Rethinking the Role of SEO Around B2B Content

Why Can B2B Marketing Be Challenging for SEOs?

I touched on it briefly in the intro, but let’s begin by properly setting the scene with some of the common challenges encountered when SEOs work with certain B2B clients.

Some of these I suspect are familiar to many, though they’re important to take stock of in terms of setting the overall context and how they might tie back to some of the solutions, strategies and tactics detailed further on.

Compliance

I’m sorry, you want me to drive leads with innovative and exciting content around your air conditioning units and I can’t talk about X, Y or Z?

Compliance. Gotta love that word, right? It’s so broad and yet so utterly soul-destroying that the minute we come up against it over an email chain following an idea or in passing on a Slack message that we immediately want to pack our bags and run.

Compliance can mean anything from industry rules and regulations, depending on the country (some of them legal, ethical or otherwise), or simply straightforward internal policies set by a particular business.

Data privacy, legal disclaimers and regulatory considerations are all factors that can impact how we approach our content strategies. Of course, I’m not suggesting we don’t take these into consideration and create content that is misleading, manipulative or against industry norms, but this can be tricky to navigate and can often lead to somewhat “blunted” outputs once a piece of content has jumped through these proverbial hoops.

Going further, internal compliance or branding policies, particularly those within enterprise operations, may have strict style guides which may hinder our use of leveraging opportunities on certain search terms, for example.

This can be particularly common in heavily regulated industries such as fintech or in the luxury sphere, where wording around a certain product or service has to be incredibly disciplined, often to the detriment of interesting content or being able to leverage certain query or keyword opportunities.

Internal Politics and Bureaucracy

Leading on from compliance are the dreaded layers of bureaucracy and departmental back and forth that can so readily cause headaches, whether it’s the time it takes to get something approved or even live in the first place.

Enterprise businesses in particular will have multiple stakeholders with eyes on content publication, and they will all have their own considerations and KPIs. Branding, marketing, UX and legal to name a few are likely all to have a say.

Larger businesses can also be messy in their workflows and communications by nature, with occurrences such as suddenly finding out that there’s an internal policy that blocks use of a certain keyword, turn of phrase, positioning or tone, which can stunt our efforts and slow us down.

Tech Stack

This isn’t exclusive to B2B brands of course, but within larger established brands (although not always) there will often exist restrictive or restricting tech stacks that can hinder our implementations, namely CMSs.

As SEO consultants we love to get stuff done on websites to improve performance. This can be anything from a simple auditing of header tags, fixing canonical URLs to a far-reaching schema deployment across a series of products, for example. Most modern, out-of-the-box CMSs (such as the one you’re viewing this content on) allow us, for the most part, to do what we need to do in order to fulfil our strategies.

I’ve been lucky enough to work with clients where I’ve had complete free rein of their WordPress environment in order to get my approved recommendations done. At the very least, most of us have sat at the other end of the table delivering thorough recommendations that are all feasibly implementable by ready and willing clients.

This isn’t always the case with CMSs for some B2B businesses, particularly those in the enterprise arena. You might encounter hard-coded components that don’t support basic HTML changes without the involvement of a dedicated developer. Even if you get access to a CMS back-end, you might find there simply aren’t the fields we’re used to seeing as SEO consultants when it comes to modern day CMSs.

This can make implementations tricky, particularly when you’re having to engage additional resources to get stuff done and might quickly face blockers in the form of resource justification.

The good news is that bulky, restrictive CMSs can open the door for template re-writes and bulk deployments across certain components site-wide which can have a huge impact on SEO (something I discuss in this webinar on enterprise SEO). However, our BAU and ability to do what we need to do on a daily basis can be impacted.

Again, this isn’t exclusive to large B2B businesses. I’ve worked with start-ups that have built JavaScript-reliant sites with no discernible CMS and found myself running into similar challenges regarding engaging dev teams each time I wanted to make a tweak.

Tough Competition

Unless you’re at the forefront of a burgeoning new industry or service (and these do exist, of course!) it’s likely that you’re in an already saturated and competition-heavy arena.

Let’s take some broad industry examples. CRM. Project management. IT delivery. Management consulting. Fintech. Logistics. Wholesale ecommerce. The aforementioned cybersecurity. Even the again aforementioned air conditioning units (or industrial business supplies as a whole). Most of us who don’t even work in these industries will likely be able to name some big hitters here.

When it comes to the search results, terms that convert or drive leads, such as anything using the term “best” or “top” or, “buy”, “purchase” or even a simple search term describing the product, such as “business invoice software” or “enterprise firewall products” can be incredibly difficult to break through on. Google will likely favour the big hitters here, E-EAT or otherwise and the big hitters themselves will have huge SEO, content, linkbuilding (and PPC) budgets to retain their dominance.

That doesn’t mean all is lost, however. Even if you are trying to make yourself visible in an industry as saturated as, well, the SEO tool industry, there are ways in which you can leverage your USPs and innovations within your content. But I’ll get to that.

Boring and/or Complex Subject Matter

This one should be relatively self-explanatory. I’ve already listed a litany of industries that, and no offence to them, don’t necessarily light up the world when it comes to interesting content.

The point of this article is to prove this mantra wrong, however, and hopefully you’ll come away with some ideas on how to approach content from an SEO perspective if you do indeed find yourself working with, say, a fencing client. Again, no offence to the fencing industry (landscaping not Squid Game sword fighting, which would be a fun client).

Complexity of subject matter can certainly be an asset, particularly when you’re looking for those “inside baseball” type knowledge nuggets and product USPs that you can potentially utilise to craft interesting content to those you’re trying to reach, but it can present a challenge from the offset.

Where Is All My Keyword Opportunity?

Upon opening up our favourite keyword research tool and plugging in our client and their competitors during that early discovery phase, you may discover that there are slim pickings in terms of keyword variety in some datasets, industry-dependent.

This marries up with the previous points over competition being fierce as well as dry subject matter. I once worked with a client in cybersecurity who specialised in third-party risk management, and while cybersecurity was a huge umbrella, third-party risk assessment (or TPRM) was not. There just weren’t many obvious avenues to create content outside of basic terms like “what is TPRM” or “TPRM tool”.

This initially made it challenging to latch on to clear content topics and keyword clusters to build out a content plan from. The terms that returned search volume in the traditional manner were typically ultra competitive and had low to zero volume.

This can make it difficult to get buy-in from clients who want to see the data opportunity behind what we’re proposing.

But of course, some of you reading this will be very familiar with various avenues of modern-day keyword research and concepts such as “zero search volume keywords” that can help us unearth opportunities not immediately apparent within the popular keyword research tools. I’ll explore some ideas in this department as well as ways in which we can reframe the keyword process altogether to help inform content that gets B2B brands noticed.

What Can B2B Brands and SEO Consultants Do to Gain the Content Edge?

So, here’s the part of this piece that you came for. I’m going to use this space to lay out some of the ideas that Jack and I discussed on the podcast, as well as expand on some of these concepts further for B2B SEO as a whole.

Go Beyond the Basics of What Your Industry or Product Does

When approaching a new client, SEO consultants are advised to understand the landscape of the industry their client is in. What does our product or service do? Which competitor do we want to emulate and beat? What are the core topics we want to dominate on? These are all completely sensible questions to pose and ascertain answers for.

A subsequent tactic within the resulting SEO content strategy may be proposing going for content gaps that competitors are missing out on. “This competitor is a bit light on X topic within industry Y so I suggest we plug the gap here with some excellent content.”

There is no harm in this approach, and it might get you just rewards within the search results. Harking back to my third-party risk assessment client, this was an approach taken when we built out topical adjacent content related to this industry, and did pretty well on posts covering “third-party risk assessment in education” and “third-party risk assessment in transport” for example.

Explainer-type top-of-funnel content is great in terms of sending signals to Google around your authority within this niche. You should definitely pursue this. However, are these the types of posts or guides that are going to win you new customers in the B2B space who really, really know their stuff?

During our podcast, Jack said that the quickest way to piss him off is to patronise him. I’d concur with that. Now, imagine that you’re a potential buyer of electrical components for soldering irons. Do you think an article on “Soldering Irons Through the Ages” or “10 Popular Use Cases for Soldering Irons” is going to impress you and get you buying? Unlikely.

Always think about how you can go beyond this in your content offering and how you can tie it back to your product or service USPs. This accounts for general industry-centric content too. Owning the space on common industry search terms is a worthy pursuit, and the keyword opportunity is often an easier sell here. But getting creative in your content proposition will really make the difference. I’ll dive into some specific tactics to address this next.

Reframe How You Do Keyword Research

As I alluded to earlier, building out industry-centric hub and spoke type content, say around clusters around the topic of “IT compliance” still counts for something. You’ll get the topical authority (to use a buzzword of sorts, sorry) and will be sending the right signals to Google to help with concepts such as E-EAT.

Yet you might find it difficult to compete using top of funnel, informational type content pieces around your industry, as there’ll likely be established hitters occupying the top spots. This is before we even consider content that actually drives leads.

Instead, think about reframing the genesis of your content briefs by switching around the way in which you might see certain search terms in familiar keyword research tools and consider how they might be written from the perspective of the user. This is particularly relevant for building content around the USPs or pain point solutions that your product or service offers.

For example, if you’re selling a SaaS onboarding service, a typical search term that might rear its head in keyword research tools would be “SaaS onboarding solution”. Think about reframing this and build out the content from the perspective of the user who is searching for something like this, but without directly alluding to the product or service itself.

Instead of “SaaS onboarding solution”, try “how to reduce onboarding dropout”.

Selling air conditioning units for office spaces? Instead of the apparent “which air conditioning unit is suitable for a small office?”, try “our office is stuffy and we need better circulation”.

Of course those product and service-specific head terms are vital to go for, but you might find better cut through with this approach.

You likely won’t always find these types of conversational type searches in your traditional keyword tool, but tools like AlsoAsked can help pull in more conversational searches adjacent to your topic from People Also Ask data. You can also explore Reddit threads or industry-specific forums to help consolidate these types of queries. Of course, don’t forget to examine the search results themselves for what’s being displayed around these queries as part of your research method too.

What Are the Stories & Stats Behind Your Business?

Moving deeper into the reframing of keyword research when it comes to gathering B2B content ideas, why not get additional topics or queries around the pain points that your product helps solve by talking to your product, sales and marketing teams.

They’ll likely have plenty of data on previous conversations that lead to a potential sale, or a particular pain point that might have led to certain product innovation. This information won’t be available in many familiar keyword research tools, yet it is still real data from real people. What is the reason your product team decided to bolt on that particular feature of your SaaS lead generation tool? Where did the conversations around the enhancement to that office air conditioning unit come from before it properly hit the market? What mistakes have been made along the way as part of your business’s growth journey?

These are all likely conversations that have occurred internally with the business or with customers at some stage of the buyer journey, and there are likely ways in which you can repurpose these into compelling content.

As mentioned, above it’s worth exploring People Also Ask and forum data, as well as further query-led searches that may have driven users to your site that can be unearthed from Google Search Console as this data can also back up your content ventures.

What Type of Content Formats Work Across B2B?

With all the above thinking in mind, let’s take a look at some formats where you can sculpt these ideas. Outside of traditional blog or guide content (as well as your core product and service offering pages), here are a few quickfire content formats where I’ve had success with in the B2B sphere:

Whitepapers

Long-form, thought-leadership style “state of the industry” or research-led papers are a great way to stick your brand’s head above the parapet and establish it as a leading voice. Whitepapers also offer the opportunity for brands to leverage their own products and services as part of the study, providing solutions and proposals to industry challenges using data, findings and research that has been achieved by your offering.

Case studies

Without being too out and out salesy or contravening privacy agreements/NDAs, how did your product or service help well-known brand X overcome complex and nuanced problem Y? What can your product do that others can’t in the market and how has this been put into practice? Everyone loves numbers as part of a successful case story, but stories with a unique edge are what really stand out.

Reactive Content

This can be difficult to put into practice as it is resource and context-dependent. There are a number of different types of “reactive” type content, but one example could be that if there was a major news event in your industry that your business was in a strong position to provide commentary on in a way that highlights your offering, then quick action could be very rewarding. Across the aforementioned cybersecurity project I worked on, data leak or cyber attack stories that hit the news allowed the client to quickly publish analysis pieces on the who, the what, the why and the how, all through the lens of how their product can aid against such incidents.

Podcasts & Video

Everyone has to have a podcast these days, right? In all seriousness, distilling the content types and ideas I’ve detailed across different formats makes a lot of sense if you have the resources to do so. Outside of the written word and the sharing of it across multiple channels outside of just SEO, doing the same with audio and video formats can open up your reach to more users. Podcasts in particular, be it audio only or audio and video, are another great way to grow communities and humanise your brand with real people and real voices telling the stories behind your offering and the industry you work in. The same goes for webinars and “office hour” type video publications, too.

Going “Beyond SEO” In B2B Work (and beyond)

I talk about this a lot in general and it’s something Jack and I discussed briefly in our podcast episode too. As I grow into my role with businesses, and this is not limited to B2B clients, I try to position myself as something more than just an SEO consultant.

Forgive me if this sounds fanciful and somewhat grandstanding. It’s more to do with providing as much value as I can from my primary skillset as an SEO consultant, as well as my soft skills in business, and using this is in a way that traverses adjacent disciplines and benefits businesses digitally overall.

Typically, someone like me, a professional who advertises their services as an “SEO Consultant” will be brought in to justify that need, possibly because a company has a budget for SEO alongside other digital marketing channels.

Once I’m in, I try to get myself involved in as many conversations and meetings across a business that have jurisdiction over something that may impact SEO, holds some of the keys to getting SEO implemented, or has the potential to benefit from SEO. I chase teams for access to all manner of Notion sheets, Google Docs, content planners, you name it.

Think about UX. Engineering. Content. Social media. Paid media. Product. SEO has the ability to influence thinking across these disciplines, and there are many shared interests, from discipline-centric KPIs to overall business performance (which is what really matters).

Which paid search keywords are driving the most leads and what can SEO learn from this? Can budget be saved on certain paid terms where SEO is performing well and driving leads in its own right? Can that bit of social media content that went semi-viral on LinkedIn be repurposed in a long-form article for organic search traffic purposes? What about some of those great stats included in that whitepaper that landed us a load of backlinks – can these be repurposed for social media content?

To use a tired analogy, it’s about breaking down siloes. Siloes exist across any business, big or small (though they are commonly associated with enterprise), and SEO, with everything that it can touch across a website or digital operations in general, can be a great leveller in bringing everything together. Taking this approach is also vital for getting buy-in from all sides to get your tactics and strategies moving.

We’re also living in interesting times regarding the re-shaping of SEO as a profession with everything around generative search and LLMs in general. With the emergence of ChatGPT as a popular search method as well as the recent news around indexing Instagram posts in Google search, SEO is becoming more and more a multi-platform venture. To stay relevant and to stay in the conversation, we have to think cross-discipline and beyond our own silo.

I used the term “digital lobbyist” in my conversation with Jack which sounds a little cynical, but given that SEO work touches so many other areas of digital marketing and website work, we’re in a unique position to use our skills and experience to get things done across the board.

Some Final Thoughts On Getting Buy In on Your B2B Content Ideas

Hopefully, there’s been some recurring themes throughout this blog post that all point towards that wondrous and elusive phrase we run into in B2B SEO (and elsewhere in general): buy-in.

Breaking down department siloes. Reframing SEO in what can do for your user base and your product. There are plenty of clear and obvious ones too, such as framing everything you do around a dollar sign with traffic, revenue and warts and all forecasting. I’m not going to use this space to go into this however. There are plenty of people who have shared plenty of brilliant ways to get buy-in for SEO, with Tom Critchlow’s work in this field being a particular must-read. I was also recently a guest on the Keep Optimising Podcast where I went into my own thoughts on this topic.

If you’re adding one tactic to your arsenal which you haven’t explored already, then I’d suggest looking into recording test data for everything you do. This isn’t to say that every venture needs to be backed up by previous proof of concept data, but rather a call to arms to encourage SEOs to measure, test and iterate as much as what they are doing as possible.

Think back to one or two of my previous points over compliance, bureaucracy and restrictive CMSs, particularly (though not exclusively) in larger businesses. If you’re able to emerge with some solid positive historical data around a particular SEO implementation, whether this is adding a new content component, bulk uploading a load of page titles with a locational keyword modifier, or adding an internal linking component across a series of pages, then this will make your life a lot easier when you come across potential buy-in blockers further down the line.

There are plenty of ways to record SEO tests or split tests, though I’ve found SEOTesting to be an utterly necessary asset in this department.

Some Tips on Optimising for LLMs and AI Overviews in B2B SEO

Sorry, you’re writing a blog about SEO in 2025 and you’ve barely mentioned AI, generative search and LLMs and haven’t even bothered to vaguely pontificate about the future of SEO using multiple sweeping platitudes?

Correct, my bad. But I’ve got here eventually. I’m only going to half lean into the above however, and share some quickfire ideas on optimising for AI search based on some of my own experience in the field. None of the below is particularly groundbreaking compared to what so many others have written on this topic, but hopefully there are some starters for ten (platitudinal or otherwise):

• Consider conversational search habits. Again, use data sources like People Also Ask and forums to address long-form queries around pain points and USPs your product offers. FAQ-type content can help here, particularly around long-form informational type queries around how your product works or other industry-relevant content.
• Watch out for E-EAT. It does appear that, for comparison type terms (“best brands in X”, “best SaaS software for Y”) E-EAT (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trust) plays a major role in AI Overview citations. This is good news for big brands with established authority and strong backlink profiles, though it can be tough for new players. Smaller, but potentially more agile and savvy brands, might be able to find ways to cut through using some of the keyword research approaches I mentioned earlier.
• Lean into originality. A continuation of the point above, really, but if you can get some great content that answers a specific question or topic ahead of time in a unique way, this can pip you above the big hitters. Be the source, not the commentary.
• Best in class technical SEO still matters. This doesn’t need elaborating any further. Continue to do technical SEO.

What is One Actionable Thing People Doing B2B SEO Can Do Today?

I’ll finish this post with a summary of one of the final points Jack and I discussed as part of this topic (before we went deep down the rabbit hole of podcast recommendations…)

This may be relatively obvious to some readers, but when I’ve engaged with a new B2B client, particularly in the SaaS arena, I’ve often discovered that they have fully fleshed out help centres and changelog sections on their websites that are blocking search engine crawlers.

Firstly, why not remove the noindex or robots.txt directive to open up this type of helpful and user-centric content to search engines?

Secondly, there’s likely a goldmine of content opportunities here, particularly in the help centre sections, that could readily be repurposed into the front-facing “pain point” type content I’ve been banging about at various junctures in this post.

Thanks for reading. Now, go forth and B2B the hell out of that website (closing article sentence not written by AI)