How to Create a B2B SEO Strategy

Updated by Chima Mmeje — November 21, 2024.

In today’s digital landscape, where competition is fierce and a meaningful online presence is vital, developing an effective B2B SEO strategy is crucial for success. A comprehensive digital marketing strategy aimed at enhancing the online presence of your company's website to attract business buyers more effectively is essential. Simply optimizing your website and targeting keywords won’t be enough to capture your audience and turn them into high-value clients.

A robust Business-to-Business (B2B) marketing strategy targets businesses, organizations, and professionals. In contrast to Business-to-Customer (B2C) marketing, where individuals often make the purchasing decisions, B2B transactions usually involve multiple stakeholders. While there are still people at the heart of any strategy, they often have different expectations, requirements, and a more complex approval process.

A fully developed B2B SEO Strategy involves:

• Identifying and solving problems for your target audience
• Understanding the dynamics of sales cycles and the buying process
• Getting in front of your audience with the right content at the right time
• Understanding the competitor landscape
• Conducting an SEO audit so you know your own strengths and weaknesses
• Tracking results so you know what is working so you can refine and repeat
• Staying ahead of trends, like AI, that impact search behavior and the buyer funnel

In this guide we’ll cover how you can identify and solve audience problems, how the B2B buying process impacts SEO, B2B SEO audits, keyword research and competitive analysis, and the latest trends in B2B SEO strategy.

What is the difference between B2B vs. B2C SEO

B2B SEO and B2C SEO differ significantly in terms of approach, target audiences, and desired outcomes. B2B SEO focuses on reaching professionals and businesses, whereas B2C SEO targets individual consumers. In B2B SEO, the sales cycle is typically longer and involves multiple stakeholders, requiring a more nuanced understanding of the target audience and their needs. 

Conversely, B2C SEO usually involves a shorter sales cycle and a more straightforward conversion process, often driven by immediate needs and personal preferences. Understanding these differences is crucial for tailoring your SEO strategy to effectively reach and engage your target audience in the B2B space.

The B2B buying process tends to be longer and more complex than the B2C buying process. It’s not unusual for customer journeys to take 18 months or longer. The B2B customer journey involves extensive research, evaluations, comparisons, and negotiations. In B2B transactions, decision-making often involves multiple departments and requires aligning with organizational goals and budgets.

However, this can be used to your benefit: the longer purchasing journey means more opportunities to reach your target customers as they go through each stage of the conversion process.

Tracking keyword rankings alongside other metrics like organic traffic and click-through rates is essential for a comprehensive assessment and ongoing optimization of SEO performance.

In summary, to best optimize your SEO strategy for B2B, it’s crucial to build trust, provide detailed product information, showcase case studies, and demonstrate return on investment (ROI). Your marketing efforts should align with the different stages of the buying process, nurturing leads through the funnel and addressing the specific needs and concerns of your B2B audience.

Identify your target audience

Every single business should understand who their target audience is. While a B2B strategy typically targets business, within those businesses are human decision-makers and stakeholders who have a say on whether your solution will be implemented.

In her article 8 Unconventional Ways to Generate Qualified B2B Sales Leads Nadya Khoja explains that the key to generating B2B leads is by first identifying key decision makers you can research and build buyer personas around, then using this data to determine search intent.

Perform technical SEO audit

Performing a technical SEO audit is essential for identifying areas of improvement on your website. A technical SEO audit involves reviewing website structure, content quality, mobile-friendliness, page speed, internal and external linking, and social media presence. Use tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog SEO Spider, or Moz to conduct a technical SEO audit and identify opportunities to optimize your website. By addressing any technical issues, you can enhance your website’s performance, improve user experience, and boost your search engine rankings, ultimately driving more organic traffic and conversions.

SEO audits and competitive analysis usually go hand-in-hand. Part of a good SEO audit, according to Carly Schoonhoven in her B2B SEO Audit Whiteboard Friday, is knowing where you stand with keyword rankings compared to your competitors.

For instance, if you rank for 100,000 keywords and your competitors are ranking for 175,000 keywords, you know where you stand and have a goal to work toward when it comes to strategy development.

In most cases, there are five main areas of an SEO audit:

• On-page optimization: what are the basics of on-page optimization that need improvement or are doing well? This includes meta titles and descriptions, navigation, and site architecture from a UX perspective (but this also delves into technical SEO territory when it comes to implementation).
• Competitor analysis: As mentioned above, looking at competitor performance with SERP keywords they rank for, traffic estimates, social media audience, and other metrics allow us to estimate where our website ranks among competitors.
• Current content landscape: What content does the website host now, and how is it performing? Deciding what blog posts or pages should be revised, redirected, or rewritten goes into “content audit” territory, but it relates to SEO performance of the site as a whole. B2B SEO content strategy, like pillar page creation, comes into play here as well.
• Technical SEO: Is the website generating 404 errors or improper redirects? What about core web vitals or the user experience across different devices? The back end of a website and how it appears to search engines is crucial to know.
• Ongoing strategy: Once any issues in the realms of technical SEO, content, and on-page optimization are identified and addressed, ongoing strategy becomes paramount. What is your SEO program going to focus on each month, quarter, and year? What should the metrics be for success on these one-time and ongoing strategies?

In most cases, SEO audits are dozens of pages long and can be used as a handbook for your SEO program, acting as a guide for where to start and what to focus on next.

Run an SEO competitive analysis

Running a competitive analysis is arguably the best first thing you can do when setting out to create a more cohesive and effective B2B SEO content strategy. If you don't know what your competitors are doing in your industry with SEO and content, how can you know what your own focus should be? It's worth noting that this may not be the recommended approach for every business there as so many unique niches and industries in B2B. If you're not sure where to start, we recommend beginning with our guide on How to do a Competitor Analysis to fully explore who your direct online competitors are, you may be surprised.

It's never advisable to directly copy your competitors, as that means you're always going to be one step behind them. Rather take the strategies mentioned below to capitalize on best practices or areas of SEO that your competitors aren't focusing on. Combining your competitive analysis with a good understanding of your target audience and strategy around how you will reach them can help give you a competitive advantage.

Because it's fairly common for B2B organizations (especially those that aren't in tech or focused on product innovation) to be slow off the mark when implementing ongoing SEO trends as they happen, a thorough competitive analysis can help your team get a major head start on better ownership of the SERPs for your target audience.

Unsure who your online competitors are? Start with Moz's free Competitive Analysis tool

Conduct keyword research

Once the current search landscape is set with the SEO audit, B2B SEOs can take on the task of deciding what keywords to rank for. Conducting keyword research is a critical component of B2B SEO. Keyword research involves identifying relevant keywords and phrases that potential customers use to search for products or services. By understanding search volume, search intent, and keyword competition, businesses can develop a targeted SEO strategy that drives organic traffic and conversions.

Use tools like Google Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer to conduct keyword research and identify opportunities to optimize your website. Focusing on relevant keywords that align with your target audience’s search behavior will help you attract the right visitors and improve your search engine rankings.

There are several things to consider when deciding where to focus efforts:

• Audience search versus industry terms: What is your target audience actually searching for? In many cases, this isn’t technical or proper industry terms. You may know your top-selling product is called the “Combuster Chip 3000, “but your audience likely isn’t searching for that. Therefore, it’s important to go after keywords that relate to your target audience’s problems or what they would consider to be a solution.
• Content gap analysis: A content gap analysis helps you identify what keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t. Use the keyword gap tool in Moz Pro to find
• Long-tail versus short-tail keywords: Long-tail keywords will always be worth targeting, as they likely have stronger intent and less competition in many cases. Writing a more specific and useful piece of content about a niche topic is easier than ranking for “short-tail” or high-level keywords, such as “microchip supplier.” Instead, focus on what it is about your offerings that create solutions for your target audience.

Keyword research is a nuanced and intensive process, but targeting the right keywords for your B2B SEO content strategy is where you’re going to see a lot of progress.

Creating a successful B2B SEO strategy requires staying ahead of the curve and adapting to the latest trends. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in B2B SEO practices (as well as how users will interact with search engines going forward) is revolutionizing how marketers optimize their strategies.

Discover how to make industry landing pages engaging for B2B companies in this Whiteboard Friday:

Create buyer personas

Creating buyer personas is a crucial step in developing a B2B SEO strategy. A buyer persona is a detailed representation of your ideal customer, encompassing demographics, objectives, behavior, budget, and more. By understanding the needs and preferences of your target audience, you can craft a targeted marketing strategy that resonates with potential customers. To create buyer personas, gather data from customer interviews, sales team feedback, and market research. This comprehensive understanding allows you to tailor your content and SEO efforts to meet the specific needs of your audience, ultimately driving more effective engagement and conversions.

Solve problems for your target audience

The key to effective marketing, especially in B2B industries where the audience may need help knowing what can solve their problem, is to prioritize solution-focused marketing. Knowing your target audience’s struggles and how they may search for solutions, can be the difference between a successful campaign and a dud.

A B2B SEO strategy aims to drive more businesses, organizations, and professionals to your site through organic on-page and off-page SEO methods. Unlike B2C marketing, where individuals or small groups often make purchasing decisions, B2B transactions usually involve multiple stakeholders. These decision-makers base their choices on business needs, ROI, and long-term partnerships. To effectively engage a B2B audience, your marketing messages should be informative, focused on product features, benefits, and solving their specific business problems. Creating effective meta descriptions as part of on-page SEO strategies is crucial to enhance visibility and relevance.

By comparison, B2C marketing targets individual consumers. Emotions, desires, and personal preferences usually drive the decision-making process in B2C transactions. Consumers make quick purchase decisions based on immediate needs or wants. Marketing strategies in the B2C space, therefore, focus on creating urgency, highlighting benefits, using compelling visuals, and leveraging social proof to appeal to consumer desires and lifestyles.

When comparing these differences, it’s easy to see how the nuances of B2B marketing affect our SEO strategy at almost every point in the customer journey.

Understand your sales funnel

Understanding the sales funnel is essential for B2B SEO. The sales funnel represents the journey that potential customers take from initial awareness to conversion. In B2B marketing, the sales funnel is typically longer and more complex, involving multiple stakeholders and a more detailed decision-making process. By understanding the sales funnel, businesses can identify opportunities to optimize their SEO strategy and improve conversions. Each stage of the funnel—from awareness to consideration to decision—requires tailored content and SEO tactics to effectively nurture leads and guide them towards making a purchase.

Creating valuable and relevant content is a cornerstone of a successful B2B SEO strategy. B2B messaging focuses on conveying expertise, industry knowledge, and addressing business pain points. Content should be educational, informative and provide valuable insights to establish your brand as a thought leader.

Whitepapers, case studies, research reports, and product demos are effective content formats in the B2B space. As Chima Mmeje explains in her Whiteboard Friday, 6 Money-Making Content Formats SaaS Companies Should Prioritize, the 6 key strategies you should focus on: researching keywords including ‘best’, sales enablement content, competitor comparison pages, pricing pages, modifiers to download, and personalized landing pages.

B2B audiences expect content that is professional and authoritative, focusing on building trust and showcasing the value of your product or service. But don’t ignore your business’s brand voice and tone. Creating an identifiable, unique brand voice can set you apart from competitors. Content and SEO strategies work together to create effective, engaging content that can serve as your unique brand voice amongst competitors while getting leads at different stages in the customer journey.

Ensure proper tracking and attribution

Without accurate tracking and attribution, all of the below information isn't going to live up to its potential. Whether it's tracking keywords in Moz's or another tool and then correctly monitoring and attributing revenue to search traffic, proper tracking and attribution will make or break B2B SEO success.

As Austin Peachey pointed out in his “Roadmap to B2B SEO Success” Whiteboard Friday, getting clean data through proper filters, tagging, and data reporting is the first step in a B2B SEO journey.

If data reports are coming up empty or aren't showing the right data, work with analysts and developers to make sure it's accurate before kicking off new SEO initiatives. Or, if you don't want to wait, make notes about what data is possibly incorrect or missing as you start so that it can be compensated for when running performance reports.

A great B2B SEO strategy also means knowing the latest technology to help your efforts. Artificial intelligence (AI) software and capabilities are revolutionizing B2B SEO best practices, enabling marketers to optimize their strategies with greater precision and efficiency. Machine learning algorithms are increasingly used to analyze vast amounts of data, identify patterns, and predict user behavior, allowing for more accurate keyword targeting and content optimization.

AI-powered tools can also automate tasks such as keyword research, content generation, and performance tracking, freeing up valuable time for marketers to focus on strategy and creativity. Embracing AI trends in B2B SEO can lead to improved search rankings, enhanced user experiences, and, ultimately, increased traffic and conversions.

On the other side of it, search engines like Google and Microsoft’s Bing are rolling out AI in users’ search journeys, equipping them with AI chatbots for a more engaged and personalized experience when searching, and machine learning is also helping search results become more accurate based on users’ queries, demographics, and past search history.

To truly stand out and drive meaningful results in this new AI-equipped search environment, it's essential to prioritize solution-focused marketing and understand the unique dynamics of your target audience.

Even as technology evolves, a strong B2B SEO needs to understand the dynamics of the B2B buying process, implement a robust SEO content strategy, and follow best practices for tracking, competitive analysis, and SEO audits. Creating a powerful B2B SEO strategy that drives meaningful results and positions your organization for success in the ever-evolving digital landscape is possible.

• How to Create an SEO Strategy
• Professional's Guide to SEO: Advanced SEO Strategy
• 5 ways you can use search as a growth channel for B2B