Did you know that according to a german case study by Sana 50% of all Business to Business (B2B) purchases are made online?

As such, organic search is an extremely important channel for B2B companies – but we can’t simply apply Business to Consumer (B2C) SEO strategies to B2B. In this article, I'll show you exactly where the differences lie and which levers for SEO and content really work in a B2B context.

B2C vs. B2B – what are the differences?

Whilst both Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) marketers are targeting people; the core difference with B2B lies in how people buy –i.e. the customer journey.

To help illustrate the differences between B2C, and B2B customer journeys I like to use Avinash Kaushik’s See, Think, Do, Care framework.

His framework divides the customer journey into the following 4 phases:

• SEE – the attention or awareness phase
• THINK – the research phase
• DO – either a purchase or enquiry is made
• CARE – the phase after purchase (where as marketers, our aim is to nurture our existing customers)

Let’s look at an example B2C journey:

• SEE: You see an Instagram ad for fitness clothing. Your interest is piqued and on the way home you decide that you want to buy some new sportswear.
• THINK: At home, you sit down on the sofa with your smartphone and start researching what’s out there. Maybe you read some articles on health and fitness sites, or take a look at what your favourite social media influencers recommend. Then maybe you read some reviews, and browse a few different online stores. Eventually you decide what you want to buy, and which site you want to buy from.
• DO: You put your new sportswear in your shopping basket and check out.
• CARE: After your products have reached you, you receive newsletters and/or discount promotions via email.

Now let’s look at an example B2B journey:

• SEE: You see an ad on LinkedIn about the benefits of a project management software solution.
• THINK: You wonder if a project management software solution might be beneficial for the company you work for. You talk to your boss about it.
• THINK: Your boss thinks it’s worth looking into and asks you to find out more about the different software solutions available, their advantages and disadvantages, and pricing.
• THINK: You search for ‘project management software’ on Google and look at various providers.
• THINK: You begin to search more specifically for your industry e.g.: ‘project management software for construction companies’ and create a list of potential providers.
• THINK: You compare and contrast what’s out there, and narrow down your selection to 3 tool providers.
• DO: You sign up for free demos for your top 3 providers
• THINK: After the extensive demo phase, you build a business case, and present your recommendations to the Board. They decide on software solution B.
• DO: You purchase the software solution.
• CARE: The tool provider onboards your company, and assists with implementation. On an ongoing basis you receive tips on how to use and optimise your project management processes via the support team, internal pop-up notifications, newsletters, etc.

As you can see, not only is the customer journey longer, and more complex in B2B, both “THINK” and “DO” are multi-phase. In addition to this, whereas in B2C there’s typically just one decision-maker, in B2B there are often many people involved in the decision-making process.

As such, in order to succeed in B2B, our content strategies need to reflect and support these long and often complex customer journeys. There are two frameworks which can help you with this.

Useful content strategy frameworks for B2B companies

See, Think, Do, Care

Given that I just introduced you to the “See, Think, Do, Care” framework in the section above, it won’t surprise you to learn that a popular tactic in B2B is to create content to support the various stages within this customer journey.

SEE

Reaching potential customers within the See phase is typically a job for advertising, PR, or push marketing. The See phase isn’t typically a space for SEO content, because at this point, the customer isn’t actively searching for providers online. However, ad content, landing page content, and homepage content should be carefully considered in order to reflect where customers are in their journeys at this point.

THINK

The Think phase is where SEO comes in. Our potential customers’ initial search queries are often fairly broad. This means that the keywords we’re targeting tend to relate to a category or a specific area of our products or services, for example, ‘project management software’ and our content should reflect this.

A little later in the Think phase, we start to see more specific search queries – for example, rather than ‘project management software’ we might see things like ‘project management software for construction companies’. In order to target these long tail queries effectively we need to create relevant pages that highlight the specific challenges, problems, and use cases our potential customers are researching.

DO

Once our potential customers have shortlisted their potential providers we’ll start to see branded search terms like ‘[your brand] project management software’. These people are now ready to act, so at this point in the journey we’ll want them to land directly on our product pages with a compelling call to action to make it as easy as possible for them to convert.

CARE

Whilst Care content is often pushed directly to customers, it’s often the case that this content also has a home online within help sections for example. As such we still have a role to play here to make sure that any content is well-structured, and easily discoverable.

In order to use this framework, extensive keyword research and clustering are necessary. You should also carry out a content gap analysis to see which content your competitors are already targeting, but you are not. After all, the SEO goal is clear: to rank in the top positions for the most important and relevant search terms that generate qualified traffic, and convert leads.

PAS: Problem, Agitation, Solution

Another framework which I’ve used extensively for B2B clients is the PAS framework. It is particularly popular in copywriting, as it adds an emotional component and clearly articulates solutions to the problems your customers are facing.

Let me give you example:

You are a provider of industrial vacuum pumps for all sorts of industries. With PAS a content piece could look like this:

• Problem: “vacuum pump losing performance”
• Agitation: Unreliable vacuum pumps can disrupt operations, increase maintenance costs, and impact the quality of end products. These inefficiencies not only frustrate your customers, but they also risk damaging your reputation.
• Solution: An upgrade to a high-efficiency vacuum pump that is designed for reliability and consistent performance in even the most demanding industrial environments.

Keyword research is also important here. An insider tip from me: Talk to support, customer service and, above all, the sales team. What problems do your target audience have? What questions do they ask most often? That's the P in PAS that you're looking for. If there are also suitable keywords and even search volume - jackpot.

Tips for B2B SEO

Tip 1: Quality beats quantity

Be mindful of the keywords you’re targeting with your content. For example, I often see B2B companies with glossary content which drives a lot of traffic; but next to no conversions. That’s because the vast majority of the visitors to this content don’t reflect the company’s target audience, and as such, will probably never become customers.

I’d recommend putting your time and energy into optimising for the search terms that your target audience are most likely to use. The associated search volumes may not be as high, but the business outcome will be.

Tip 2: Create content hubs through internal linking

In some instances you will need external links to help your content rank organically, but in my experience it’s often the case that you can get great results just by improving your information architecture and internal linking – that’s where content hubs come in.

Creating content hubs is all about connecting your content thematically. Take a look at your website content and think about how you could organise it. Which areas or topics should, or could be grouped together?

My favourite toolstack for doing this is Screaming Frog, Gephi and the R console.

I use Screaming Frog to crawl the entire domain and extract the all-inklinks report. I still have to make slight adjustments to the file because we only want internal links with status code 200, so I delete self-referencing links, links to 404 pages and internal redirects. Now I have a raw amount of data that I can put into Gephi. Gephi uses the data to create and visualise nodes and edges. Nodes are my pages and edges are the links between them. The visual part in particular is important for outsiders in the company who have nothing to do with SEO and makes the topic of internal links and their importance more accessible. Vincent Malischewski has published a great guide to this.

With the R Console, I can also calculate internal PageRank and measure the quality of the links, whereas Gephi only takes into account the quantity, but not the link power of the individual pages. Like Gephi, R is an open source tool. To calculate the internal PageRank, you need to install a package in R. You can also use this predefined code snippet for calculating the PageRank.

You now have gathered data on how your content is connected. When it comes to optimizing I recommend that you avoid over-doing any internal linking. Stay on-topic and link only to related content that users might find helpful in their research.

Tip 3: Get the SEO basics right

All your hard work will amount to nothing if you haven’t got the SEO basics right – not least because, if your content isn’t indexable, no one will ever find it. Indexation issues aside, you’ll also need to ensure your on-page optimisation is on point in order to maximise your chances of ranking organically.

Final thoughts

Want to get started with SEO and these frameworks? That’s great!

However, in my experience, getting buy-in for SEO projects in B2B companies can be tough; because before you can get to work, you’ll need to convince the C-Suite that organic search is a relevant channel for the business.

Plus, because customer journeys are more complex, (and it’s often the case that sales are closed offline, rather than online) building a business case for B2B is often more challenging than for B2C. For more information on the metrics that matter, you might like to check out Erica Ylimäki’s excellent article: on SaaS SEO Metrics (many of which are applicable to B2B companies outside of SaaS too).

I’ve also seen success through competitor analysis – highlighting competitor visibility and estimating the likely business impact can make a compelling argument for a business to invest in SEO too.

Ultimately, when it comes to B2B SEO it's important to make the right arguments at the right time - just like the content in the phases of the customer journey 😊