The 2024 B2B SEO Strategy Guidebook

When you begin any B2B campaign, start with the assumption that you don’t know jack. Your users are the people who know what they want. Your job is to help connect the dots between what users want and the product your company sells.

Spend every hour you possibly can sorting through qualitative and quantitative data. 
Quantitative data can include historical KPI performance, web data, seasonality data, search trends, heatmaps, etc. 

Qualitative data includes audience and persona research, sales calls, meetings with your team, and survey results.

To succeed in B2B, you need to learn as much as possible about 1) your audience, 2) your internal team, 3) your website, and 4) your opportunities.

ASAP in this case does not mean skip the research process.

In-fact, your initial research process should have already turned up several quick win SEO opportunities, a.k.a. low-hanging fruit. 

These are going to vary from website to website, but a quick win opportunity should never take more than a couple of hours worth of work or resources to execute on. Beyond 4 hours of work, you’ve got yourself a project.

As you begin to sift through your research, your goal should be to publish the quick-win opportunities as fast as you possibly can. 

My favorite quick-wins typically include:
• Title tag tests (where there’s a search intent mismatch between the page title and the primary keyword)
• Internal links (try linking from the homepage to your highest-value SEO pages)
• Adding structured data to FAQ sections, reviews, or other areas that can trigger rich results
• Fixing broken pages, orphaned URLs, and other crawlability or indexation issues
• Featured snippet testing
• Select page speed enhancement techniques

Can you run a B2B SEO campaign without goals?

Yes, you can. 

But should you?

Not if you want to yield the best outcomes. 

You might have read one-too-many articles about S.M.A.R.T. goals, so I won’t rehash that strategy here. Instead, I recommend trying out EOS or OKRs. Both of these are better-refined systems for driving business outcomes. 

Whichever goal-setting framework you choose, we know that simply setting and having goals leads to better performance than no goals. 

Crucially, your goals need to be measurable against a clear set of metrics or KPIs. Get clear on these success metrics so that when it’s time to reflect back on your performance, you’ll know exactly how well your strategy performed.

With quick-wins and KPIs in hand, the next most-important project to tackle is building your SEO infrastructure. 

This infrastructure includes most of the components mentioned above.

You’ll need to build:
• Your keyword TAM
• Your content priority log
• Your reports
• Your SEO testing dashboard

It also includes resource infrastructure. 

Do you have a writer, or a means of getting content?

Do you have a supportive cast of SEO influencers? Development? Design? Budget to get these resources?

If not, plan ways to build these into your program, even if it means waiting for positive results to come in.

By now you should have already built your keyword TAM, containing all of your most-viable keyword targets. 

Tempting as it is to cherry-pick the highest-volume keywords to write about first, volume-based strategy is not the best way to drive business forward.

For B2B, bottom-of-funnel keywords are your #1 ally. 

Get good at identifying BOFU keywords based on high-intent keyword modifiers as you sort through your keyword lists, and prioritize your B2B content strategy accordingly.

BOFU modifiers include terms like:
• software
• services
• platform
• solutions
• vs.
• your competitors’ brand
• alternatives
• etc.

By write, I don’t mean you, yourself have to write all of the content (unless you are your only content resource).

What I mean is, maintain a strong focus on content production, and don’t stop.

I also don’t mean, “mass produce low-grade content without any editorial considerations.”

B2B SEO today is as competitive as it’s ever been. Could you do all your content with ChatGPT?

Technically, you could.

But will it be good enough to compete for the top positions on your best keywords?

Chances are low, unless you can really add unique value and edit rigorously.

Content publication velocity should remain your priority in B2B, but you have to temper velocity goals with qualitative competitive content strategy.

Link building die-hards will hate me for saying this, but I don’t actually believe external link campaigns are necessary for SEO success in B2B. 

B2B SEO content is a must-have.

External link campaigns are a nice-to-have.

Why?

Firstly, because some teams don’t have enough resources (or time) to do both. If you’re bootstrapping, or building a seed-funded startup, you’ve got much bigger problems on your hands than worrying about how many external backlinks you’re bringing in each month.

Second, larger B2B brands attract enough external links to their domain through non-SEO activities like events, webinars, sponsorships, PR, syndication, and even the natural earned links due to the strength of their brand or word of mouth. These brands already bring more links in each month than a manual outreach campaign could dream of doing. 

Third, attribution. Unlike content programs, link acquisition campaigns are really f*cking hard to tie back to ROI. 

Internal links, on the other hand, are a non-negotiable. Every website I’ve ever worked on has untapped internal linking opportunities. 

I prefer to maximize the value of link authority that’s already on your website, before chasing external link opportunities outside of your controllable environment.

Then, if you’ve got enough budget to allocate to external link campaigns without the need to attribute ROI, go nuts!

It was really difficult placing this recommendation at #8 because I genuinely think that this should happen much closer to the quick-wins phase of your program. But, since this activity is generally considered more CRO-related than SEO-related, tough calls were made.

Tying your content to conversion triggers is literally one of the most valuable activities you can possibly execute on in B2B SEO.

Let me say that one more time.

Tying your content to conversion triggers is literally one of the most valuable activities you can possibly execute on in B2B SEO.

Conversion triggers bring customers through the buying funnel and into your business, so it’s imperative that you have these connected to your SEO strategy sooner rather than later. 

We’ve already discussed some of the most common conversion triggers in B2B (gated assets, demo requests, and free access offerings).

These triggers are most-valuable for bringing middle-of-funnel traffic through to the bottom of your funnel, but they don’t always do a great job of bringing top-of-funnel traffic further down to the middle of your funnel. 

When it comes to TOFU B2B traffic, you should take a different approach where your goal is to meet these users where they are at the top-funnel awareness stage and nurture them to the mid-funnel consideration stage.

Rather than asking TOFU users to book a demo, try some of these softer triggers instead:
• Subscribe to our newsletter
• Watch a 30-second video
• Sign up for our webinar
• Check out our features
• Register for a free training
• Read a related article
• Etc.

By using appropriate and relevant CTAs to your audience, you’ll be more likely to keep their attention and build brand affinity.

Internal team communication is an often-underestimated component of successful B2B SEO campaigns. 

Managing up in a B2B organization is incumbent on the clarity and frequency of your reports.
Did you catch those two pieces?

Clarity and frequency. 

If your internal reports are too lengthy, too difficult to read, or altogether confusing, your company executives are going to tune out faster than a toupee in a hurricane.

And, if your reporting frequency is too scarce, they’ll perceive you as being checked-out, even if you’re working round-the-clock. 

Dial in your monthly reports, fine-tune them, and make sure to celebrate smaller wins in team Slack channels, email, or in-person encounters. 

Make sure your leaders, and your team know what’s going on with your SEO program.

By this stage of your B2B program, you should be seeing strong performance results. 

Content velocity has (hopefully) been reached. Infrastructure is built. And your team is thoroughly excited about what the SEO program has accomplished.

This is the point where SEO testing has maximum potential. 

In the past, I’ve compared SEO testing to a high-performance car’s NOS injection system. If content is the primary fuel that powers your B2B campaign, then SEO testing is the extra boost that helps your keyword rankings go from good to freaking amazing.

SEO testing helps your content break out of ruts, adds a freshness element, and generally helps you make sure you’re maximizing the traffic potential of URLs where traffic is tied to ROI potential.

We don’t have room to dive deep into SEO testing in this piece, so if you’d like to read on, I recommend checking out some of my other content on the topic of SEO testing.