B2B SEO Strategy: Complete 2025 Guide

No, B2B SEO isn’t dead — but it sure looks a lot different these days. Between AI models and algorithm updates, it’s not enough to push out keyword-bait or generic FAQs and hope your website sees a traffic boost.

The good news is that B2B SEO is still a viable demand generation strategy, so long as you’re following all best practices, of course.

We took the liberty of creating a comprehensive guide covering everything you need to know about B2B SEO in 2025, including keyword research, technical essentials, content strategy, and appearing in AI search results.

💡 Related: Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google’s AI

And speaking of AI…

• How AI Search Results Are Reshaping SEO
• B2B SEO Fundamentals
  • Keyword Research for B2B Companies
  • Technical SEO Essentials for B2B Websites
  • Content Strategy for B2B SEO
  • Appearing in AI Search Results
  • Measuring SEO Performance for B2B
• Working with B2B SEO Companies
• Answering Your Questions
• Implementing a Winning SEO Strategy

How AI Search Results Are Reshaping SEO

The rise of AI has made SEO trickier for newer B2B brands, especially in the technology industry. This is due to three major reasons: AI platforms, AI-generated search results, and AI-generated SEO articles.

First, more and more people are using AI to answer questions than simply relying on search engines alone. Think about a B2B buyer wondering about fintech platforms for global payouts. Instead of searching Google for a possible fit, they might ask ChatGPT to give them a list of potential companies — potentially cutting your brand out of the running completely.

There are also AI-generated search results on major search engines, which can significantly limit user access to your content. You might have a great article covering marketplace payment processing and APIs, but with an AI overview summarizing the content, they may not have to click through to your website’s page. 

These factors certainly make SEO more challenging, but they have not (and will not) eliminate organic B2B SEO. The numbers, frankly, speak for themselves:

• 99% of AI users still rely on search engines. In fact, 58% still prefer tools like Google over ChatGPT when they need a factual answer. 
• B2B SaaS (like technology brands) have an SEO return on ad spend (ROAS) of $8.75. This comes out to an ROI of 702%, with a break-even point after seven months.
• Organic search generates 53.3% of traffic for B2B brands, plus two times more revenue than any other channel. That number is higher for B2B technology brands — 58.8% share of revenue, which is higher than paid search and organic social media.  

TL;DR — you can still use B2B SEO for demand generation by working with obstacles, not against them.

Let’s take a closer look at how this works with a brief crash course in B2B SEO fundamentals. 

B2B SEO Fundamentals

As you’ve seen, B2B SEO is a critical pillar of any demand generation strategy. But it’s important to note that it’s different from B2C SEO, and the two strategies cannot be used interchangeably.

The first reason why is a longer sales cycle. B2C brands typically sell in six months or less, while B2B brands can take six months or longer — which means you’ll need to create more content for different stages of the B2B funnel.

It currently takes around six months to one year to see results for B2B SEO, with the highest ROI after two or three years. This means the journey you’ll embark on here is not for the faint of heart. And while you may not necessarily see instant ROI, you will certainly see changes in lead quality, traffic, and volume.

The second consideration is SEO execution, meaning the way you perform keyword research, technical SEO, content, AI results, and analytics or benchmarking. This, of course, is too much to fit into in a few paragraphs.

So let’s break it down into five different sections:

1. Keyword Research for B2B Companies

You likely already know what keyword research is: finding the words or phrases your prospects are searching for online. The goal is to identify high-intent keywords that denote a prospect is ready to buy (or at least moving toward a selection decision).

You need a few tools and resources before getting started:

• A way to see what your audience is searching for. Google Analytics might be a good tool here, although you can also use tools like Seed Keywords Engine. With Seed, you can generate a scenario and send an email to contacts asking what they might search to solve the problem (think ‘what would you type into Google to find a tutorial estimating development effort for APIs?’). After your contacts respond, Seed condenses their responses into an easy-to-read spreadsheet with keyword ideas you might not have considered.
• A way to search for and evaluate keywords. You can use free tools like Answer the Public or Google’s People Also Ask segment (found when searching any popular keyphrase in the search engine). You can also get browser extensions like Keywords Everywhere or a dedicated platform like Ahrefs or Semresh.
• A way to compare competitors’ keywords. Spyfu and BuzzSumo are two popular options, although you could also use all-in-one platforms like Semresh and Ahrefs.

💡Related: SEO Keyword Opportunities in Developer Marketing

Now that you have the tools of the trade, you can start narrowing down the best keywords for your SEO strategy. There are five things to remember when gathering up great keywords: content/campaign type, funnel placement, traffic, difficulty, and cost per click.

First, think about the SEO campaign you’re running. Are you rehashing your website? Optimizing old blog posts? Creating new technical tutorials? You need to know the intent of your audience so you can search keywords that match the right stage of the funnel.

Speaking of funnel, what is your lead going to be doing once they reach your piece of content? If you’re just getting introduced (top of funnel or informational), they might click into an About Us page. If they’ve heard of you but are comparing their options (middle of funnel or commercial), they might search through a blog post you have about pricing. If they’re ready to buy (bottom of funnel or transactional), they might click from your blog post into a demo request or sales call.

Ultimately, you should try to pick a keyword or set of keywords that meet your customer’s needs. If you’re struggling to differentiate or worried you’re not picking correctly, you can use a tool like Ahrefs to distinguish between informational, commercial, and transactional intent.

Now that you have a general heading, it’s time to evaluate keywords based on traffic, difficulty, and cost per click.

• Traffic refers to how many people are searching for a specific phrase. The more traffic there is, the more likely you are to have more visitors to related pieces.
• Difficulty refers to how many other businesses have targeted a keyword, including how strong their web presence is. The higher the number, the higher the competition. For example, you might need a heavier web presence or backlink portfolio to rank for something like ‘Kubernetes cluster.’
• Cost per click is the estimated average cost to use a keyword in a paid campaign. You won’t necessarily need to pay this in an organic campaign, but it could clue you in to potentially high-value keywords attracting leads that are ready to buy.

This will give you everything you need to identify, sort, and select the best keywords for your campaign. It will also help you build topic clusters, which you can use in your content strategy, as you’ll see below.

Sidenote: you don’t need to add a million keywords to one page (or meet some arbitrary keyword density) to reach the top page of Google. Case in point, pages that occupy the top 10 in Google’s SERPs have a 50% lower keyword density than the ones that ranked two years ago.

2. Content Strategy for B2B SEO

You’ve probably heard that content is king — and it still rings true in the age of AI. The key nowadays is creating high-quality content that offers value, answers questions, and perfectly answers the searcher’s intent.

Let’s break down how you can make this happen:

Topic Clusters Approach

Once you’ve identified high-quality keywords, you can group them together into similar categories called ‘clusters.’ The idea is to lump related keywords and topic ideas together that act as ‘supports’ for a single ‘pillar’ article, which is usually a higher-difficulty topic. 

At the end of the day, it might look like this:

This will work wonders in boosting domain authority, generating traffic, and pushing pillar pages to the top of Google results.

You don’t have to store everything in a spreadsheet, though. If you prefer Google Docs or third-party organization software, that will work too. 

💡 Related: Topic Clusters and Keyword Research for Technical Content

Content Types that Perform Well

Now that you know your keywords and topics, let’s look a little closer at the content types available.

Topic clusters work well for technical tutorials and blog posts, but they’re not necessarily a fit for other types of content. There are other high-performance options that could help you move the needle.

We’ve collected a few for your consideration below:

Content Type	Description	Best for
Roundups, reviews, and comparisons	Long-form written content that addresses your audience’s questions, pain points, and interests	Organic traffic, lead generation, and SEO authority
Video tutorials	Step-by-step visual guides or explanations of a process, tool, or concept	Engagement, brand authority, and search rankings in video platforms (like YouTube SEO)
Webinars	Live or recorded online events with real-time audience participation	Nurturing leads, building authority, and showcasing thought leadership
Podcasts	Audio-first interviews, discussions, or solo episodes	Expanding reach, building trust, and connecting with niche audiences
Social Media Content	Posts shared across LinkedIn, Twitter, or other channels	High brand visibility, plus driving targeted traffic to your main site.
Case Studies	In-depth stories about real customer successes	Sales enablement and trust building

💡Related: How to Write Better Technical Content

Content Calendar Planning

You know your topics, clusters, and content types. Now it’s time to build a content calendar so you know exactly where your content is and when it should go live. This can also help you track development processes and ensure the right people are working on the right projects. That way, you can easily stay consistent with publishing — yet another signal for SEO.

Some pointers:

• Build in an accessible doc or use a cloud-based third-party tool. This will make it easier to collaborate with decision-makers and hold contributors accountable (whether or not they’re on your payroll).
• Pick a schedule you can stick to. Even if it’s just once or twice per month, it’s better to be consistent then scattered and frustrated. 
• Store more than just ideas on your calendar. This could be URL slugs, meta information, keyword details, and more. You can also add more than just brand-new content. For example, you might earmark times for content optimization, converting podcasts into social media posts and blogs, and other tasks.

3. Technical SEO Essentials for B2B Websites

Technical SEO might sound intimidating at first glance. Thankfully for business owners, it’s not always as difficult as it sounds.

These four tips can help you get started:

Site Structure and Navigation

The first step is ensuring your website is easy to navigate and follows accepted logic for both people and robots. That means building a flat architecture, which translated from jargonese, means creating a simple hierarchy where users can reach key pages in three clicks or less. 

Make sure this architecture is optimized for mobile too, as 60% of B2B buyers say they use their phones at some point during a buying journey. To do this, you might:

• Create ‘hamburger’ menus
• Set up ‘breadcrumb’ links
• Remove desktop-only features to avoid confusing mobile visitors

Next, look for ways to remove orphan pages, which are portions of your site that don’t have any internal (incoming) links. This makes it more difficult for search engines to discover them, which could dramatically affect its ranking and authority.

Finally, do your best to optimize pages with proper titles, meta descriptions, and URL slugs. Make sure that each category has your main page keyword, as well as follows best practices for size and length.

You can use Mangool’s simple SERP simulator to test these on the fly.

Site Speed Improvements

The speed of your website (i.e., how fast it loads) will have a significant impact on your SEO signals. It might worsen your bounce rate, lower visitor satisfaction, and ultimately send poor user signals that push your website lower in the rankings.

A few quick suggestions for speeding up your website:

• Compress large images and use modern formats (like WebP)
• Minimize any render-blocking JavaScript.
• Use a reliable content delivery network (CDN)
• Choose a lightweight or performance-focused website theme.
• Implement lazy loading for images and videos

Schema Markup for B2B

Schema markup, also called structured data, can help search engines understand your content better. For B2B websites, this can improve how your content appears in search results (like rich snippets), which pushes your brand to the top of the page. 

Common types of schema to consider for B2B SEO include:

• Product schema for service pages
• Organization schema to showcase brand details
• FAQ schema to highlight common questions and answers
• Event schema for webinars or workshops

Keep in mind schema can also indirectly boost SEO by increasing click-through rates and making your site easier to find.

4. Appearing in AI Search Results

AI may not be eclipsing traditional search engines yet, but it still offers an opportunity to rank in a whole new way. This involves getting your business name picked up by AI systems so they can display your information after relevant searches (such as ‘best mobile development platforms’).

Rand Fishkin at SparkToro outlines a three-step process for this:

1. Search for keyphrases that have a strong opportunity for your brand. For this example, let’s do ‘transactional email service.’
2. Next, create content that includes your business’s name directly next to the key phrase. For example, if your business name was SendGrid, you might include words like, ‘SendGrid’s transactional email service is…’
3. Finally, look for ways to include your business name and keyword phrase in new articles or press releases as they appear. For example, you might include these in podcast bios, press releases, and other article roundups. It’s also good for backlinks, even apart from AI, since you’re getting your brand noticed across high-authority websites.

Why does this work? Because AI is a predictive model. It’s trained to ‘write’ by predicting words that typically occur after other phrases. 

So if a model like ChatGPT notices a pattern of articles saying ‘SendGrid’s transactional email service,’ it’s much more likely to provide SendGrid as an answer to ‘what are some top transactional email services?’

Like this:

5. Measuring SEO Performance for B2B

Doing SEO is just one step in the process. You also have to consider how to measure your progress. Otherwise, you won’t have the knowledge to benchmark your performance, improve your approach, or calculate an accurate ROI.

First, you need to define key performance indicators (or KPIs), which will help you determine if your SEO work is meeting expectations. Website and page traffic are, of course, some of the most common metrics, but there are a few other options depending on your approach:

KPI Name	Description	Best For	How to Track or Calculate
Organic Traffic	Visitors who find your website through unpaid search results	Gauging effectiveness for driving new visitors	Use Google Analytics or third-party platforms
Keyword Rankings	Tracks your website’s position for target keywords	Evaluating how well your content aligns with target search terms and improving topic authority.	Use rank tracking tools like Semresh or Ahrefs
Backlink Profile	Number and quality of external websites linking to your content	Building domain authority and credibility	Use SEO tools like Link Explorer
Conversion Rate	Percent of website visitors who take an action (i.e., convert)	Connecting SEO efforts to demand generation goals	Conversion Rate (%) = (Total Conversions / Total Visitors) x 100
Bounce Rate	Percent of visitors who leave your site after viewing one page	Assessing content relevance and user experience	Bounce Rate (%) = (Single Page Visits / Total Visits) x 100
Lead Quality	Measures the relevancy and quality of leads	Connecting SEO to pipeline quality and sales-readiness	Assigned by sales team or marketing automation tools (based on lead scoring frameworks)
Domain Authority (DA)	Predicts how well a website will rank	Benchmarking your overall authority and competitive position	Use a tool like Moz, Ahrefs, or Semrush
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)	Estimated cost of acquiring one customer through SEO	Assessing how cost-effective your SEO efforts are	CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Costs / Number of New Customers
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)	Estimated revenue a customer will generate	Connecting SEO efforts to long-term revenue potential	LTV = (Average Purchase Value) x (Number of Purchases per Year) x (Average Customer Lifespan)
SEO ROI	Compares the revenue versus cost of SEO	Measuring direct financial return	SEO ROI (%) = ((SEO Revenue – SEO Costs) / SEO Costs) x 100

Next, you need an attribution model, which can help you match SEO activities to specific sales or conversions. For example, if a prospect signs up for a demo after reading an article on your blog, you’ll want to have some way to record this so you can make more content like that in the future. 

Attribution models measure the number of ‘touches’ a person has with your SEO content along their buyer’s journey. That way, you can give more or less credit to specific types of content and get a better idea of what’s working best for your brand.

You can use Google Analytics, another third-party attribution tool, or a custom Python program to track where buyers go on your website. Then, you can use one of five different types of attribution models:

1. First touch: You give all the credit to the buyer’s first touchpoint.
2. Last touch: You give all the credit to the buyer’s last touchpoint.
3. Linear: You give all touchpoints in the buyer’s journey the same amount of credit. 
4. Time decay: The touchpoint that happened the closest in time to conversion is the one that gets the credit.
5. Multi-touch: You can use the ‘U’ shaped model, which means you give credit to the first and last touchpoints, or the ‘W’ shaped model, which gives credit to the first, last, and midpoint (lead conversion) in a journey.

Finally, to keep track of all these analytics and attributions, you’ll need to set up a reporting framework. You can use this to track progress and report changes either internally (with stakeholders) or externally (with investors, agencies, or clients of your own). 

You have quite a few options depending on your setup:

• Use software like HubSpot, Ahrefs, or Semresh to collect SEO metrics and send them to clients. You can generate a PDF or automate weekly emails so you don’t need to worry about putting together the information yourself. 
• Create a dedicated dashboard that keeps track of business intelligence. This might be a custom report on Google Analytics, or a business intelligence visualizer like Tableau, Looker, or Power BI. You could also give certain users view access to your dashboard so they can check your analytics anytime they want or need.
• Curate specific numbers and put them into a custom report (such as a Word document or Excel spreadsheet). That way, you can mix and match data from different reporting sources while keeping sensitive info out of the public eye.

💡Related: Maximizing Your Content Marketing ROI

Working with B2B SEO Companies

Managing B2B SEO internally is certainly possible — but as you’ve seen, it’s not necessarily easy (or fast). There may come a point where it no longer makes sense to continue, either from a work output, financial expenditure, or timeline perspective.

You might start considering outsourcing B2B SEO when:

• You realize you’re the bottleneck. Sure, you might save money with DIY, but you certainly won’t save time. This might not be a great option if you’re launching a time-sensitive product or looking for a faster return on investment (ROI).
• You want higher-quality content. Anyone can click ‘Submit’ on ChatGPT, but not everyone knows how to create quality content. Considering businesses that spend more on SEO articles tend to be more successful, hiring an expert for content marketing (or an agency with multiple experts) could help maximize your budget with quality graphics, images, content, and publishing strategies. 
• You need higher volume SEO. You might have been able to handle one or two pieces in the beginning, but now that your business is scaling up, you don’t have the resources (or the head of content) to keep going. You need a dedicated SEO support system that gets more work done without the full-time employee paycheck.

For all these reasons and many more, 48% of businesses outsource their SEO to agencies or freelancers. This, of course, requires careful assessment to ensure you’re investing in a high-quality service. You’re welcome to read our guide on finding a B2B agency that works for you, as well as working effectively with ghost blog writers.

So, how do you manage outsourced SEO relationships successfully? It mostly depends on what you need from a provider. That said, be sure to communicate your needs, provide dense feedback on the first few drafts or campaigns, and express how frequently you expect to meet and receive updates and results.  

Frequently Asked Questions About B2B SEO

Implementing a Winning SEO Strategy

B2B SEO is one of the easiest ways to capture more leads without cold prospecting. But that doesn’t mean you can set it and forget it — you’ll need a full system for keyword research and implementation, content writing, technical SEO, and showing up on AI search results.

If you can’t (or don’t want to) spare the time, patience, or human resources to do this, you can always lean on experts like Draft.dev. We have decades of combined experience in generating SEO results for B2B brands through technical tutorials, ebooks, social media collateral, and videos tutorials designed to convert readers into leads.

Learn more about working with our B2B SEO agency by scheduling a discovery call.