If your goal with SEO is to generate B2B leads, the most important thing you can do is choose keywords with high buying intent.
But, this can mean sacrificing traffic in order to get more leads, which is where a lot of marketers get hung up.
You’ve probably heard advice like “create quality content,” “optimize your website for search,” or “target the same keywords as your competitors.” But in our experience, most of that advice is either obvious (of course you should create high quality content) or ineffective (increasing traffic only helps with leads if those people are ready to buy).
We’ve ranked clients for thousands of keywords over the past 8+ years, and our data shows that the #1 factor in whether SEO generates leads is the type of keywords you target.
In this article, we get into the details of how to find and rank for keywords with high buying intent and common mistakes people make in the process. We also briefly cover how to effectively track leads and ROI, how long it takes to get results from SEO, how to speed up results, and how to drive leads while you’re waiting for those results.
Why High-Buying Intent Keywords Convert 20x Better (+ How to Find and Rank for Them)
Like we said above, the biggest mistake we see in B2B SEO is traffic chasing. Yes, a lot of SEOs give lip service to “intent”, for example labeling SEO keywords as “commercial” versus “informational” like Ahrefs does. Almost every single time we look at the keywords a client has already gone after before working with us, it’s a bunch of low-buying-intent top of funnel keywords, while leaving tons of really high intent bottom of funnel keywords on the table.
The argument for top of funnel keywords is that you need traffic above all else. That traffic is alluring. There’s this underlying assumption that if you generate enough traffic, surely it’ll lead to conversions and ultimately customers.
Right? Wrong.
The difference in conversion rates between bottom and top of funnel keywords is massive. Not 10% or 20%, but as much as 20x, meaning high buying intent keywords convert 20x better than top-of-funnel traffic-generating keywords.
Top-of-funnel searches are simply done by people who likely aren’t ready to buy your product. For example, a top of funnel keyword for an IT company might be ‘cybersecurity’, which has a search volume of 124k.
When you look at the top results on Google, they’re mostly informational posts on what cybersecurity is, which tells us this reader doesn’t know what cybersecurity means and wants to learn about it.
Sure, these readers might eventually be head of IT and in charge of hiring an IT security service, and they might remember that your company once wrote a nice article on the topic and look you up.
Meanwhile, there are people actively searching for solutions like yours. Continuing with the cybersecurity example, someone who is ready to pay for an IT security service or software already knows what cybersecurity is and just needs help implementing it. Those are the people you should be targeting.
This is especially important for B2B companies. In B2C, there are scenarios where top of funnel content leads to a purchase because purchases are often made more impulsively for stylistic reasons. For example, a B2C apparel shopper might search “summer fashion trends 2025,” learn about something new, and then within a day or two try to buy an item they like. In this case top of funnel content can directly lead to a purchase.
But B2B purchases take more consideration. They aren’t as flippant. For example, if you’re selling IT security software, your customer isn’t buying on a whim, and they’re certainly not buying because they saw a mention of your brand in a general purpose article on “IT security tips in 2025”. They’re buying only when and if they’re in the market for new security software.
Note this is true even when the B2B purchase is relatively “cheap”. Take project management software, for example. Tools like Trello or Asana aren’t expensive (around $10 per user per month) and can be purchased self-serve with a credit card.
But they’re operationally expensive because they require an entire team or company to change their habits (switch to a new project management tool). No organization makes that decision lightly. That’s why there’s a massive difference in conversion rates between traffic reading a general article on project management tips and traffic searching for “best project management software for startups.”
Lastly, in our experience, you can’t nurture someone from no buying intent to buying intent. No amount of drip emails to someone who isn’t in the market for new PM software or new IT security software is going to manufacture that buying intent. They’ll want it when they need it. In the meantime you could have spent that same time and energy creating content that ranked for keywords that do have buying intent.
Three Types of High Buying Intent Keywords for B2B Companies to Target
Based on our analysis of over 90 blog posts we wrote for B2B clients, there are three types of high buying intent keywords that consistently drive the most conversions.
And, all three of these keyword types significantly outperform top-of-funnel content keywords, which typically convert at just 0.2% in our data.
1. Category Keywords convert at 3.25% on average
These are search terms that directly correspond to the product or service category you’re in. Examples include “content marketing agency,” “CRM software,” or “accounting software for small business.”
These are usually the easiest ones to think of, but there are also typically more than you think. Read our article to learn more about how to find these.
In our data, category keywords convert at 3.2% on average.
2. Comparison and Alternatives Keywords convert at 6.94% on average
These terms indicate the searcher is actively comparing products or looking for alternatives to existing solutions. Examples include “Salesforce vs. HubSpot,” “Mailchimp alternatives,” or “best alternatives to Shopify.”
These keywords typically convert quite well on average at 8.43%, because searchers are actively evaluating solutions and are closest to making a purchase decision.
3. Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) Keywords convert up to 12.5%
These are queries that indicate the searcher has a specific problem your product solves. Examples include “how to manage sales leads,” “how to track content marketing ROI,” or “how to migrate from Salesforce to HubSpot.”
JTBD keywords convert at 2.44% on average in our data because they capture people who have identified a specific pain point, but may not yet know what category of solution they need. In other words, they’re just looking to solve a problem. They aren’t looking specifically to buy your product/service, which is why we see a lower average conversion rate.
However, they do have the possibility to convert at a much higher rate — up to 12.5% in our experience. This is because some JTBD keywords have extremely high buying intent while others have less.
For example, for our digital marketing client, JTBD keywords around collecting or gathering video testimonials (exactly what their software does) converted to free trials at 5–9%. But keywords around what to say in a testimonial video, i.e., no intent for buying software, converted at only 0.6%.
How to Find High-Converting Keywords That Most Teams Overlook
It’s usually pretty easy to find a handful of the most obvious category keywords (like “content marketing agency” if you’re a content marketing agency), but these often run out quickly. So how do you find more?
We suggest talking to your sales team and any other customer-facing teams. Many B2B marketing teams will review a few sales calls, read customer feedback, and look at sales battlecards, but they don’t systematically involve the sales team in their SEO strategy.
This is a missed opportunity. Your sales team knows exactly which pain points resonate most with prospects, which objections come up repeatedly, and which benefits actually close deals. This is where you can find JTBD keywords that actually have buying intent, additional category keywords, and competitor keywords you might have missed.
For example, a marketing automation company might target the obvious category keyword “marketing automation software.” But, after talking to sales, they might discover prospects frequently ask about “how to set up drip email campaigns” or “how to track email marketing ROI” — both high-intent JTBD keywords that indicate someone needs marketing automation.
Ask your sales team specific questions like:
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What pain points do prospects mention most often in sales calls?
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Which product benefits close the most deals?
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What objections do you hear repeatedly, and how do you overcome them?
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What language and terminology do prospects use when describing their problems?
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Which types of leads convert best and why?
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What are prospects typically using or doing when they come to us?
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What competitors do they mention most often?
This research should directly inform your keyword strategy and content creation.
Plus, it can also tell you whether your content is working and help you drive more qualified leads. Check in with sales regularly to learn what type of leads your content is bringing in, get specific about why certain leads are or are not closing, and use that information to fine tune your marketing strategy.
How to Rank for High Buying Intent Keywords
Most advice on writing SEO content talks about creating quality content and thoroughly meeting search intent — understanding what the searcher wants and giving them exactly that. This is great advice and we agree completely.
However, when it comes to B2B blog content, most marketers go wrong with this approach in two ways: they don’t write at the expertise level of their audience, and they don’t sell their product or service.
How to Write for B2B Readers (Beyond Just “Create Quality Content”)
With B2B, your reader has likely been in the industry for many years and knows the ins and outs of the job. In short, they’re experts on the topic. And yet, most content reads like a “Google research paper” — surface-level content that regurgitates what’s already available online without adding any new insights or expertise.
This usually happens because the writers aren’t experts themselves (whether internal marketing team members or freelancers), so they end up just researching what’s already published or reading through a few internal documents.
This approach fails for two reasons:
1. Google can only provide what everyone else has already said on the topic, not your company’s unique perspective or any details about your product/service.
2. Internal documents are often outdated or not detailed enough, so the content ends up reading like the writer knows less than the reader — because it’s true.
To solve this, we conduct detailed interviews with subject matter experts for each blog post (or at least each blog post where we’re covering new information). More importantly, these SMEs are from within our clients’ own companies, so we get the unique perspective they have to offer and can easily tie their product or service directly to the pain points hidden in the keyword we’re targeting.
In these interviews, we ask questions like:
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What do you think a potential customer is looking for when they search {keyword}?
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Why are they looking for that (i.e., what problem are they trying to solve)?
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Do you think there’s anyone who would be searching this term that wouldn’t be a good fit for your company? Why?
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What specific features or capabilities does our product have that solves this problem?
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What mistakes do you see prospects making when they try to solve this problem on their own?
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What questions do customers ask most often about this topic?
Further reading: How to Improve Your Content Writing Skills by Using an Interview Process (+ 6 Other Content Writing Tips)
Why You Need to Sell Your Product
If you follow our suggestion and target high buying intent keywords, you need to sell your product or service in order to satisfy intent.
Many marketers and business owners shy away from this because they don’t want to be “too salesy” with their content marketing. They often have this belief that with content marketing you should ‘give and not ask’.
But, the searcher is literally looking for something to solve their problem. So, if you do solve that problem, the best way you can help them is by showing them exactly how you solve it.
Additionally, we believe you should spend the majority of the blog post going into detail about how you can help them. Again, B2B buyers want this level of detail. And, it makes sense that you only know that level of detail for your own product or service, so the other sections about the competitors have to be shorter.
Plus, they can see whose website they’re on, so it can seem disingenuous to try to sound completely unbiased. Include specific details related to the keyword, screenshots of your product in action, and use roughly half of the blog post real estate to explain your own solution.
How to Effectively Measure Leads and ROI From SEO
All of the advice so far can help you take SEO content from something that just generates traffic into a lead generation tool, but you will still need a way to track leads and ROI.
Organic traffic and search rankings can tell you if what you’re doing has potential, but it’s not the same as actually tracking conversions. In order to know whether your content is actually generating a positive ROI, you need to be able to directly tie individual leads to specific pages.
In this article, we go over how to set up conversion tracking in GA4 to track form submissions, demo requests, and other lead actions. But, there are other tools besides Google Analytics like WhatConverts that can help you track additional types of leads, like phone calls.
If you can track which leads actually become paying customers, even better. Every company will have a different process for how they do this.
Next, figure out the ROI or breakeven point. How much are you spending on content right now? How much is the average value of a lead in dollars? Use that to figure out how many leads per month you need to break even and start plotting those numbers on a graph.
It Takes 3–6 Months to Start Seeing Results from SEO
Our study on how long it takes to rank on the first page of Google shows that it takes an average of 3-6 months to start seeing meaningful rankings for new content. But that’s just rankings.
We typically see a few leads start to come in with page one rankings, but steady leads typically don’t come in until you’re ranking in the top three spots for your target keyword.
Figuring out your timeline for getting into the top three positions is harder to predict because it depends on the specific keyword, your industry, and your domain authority. We sometimes see slower results in industries with longer sales cycles (think switching over your entire CRM, which would require buy-in from multiple levels of management, all departments, significant financial investment, and significant disruption for all employees using it) or for highly competitive keywords.
However, on average our data shows that nearly half of the blog posts we create for clients rank in the top three positions within the first year.
How to Speed Up Results and Drive Leads in the Short Term
While the number one factor for getting results from SEO is time, you can speed up results with strategic link building. This means getting high-quality, relevant websites to link to your content through guest posting, editorial outreach, and relationship building. Quality backlinks signal to Google that your content is authoritative and can help you rank faster for competitive keywords.
While you’re waiting to get those results organically, you can also drive leads in the short term with:
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Paid ads: Run targeted ads on Google, LinkedIn, or other platforms to drive immediate traffic to your high-intent content. This approach allows you to start generating leads from your content investment while you wait for organic rankings to develop. Just like with organic search, we recommend taking an intentional, buying intent focused approach with PPC. You can learn more about our approach to PPC here.
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Disruption stories: If your company has a unique perspective that challenges conventional wisdom in your industry, write about it and share it across social media channels and industry forums. These contrarian takes often generate immediate attention and can drive qualified traffic to your site. Plus, they can attract buyers who may not be actively searching for your product/service because they don’t know it exists. You can learn more about disruption stories here.
How Does the Shift to ChatGPT and LLMs Affect Content and SEO Strategy?
Finally, the shift in everyone’s search habits from Google to AI tools like ChatGPT is on every marketer’s minds — how to show up in AI searches, how to get mentioned by Google’s AI overviews, how to use AI for writing and optimizing content— but the truth is, no one actually knows very much about how it works or how to hack the system.
We share our thoughts on AI in these articles:
To summarize these articles, we believe a lot of the advice out there right now is largely unhelpful (‘get mentioned on Reddit’ — nice, but how?) or unnecessary (‘add .txt files’). The best thing you can do is have a strong SEO presence and produce the type of content we recommend above.
When it comes to using AI to create content, we recommend caution because many of the writing tools out there are nowhere near good enough to produce the kind of content you need to get quality leads or AI mentions. (That’s why we’ve created our own tool, which you can read about here.)
How to Work With Us or Learn More
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Work with our agency: If you want to hire us to create and execute a search engine optimization strategy by identifying your best keywords, creating content that is laser-focused on ranking and driving conversions, and link building to improve your ranking positions, you can learn more about working with us here.
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Join our team: If you’re a content marketer or writer who wants to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.
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Learn our methods in our content marketing course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course and community, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here.
