B2B SEO judged on lead quality, not lead count.

Why B2B SEO is measured differently

In consumer search a conversion is the end of the story. In B2B it is the beginning: a form fill goes to a salesperson, who spends time qualifying it, and most of those enquiries are worth nothing. A campaign that doubles form fills while halving their quality has made the business worse, and the SEO report will still show it as a success.

That means the useful question is never how many leads arrived. It is how many reached a proposal, and how many closed. Answering it requires connecting search data to the CRM, which most B2B companies have never done, so nobody can say which content actually produced revenue.

You are not writing for one person

A B2B purchase of any size involves several people with different concerns, and they search differently. Content aimed only at the researcher stalls once the decision moves up the chain.

The keywords generalist agencies miss

Most agency keyword research stops at the obvious category terms, which in B2B are usually the least commercially useful. The searches that produce real enquiries are narrower, uglier, and often carry almost no reported search volume.

• Specification searches: materials, tolerances, ratings, and standards.
• Part and model numbers: including competitor equivalents and cross-references.
• Application searches: the job the buyer is trying to do, not your product name.
• Compliance terms: certifications and standards a buyer must satisfy.
• Supplier-intent searches: supplier, distributor, manufacturer, plus a location or spec.

Low volume is not low value

A keyword tool showing thirty searches a month leads most people to dismiss the term. In B2B that judgement is often wrong. If your average order is substantial and the term is genuinely specific, a handful of visitors a month can be worth more than thousands on a general term.

We size opportunities by likely deal value rather than by search volume alone, which is why our keyword recommendations frequently look unambitious next to a generalist proposal and produce considerably better pipeline.

Attribution across a nine-month cycle

B2B breaks standard analytics. Someone reads a technical article, disappears for four months, returns via a branded search, and phones the office. Last-click attribution credits the brand search. The article that started everything gets no credit and often gets cut from the plan.

We set up measurement that persists across the real cycle: first-touch and last-touch recorded together, offline conversions imported from the CRM, and phone enquiries tracked back to source. It is more work to configure and it is the only way the reporting reflects reality.

Who this suits

This work fits B2B companies where deals are meaningful, cycles are long, and a salesperson is involved.

• Manufacturers and industrial suppliers with technical, specification-led buyers.
• Distributors and wholesalers competing on range, availability, and terms.
• Professional and consulting firms where a single client is worth many months of spend.
• Companies whose enquiry volume looks healthy while sales complain about quality.

What is B2B SEO?

B2B SEO is search engine optimisation for companies that sell to other businesses. The searches are fewer and more specific, several people take part in each decision, and a sale can take months, so the work is judged on qualified enquiries and pipeline rather than traffic. One of our SEO clients is Perlite, a bulk perlite supplier in the US, listed on our work page.

What a B2B SEO firm should do in the first 90 days

• Weeks 1 and 2: technical audit, Search Console and CRM access, and a talk with sales about which deals are worth winning.
• Weeks 3 and 4: a keyword map built from specification terms, problem searches and comparison searches, each tied to a page.
• Month 2: service and product pages rewritten for each role in the buying committee, with answers, specifications and proof.
• Month 3: comparison and use-case content, internal links, and the first report on enquiries by source.

How to choose a B2B SEO agency

There is no single best agency, only the one that fits your sales cycle. These questions sort them quickly.

• Do they ask about your sales process before keywords? A B2B agency should want to know deal size, cycle length and who signs.
• Will they report on enquiries and pipeline? Traffic and rankings alone do not show whether SEO is working for B2B.
• Can they write for technical buyers? Ask for a sample page in your industry.
• Do they cover AI search? Buyers now ask ChatGPT and Perplexity for vendor shortlists.
• Who owns the content and accounts? You should, from day one.

Our guide What does an SEO agency do? explains the monthly work in plain words.

B2B SEO and AI search

Many buyers now ask an AI assistant for a shortlist before they visit any vendor's website. Being named there depends on the same basics as B2B SEO: clear pages about what you sell and to whom, the same company facts across directories, and mentions on the industry sites those tools read. We track a fixed set of buyer questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews alongside normal rankings. Our AEO services page has the details.