When should B2B companies invest in SEO?

B2B companies should invest in SEO from the very beginning.

It’s common advice, but I think it needs repeating: SEO is a long-term game. It won’t drive a thousand signups overnight, but it will quietly compound behind the scenes, month over month.

Metaphorically, SEO is like Sisyphus on a curve.

When your site’s new and has little authority, it’s unrealistic to expect fast traction. It takes several months to build traffic, expertise, reputation, a solid content library, and a rhythm that compounds into real momentum.

The challenge is that many teams expect a quick payoff, sometimes in just a couple of months. Sure, that’s possible if Google trusts your site already. In that case, every new piece of content has a chance to perform well. But for smaller or newer players, there’s no shortcut. With little ranking power and no built-in audience, results take time. Most businesses give up before the flywheel starts spinning, just when it’s about to get good.

What options do B2B companies have when it comes to SEO?

Either you invest in an in-house team or you outsource it.

Here I’m going to explain the pros and cons of both SEO investment approaches:

• If you build SEO in-house, you get control, obviously. Your team lives and breathes your product, your ICP, your revenue model, so SEO doesn’t sit in a silo. The downside is that I see many teams underestimate the cost and time: hiring senior SEO talent is hard, ramp-up is slow, and one or two people can’t realistically cover technical SEO, content strategy, links, and analytics at a high level. If you need results soon, you may feel stuck building foundations while leadership asks why impact is taking so long.
• When you outsource SEO, you’re buying speed and experience. You get people who’ve already seen what works (and what doesn’t) across B2B companies like yours, without waiting months to hire and train. I’ve also seen outsourcing unlock momentum when internal teams are stretched thin. But you give up some ownership. Agencies don’t wake up thinking about your product the way you do, and without strong direction from you, SEO can drift into traffic-first tactics that don’t move pipeline. Long-term, if you outsource everything, you risk never truly owning SEO as a core growth lever, so you move faster now, but you may pay for it later in dependency and lost internal learning.

How to do SEO in B2B?

Based on my experience working with B2B companies, here’s what you can do to make SEO become your highest ROI marketing channel:

• Start with BOFU keywords: Focus first on bottom-of-funnel searches like “vendor pricing,” “alternatives,” “vs,” and “best tools,” where intent is highest and each click is worth real money, even at low volume.
• Use listicles as your core format: “Best / Top / Alternatives / Vs” articles match how B2B buyers evaluate solutions, rank well, attract links, stay evergreen, and increasingly show up in AI answers.
• Build tight topical authority: Pick one topic at a time, create a clear pillar page, support it with focused subpages, interlink aggressively, and don’t expand until you truly own that topic.
• Improve links deliberately, not randomly: Let natural links grow, but support competitive pages with targeted tactics like niche listicle inclusions, expert quotes, guest posts, and value-based content exchanges.
• Write for users, not algorithms: Optimize titles and slugs, then fully answer the question in the clearest way possible—Google rewards authority and relevance more than “SEO-optimized” prose.
• Win with long-tail queries using Search Console: Mine first-party data for specific, high-intent queries you already rank for, then create short, focused content to capture easy wins that convert.