As B2B marketing grows more competitive, it’s beneficial to find every advantage you can. One area where you can gain a significant edge is through effective B2B keyword research.
You can drive organic traffic and generate high-quality leads by identifying and targeting relevant keywords.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of keyword research, help you create your keyword research strategy, and discuss the best tools you can use.
Keep in mind that keyword research can be complex and require frequent refinement. If you want to maximize results without the hassle, partner with TrioSEO.
With 10+ years of SEO expertise, we’ll craft a personalized B2B SEO strategy that generates organic traffic and attracts qualified leads.
Start growing your business with our specialized B2B SEO services.
What is B2B Keyword Research?
B2B keyword research involves identifying keywords and phrases that target your business audience who are seeking solutions.
It analyzes search terms to understand what they are looking for and how to align your SEO strategy with their requirements.
Purpose of B2B Keyword Research
Here’s a breakdown of why B2B keyword research is crucial:
- Target the right audience: Performing keyword research ensures that your marketing efforts are well-spent by directing them toward the most relevant and high-intent prospects.
- Understand customer intent: Proper keyword research helps you identify what potential business clients are searching for and their specific needs or pain points.
- Guide content strategy: Finding the right keywords helps develop relevant content, improving engagement and lead nurturing.
- Improve search engine visibility: Your B2B website can rank higher in search engine results when incorporating relevant keywords. Higher visibility ensures your content is discoverable when potential clients search for related terms, increasing organic traffic to your website.
B2B Content Marketing Funnel
The B2B content marketing funnel is a framework that guides potential customers from awareness to conversion. Keyword research helps you find the correct search terms for each stage, whether top, middle, or bottom.
Find out more about this funnel below:
What is TOFU Content?
TOFU (Top of Funnel) content is about capturing the attention of businesses that might use your products or services.
TOFU content aims to attract potential leads by educating them about your industry, whether it’s about the challenges or rising trends.
Some forms of TOFU content include:
- White papers on market trends
- Industry-specific blog posts
- Webinars
- Infographics about common business issues
For your keyword strategy, you must target broad, informational keywords that reflect industry challenges or educational content.
Some examples include “benefits of cloud-based CRM systems” or “latest cybersecurity trends.”
What is MOFU Content?
The next layer in the B2B content marketing funnel is MOFU (Middle of Funnel) content, which caters to target leads who have already shown an interest in your offerings.
At this stage, your potential leads have already recognized that they’re dealing with a challenge – now it’s your job to guide them by providing valuable information that addresses their needs.
Your focus must be to showcase the value of your offerings. You can achieve that by crafting these content forms:
- Case studies demonstrating successful implementations
- Product comparison sheets
- In-depth guides on industry-specific challenges
Keywords at this stage are more solution-oriented. Sample keywords include “best project management tools for remote teams” or “how to optimize ad spend.”
What is BOFU Content?
The last stage of the content marketing funnel is BOFU content, designed to convert leads into customers. This form of content addresses the specific concerns of your leads head-on, which helps give the final push when making a purchasing decision.
You can present offers, demos, and even customer success stories at this stage.
When creating BOFU content, you must incorporate transactional keywords. These are keywords that indicate a prospect is ready to make a purchase. For example, “buy [name of software] subscription” or “request a demo of [name of software].”
How to Build a B2B Keyword Strategy
Building an effective B2B keyword strategy isn’t just about picking the right words.
Learn more about the actual steps below:
- Understand your audience: Begin your strategy by knowing your audience. What are their needs and pain points? From this information, you can develop an ideal customer profile. Your strategy must focus on addressing their challenges and interests.
- Define your goals: Set clear, measurable goals for your keyword strategy. These goals can include metrics such as increasing website traffic, generating leads, or improving conversion rates.
Make these goals as specific as possible and set a realistic timeframe. Also, use various analytics tools to measure your performance and strategy effectiveness. - Analyze keywords: You can only find the right keywords by performing in-depth keyword research. This will involve using the right tools, analyzing your competitors’ keywords, and segmenting the keywords by funnel stages.
- Iterate and improve: It’s worth reviewing your keyword plan based on performance data and industry changes to ensure your strategy stays relevant. For instance, Google may release another core update, which could affect your search engine rankings.
Although Google does not dive deep into the specifics of its algorithms, it consistently emphasizes creating content that is valuable to its audience.
B2B Keyword Research Process
The B2B keyword research process entails several core steps to connect with your target audience.
Here’s a quick overview of how to approach this process:
1. Gather Initial Keyword Ideas
First, brainstorm a list of keywords related to your industry, products, or services. What terms are your prospects likely to use when searching for solutions you offer?
Working with other teams, specifically sales and customer service, pays off, given that they understand your customers’ pain points. This ensures that your keywords are aligned with real-world needs.
2. Use Keyword Research Tools
The next step is to expand your list with keyword research tools.
Tools like Google Keywords Planner, Ahrefs, and Semrush provide valuable data on search volume, competition, and related keywords.
3. Evaluate Your Competition
Use keyword research tools to gain awareness of your competitors’ strategies. You’ll learn more about what keywords they use and how they use them to their benefit.
Competitor analysis can also expose any gaps in strategy, such as keywords competitors use more effectively or other content areas where you can offer a unique perspective.
4. Incorporate Keywords into Content
Once you’ve narrowed down your list of keywords, the next step is to integrate them into your content.
Your keyword placement strategy shouldn’t be limited to blog posts and website pages. Incorporate them into meta descriptions, alt texts, and other on-site elements.
5. Monitor Performance
While it’s the final step, monitoring your performance is an ongoing process.
Using keyword research tools, you’ll learn more about the B2B SEO keywords that drive the most traffic and conversions and those that are underperforming.
Tools to Help Conduct B2B Keyword Research
You can’t perform effective B2B keyword research without tools. Now, let’s review the best ones to guide you in the keyword research process.
Google Keyword Planner
Google Keyword Planner is a free tool for finding search volumes, historical data, and keyword forecasts. It’s also a powerful tool for discovering new keyword ideas.
You have two options for keyword discovery: starting with keywords or websites. When choosing keywords, you input the keywords of products or services related to your business. The tool provides an option to enter your website to filter unrelated keywords.
Otherwise, you can enter your website’s link into the tool to find other keyword ideas.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs boasts a rich database of 28.7 billion keywords in its powerful Keywords Explorer.
While it generates keywords and provides relevant metrics to analyze them — such as traffic value, backlinks, and organic traffic — Ahrefs also leverages AI to create them, identify search intent, and organize them into clusters.
Semrush
Semrush offers a suite of tools for keyword research: Keyword Overview, Keyword Magic Tool, Keyword Strategy Builder, Position Tracking, and Organic Traffic Insights.
The tool lets you quickly find core metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty while discovering related keywords.
The platform helps you analyze competitors’ strategies, track real-time metrics, and integrate with Google Analytics and Search Console to give a complete overview of keyword performance.
While these tools are impressive, mastering them requires significant experience. If you’re short on time or prefer to focus on other aspects of your business, entrust your keyword research strategy to SEO experts.
In business for 10+ years, TrioSEO specializes in in-depth keyword research that is aligned with your business objectives. Our proven strategy ensures you target the most valuable keywords, improve your search visibility, and attract qualified leads.
Start growing your business with our expert B2B SEO services.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
In this section, we’ll tackle common questions about B2B keyword research to help you optimize your strategy for your audiences.
Is SEO Effective for B2B?
Absolutely! The numbers prove it. About 57% of B2B marketers claim that SEO is one of their most effective marketing initiatives.
That isn’t surprising, considering that SEO helps attract organic traffic and convert qualified leads.
How Do Industry Trends Influence B2B Keyword Research?
When a trend emerges in your industry, performing B2B keyword research allows you to identify new search terms and tweak your strategy accordingly.
Monitor metrics like search volume and keyword difficulty to gauge these trends’ relevance and potential impact.
What Are Long-Tail Keywords and their Importance in B2B Keyword Research?
Long-tail keywords are more specific, often in the form of longer phrases with low search volumes but high intent.
For instance, targeting a long-tail keyword like “accounting software for small businesses” might be better if it aligns more with your customer’s needs than a short-tail keyword like “accounting software.”
Conclusion
Mastering B2B keyword research enables you to reach and engage your audience effectively. By following the proper process and using the right tools, you can discover new opportunities to propel your B2B website to higher ground.
However, creating a winning strategy requires precision and expertise.
At TrioSEO, we specialize in delivering comprehensive keyword research services, crafting valuable B2B content, optimizing on-page SEO, and more. With our strategic approach to SEO these past 10+ years, we’ve effectively scaled businesses to 6, 7, and 8 figures.
Optimize your keyword strategy today with our tailored B2B SEO services.
