The Complete B2B SEO Guide: How to Attract and Convert Business Buyers

B2B buyers don’t start their journey with sales calls anymore.

In fact, a massive 66% of B2B buyers rely on online search results when searching for products they want to buy, according to Statista.

What does this mean for your B2B company?

Your ideal customers are searching online. If you want to claim that number one spot in their searches, you need to invest in B2B SEO.

When done right, it helps you reach business decision-makers at the exact moment they are looking for solutions online. But how does it work?

In this guide, you’ll learn about B2B SEO strategies, how they differ from B2C SEO, and the exact steps you can take to build a successful strategy.

What is B2B SEO?

B2B SEO is the process of improving a business website so that it ranks higher in search engines when other businesses search for solutions to their problems. This means that B2B SEO services focus on decision makers in a company rather than a general audience.

To understand how it works, let’s take an example. If someone searches for “best shoes for jogging,” they might land on a B2C site targeting people looking for running shoes. In contrast, a keyword like “ISO-certified medical equipment suppliers” is something a professional, such as a hospital procurement manager, would search. SEO for B2B focuses on these types of keywords that are connected to a business buying decision.

What’s the Difference Between B2B SEO and B2C SEO?

The main difference between B2B and B2C SEO lies in their target audience and how they buy. B2B SEO is a business-to-business strategy, while B2C SEO focuses on businesses selling directly to consumers. Let’s look at their key differences in detail.

1. Complexity of Audience

B2C SEO is concerned with a single customer making a personal purchasing decision. In contrast, SEO for B2B companies targets multiple stakeholders in a company. These can be executives, department managers, or technical teams. As experts in their field, these audiences tend to research more deeply. They compare and analyze their options carefully instead of purchasing on impulse.

1. Low Volume Keywords

In SEO for B2B marketing, you work with niche keywords with lower search volume but stronger commercial intent. For example, “enterprise cybersecurity software for banks” attracts far fewer searches than “best antivirus software,” yet it indicates a higher buying intent. Meanwhile, B2C focuses on high search volume and low competition.

1. Longer Sales Funnels:

In B2B marketing, sales cycles are much longer compared to B2C. In fact, according to Dentsu, the average decision time for a B2B buyer in 2024 was 379 days. The reason for this time period is the more complex decision-making process and professional-grade online research before your audience contacts sales.

9 Steps to Create a Successful B2B SEO Strategy

Now that you understand the unique challenges, let’s look at the B2B SEO best practices that make it work. Like traditional SEO, you’ll need to use multiple strategies to build both on-site and off-site presence. However, your unique target audience changes everything at the micro level.

Here are the steps to a winning B2B SEO marketing strategy.

Step 1: Build Detailed Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is a clear profile of the business you are targeting. It represents the people involved in making buying decisions and explains what motivates them to purchase. Why do these matter? Personas can help you align your content and marketing efforts to the needs of your ideal business customer.

A B2B SEO company can help you build buyer profiles of your ideal customers based on data analytics and user behavior. But if you want to do it yourself, make sure to include their job title and seniority level, key pain points, daily challenges, and business goals. It should also define the KPIs they are measured on, where they search for information, and how they prefer to consume content.

To create accurate personas on your own:

1. Start by interviewing existing customers.
2. Then, speak with sales and support teams to identify common patterns.
3. Or build personas using tools like HubSpot’s Persona Generator, Xtensio, or Adobe Express for templates.

If you already have your buyer profiles ready, you can directly start with a B2B SEO audit. It can help you identify the areas you need to focus on, whether that’s keywords, content, or the technical health of your site. With that done, you can proceed with the following steps.

Step 2: Find B2B SEO Keywords

After creating personas, you need to identify the exact terms your buyers might use when searching. This process is called keyword research. Each search query represents a different stage of your buyer’s sales funnel. That said, you want to focus on two types of search terms:

• Top-of-funnel (TOFU) keywords are informational and used early in research, such as “how to improve sales team productivity.” These are useful for creating blog content that informs and, over time, guides your audience towards a decision.
• Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) keywords are transactional and signal purchase intent, like “enterprise CRM software pricing” in SEO for B2B Saas. As they have a high buying intent, they are great for service or landing pages.

  

To see the impact of keyword research, consider a B2B SEO case study of DataBrain. As a new company, DataBrain needed to build a keyword-optimized content library from scratch. By targeting the right keywords, especially BOFU terms, the company increased its ranking keywords by 1600% and doubled its organic traffic within six months.

In addition, audiences are typically more professional and well-informed. As a result, they tend to use precise and detailed search queries. For this reason, you should prioritize long-tail keywords over broad short-tail terms. – particularly those with a low search volume. You can work with a B2B SEO agency to find high-impact keywords tailored to your audience.

Step 3: Map Keywords to the Buyer Journey

Once you have your keywords, you can align them with the buyer journey of your audience. Buyer journey is the path your customers take toward a purchase decision after first recognizing a problem. It has three main stages. And each stage requires a different type of keyword and content focus, as explained below:

• Awareness: Buyers recognize a problem but are not yet looking for vendors. They might search “how to improve team productivity” or “challenges in supply chain management.”
• Consideration: Buyers explore and compare possible solutions. In B2B Saas SEO, keywords can be “best inventory management software” or “ERP vs inventory tools.”
• Decision: They evaluate providers and prepare to purchase. They might look for “inventory management software pricing” or “enterprise ERP case study.”

  

To align keywords to the buyer journey, you can start by creating a keyword-to-funnel mapping document. Then, assign each keyword to a buyer stage and plan your content around it.

Step 4: Optimize Product and Service Pages

Product and service pages are your “money pages.” Their main goal is to convert visitors into qualified leads. Unlike blog post content, these pages align with your conversion goals and have clear calls to action strategically used to convert. In B2B SEO, these pages usually target bottom-of-funnel keywords. This is where buyers are ready to evaluate vendors and finally make a purchase.

A B2B SEO specialist can help you optimize these pages for ranking. Here’s how:

• Write original and in-depth content. According to Backlinko, the average length of the top-ranking content is 1447 words. As you follow this length, make sure it clearly explains your business solution and its value for your target companies.
• Place keywords strategically. Include your primary keyword in the H1, URL, title tag, and meta description. Then, use keyword variations and related terms naturally throughout the page.
• Add clear and persuasive CTAs, such as demo requests or consultation bookings. To make them effective, prove your worth with case studies and testimonials, while comparison charts and measurable results provide the data businesses need for decision-making.

Step 5: Create High-Quality Content

Content marketing is the foundation of a successful B2B SEO strategy. High-quality B2B content goes beyond basic blog posts. It delivers original research, expert insights, and guidance that builds trust by helping professionals solve their business problems. According to StrataBeat, SaaS businesses that publish original research can increase SEO traffic by 18.7%.

In addition, make sure that the content you write is clear and easy to understand. You may use professional language suitable for your target audience. But avoid complex or unnecessary jargon. Instead, provide value to make your content feel credible and helpful. Here are some ways to do this:

• Support your claims with data and relevant statistics.
• Add real-world examples that show how solutions work in practice.
• Use clear headers, short paragraphs, and bullet points to improve readability.
• Make your pages scannable so decision-makers can quickly find the information they need.

Step 6: Build Authoritative Backlinks

Backlinks are a link-building strategy in which other sites link back to your website. Search engines like Google use them to judge how credible and authoritative your pages are and where to rank them in search results. In fact, a study by Backlinko found that the top-ranking page on Google has 3.8 times more backlinks than those in second or tenth position.

However, your backlinks should come from well-reputed websites in your specific industry to be considered as “votes of confidence” by Google. Therefore, instead of quantity, focus on building high-quality backlinks. Some ways to do this include:

• Creating original research that can be referenced by other publications in your industry.
• Guest posting on relevant blogs helps you reach the right audience while earning contextual links.
• Broken link building involves finding outdated links on industry sites and offering your content as a replacement.
• Earn links from partnerships, resource pages, directories, and existing business relationships.
• Interactive assets like tools, calculators, templates, and checklists naturally attract links.

Step 7: Improve Your Page Speed

Page experience matters a lot in B2B ecommerce SEO. Your target audience is busy and focused on results. They want fast and smooth interactions when they’re researching solutions online. If your page loads slowly or feels confusing to navigate, they will not stick around.

In fact, a page that loads 100 milliseconds slower can reduce your conversions by 7%, according to Akamai. Therefore, make sure that your website loads fast and has a clean layout that makes it easy to find the information your audience needs. Here’s what you can do to optimize loading speed.

• Use modern web formats like WebP for images
• Minimize JavaScript and CSS file sizes
• Enable browser caching for faster repeat visits
• Use a content delivery network (CDN) globally
• Implement lazy loading for images and videos
• Limit the use of heavy plugins or scripts

Step 8: Optimize for Mobile Searches

The next step is to ensure that you’re using a responsive web design that automatically adapts to mobiles and small screens. Why does this matter for B2B SEO? Data from Ahrefs shows that 80% of B2B buyers use mobile devices at work. Moreover, mobile played a huge role in the recent purchase decision for more than 60%. Mobile-friendliness is also one of the ranking factors for Google.

Step 9 Optimize for AI Searches

Today, AI search algorithms are changing the way B2B buyers find content online. According to Demand Gen Report, platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity drive a significant 34% share of qualified B2B leads. This means if your content isn’t optimized for AI searches, you will stay invisible to a significant number of high-intent buyers.

To optimize for AI or Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), create content that’s clear, shareable, and easy for AI tools to surface. In practice, this means using natural and conversational language when writing content. Moreover, structure your content with schema markup to make it easy for AI to understand its context and index it.

Final Words

B2B SEO requires a deep understanding of your audience, choosing the right keywords, and publishing helpful, relevant content. However, learning and managing SEO on your own can take time and some trial and error. A B2B SEO expert can simplify the process and guide you in the right direction.

At PNC Logos, we offer comprehensive SEO services aligned with your business goals and audience. Our team helps you rank higher, attract qualified leads, and grow your online visibility. If you want to build a results-driven SEO strategy, contact us today!