Business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce is one of the fastest-growing sales models, with more than half of lB2B transactions over $1 million now processed through digital self-serve channels.
There are plenty of overlaps between B2B and traditional direct-to-consumer (DTC) ecommerce—namely, the ability to sell through a self-serve online storefront and use search engines to target potential buyers when they’re actively looking for a solution you can provide.
Studies show the average B2B buyer spends 70% of the time in their purchase journey doing independent research online. Most of them consult search engines during this decision-making process, beating online marketplaces and trade shows as the most popular channel for B2B product discovery.
This guide shares how to capitalize on buyers’ preference for search engines with a B2B SEO strategy that can turn casual browsers into high-value customers.
While there are crossovers between these two types of SEO marketing, there are key differences.
The B2B sales process is much longer and more complex than direct-to-consumer sales, spanning up to five months. The decision-making process also frequently involves up to 15 stakeholders for enterprise purchases, compared to the sole buyer in a B2C transaction. Content needs to be easily discoverable by multiple people, each of whom weighs in at different points in the decision-making process.
And with more risk due to generally higher costs for B2B purchases, buyers need more convincing before committing. Content formats like case studies, white papers, and product documentation play a key role later in the conversion funnel. All of this content needs optimizing so that it’s easy for buyers to locate when required.
Traditional SEO “best practice” suggests finding a keyword with a high search volume. The more people searching this term, the better chance you have at monetizing the page targeting it … right?
This isn’t necessarily true with B2B SEO. Businesses that are evaluating different options likely care about a product’s specifications, which means they’re more likely to use long-tail variations on top search terms (e.g.., “wholesale vitamin C face masks”). The search volume of these variations is lower, but B2B means these customers usually spend more than individuals. You don’t need as high a search volume to make the keyword targeting a profitable strategy.
Some B2B markets are also much smaller than B2C. For example, a keyword like “industrial HVAC system” has a much narrower target audience than a broader B2C term like “red summer dress.” The former will have a lower search volume than you’d expect for a DTC term.
Because the B2B decision-making process is longer and more complex, it’s unlikely that a buyer will convert immediately after coming across your storefront in a search engine. Buyers need multiple interactions with your brand before feeling confident enough to buy. This means that B2B SEO has a lower immediate conversion rate than DTC strategies—but that’s not to say that B2B SEO is ineffective.
Multichannel marketing attribution can show the part your B2B SEO strategy plays in longer sales cycles. Buyers might initially discover your products or services through a search engine like Google, only to go on and view your social media accounts or visit the site directly. Multichannel attribution can surface the impact of SEO on these longer B2B sales journeys by giving the channel credit for the sale, rather than the channel a buyer used immediately before purchasing.
It’s clear that the benefits of a B2B SEO strategy are worth the investment. Now it’s time to build one on your own. Here’s how:
Any marketing strategy starts with a strong understanding of who you’ll plan to reach. B2B search engine optimization is no different.
Understanding your target market helps identify the keywords and phrases they’re likely to use when searching for your products or services online. Without this knowledge, there’s a risk of targeting keywords that may drive more organic traffic but fail to attract qualified leads or potential buyers. (When this happens, some stakeholders will claim that “SEO is dead”—in fact, you’re just targeting the wrong searchers.)
Quiz existing B2B customers to uncover:
This insight also helps build the online user experience. Google has openly said this holds weight in its algorithm: “Google’s core ranking systems look to reward quality content that provides a good page experience. Site owners seeking to be successful with our systems should not focus on only one or two aspects of page experience. Instead, check if you’re providing an overall great page experience across many aspects.”
Now that you understand your target market, dive deeper and learn the typical path they take toward becoming a customer. This full-picture view of your B2B sales funnel helps you prioritize resources when implementing a new SEO strategy.
Keywords used by buyers at the bottom of the funnel are the hottest leads, but competition tends to be fierce since other businesses want to claim the limited top spots. You might need to invest time in accumulating trust signals like backlinks, brand mentions, or customer reviews before claiming the top spot in a competitive SERP. It’s therefore not always the best strategy for a newer B2B brand that wants to see SEO return on investment (ROI) quickly.
A comprehensive view of the B2B buyer journey also informs the content you’ll produce. Buyers who interact with your brand for the first time might digest educational articles or top-level how tos. Those closer to a purchase require case studies and in-depth reviews—all of which must be accessible through the keywords they’re searching to find them.
Keyword research is the process of uncovering which phrases your buyers search for when they’re looking for products or services like yours. SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs can help you find them. Customer feedback and visitor acquisition reports in Google Search Console can also point you in the right direction.
Contrary to B2C SEO best practices, search volume isn’t a key priority when shortlisting potential keywords. Buyers tend to use longer, more specific keywords when they’re looking for wholesale products. They also often use technical jargon that professionals use regularly.
Low search volume aside, evaluate the search intent for shortlisted relevant keywords. This determines where you’ll target the phrase and the content you’ll write for each.
We can break search intent down into four key categories:
Topic clusters are an SEO strategy that organizes content around a revenue-driving theme. It involves a pillar page, which acts as the hub that answers problems at a higher level. Then, cluster pages on subtopics go deeper and link back to the pillar.
For example, say a B2B ecommerce brand sells professional-grade lighting equipment to production agencies and photography studios. Their theme might be “professional video lighting.”
The brand might create a pillar page titled “A Professional’s Guide to Lighting for Video Production.” It would cover everything a studio manager or creative director needs to know, like the science of three-point lighting, color temperature, and equipment types.
The cluster pages would be a series of articles and tutorials targeting more technical questions buyers have, such as:
With the cluster model, a production agency searching for “best lighting for corporate interviews” would find the company’s article on that subject. Ideally, the article provides so much value that the agency sees the lighting brand as a trusted expert in the field. Then, they either sign up for an email list, explore more content on the brand’s website, or book a meeting with sales.
💡Build your topic cluster:
A cluster model isn’t built overnight, and it’ll take a content team to enforce it. The process involves creating briefs, incorporating subject matter expert review steps, and a refresh cadence to keep clusters current. Create a “who owns what” governance doc so everyone knows their role in the program.
If you’ve spent time in the marketing space on LinkedIn over the past 12 months, you know that SEO has changed dramatically. Yet, many fundamental principles remain the same—create content that people want to read, and search engines reward you.
Regardless, it’s good to understand the organic search landscape beyond those basics. Google’s AI experiences (AI Overviews and AI Mode) are now mainstream, and have changed the interface for search experiences. Reddit content features heavily across SERPs and AI summaries now, as Google has licensed Reddit data—so, valuable and trusted contributions from Reddit now influence search and AI surfaces.
When a user searches for something online, they no longer only see a few text ads and 10 blue links. Now, they can view AI summaries via AI Overviews and opt for a conversational search experience through AI Mode.
To see this in practice, let’s compare two different search experiences for a similar query.
In a standard search for “lighting suppliers for home goods brands USA,” the results page presents a familiar, albeit busy, landscape. It’s led by a block of sponsored ads, followed by a concise “AI Overview” paragraph, and then the traditional list of organic blue links.
However, when a user asks a more conversational question in AI Mode, such as, “Who are the top lighting suppliers in the USA for home goods brands?” the experience is fundamentally different. Instead of a list of sites to browse, the user receives a direct, detailed answer that synthesizes information from across the web into a single, comprehensive response.
The conversational experience is what users are increasingly gravitating toward. It delivers more immediate value and can answer complex questions without requiring the user to open multiple tabs and piece information together themselves.
But the takeaway is this: AI doesn’t create this knowledge out of thin air. It pulls, summarizes, and cites the most authoritative content it finds online. Your content’s objective used to be to rank. Now it’s to create content so clear, trustworthy, and expert-driven that it becomes a source for these AI-powered answers.
A content strategy is the nuts and bolts of how you’ll optimize your storefront for each B2B keyword. Here’s what a typical B2B content strategy looks like and the types of content you’d create for each search intent bucket.
A blog is a place to educate and inspire buyers by providing answers they’re looking for with informational keywords using search terms like “what is” or “benefits.”
You can also treat blog posts as a way to educate buyers with a specific challenge or pain point. If a fashion retailer is Googling “AI trends in fashion,” for example, their pain point could be feeling behind or fearing being overtaken by competitors. Your article could round up the latest AI trends—ideally with input from fashion or AI experts—to ease their concerns.
At this stage, your goal isn’t to sell your products (though you can subtly reference them throughout the content)—it’s to position your brand as an expert. You’ll cement your brand in their mind so that when a buyer is ready to search for alternatives, you’ve already shown your value.
A category page is a collection of products. Buyers might need to locate them if they’re comparing different options. Use them to target commercial keywords that use phrases like “best” or “for” (e.g., “lighting systems for warehouses”).
Buyers viewing a product page are further down in the funnel and looking at a product’s technical specifications, use case, or pricing.
Help them locate this information by targeting commercial or highly specific keywords throughout the page, including product descriptions, meta descriptions, and image alt text. For example, a B2B brand selling project management software could target phrases like “project management software for healthcare” or “customizable project management tool” on its product page.
Landing pages have one goal: success is measured by how many people complete a micro-conversion. It’s the best content format for transactional keywords that include words like “compare,” “quote,” “pricing,” or “demo.” You can use email forms to provide either type of content while simultaneously collecting a lead’s information for future retargeting.
The infrastructure of your B2B website ensures that search engine crawlers can easily access your website. Here’s a technical SEO checklist to work through when optimizing your B2B storefront:
It’s not just your website that algorithms consider when evaluating where a URL should sit in search engine rankings.
In Google’s eyes, a site with a large number of backlinks from reputable sites is more trustworthy than one with a smaller or less relevant backlink profile. Website owners must find your site useful if they’re guiding their own visitors there—a good sign that it’s worth indexing high in the results page.
Brand mentions work similarly. They’re unlinked mentions on other websites that are talking about your business. Although it’s wise to reach out to the site owner and ask for these brand mentions to be turned into backlinks, they still hold some weight. Search engines see that your site is useful enough for people to talk about it—even if it’s not directly linked.
A quick Google search will retrieve a list of link-building techniques. If you’re short on time and want to make the biggest impact fast, prioritize things like:
A presence in these offsite directories can influence a buyer’s decision to choose your products, particularly if you’re collecting positive reviews on them. Social proof is just as important in B2B as it is in DTC.
Third-party endorsements from brands similar to those evaluating yours can not only drive traffic to your B2B storefront but also build the confidence a buyer needs to shortlist your product or service.
Microfiber Wholesale has an online store to sell microfiber cleaning products to other retailers at trade prices. The retailer identifies keywords that potential buyers are searching for and targets them on product pages to increase the odds of the URL ranking in related searches.
The product page for their microfiber cleaning wipes, for example, uses long-tail variations like “disposable cleaning wipes” and “10×12 microfiber wipes” in its product description. There are also related terms that help search engines contextualize the page, such as “germs” and “chemical spills.”
Brooklinen sells bedding to both wholesalers and end consumers through their ecommerce store. It’s built on Shopify, meaning Brooklinen can experience blazing fast site speeds that are almost one second faster than competitors, on average—and that’s before any minor tweaks to the layout or appearance of their B2B storefront.
“B2B on Shopify allows us to engage with these customers in a new way—kind of like a typical DTC customer but for B2B,” says Kelly Hallinan, senior vice president of emerging channels at Brooklinen.
Super fast site speed and a technical infrastructure that search engines understand alleviate pressure on Brooklinen’s team. Now, they’re able to spend 80% of their time working with customers who also self-serve through a B2B storefront that offers the same intuitive, branded buying experience that DTC buyers are accustomed to.
Branch Furniture sells office equipment to retailers through their B2B storefront. In an attempt to target buyers at the top of the funnel, they target long-tail keywords like “how to set up your home office” and “office design ideas” on their blog.
Buyers searching for these keywords aren’t necessarily in the market for new office furniture. However, Branch treats the content as a way to build internal links to product pages using exact-match anchor text. They link to their desk chair, for example, with the anchor text “ergonomic chair.” This tells both Google and shoppers what the product page is about—and therefore, the terms it should rank for.
Planning to invest in a B2B SEO strategy for your brand? Here are a few tips to take with you.
Digital PR is a high-performing tactic to acquire more links. A single, editorially chosen link from a respected industry publication is more powerful than hundreds of low-quality links.
To earn more links:
PR isn’t the only way to get high-quality links, however. You can partner with other credible providers to create content that links back to each other’s websites. Here are some ways to achieve that:
Google’s goal is to find the best content on the web for its users. That means it needs to find your content trustworthy. In theory, trust is earned by clarity—who wrote the content, how it was validated, and when it was last reviewed.
If you’re going to invest in B2B SEO, follow these best practices to keep your SEO content authoritative:
Google’s March 2024 spam update tightened penalties for low-quality, unoriginal backlink patterns. Set guidelines for your backlink strategy:
Search engines have the potential to drive thousands of potential buyers toward your B2B storefront. The seeds you’re planting today will come to fruition for months to come, making it a long-term and sustainable marketing channel for B2B retailers.
Shopify is the best platform to run a B2B and DTC business from a single stack, packed with B2B features like wholesale price lists, B2B company accounts, and simplified sales reporting. Learn more about B2B on Shopify today.
B2B SEO is a digital marketing strategy that increases the chances of a B2B storefront appearing in Google search results for a target customer’s query. It involves activities like keyword research, building backlinks, and optimizing the site from a technical standpoint.
You can apply SEO best practices to any B2B or B2C business. But when businesses sell SEO services or software to other companies, that’s considered a B2B transaction.
SEO is important for B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies because it helps you improve your visibility. You’ll reach potential customers when they’re looking for advice, comparing options, or actively looking for software like yours.
B2B SEO has evolved from focusing on keyword rankings to establishing in-depth topical authority. The goal is now for your content to be chosen as a source for AI-generated answers, which requires a focus on creating expert-led content and original research. Consequently, success is now measured by business outcomes, such as qualified leads and influence on the sales pipeline.
AI is changing B2B search by providing direct, synthesized answers, making it important for brands to establish themselves as trusted sources for these models. At the same time, search results now frequently include discussions from communities like Reddit, where buyers find authentic, unfiltered opinions.
Topic clusters establish your brand as an expert by organizing content around a central theme. You create a comprehensive pillar page for a broad topic and support it with cluster articles on related subtopics. Linking all cluster pages back to the main pillar page signals your authority to search engines and creates an organized, valuable resource for B2B buyers.
