20+ B2B SEO Statistics to Inform Your Marketing Strategy in 2023

SEO plays a huge role in B2B marketing as it can help achieve several goals, such as lead generation, brand awareness, customer education, brand engagement, and so on. The B2B SEO statistics mentioned in this article highlight the effectiveness of this digital marketing strategy. 

We will also discuss some benchmark B2B marketing statistics to guide your SEO strategy and measure its performance.

B2B Purchase Journey Begins Online

27% of the B2B purchase journeys begin with online searches. Furthermore, 41% of B2B buyers go through at least three websites before approaching for sales. This means that your potential customers are more likely to come in contact with your content before they contact you. Consequently, B2B marketers are dedicating more resources to SEO and content marketing.

According to the 2023 Marketing Mix Report by Sagefrog, SEO leads the way among the most implemented marketing tactics for B2B marketing. 49% of B2B companies are using SEO to achieve various marketing objectives. Content marketing, which also contributes to SEO, is second with 43% votes.

It is also worth noting that the 8th most popular tactic, SEM, also depends on search engine optimization. The effectiveness of SEM campaigns is directly related to a website’s relevance, topical authority, and trustworthiness. Each of these factors depends on SEO.

B2B Marketers are Spending Extensively on SEO

You can also understand the significance of SEO for B2B marketing based on budget distribution. 31% of B2B Marketers spent the highest on SEO. It is behind in-person trade shows & events (33%) by a small margin.

It’s clear from these B2B marketing statistics that companies are keen on using SEO and are willing to spend quite a bit of money on it. But why?

B2B SEO is the Most Effective Strategy for Lead Generation

Search Engine Optimization was a more effective tactic for generating leads compared to other channels. 34% of B2B marketers said that SEO was responsible for most of their leads and sales. While in-person trade shows and events (highest in budget spent) ranked 4th with 27% votes.

As with all the B2B marketing stats above, here too SEO is crucial for other top-ranking tactics. The effectiveness of the 2nd (SEM) and 5th (Content Marketing) highest sources of lead generation and sales depend on SEO.

Now that you know about the significance of SEO for B2B marketing, let’s see how marketers are setting goals and measuring their performance.

Most B2B Marketers Track 3 to 10 Metrics for SEO

B2B marketers use various metrics as key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure SEO results. According to the survey of B2B marketers by Databox, 46.2% of marketers use 3 to 5 different metrics to measure SEO success while 40.4% of marketers use 6 to 10 different metrics.

Each of these metrics gives insight into different aspects of your SEO performance. The metrics you need to track depend on your B2B marketing strategy and area of focus. For instance, if you are focusing on technical SEO, you will need to track Core Web Vitals and Optimization Scores. On the other hand, if you are working on off-page SEO, Inbound Links and Domain Authority are the metrics to track. Based on your area of focus, you will see different results.

SEO Tactics Need 3 to 6 Months to Show Results

According to Databox’s survey, most B2B marketers said that it takes 3-6 months for SEO tactics to show results. The speed of results depends on a variety of factors. Below are the most important factors for SEO according to B2B marketers:

B2B marketers believe these factors determine how long it will take for your SEO strategy to show results. Although, if you are looking for some quick wins, you can start with on-page optimization and technical SEO tactics. These include fixing technical errors, improving website structure, internal linking, and keyword optimization. 

57.5% of B2B marketers found quick results from these tactics. Let’s see some B2B SEO stats to help you with other success-driving factors as well.

Backlinks are Crucial for SEO Success

Backlinks have a direct impact on SERP rankings and domain authority. On average, the number 1 search result has 3.8 times more backlinks compared to other results. While popular, generating backlinks is not an easy task. 

An analysis of 912 million web pages shows that 93% of B2B content does not get any backlinks. Out of the remaining 7%, only 3% of content gets backlinks from one or more sources. The same is true for social shares. About 50% of social shares come through from only 0.5% of B2B content and 75% comes from just 2% of articles. Hence, B2B marketers rank generating backlinks as the most effective off-page SEO technique.

But, how can you get these elusive backlinks for your B2B website?

Long-Form Content Generates 77.2% More Backlinks

The analysis of 912 million web pages shows that longer articles are more likely to get backlinks and social shares. B2B articles that read longer than 3,000 words get a lot more backlinks than 1,000-word articles.

However, 3,000+ worded articles fall a little short when it comes to social media shares. The B2B articles getting the most social shares are usually 1,000 to 2,000 words long.

Why Posts get More Backlinks & Listicles Get More Social Shares

B2B SEO stats also show a direct correlation between the type of content and its ability to generate backlinks. The why-posts perform best for generating backlinks, while listicles get the most social shares. 

When compared, listicles received 203% more social shares than infographics and 218% more shares than how-to posts. On the other hand, Why posts, What posts, and infographics get 25.8% more backlinks than all other content formats.

For SEO, backlinks from high-authority websites are more valuable than social shares. But, do not discount their significance. Especially if you are creating content for top-funnel searches.

Alongside content and backlinks, on-page optimization also plays a crucial role in SEO. Let’s see how you can use title tags and URLs to improve your ranking.

40-60 Character Title Tags get the Highest CTR

Title tags are crucial for SEO as they inform the users and the search engines about the contents of a webpage. They are the first thing a user would see, so they directly impact click-through rate (CTR). as well. An analysis of 4 million search results shows that the title tags which have 40 to 60 characters or 6 to 9 words have the highest CTR among search results. This length gives you ample opportunity to include your primary keywords in the title tags. 

Rank 1 Search Result Gets 27.6% Organic Traffic

The goal of most B2B SEO campaigns is to rank first in search engine results for relevant keywords. Even paid results that are positioned above organic searches do not get as much traffic as organic results. The average CTR for the top-paid result is 3.17%, while that for the top organic result is 27.6%. The analysis of 4 million search results shows that the number 1 search result gets the lion’s share of clicks. It is 1.7 times higher than those of the number 2 result and ten times the CTR of the number 10 result. All in all, just the top 3 search results take away 54.4% of the organic traffic.

But this does not mean that you will not see any results until you reach the top 3 positions. SEO strategies take time to manifest results. The study by backlinko suggests that even a change in rank can significantly improve your CTR. The below above image shows the average CTR of the top 10 search results.

Among these, some positions are quite crucial as they show significant upturns in CTR. These are #8, #6, #4, #3, and #2. Once your website reaches any of these positions, you need to be extra vigilant. B2B SEO statistics suggest you can either climb or fall in ranks based on the performance of your website at these positions.

Your climb from these positions depends on several factors. These include relevance to the search terms, quality of content, headlines, title tags, meta descriptions, backlinks, topical authority, and so on. So you need to add more vigor to your B2B SEO marketing to ensure that you climb in ranks and generate more traffic.

Your Results May Differ from B2B SEO Benchmarks

While these B2B SEO statistics paint an accurate picture of the market scenario, you might see wildly different results from your strategies. And that is not a bad thing. B2B SEO strategies depend on a company’s overall marketing goals and targeted audience. Since these two variables can be drastically different for two B2B companies, so can the outcome of the SEO strategies.

You can still use these B2B SEO stats to design and measure your campaign. But, don’t hesitate to deviate from these practices if you can generate the desired results. Although, if you want someone to handle B2B SEO, content marketing, and link-building for you, we would love to start a conversation.

Featured Image by Freepik

Author

Pratik Dholakiya

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.