet from Wikipedia, a website’s about page, news articles, reviews, etc.

Also in the coming weeks, our “About The Result” panel will further aid information literacy by showing more information to what we already display, such as how a site describes itself and content about a site from across the web. Learn more: https://t.co/6gVlyDM4B7 pic.twitter.com/CjcXWu6BRr

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) September 29, 2021

The more relevant information about your business you can provide to crawlers and users alike, the better. Optimizing the on-page content is just one step you can take to control how credible you appear in the search results. When writing the content for your About page, consider the following questions: 

• What does your business do? Why was it founded?
• When was your business established, and by whom?
• What industries or areas do your serve? Where are you located?
• How many employees or customers does your company have?
• What associations or professional/industry communities are you affiliated with?
• Who are notable alumni from your business? Or notable clients?
• How can clients get in contact with you?

After you’ve optimized the content on your About page, don’t forget to include schema!

Add Schema Markup Language to Web Pages

Schema markup, or structured data, is nothing new in the world of SEO. Some marketers have opted not to add schema, others have sought templated schema tools such as Yoast, and others have embraced the power of structured data. 

Schema markup is a piece of code translating human language into a language search engine crawlers can understand. It provides additional context to robots, allowing them to show rich results, “People also Ask,” images in search listings, and related topics. 

Now, with the landscape of the SERPs rapidly changing, implementing custom schema markup across your site is crucial if you want to rank for anything other than the standard organic listing. By creating custom strings of schema markup, you can influence the appearance of new features such as the “About This Result” panel, Knowledge Graph, Visual Inspiration, and rich results. 

Curious to learn more about using Google’s new search features for your B2B SEO tactics? Want to incorporate schema markup on your SaaS website? Connect with our team of SEOs to fuel your marketing efforts with a cutting-edge SEO strategy.