B2B SEO
B2B SEO for companies that sell to buying committees
B2B SEO for low-volume, high-value markets. We build pages for everyone on the buying committee, from the champion to finance, security and procurement.
Your free checkup
ExampleScore 58 out of 100. Could reach 74
Tap a check to see what we’d fix first. Anything big waits for your approval.
Google Business ProfileNeeds work
Pick the main category people search for and list every service you offer.
Mentioned in AI answersMissing
Answer the questions customers ask, clearly, on the pages AI tools read.
Speed on phonesGood
Nothing to fix now. We keep an eye on it as you add pages.
Pages Google can findGood
All found. New pages get linked from your menu so they stay that way.
In every planIncluded in Local or Growth, from $149 a month. Every plan has every feature; they differ by size.
Compare plansWho buys
The person searching is rarely the person signing
In a big B2B purchase, the first search usually comes from the most junior person involved: an analyst asked to find three options, or a project manager told to find out why a process keeps failing. Neither can approve anything.
What they can do is put you on a shortlist and defend it. The page that persuaded them now has to be pasted into a message thread and read by a finance director with thirty seconds and no context. Most B2B websites are not built for this.
So B2B SEO is about coverage more than keywords. Does your site answer the question each person on the committee will raise, in a form they will accept? Most sites have one page for the champion and nothing for the other three.
The second point is volume. A specialist industrial process, a regulation, a niche integration: the monthly numbers look tiny next to consumer terms. But each search is someone with a budget and a reason to buy.
Why volume misleads
How to work out what a group of B2B searches is worth
These five numbers decide whether a group of searches deserves budget. If any one of them is zero, the answer is no.
- Relevant monthly searches
- What a keyword tool shows. In a specialist market it looks tiny next to consumer terms.
- Share you could win
- Never all of it. What you could win against whoever already answers those searches well.
- Enquiries per visit
- How many of those visits turn into an enquiry from an organisation you can serve.
- Close rate from enquiry
- Your own number from your own pipeline. Published averages will not fit your market.
- Average contract value
- This is where B2B differs most from consumer search. One deal can outweigh a year of high-volume traffic.
Common problems
Four reasons B2B search programmes stall
- The plan was built from a keyword tool.
- Keyword tools measure specialist terms badly, so useful searches show zero or no data. A plan built on volume throws out the searches that would have led to deals and spends the budget on broad terms that bring in students and job seekers.
- Every page is written for the champion.
- The site makes a strong case to the person who already agrees, and says nothing to finance about cost or risk, to the security reviewer about data handling, or to procurement about terms. Deals stall because three people never got their answers.
- Leads are counted, and nobody checks the fit.
- Marketing reports enquiry numbers and sales says they are worthless. Both are right. Broad content brings in students, competitors and organisations far outside the size you serve, so the channel looks busy and useless at once.
- The reporting window is shorter than the sales cycle.
- The programme is reviewed at six months, but deals take nine. Nothing has closed, so search gets cut a quarter before its deals would have landed. Prevent it by agreeing early signs of progress with finance before you begin.
Who searches what
What each person on the buying committee searches
Example patterns. Notice how little they overlap, and how few most B2B sites cover.
The champion or practitioner
The person with the problem. They start the process and build the shortlist, but usually cannot approve spend.
- how to reduce changeover time on a production line
- alternatives to running this process manually
- best approach to consolidating supplier data
- what does an implementation of this usually involve
The budget holder
Rarely searches your category by name. They search the money question, usually after the champion raises it.
- total cost of ownership for this type of system
- typical payback period on this kind of investment
- cost of not fixing this problem
- how do companies our size budget for this
The technical or security reviewer
Cannot approve the purchase, but can stop it. Almost nobody writes a page for them.
- does this integrate with our existing erp
- data residency and processing terms for suppliers
- what happens to our data if we terminate
- api documentation and rate limits
Procurement and legal
Looking for clear reasons to say yes or no. A page that answers them directly can cut weeks from a deal.
- standard contract terms for this kind of supplier
- supplier due diligence checklist template
- references for this supplier from similar organisations
- what accreditations should a supplier in this field hold
These are example searches from keyword research and public search data. Before we suggest anything, we check how often people search for them in your area.
How we work
How we build a B2B SEO programme
Work out what each search is worth
Contract value, close rate and the share of searches you could win give finance a number they can challenge. It also shows which search groups do not pay, so you drop them before anyone writes a word.
You get: A value-per-search model for each search group
Map the buying committee
We interview your sales team and, where possible, recent customers: who was involved, in what order, what each person asked, and where stalled deals got stuck.
You get: A committee map with the objections and searches for each role
Check your pages against the map
For every question each role raises, we check whether a page exists, can be found, and is good enough to forward.
You get: A gap report by committee role
Agree what you can claim, once
One session with legal and technical reviewers to agree what can be said, what needs a qualifier and what needs a source. This removes most of the friction from later reviews.
You get: A written claims and review guide
Build the missing pages
Written with your experts, whose detail makes the pages useful: sales, proof, technical and procurement pages, in the order the model says matters most.
You get: Published pages, each backed by a named expert from your team
Connect search to your CRM
We record the first organic visit when a record is created and follow it to pipeline and closed revenue, with agreed early signs of progress for the months before anything closes.
You get: Attribution setup and an agreed reporting model
What is included
What our B2B SEO service includes
- Value-per-search modelling for every search group we consider
- Buying committee research with your sales team and recent customers
- A page audit organised by committee role
- Sales page structure for your services, the problems you solve and the industries you serve
- Technical and security pages written for evaluators
- Procurement material: terms, accreditations, references and business continuity
- Expert interviews that produce specific, publishable detail
- A claims and review guide agreed with legal before writing starts
- CRM setup for first-touch and assisted organic attribution
- Quarterly reports on pipeline and closed revenue, with agreed early signs of progress
Questions
What B2B marketing leads ask
Our search volumes are tiny. Is SEO worth it?
Often yes, because volume is the wrong number. If your average contract is worth six figures and you win one in five qualified enquiries, twenty relevant searches a month is worth having. At two hundred per contract, it is not.
We model value per search first: the share you could win, how many become enquiries, and what those are worth. Sometimes the model says search is the wrong channel, and it is better to know early.
Our buyers come from referrals and events. Do they even search?
Almost always, just not when you notice. A referral gives someone your name, and they search it along with two or three alternatives. What they find backs up the referral or weakens it.
That job is measured differently from finding new buyers. It shows up as better close rates and shorter sales cycles more than as new visits.
How do you attribute anything when a deal takes nine months?
Not with last-click, which hides the search that started the deal. We record the first organic visit in your CRM when a record is created, then report pipeline and closed revenue by first and assisted touch.
That makes the delay clear: deals closing this quarter came from last year's search work. Agreeing this with finance at the start stops the channel being judged too early.
What content does a buying committee need?
More than the single champion page most B2B sites stop at. The champion needs a case for change. The budget holder needs cost, risk and the cost of doing nothing. The technical reviewer needs integration and security details. Procurement needs terms, references and signs you will still be around in three years.
Those are four different documents. On most sites, three of them do not exist, and the deal stalls wherever one is missing.
Everything we publish has to go through legal. Does that kill this?
No. It slows things down, but it is manageable. We agree the limits once, at the start: what can be stated as fact, what needs a qualifier or a named source, and which topics need an expert reviewer.
Reviewers reject vague marketing language faster than specific facts, so review often improves the writing. We build the time it takes into the plan.
Should we gate our best content?
Rarely, and never the content you want to rank. A gated asset is invisible to search and hard to forward inside a company.
Publish the useful content and gate the tool instead, such as a calculator, an assessment or a benchmark against their own data. People give contact details more readily for something that does a job for them.
Work out what one search in your market is worth
Bring your average contract value and close rate. In one session we build the value-per-search model for your niche and show whether search deserves budget.
Prefer to talk it over? Book a free call
Your BOOSTD score improves within 90 days, or your next month is free. After 6 months, more traffic or leads, or we keep working free (up to 6 free months in any 12 months). Read our guarantee
References
Sources for B2B SEO
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
Related
More on b2B SEO
- when to expect search results to moveThe factors that decide how fast results come.
- SEO for software companiesThe same buying committee, with a self-serve product.
- SEO for large organisationsWhen the buyer is also a big organisation, the limits change again.
- fixing lead quality
- attribution and analyticsA nine-month sales cycle needs reporting built for it.
Where b2B SEO matters most
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Last updated · Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor