October 8, 2025 • 40 mins
Sam Dunning (Founder, Breaking B2B), who shares proven B2B marketing strategies and expert insights on how marketing teams can drive pipeline growth in 90 days. Sam discussed the importance and challenges of SEO for B2B companies, and emphasized that SEO is crucial for mature markets with active demand. He talked about common pitfalls to avoid, such as the “traffic trap,” low-intent keywords, and focusing too much on high traffic.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Mr. Sam Dunning, I'm gonna say,welcome back to the show, right?
Good to have you back on.
Hey, appreciate it, man, andglad I didn't annoy too many
people that weren't protestingfor do not get Sam back on for
round two. So glad, glad I madeit back.
Nah, I'm pretty sure thatthey're a fan of your online
(00:25):
video series, and we're gonnatalk about that little bit later
on in the conversation. I'msure.
Looking forward to it.
Yeah, but you know, Sam, greatto have you back on. You know
the drill. We try to, like, notdo any too much of the small
talk here, cut off the fluff andjust hop right to it. Looking
forward to this conversationbecause you shared a LinkedIn
(00:48):
post with me about a month agonow that I felt was really
pertinent in terms of, like,what B2B marketers should be
doing. So let's dive right intothat, right? Because you've been
on a mission to help B2Bcompanies to up their SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)game, as you call it, for
revenue, not vanity. So for thisparticular conversation, I'd
(01:08):
like to zero in on the topic ofhow B2B marketing teams can
crush their competitors withorganic So let's kick off the
conversation with two questions,and I'm happy to repeat them. So
first one is, why is it soimportant for B2B companies to
get it right with SEO? And as afollow up to that one, where do
you think many B2B companies getit wrong when it comes to SEO?
(01:34):
Yeah, sure. So I suppose Ishould preface that that first
and foremost for as a B2BCompany, SEO isn't always the
best thing to invest in, and nowthere's a couple situations
where it might not be a smartmove. One is, which is quite
common, especially in B2B Techand SaaS, is if you're creating
(01:55):
almost a new category or a newsolution or a new offering,
where there isn't active demand.What do I mean by active demand?
Well, there isn't there isn'tprospects that are aware of that
solution or that offering,meaning that SEO might be the
best bet, because people aren'tsearching for it, whether that's
on Google search, whether that'snow on LLMs or similar, or it's
(02:17):
not always the best bet. If,let's say you've perhaps got a
leadership team that have neverdone SEO before. SEO is not an
easy internal sell. It's often,if I was to imagine a marketing
budget for a B2B team as abarrel, usually SEO is scraping
the bottom of it, and usuallysomewhere towards the top is
(02:39):
things like outbound sales,yeah, plenty of budget for that.
Paid media, yeah, plenty events,yeah. SEO is usually something
that's not given the kind ofpriority resource or similar. So
there is a couple things you'vegot to consider. And also, hate
to say it, but it's not alwaysthe quickest thing. There are
quick wins that you can yieldwith SEO. But if you're a
company that's perhaps venturebacked. You're funded, you've
(03:02):
got investors that want to seeresults super fast, whilst there
can be quick wins as fast as 90days with a solid SEO program,
it's not something like paidmedia or kind of super cold out
cold calling, or things that wecan kind of see, see
appointments or meetings ordemos booked relatively quickly.
Usually you will need some kindof runway. I 90 days or so. So
(03:24):
it needs to, needs to have thatin mind.
But with that said, if you are aB2B company that is in a mature
market, aka. your target clientsknow your offer or your solution
or your software or serviceexists, then it's a solid
channel to get in front of thosedream clients, when they have
that high sales intent, whenthey have the problem you solve,
(03:48):
when they need your solution.Now, when they're actively in
market, when they're comparingoptions or comparing vendors, or
they have kind of a good levelof intent towards your solution,
to get in front of them onGoogle organic search, or now
LLMs (Large Language Models).And start kind of driving
awareness, driving kind of high,high intent prospects to your
website that could potentiallybe booked, calls, demos, sign
(04:08):
ups, whatever your kind of endconversion point is, so that
tees it up a little bit,hopefully in terms of how it can
be effective. And I suppose whenyou compare SEO to paid media,
whether that's Google ads,LinkedIn ads or similar, opposed
to paying for each and everyclick, you've got more of that
evergreen effect where, justlike when you do a YouTube
(04:31):
search, right, like you mightsee content that's a week old, a
month old, or even years old,and SEOs are similar, like your
content can work almost aroundthe clock, and you're not paying
for each and every click. Itkind of compounds over time with
the right strategy in place, sothat that hopefully teases up a
little bit. And I forgot whatthe second part of your question
(04:51):
was.
No problem at all. Where do yousee a lot of B2B marketing teams
getting it wrong with SEO?
There's many, many ways. So oneis trying to do SEO. If there's
not actually active demand foryour offer, I maybe you're a new
solution, new category that yourdream clients know about. In
that case, I would suggest thatyou actually work out where your
(05:12):
ICP or your ideal client profilespends time, where they get
their trusted information from,and one of the best ways to do
that is with customer research,whether that's leveraging sales
calls or actually interviewingkind of target prospects, or
recently churn clients orrecently won clients.
Understanding what are those toptwo three channels they get
their trust information from, beit a podcast, maybe they listen
to certain industry podcasts ornewsletters, or hang out on
(05:34):
LinkedIn and work out that spendtime there, educating them,
talking about the problem yousolve, positioning your product
as a painkiller, building trust,social proof, authority, and
that's more much more likely toget your clients than SEO is.
Where else do folks get SEOwrong? Well, let's pretend you
are in a segment. You areproviding an offer that's known,
and you do have potentialclients searching for it. Well,
(05:55):
most of the time it's we oftensee companies falling into what
I call the quote, unquotetraffic trap. So they're going
after, let's call it real topfunnel informational based
searches. And that could besomething like, what is a CRM
(Customer RelationshipManagement), or how to build a
(06:15):
website, or what is a KPI (KeyPerformance Indicators), or
those kind of real high levelqueries, informational based
stuff. And the thing is, if yousearch for those kind of
keywords on tools like Ahrefs,they might show up as having
tons of traffic. But the issueis, if someone's searching for
something like how to or whatis, or things like that, they're
probably super early in theirjourney. They might even be a
(06:37):
student. They're just lookingfor information about that. But
what's worse is a lot of thosequeries now, especially on
Google search, are being wipedout by AI overviews. So the
instant result above the fold,where Google will give you an
instant explanation to thequestion, sometimes cite a
website, sometimes not. And theproblem is, whilst historically,
(06:59):
that was a big SEO play, kind ofgo for super high traffic search
terms, build content aroundthem, get traffic at all costs,
and a small chunk of that willconvert. Nowadays, it doesn't
really make sense as a strategy,purely because AI, AI is wiping
out a lot of it.
And secondly, because even ifthose prospects do eventually
click through to your website,be it an article or landing page
(07:20):
or similar, in most cases,they'll get the information they
need and hop straight off. Or abest case scenario, they might
grab a lead magnet, or check outyour YouTube channel, your
podcast or something like that.So going after what we call
vanity metrics, like traffic atall costs, that isn't going to
attract high sales intentprospects. Because most of the
(07:42):
time if B2B companies arelooking to do an SEO program,
they're doing it to feed theirsales team with booked calls or
demos, or they're looking, ifthey're product led, then
they're looking to drive signups or trials of their product.
So we can talk about this, thatthe crux of great SEOs doing the
opposite, working out what thosedream clients actually search
(08:04):
for when they need the solution,or they're comparing options, or
they have the crisp problem thatyou solve, and starting at the
bottom and working up.
Yeah, no, those are some reallyfantastic points. I had three
pull off questions there, butlet me just work through them
here. So you mentioned but oneof the circumstances in which
(08:24):
you wouldn't advise companies touse SEO is if they're creating a
new category. So I guess myquestion is, Okay, that's fair
enough. But like, at what pointin time would that category have
reached a certain level of Idon't know, you can call it
maturity, and then that's whenyou would recommend, yes, you
can use SEO now.
(08:44):
Yeah, good question, and there'sno, I don't have a pinpoint
answer to be fair. I'd probablysay there's a couple ways you
could think about it. So if youwere in a new category, creating
a new solution that hasn'texisted before, there is an
argument that you could go doSEO, but I'd say unless you had,
unless you were well backed, hada good amount of or had a good
(09:07):
amount of cash in the bank, itmight not be your best bet. But
if you really wanted to do SEO,there's a couple ways you could
hit it. One would be leaningmore into the problems that your
dream clients might face. So Idon't know. And one example we
sometimes use is like, one ofour clients is a, I suppose, to
tee up some context, one of ourclients is a proposal software
(09:28):
SaaS (Software as a Service). Soif you had their problem, it
might be something like how tobuild sales quotes that convert
in Google Docs. If you knew yourdream clients crisp and specific
problems and how they're gettingthe job done today, chances are
they're probably searching forthat. And if you can map those
out in problem based, crisp andspecific searches that are
relevant to that pain point,then those could be one, one way
(09:52):
you could do it that would bereasonably top funnel.
So if someone searched forsomething like that, they might
land on an article. And youcould say, look, you're probably
getting it done this way, likemessing around with Google Docs,
trying to build these lengthysales proposals, taking you an
hour and a half each day to doit. Why not try our SaaS? Grab a
free sign up. You can do thisprocess in five minutes. Follow
these AI prompts, and it's goingto build it all out for you. So
(10:13):
that's one way to do it, quitetop funnel. Another way, if you
really wanted to attack it, wasgoing after maybe competitors
that aren't direct. So maybethere's competitors that you
could try and target that maybearen't direct but are loosely
related to your product. So ifmaybe someone's frustrated with
this incumbent solution, andthey're looking for like, X
(10:33):
alternatives, or whatever thesoftware name is, alternative to
that, that's another way youcould position your product, and
those would be reasonably highintent. So there's a couple ways
you could do SEO. It would justbe a lot more of a slow burn.
And of course, you could, youcould build out content, build
out pages, put up product pages,industry pages, feature pages to
(10:54):
wrap, to show up for yourcategory terms. And then
meanwhile, the strategy would beto build awareness, build brand
and build demand on thosechannels. You do know that your
your dream clients are gettingtrust information from so
whether that was LinkedInorganic content, LinkedIn ads,
guesting on niche, relevantpodcasts, featuring on industry
(11:15):
relevant newsletters, attendingevents, then all this stuff
you're doing outside of SEO,we're building up that awareness
and that brand and that demand,and then when they search on
Google or AI search now, and youhave that foundation in place, I
guess.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,absolutely, no, fantastic. Okay,
so that was the first follow upquestion. Um, second follow up
(11:37):
question is, and I know thatyou've probably been in the spot
more times than you care toremember. But as you said,
getting buy in from leadershipto do SEO, if a, they've never
done it before, and B, they kindof sort of know what it is, but
not really right. And butperhaps it gets to that point,
(12:01):
and I suppose it got to thatpoint with many of the people
that you're working with now. Itgot to the point where SEO has
become a necessity, and theyneeded to get that buy in,
right? They can't, they can't dothis like slow dance around the
room anymore, right? Well, howwould you, how would you get
that buy in from seniorleadership? Is, I think what I'm
(12:21):
trying to say.
Yeah, it's difficult. So you'vekind of got a leverage. There's
a couple ways you can go aboutit, but there is no easy way in,
yeah, and it's usually the mostdifficult when your leadership
team haven't invested in SEObefore. I maybe they've
historically grown their companythrough referrals or trade shows
(12:43):
or maybe even outbound sales. Sothey've got a completely
different mentality to maybeinbound marketing or similar,
that's where it gets tough. Butthere's a few ways you can
leverage it, like one is withGoogle search. For example, you
could, you could literally justsit down and show them and say,
look every time, or maybe createa loom video, if you're working
(13:05):
remote, remotely, whatever makessense. And you say, look every
time someone's searching for ourtype of service or our solution
or our software, I'll send youscreenshots or record on this
loom video, we're nowhere to beseen. So every time someone's
searching for X software or Xsolution or X service, X
industry, or searching for thisspecific problem we solve, or
they're fed up of our maincompetitor, and they're looking
(13:26):
for alternative solutions. We'renowhere to be seen, but these
top three competitors show upeach and every time, both in
Google search or now llms, andthey're enjoying that
visibility, that mind share, butmost importantly, those high
sales intent visits andpotential leads, 24/7, that
we're just sleeping on aroundthe Klepp so they're literally
(13:47):
eating our lunch for free whilstwe rely on whatever it is, cold,
outbound, etc.
If you were already doing paidsearch, it would be a lot
easier, because if you'realready doing Google ads, you
could say, Look, we're quiteliterally paying for each and
every click through. Some ofthose will convert to
opportunities. Some won't. Whynot start owning that
organically so over time, we canreduce our reliance on paid and
(14:11):
lower our cost per customeracquisition and kind of build
that out and also realize thatour prospects aren't stupid.
They know what's a sponsored adand what's not, and quite a lot
of folks do place more emphasison the organic results. So those
are a couple ways. And the thirdI'd say is it's better I forget
(14:35):
the exact phrase, but it'sbetter to seek forgiveness than
it is to ask for permission. Soif I was ABM (Account-based
marketing) marketers, then I andI knew that SEO was a valid
channel for our business, Iprobably just start doing it
anyway. It's like, I probablyjust work out, like, I call them
money keywords, but what is the,what are the terms that we can
(14:56):
map out that our dream clientsare going to look for when they
need our solution? When need oursolution for their industry,
when they're fed up withcompetitors, which is often a
quick one to rank for thatcontent can rank super fast. And
how can I start with like thelowest difficulty but easiest to
build out pages. Do a bit ofresearch. Build those out, start
mapping out those pages. If wesee a bit of traction, then
(15:19):
report to leadership and say,Look, I've built these articles,
or affiliate solution pages,I've built these landing pages.
And if you're getting someimpact, then they'd be stupid
not to buy in. And if they'renot buying into that of work
you're doing off your own back,then you're probably in the
wrong company.
Absolutely. It's almost likeyou're injecting them with a
(15:39):
little bit of FOMO (Fear ofMissing Out), right, or maybe
not even FOMO. But like, youknow, if we're not doing it, the
competitors will, right?
Exactly, exactly. That's it. AndI appreciate the advice I've
given. Is a lot more difficultif you're an enterprise company,
and I know things, there's waymore red tape stuff, stuff moves
a lot, lot slower becausethere's various tiers of
(16:00):
management. But let's pretendmaybe you're startup or mid
market, then you've probably gotmore flexibility to do some of
this stuff.
Yep, absolutely, absolutelyfantastic. So that was the
second follow up question, thethird follow up question, and
this in itself, could be anentirely different episode, but
like, what's your take on AI andSEO and where it's going.
(16:24):
Yes, it's probably one of thebiggest changes in SEO in like,
the last 10 years or so, becauseeverything's changing in the
sense that historically, SEO wasmainly Google organic search,
search for what you want see,the 10 blue links, if you're top
three, you'll probably get achunk of those visitors. And if
(16:45):
you're a B2B Tech or servicecompany, then a set amount of
those visitors for those highsales intent keywords will
convert, convert into calls ordemos or signups, whatever is
relevant to your company. That'schanged a lot with one Google
AI, AI overviews. Now Google'srolling out AI mode, which is
(17:05):
basically their version ofChatGPT. And now, of course,
LLMs like ChatGPT.
So historically, someone, ifthey if they wanted, let's say
payroll software, they mightsearch on Google best payroll
software as a CMO, and then whatwould probably show up on Google
would was, would be a listicle,an article listicle, like we
evaluate the top 10 payrollsoftware as a 2025, you'd click
(17:29):
a few of those links, look atthe top three, make a short
list, and reach out to some fordemos. Whereas now on an LLM, a
CMO might search. I'm a CMO atthis company, I need a payroll
software for a company with, Idon't know, 100 execs or 100
reps, it needs these features.It needs to solve these pain
points, and I need it withinthis budget. And then you'll get
(17:51):
presented instantly, these,these results that hit that
quota, I'll hit that searchcriteria, that prompt criteria
rather and some of those willhave links to external sites,
some of them won't, so LLMs willright now, Google still, by far,
got market share. So traditionalSEO for Google is by no means a
waste, because I still seeGoogle as the demand capture
(18:14):
beast. It's still really solidto drive inbound leads and
pipeline for mostly to becompanies, but LLMs will slowly
gain more and more market share,and they already have, if you've
got a technical, if you're, forexample, if you're a B2B company
that sells to a technical ICP, atechnical end user, they might
have scrapped Google altogether,and they might solely use LLMs
(18:37):
like ChatGPT and so on. So inthat case, you probably want to
go all in on your strategy.
But the point I'm making is, tome, at least, it feels like
we're going more into the era,because a lot of companies that
have historically done SEO willsee that their non branded
traffic might be taking a hit,their impressions might be going
up, but their click throughsmight be going down, but they
(19:00):
might be getting more directtraffic to their homepage or
their general website. So what'straditionally been kind of great
SEO to get loads of non brandedtraffic get loads of click
throughs is changing because AIis giving instant answers,
likewise with LLMs, so I feelwe're moving more into the mind
share era. So which was all mindshare, in my opinion, has always
(19:22):
been big for B2B marketing, likegetting your brand known for the
problem you solve as the endsolution, sharing why you so
your differentiators in themarket and being remembered. So
if someone thinks of yourcategory or solution, you're in
that consideration set. Andthat's kind of where I feel that
SEO is going. With LLMs, becausethey're less encouraging click
(19:45):
throughs more giving you instantanswers, instant responses. So
it's more a case of you wantyour brand shown each time
someone has the problem yousolve, someone's comparing
vendors, someone's searchingdirectly for the solution. And
someone's asking questionsaround your niche, if your brand
can be consistently mentioned,then that will put you in the
(20:06):
consideration set you mightyou're probably going to see
less non branded traffic. Butwhat probably happens is folks
do their valuation, whether thatbe on Google, whether it be on
LLMs, discuss that internally,and then just go direct to your
website when they're ready, typein your website directly, or
search for your website name onGoogle, and then click through
(20:28):
to your site and grab a call andgrab a demo. That's kind of how
I see it going.
You can kind of go down thisreally deep rabbit hole with
that question, right? Likethere's a lot, yeah, and what I
appreciate that you've given usa top level perspective, and you
mentioned earlier some aspectsof like, where B2B marketing
(20:50):
teams get it wrong when it comesto SEO. So looking at it from a
more constructive perspective,what else could you add in terms
of what are some of key pitfallsthat marketers need to watch out
for when it comes to SEO, andwhat should they be doing instead?
Yeah, yeah. So most of it isruthless prioritization. So a
(21:12):
lot of marketing teams,especially ones we deal with at
B2B Tech and SaaS companies,they're small marketing teams,
right? Marketing teams ofanywhere from one solo marketer
could be a VP of marketing tomaybe they're 2, 3, 4 max on the
team. So they have a lot ofstuff to juggle, be it their
website, be it SEO, be it paidmedia, be it events, be it
(21:35):
communities and more. Soruthless prioritization is
important, not just an SEO butin their work in general. So
where am I getting at with this?Well, like I said, not falling
into the traffic trap with yourSEO, kind of working out, in our
case, doing the opposite ofthat, working out, what would a
dream client search, not forfun, but when they need our
(21:58):
solution now, or they'recomparing their options, or they
have very specific problems wesolve, or they're looking for
our solution for their specificuse case or their specific
industry, or they're looking fora specific feature that we
provide, or all that kind ofstuff, and mapping that out, and
I've got a bit of a flow that wekind of recommend to see. We
(22:21):
recommend a lot of smallmarketing teams to follow if
they want to see kind ofpipeline as fast as 90 days with
SEO, which I can run through ina sec.
But yeah, a lot of it isruthless prioritization, working
out what is realistic. So likemapping out those money
keywords, working out what isactually realistic for your team
(22:42):
to manage. Like, can we put out,I don't know, five net new pages
of web, of content on a websiteeach week or each month? What's
actually gonna be realistic? Canwe do this in house, or do we
need to get a contract or anagency or an external team,
like, what's going to be gooduse of resource or budget, or,
like we said earlier, is it? Canwe actually make SEO a good bet
(23:05):
right now? Well, if we do it,are we going to be able to
access resource or cash flow tomake it happen? Or we better
spend doubling down on what'sgoing on already and then maybe
looking at SEO again in 3, 6, 9,months, when we know we're going
to have even gonna have eithercash or resource to make it a
good bet, because doing a monthof SEO is pointless. Really.
(23:27):
I'll say that to prospects. I'llsay, Look, if you want to do
this for one or two months, I'drather not not partner yet. I'd
rather pick it up when you'reready. So we can actually make
it a good bet. It's notsomething you can kind of switch
on, switch off.
Pretty good advice, pretty goodadvice. Going back to the
article that you wrote onLinkedIn that received quite a
(23:50):
bit of engagement, and I thoughtit was an interesting one, and
which is why I asked you to comeback on the show, right? So you
published this post, it receivedgreat engagement, and it was on
the topic of crushingcompetitors with organic so the
question, I suppose, is, walk usthrough what you talked about
and what are those steps youwould take, what are those key
(24:13):
components in that process?
I'll try and make it asactionable as possible, and feel
free to dive in if anything iskind of a bit too high level. So
all of this is on the premisethat you've got 90 days. And the
reason we say 90 days is often,especially on Google, if you
publish net new pages orcontent, it usually takes
(24:33):
roughly 90 days for rankings tosettle. So that's tends to be
why we use that as a benchmark.So the I suppose, to set some
context is, if you're a smallmarketing team and you want to
kind of make SEO or organicsearch a good bet from both LLMs
and Google as soon as possible.So one is starting where you win
right now. That's the firststep, and that's basically
(24:57):
mapping out who the industrieswe've historically sold well
into. Like, what theyaccounting, finance sports,
whatever, and those are the onesthat have the crisp and specific
problem that we solve. Aremotivated to solve it we've sold
well into before and can easilyafford our offer. And kind of
map that out.
Once you've done that, you kindof got to look to build a moat.
(25:20):
So you know the industries, youshould also know the problems
that dream clients might searchfor when they need your
solution. So we talked a bitabout that before. Great
framework for this is jobs to bedone, knowing what kind of
struggling moments your prospectface when they're evaluating
solutions like yours, or theyget so frustrated with what
they're working with, whetherthat's the incumbent or whether
(25:44):
it's a botched together orcobbled together solution
internally that gets so annoyingthat causes churn, or causes
revenue loss or causes timeloss, that they need to evaluate
a solution like yours to map outthose industries, map up those
those problems, I'd also say,map out the main competitors
that often get raised on salescalls, almost to an annoying
level. There's always three orfour that you're sick and tired
(26:07):
of. Heard of hearing of thatyour sales team always say,
Look, we're up against theseagain. Map those out.
And the fourth is probably mostimportant. What is, what are
actually your category terms? Sowhat do folks call your solution
or your service? So if you areproviding payroll software, they
might call it best payrollsoftware or best payroll
(26:30):
solutions. Or then you could tapinto your industries, like best
payroll software for nonprofits,or best payroll software for HR
teams or finance teams, theindustries you've established
there's money in because you'vesold well into them
historically. And the reason wedo that exercise, this is a
simplified version, but thereason we do that is to build
out the long tail potentialsearches, queries, keywords or
prompts that dream clients arelooking for, not when they're in
(26:52):
information gathering mode, butwhen they're in buying mode. And
that's how they could look atthose kind of industries or
solution based searches, but ifthey were those sometimes take a
little while to rank, andusually what will rank well for
those is kind of landing pages,or what's called product
listicles, where you evaluatetop 10 vendors in the space. But
(27:14):
ones that can often rank evenfaster is alternative pages. So
this works especially well intech and SaaS like if you know,
there's three or four vendorsthat often get raised on sales
calls, if you can make thatcompetitor alternative page, and
again, usually that's the top10x alternative vendors of 2025,
or something like that. And theway you build those in simple
(27:36):
terms is it's kind of a list.You position your product or
services number one, but youshare why folks choose you
problems you solve that othersdon't. How you stand out your
differentiators. You weave insocial proof, and then you put a
fair comparison of the othersbelow those rank really well for
those kind of terms. So map outall those terms. Look to build
out all those pages in as muchdepth as possible. Make sure
(28:00):
when you're building these otherarticles, industry pages,
landing pages, product pages,comparison pages, that you're
leveraging customer research.
One of the biggest mistakes inSEO is just trying to optimize
for search when really youshouldn't just optimize for
search. You should do that, butyou should think about your end
user, and that's why a lot ofthe stuff I talk about is
(28:21):
regularly having a feedback loopof talking to your dream
clients, whether they'rerecently won, target prospects
recently churned, so you have agood pulse on what their
problems are, why they choseyou, what they like about the
offer, the features they careabout, and more. So that's
ingrained into the content youbuild. So yeah, basically we're
(28:41):
talking about step two isbuilding out a moat like no
other. So you have all theseuseful pages that are actually
money pages, like highcommercial, high sales intent,
pages that cover industries, usecases, the product itself
features alternatives, maybecompetitor one versus competitor
two, all this kind of stuffthat's high sales intent, that
all these lines in the waterthat people could search for
(29:04):
that could position your productas the solution.
And then step three is kind oflooking at quick wins to craft
and improve. So you mightalready have, if you've got a
website that's been around awhile, you might have pages that
already have commercial value,and tools like Ahrefs will let
you easily look at these. Ithink they call it like low
hanging fruit keywords, or stufflike that. And you can basically
(29:25):
look at the pages that arelagging on page two or bottom
page one, and benchmark againstwhat's ranking top and look for
gaps. I basically have astrategy called the blow out the
water strategy. So evaluate thetop ranking pages. Look for
gaps. If it was landing page,maybe they've built out the
landing page with the problemagitation solution framework,
and I'd say, Well, how can Iblow this page out the water,
(29:46):
leveraging our customerresearch? Maybe I'll add in a
nice YouTube video that talksabout the topic. Maybe I'll go
into more depth on the problemmy dream client might be facing.
Maybe I'll weave in, weave insome relevant case study. Maybe
I will add an FAQ section at thebottom that talks about kind of
real difficult questions we getleveraged on, we get asked on
sales calls, and kind of reallyweave those in. Like, why are
(30:09):
you so expensive? How long iscustomer onboarding? What's your
refund policy? All that stuffthat everyone else is scared to address.
So improve those pages that arelagging. Step four is, like, one
of the cheat codes I touched onit a bit, and that's that's
listicles. So especially in B2BTech and SaaS and B2B service,
if you're doing prompts on LLMs,like I mentioned payroll, like,
(30:31):
show me the best payrollsoftwares for this specific use
case, this specific feature set,in this budget, the small links
that get cited on there areoften listicles like we evaluate
at the top 10 payroll softwareas these articles. So two angles
to this. One is build out allthose articles, those listicles,
on your own website, so you ownthem. And the second part is
(30:53):
reach out to those, thoselisticles that are often cited
on LLMs, or those list schoolsthat are ranking well on Google
organic search, reach out to tryand get featured placements on
those, ideally in the top three,because not many people scroll
past like the first 123, whenthey consider options. And a lot
of folks think these are onlypay to play. But we've had quite
(31:14):
good success by value exchange.So you kind of reach out to
these listicles you want to getplacements in, find out who's
the best person to speak to.Maybe find them out. Search for
them on LinkedIn. I'm a big fanof painfully short connection
request messages, so I'll findout maybe the author of the post
or who manages content for thepage. And might say something
(31:35):
like, Hey, Jess had a weirdidea, if you're listicle, you
against a conversation. And thenshe'll probably connect with me
on LinkedIn and say, like, Sam,what the heck are you on about?
And I'll probably send her aquick loom video that would just
be like me, on their list, ontheir article, like top 10x
software page. And I'll just saylike, I've enjoyed this recent
(31:57):
read. Was having a look. Iwondered what it would take to
get a placement here. Perhaps Icould have you as a guest on my
podcast, or maybe we couldfeature in an article writing
for this. Or maybe you've gotanother idea of a fair value
exchange, and that'll separateyou from probably the masses of
wall of text emails that they'regetting and get, likely get your
(32:18):
response, whether it's no way,or it's pay to play, or, yeah,
we can actually do a valueexchange, at least you're going
to get straight to the point.
So we've had good success withthat for our own company,
breaking B2B, and also forclients. See, I'm making a
process to steadily reach out tothose listicles is super
powerful. One, because LLMs lovethem, and two, because LLMs
(32:40):
really like brand mentions. Soif you get your brand mentioned,
along with your category reallystrong, also you can get a
backlink, which is going to helpyour SEO. And also, the chances
are those listicles already getgood traffic, so they can, they
can drive you direct leads,direct inbounds as well. That's
step four.
Step five is leveraging pastmedia. So if you've got a
(33:02):
founder or someone in your execteam, maybe a marketing or
revenue leader, or IT leader,whoever it is that's done a lot
of podcasts or press or articlesor stuff like that in the past,
what you can do is tools likeAhrefs SEO tools, you can
literally just copy and pastetheir LinkedIn profile into that
tool, and it will come up withall the press that they've been
(33:23):
on, and then look for thosearticles or those podcasts or
similar and they've probablyjust in the article, just put in
their LinkedIn profile. Sosimilar process to before reach
out to whoever wrote the articleand just say thanks again for
including our founder, orwhoever it was in the article.
And I wondered if you couldchange this and actually mention
(33:43):
our brand and possibly give us abacklink back to one of our
focus pages and keywords, andthat'll give you a nice little
boost again on both LLMs and SEO.
Step six out of seven is againreally big. Reddit is getting
cited like crazy, both on Googleand ChatGPT and other LLMs. So
looking to really control thenarrative, a lot of people ask
(34:07):
me on sales calls, like Sam,what's the best way to ramp up
our LLM visibility? And I'll saywe just need to go back 10 years
and build a brand. So yeah,nothing difficult. But
unfortunately, not many peopleare able to do what Back to the
Future did in the DeLorean so.
No, at least not yet.
So controlling the narrative isreally important, because LLMs
I mean, that might be comingsoon. Might be a new SaaS tool,
(34:28):
go back in time for 10 years,but the next best thing is to do
love to cite from all over theweb, not just your website,
all this stuff that we talkedabout, to really look to control
places like Reddit, Quora,Wikipedia could be YouTube,
the narrative. So try and gueston industry relevant and niche,
relevant podcasts. Make sure,when they publish the article,
could be elsewhere to buildthinking, which could be to be
that they're uploading atranscript, mentioning your
marketers have done anywhereanyway. They've known the
brand and also giving a linkback to your site. Maybe, if
channel from customer research.They've known the channels that
(34:48):
you've got resource, you buildout your own podcast, niche,
relevant show and YouTubechannel. If you've got someone
their dream clients get trustedinformation, and they're trying
in your team that knows howReddit works and they. Many
tools now that can actuallynotify you when someone's
to build positive affinityaround the problems they're
talking about your niche foryour industry, and Reddit, if
solving, and how their brand'spositioned to solve those and
you can get involved in thoseReddit threads and have someone
why they should choose them onchannels outside of their
from your team that actuallyknows how to use Reddit, knows
(35:11):
how to add value, and when I sayadd value, I mean, be a useful
website. So having a process todo that, it's going to help you
resource like give tips aboutyour industry, actually answer
control that narrative. And thenthe last thing is to is speed.
the questions people care about,talk about problems that they
might want to solve. Give themthe step by step, and then only
So a lot of this goes outsideSEO, but the thing that slows
mention your brand whererelevant. So give real,
down SEO programs the most iskind of building out what those
tactical, useful advice and kindof avoid getting your comments
(35:31):
instantly deleted, which iseasier said than done.
money keywords we talked about,what stream client actually
searching for on Google ABM whenthey need your offer now.
Building out that content atspeed pace that you can keep up
with, whether that's a couplearticles a week or a couple of
(35:51):
landing pages a week, whateveryour team can manage, and then
getting those published as fastas possible, because it'll take
a while for them to get indexedor Google get visibility on a
lens. But often what hamstringsSEO progress is this is very
common in enterprises. You cankind of build a strategy for
(36:15):
SEO, work out what you'retargeting, or work out the
updates you've got to do toexisting content, and likewise,
net new content, build thisclear plan of action roadmap,
which is priority based, andthen that might take a couple
months to get approved. Couplemonths later, the contents
(36:38):
written couple months later,it's checked by legal. Couple
months later, web design and devteam have got it, and a couple
months later, you're a year downthe line that's eventually got
published. Your advantage of asa scrappy startup or kind of
smaller marketing team is youcan do everything we've talked
(37:03):
about in this episode, but speedand meanwhile, these slow moving
giant competitors are slowlypublishing. You can get stuff
out the door, see how it tracks,see how it goes. Like does it
show up in LLMs? Does it show upin Google. Great. Let's do more
(37:23):
of it. All right? It didn't goas well as we did. Let's go back
to the drawing board. Update it,ramp it up, refresh it. Okay,
now it is. Let's keep going. SoI think that's such a massive
advantage as a smaller marketingteam that you can really outpace
(37:44):
these slow moving giants just bydoing things done at speed. They
don't need to be perfect. Theyneed to have the strategy we
talked about and be wellexecuted. But it's better to get
out the door and then see how itfares and then update it if you
need to. That's kind of a highlevel seven step progress or
(38:08):
plan. Rather that we encourage alot of our clients to do that
kind of can actually drivepipeline from LLMs and Google as
quick as 90 days.
Dynamite stuff. Dynamite stuff.Yeah, I've been, I've been just
writing down the stuff furiouslyhere, and I hope the audience
does the same thing. Or ifthey're too lazy to write them
(38:30):
down, they can just usetranscription AI, right?
True, true that.
Yeah, yeah, no, I haven't,because I was like, hey, palace.
All right. Um, two morequestions before I let you go.
All right. So the bonus questionis, for those of you in the
Um, if you have the opportunityto take this series because
audience that don't know, um, soSam has this video series on
LinkedIn called I asked thepublic. So you've done this
video in many places, and Ithink one of them was outside
(38:51):
you've been doing this, um,you've been doing this mostly in
Buckingham Palace, if I'm notmistaken.
I forgot about that one.
Do you know where? For somereason, I don't even know why.
the UK, right where you live.But if you had the opportunity
to take this series abroad,where would you go? And why?
(39:12):
It just came into my head.Literally, as you said it,
what's the place in Americawhere they've got those paving
slabs with the stars name instars?
Oh, it's an, um, it's in LA.
For some reason, when you saidthat, that just came into my
head, yeah. And maybe I'd do it.Maybe I'd do it like, we'd
(39:35):
Photoshop, or we'd AI workfamous marketers into those
stars. And I'd say, like, Idon't know, for example, have
you heard of Adam Robinson, orhave you heard of Chris Walker,
just famous B2B SaaS folks onLinkedIn, and just do some kind
of spoof or something like that,confusing the public.
(39:55):
That'll be awesome.
Probably getting some abusealong the way, as usual.
Yeah, you can. Cut those out inthe post production. Fantastic.
Sam, thank you so much forcoming back on the show and for
sharing these excellent tipswith the listeners. So please a
quick introduction to yourselfand how people out there can get
in touch with you.
No, I really appreciate havingme back on there's. Yeah, three
(40:18):
main ways. One is LinkedIn. I'mshowing daily ramblings on SEO
and SaaS marketing. The secondis the podcast called breaking
B2B, much like this, weinterview B2B marketing leaders,
share tips, and we have soloepisodes on SEO as well. And
then the third is, if you'reperhaps a little frustrated that
Cheers.
All right. Thanks. Bye for now.
your website is not driving asteady flow of organic pipeline
(40:39):
through SEO. LLMs, we might beable to fix that. It's
https://www.breakingb2b.com/Happy to have a chat.
Mr. Sam Dunning, I'm gonna say,welcome back to the show, right?
Good to have you back on.
Hey, appreciate it, man, andglad I didn't annoy too many
people that weren't protestingfor do not get Sam back on for
round two. So glad, glad I madeit back.
Nah, I'm pretty sure thatthey're a fan of your online
(00:25):
video series, and we're gonnatalk about that little bit later
on in the conversation. I'msure.
Looking forward to it.
Yeah, but you know, Sam, greatto have you back on. You know
the drill. We try to, like, notdo any too much of the small
talk here, cut off the fluff andjust hop right to it. Looking
forward to this conversationbecause you shared a LinkedIn
(00:48):
post with me about a month agonow that I felt was really
pertinent in terms of, like,what B2B marketers should be
doing. So let's dive right intothat, right? Because you've been
on a mission to help B2Bcompanies to up their SEO
(Search Engine Optimization)game, as you call it, for
revenue, not vanity. So for thisparticular conversation, I'd
(01:08):
like to zero in on the topic ofhow B2B marketing teams can
crush their competitors withorganic So let's kick off the
conversation with two questions,and I'm happy to repeat them. So
first one is, why is it soimportant for B2B companies to
get it right with SEO? And as afollow up to that one, where do
you think many B2B companies getit wrong when it comes to SEO?
(01:34):
Yeah, sure. So I suppose Ishould preface that that first
and foremost for as a B2BCompany, SEO isn't always the
best thing to invest in, and nowthere's a couple situations
where it might not be a smartmove. One is, which is quite
common, especially in B2B Techand SaaS, is if you're creating
(01:55):
almost a new category or a newsolution or a new offering,
where there isn't active demand.What do I mean by active demand?
Well, there isn't there isn'tprospects that are aware of that
solution or that offering,meaning that SEO might be the
best bet, because people aren'tsearching for it, whether that's
on Google search, whether that'snow on LLMs or similar, or it's
(02:17):
not always the best bet. If,let's say you've perhaps got a
leadership team that have neverdone SEO before. SEO is not an
easy internal sell. It's often,if I was to imagine a marketing
budget for a B2B team as abarrel, usually SEO is scraping
the bottom of it, and usuallysomewhere towards the top is
(02:39):
things like outbound sales,yeah, plenty of budget for that.
Paid media, yeah, plenty events,yeah. SEO is usually something
that's not given the kind ofpriority resource or similar. So
there is a couple things you'vegot to consider. And also, hate
to say it, but it's not alwaysthe quickest thing. There are
quick wins that you can yieldwith SEO. But if you're a
company that's perhaps venturebacked. You're funded, you've
(03:02):
got investors that want to seeresults super fast, whilst there
can be quick wins as fast as 90days with a solid SEO program,
it's not something like paidmedia or kind of super cold out
cold calling, or things that wecan kind of see, see
appointments or meetings ordemos booked relatively quickly.
Usually you will need some kindof runway. I 90 days or so. So
(03:24):
it needs to, needs to have thatin mind.
But with that said, if you are aB2B company that is in a mature
market, aka. your target clientsknow your offer or your solution
or your software or serviceexists, then it's a solid
channel to get in front of thosedream clients, when they have
that high sales intent, whenthey have the problem you solve,
(03:48):
when they need your solution.Now, when they're actively in
market, when they're comparingoptions or comparing vendors, or
they have kind of a good levelof intent towards your solution,
to get in front of them onGoogle organic search, or now
LLMs (Large Language Models).And start kind of driving
awareness, driving kind of high,high intent prospects to your
website that could potentiallybe booked, calls, demos, sign
(04:08):
ups, whatever your kind of endconversion point is, so that
tees it up a little bit,hopefully in terms of how it can
be effective. And I suppose whenyou compare SEO to paid media,
whether that's Google ads,LinkedIn ads or similar, opposed
to paying for each and everyclick, you've got more of that
evergreen effect where, justlike when you do a YouTube
(04:31):
search, right, like you mightsee content that's a week old, a
month old, or even years old,and SEOs are similar, like your
content can work almost aroundthe clock, and you're not paying
for each and every click. Itkind of compounds over time with
the right strategy in place, sothat that hopefully teases up a
little bit. And I forgot whatthe second part of your question
(04:51):
was.
No problem at all. Where do yousee a lot of B2B marketing teams
getting it wrong with SEO?
There's many, many ways. So oneis trying to do SEO. If there's
not actually active demand foryour offer, I maybe you're a new
solution, new category that yourdream clients know about. In
that case, I would suggest thatyou actually work out where your
(05:12):
ICP or your ideal client profilespends time, where they get
their trusted information from,and one of the best ways to do
that is with customer research,whether that's leveraging sales
calls or actually interviewingkind of target prospects, or
recently churn clients orrecently won clients.
Understanding what are those toptwo three channels they get
their trust information from, beit a podcast, maybe they listen
to certain industry podcasts ornewsletters, or hang out on
(05:34):
LinkedIn and work out that spendtime there, educating them,
talking about the problem yousolve, positioning your product
as a painkiller, building trust,social proof, authority, and
that's more much more likely toget your clients than SEO is.
Where else do folks get SEOwrong? Well, let's pretend you
are in a segment. You areproviding an offer that's known,
and you do have potentialclients searching for it. Well,
(05:55):
most of the time it's we oftensee companies falling into what
I call the quote, unquotetraffic trap. So they're going
after, let's call it real topfunnel informational based
searches. And that could besomething like, what is a CRM
(Customer RelationshipManagement), or how to build a
(06:15):
website, or what is a KPI (KeyPerformance Indicators), or
those kind of real high levelqueries, informational based
stuff. And the thing is, if yousearch for those kind of
keywords on tools like Ahrefs,they might show up as having
tons of traffic. But the issueis, if someone's searching for
something like how to or whatis, or things like that, they're
probably super early in theirjourney. They might even be a
(06:37):
student. They're just lookingfor information about that. But
what's worse is a lot of thosequeries now, especially on
Google search, are being wipedout by AI overviews. So the
instant result above the fold,where Google will give you an
instant explanation to thequestion, sometimes cite a
website, sometimes not. And theproblem is, whilst historically,
(06:59):
that was a big SEO play, kind ofgo for super high traffic search
terms, build content aroundthem, get traffic at all costs,
and a small chunk of that willconvert. Nowadays, it doesn't
really make sense as a strategy,purely because AI, AI is wiping
out a lot of it.
And secondly, because even ifthose prospects do eventually
click through to your website,be it an article or landing page
(07:20):
or similar, in most cases,they'll get the information they
need and hop straight off. Or abest case scenario, they might
grab a lead magnet, or check outyour YouTube channel, your
podcast or something like that.So going after what we call
vanity metrics, like traffic atall costs, that isn't going to
attract high sales intentprospects. Because most of the
(07:42):
time if B2B companies arelooking to do an SEO program,
they're doing it to feed theirsales team with booked calls or
demos, or they're looking, ifthey're product led, then
they're looking to drive signups or trials of their product.
So we can talk about this, thatthe crux of great SEOs doing the
opposite, working out what thosedream clients actually search
(08:04):
for when they need the solution,or they're comparing options, or
they have the crisp problem thatyou solve, and starting at the
bottom and working up.
Yeah, no, those are some reallyfantastic points. I had three
pull off questions there, butlet me just work through them
here. So you mentioned but oneof the circumstances in which
(08:24):
you wouldn't advise companies touse SEO is if they're creating a
new category. So I guess myquestion is, Okay, that's fair
enough. But like, at what pointin time would that category have
reached a certain level of Idon't know, you can call it
maturity, and then that's whenyou would recommend, yes, you
can use SEO now.
(08:44):
Yeah, good question, and there'sno, I don't have a pinpoint
answer to be fair. I'd probablysay there's a couple ways you
could think about it. So if youwere in a new category, creating
a new solution that hasn'texisted before, there is an
argument that you could go doSEO, but I'd say unless you had,
unless you were well backed, hada good amount of or had a good
(09:07):
amount of cash in the bank, itmight not be your best bet. But
if you really wanted to do SEO,there's a couple ways you could
hit it. One would be leaningmore into the problems that your
dream clients might face. So Idon't know. And one example we
sometimes use is like, one ofour clients is a, I suppose, to
tee up some context, one of ourclients is a proposal software
(09:28):
SaaS (Software as a Service). Soif you had their problem, it
might be something like how tobuild sales quotes that convert
in Google Docs. If you knew yourdream clients crisp and specific
problems and how they're gettingthe job done today, chances are
they're probably searching forthat. And if you can map those
out in problem based, crisp andspecific searches that are
relevant to that pain point,then those could be one, one way
(09:52):
you could do it that would bereasonably top funnel.
So if someone searched forsomething like that, they might
land on an article. And youcould say, look, you're probably
getting it done this way, likemessing around with Google Docs,
trying to build these lengthysales proposals, taking you an
hour and a half each day to doit. Why not try our SaaS? Grab a
free sign up. You can do thisprocess in five minutes. Follow
these AI prompts, and it's goingto build it all out for you. So
(10:13):
that's one way to do it, quitetop funnel. Another way, if you
really wanted to attack it, wasgoing after maybe competitors
that aren't direct. So maybethere's competitors that you
could try and target that maybearen't direct but are loosely
related to your product. So ifmaybe someone's frustrated with
this incumbent solution, andthey're looking for like, X
(10:33):
alternatives, or whatever thesoftware name is, alternative to
that, that's another way youcould position your product, and
those would be reasonably highintent. So there's a couple ways
you could do SEO. It would justbe a lot more of a slow burn.
And of course, you could, youcould build out content, build
out pages, put up product pages,industry pages, feature pages to
(10:54):
wrap, to show up for yourcategory terms. And then
meanwhile, the strategy would beto build awareness, build brand
and build demand on thosechannels. You do know that your
your dream clients are gettingtrust information from so
whether that was LinkedInorganic content, LinkedIn ads,
guesting on niche, relevantpodcasts, featuring on industry
(11:15):
relevant newsletters, attendingevents, then all this stuff
you're doing outside of SEO,we're building up that awareness
and that brand and that demand,and then when they search on
Google or AI search now, and youhave that foundation in place, I
guess.
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely,absolutely, no, fantastic. Okay,
so that was the first follow upquestion. Um, second follow up
(11:37):
question is, and I know thatyou've probably been in the spot
more times than you care toremember. But as you said,
getting buy in from leadershipto do SEO, if a, they've never
done it before, and B, they kindof sort of know what it is, but
not really right. And butperhaps it gets to that point,
(12:01):
and I suppose it got to thatpoint with many of the people
that you're working with now. Itgot to the point where SEO has
become a necessity, and theyneeded to get that buy in,
right? They can't, they can't dothis like slow dance around the
room anymore, right? Well, howwould you, how would you get
that buy in from seniorleadership? Is, I think what I'm
(12:21):
trying to say.
Yeah, it's difficult. So you'vekind of got a leverage. There's
a couple ways you can go aboutit, but there is no easy way in,
yeah, and it's usually the mostdifficult when your leadership
team haven't invested in SEObefore. I maybe they've
historically grown their companythrough referrals or trade shows
(12:43):
or maybe even outbound sales. Sothey've got a completely
different mentality to maybeinbound marketing or similar,
that's where it gets tough. Butthere's a few ways you can
leverage it, like one is withGoogle search. For example, you
could, you could literally justsit down and show them and say,
look every time, or maybe createa loom video, if you're working
(13:05):
remote, remotely, whatever makessense. And you say, look every
time someone's searching for ourtype of service or our solution
or our software, I'll send youscreenshots or record on this
loom video, we're nowhere to beseen. So every time someone's
searching for X software or Xsolution or X service, X
industry, or searching for thisspecific problem we solve, or
they're fed up of our maincompetitor, and they're looking
(13:26):
for alternative solutions. We'renowhere to be seen, but these
top three competitors show upeach and every time, both in
Google search or now llms, andthey're enjoying that
visibility, that mind share, butmost importantly, those high
sales intent visits andpotential leads, 24/7, that
we're just sleeping on aroundthe Klepp so they're literally
(13:47):
eating our lunch for free whilstwe rely on whatever it is, cold,
outbound, etc.
If you were already doing paidsearch, it would be a lot
easier, because if you'realready doing Google ads, you
could say, Look, we're quiteliterally paying for each and
every click through. Some ofthose will convert to
opportunities. Some won't. Whynot start owning that
organically so over time, we canreduce our reliance on paid and
(14:11):
lower our cost per customeracquisition and kind of build
that out and also realize thatour prospects aren't stupid.
They know what's a sponsored adand what's not, and quite a lot
of folks do place more emphasison the organic results. So those
are a couple ways. And the thirdI'd say is it's better I forget
(14:35):
the exact phrase, but it'sbetter to seek forgiveness than
it is to ask for permission. Soif I was ABM (Account-based
marketing) marketers, then I andI knew that SEO was a valid
channel for our business, Iprobably just start doing it
anyway. It's like, I probablyjust work out, like, I call them
money keywords, but what is the,what are the terms that we can
(14:56):
map out that our dream clientsare going to look for when they
need our solution? When need oursolution for their industry,
when they're fed up withcompetitors, which is often a
quick one to rank for thatcontent can rank super fast. And
how can I start with like thelowest difficulty but easiest to
build out pages. Do a bit ofresearch. Build those out, start
mapping out those pages. If wesee a bit of traction, then
(15:19):
report to leadership and say,Look, I've built these articles,
or affiliate solution pages,I've built these landing pages.
And if you're getting someimpact, then they'd be stupid
not to buy in. And if they'renot buying into that of work
you're doing off your own back,then you're probably in the
wrong company.
Absolutely. It's almost likeyou're injecting them with a
(15:39):
little bit of FOMO (Fear ofMissing Out), right, or maybe
not even FOMO. But like, youknow, if we're not doing it, the
competitors will, right?
Exactly, exactly. That's it. AndI appreciate the advice I've
given. Is a lot more difficultif you're an enterprise company,
and I know things, there's waymore red tape stuff, stuff moves
a lot, lot slower becausethere's various tiers of
(16:00):
management. But let's pretendmaybe you're startup or mid
market, then you've probably gotmore flexibility to do some of
this stuff.
Yep, absolutely, absolutelyfantastic. So that was the
second follow up question, thethird follow up question, and
this in itself, could be anentirely different episode, but
like, what's your take on AI andSEO and where it's going.
(16:24):
Yes, it's probably one of thebiggest changes in SEO in like,
the last 10 years or so, becauseeverything's changing in the
sense that historically, SEO wasmainly Google organic search,
search for what you want see,the 10 blue links, if you're top
three, you'll probably get achunk of those visitors. And if
(16:45):
you're a B2B Tech or servicecompany, then a set amount of
those visitors for those highsales intent keywords will
convert, convert into calls ordemos or signups, whatever is
relevant to your company. That'schanged a lot with one Google
AI, AI overviews. Now Google'srolling out AI mode, which is
(17:05):
basically their version ofChatGPT. And now, of course,
LLMs like ChatGPT.
So historically, someone, ifthey if they wanted, let's say
payroll software, they mightsearch on Google best payroll
software as a CMO, and then whatwould probably show up on Google
would was, would be a listicle,an article listicle, like we
evaluate the top 10 payrollsoftware as a 2025, you'd click
(17:29):
a few of those links, look atthe top three, make a short
list, and reach out to some fordemos. Whereas now on an LLM, a
CMO might search. I'm a CMO atthis company, I need a payroll
software for a company with, Idon't know, 100 execs or 100
reps, it needs these features.It needs to solve these pain
points, and I need it withinthis budget. And then you'll get
(17:51):
presented instantly, these,these results that hit that
quota, I'll hit that searchcriteria, that prompt criteria
rather and some of those willhave links to external sites,
some of them won't, so LLMs willright now, Google still, by far,
got market share. So traditionalSEO for Google is by no means a
waste, because I still seeGoogle as the demand capture
(18:14):
beast. It's still really solidto drive inbound leads and
pipeline for mostly to becompanies, but LLMs will slowly
gain more and more market share,and they already have, if you've
got a technical, if you're, forexample, if you're a B2B company
that sells to a technical ICP, atechnical end user, they might
have scrapped Google altogether,and they might solely use LLMs
(18:37):
like ChatGPT and so on. So inthat case, you probably want to
go all in on your strategy.
But the point I'm making is, tome, at least, it feels like
we're going more into the era,because a lot of companies that
have historically done SEO willsee that their non branded
traffic might be taking a hit,their impressions might be going
up, but their click throughsmight be going down, but they
(19:00):
might be getting more directtraffic to their homepage or
their general website. So what'straditionally been kind of great
SEO to get loads of non brandedtraffic get loads of click
throughs is changing because AIis giving instant answers,
likewise with LLMs, so I feelwe're moving more into the mind
share era. So which was all mindshare, in my opinion, has always
(19:22):
been big for B2B marketing, likegetting your brand known for the
problem you solve as the endsolution, sharing why you so
your differentiators in themarket and being remembered. So
if someone thinks of yourcategory or solution, you're in
that consideration set. Andthat's kind of where I feel that
SEO is going. With LLMs, becausethey're less encouraging click
(19:45):
throughs more giving you instantanswers, instant responses. So
it's more a case of you wantyour brand shown each time
someone has the problem yousolve, someone's comparing
vendors, someone's searchingdirectly for the solution. And
someone's asking questionsaround your niche, if your brand
can be consistently mentioned,then that will put you in the
(20:06):
consideration set you mightyou're probably going to see
less non branded traffic. Butwhat probably happens is folks
do their valuation, whether thatbe on Google, whether it be on
LLMs, discuss that internally,and then just go direct to your
website when they're ready, typein your website directly, or
search for your website name onGoogle, and then click through
(20:28):
to your site and grab a call andgrab a demo. That's kind of how
I see it going.
You can kind of go down thisreally deep rabbit hole with
that question, right? Likethere's a lot, yeah, and what I
appreciate that you've given usa top level perspective, and you
mentioned earlier some aspectsof like, where B2B marketing
(20:50):
teams get it wrong when it comesto SEO. So looking at it from a
more constructive perspective,what else could you add in terms
of what are some of key pitfallsthat marketers need to watch out
for when it comes to SEO, andwhat should they be doing instead?
Yeah, yeah. So most of it isruthless prioritization. So a
(21:12):
lot of marketing teams,especially ones we deal with at
B2B Tech and SaaS companies,they're small marketing teams,
right? Marketing teams ofanywhere from one solo marketer
could be a VP of marketing tomaybe they're 2, 3, 4 max on the
team. So they have a lot ofstuff to juggle, be it their
website, be it SEO, be it paidmedia, be it events, be it
(21:35):
communities and more. Soruthless prioritization is
important, not just an SEO butin their work in general. So
where am I getting at with this?Well, like I said, not falling
into the traffic trap with yourSEO, kind of working out, in our
case, doing the opposite ofthat, working out, what would a
dream client search, not forfun, but when they need our
(21:58):
solution now, or they'recomparing their options, or they
have very specific problems wesolve, or they're looking for
our solution for their specificuse case or their specific
industry, or they're looking fora specific feature that we
provide, or all that kind ofstuff, and mapping that out, and
I've got a bit of a flow that wekind of recommend to see. We
(22:21):
recommend a lot of smallmarketing teams to follow if
they want to see kind ofpipeline as fast as 90 days with
SEO, which I can run through ina sec.
But yeah, a lot of it isruthless prioritization, working
out what is realistic. So likemapping out those money
keywords, working out what isactually realistic for your team
(22:42):
to manage. Like, can we put out,I don't know, five net new pages
of web, of content on a websiteeach week or each month? What's
actually gonna be realistic? Canwe do this in house, or do we
need to get a contract or anagency or an external team,
like, what's going to be gooduse of resource or budget, or,
like we said earlier, is it? Canwe actually make SEO a good bet
(23:05):
right now? Well, if we do it,are we going to be able to
access resource or cash flow tomake it happen? Or we better
spend doubling down on what'sgoing on already and then maybe
looking at SEO again in 3, 6, 9,months, when we know we're going
to have even gonna have eithercash or resource to make it a
good bet, because doing a monthof SEO is pointless. Really.
(23:27):
I'll say that to prospects. I'llsay, Look, if you want to do
this for one or two months, I'drather not not partner yet. I'd
rather pick it up when you'reready. So we can actually make
it a good bet. It's notsomething you can kind of switch
on, switch off.
Pretty good advice, pretty goodadvice. Going back to the
article that you wrote onLinkedIn that received quite a
(23:50):
bit of engagement, and I thoughtit was an interesting one, and
which is why I asked you to comeback on the show, right? So you
published this post, it receivedgreat engagement, and it was on
the topic of crushingcompetitors with organic so the
question, I suppose, is, walk usthrough what you talked about
and what are those steps youwould take, what are those key
(24:13):
components in that process?
I'll try and make it asactionable as possible, and feel
free to dive in if anything iskind of a bit too high level. So
all of this is on the premisethat you've got 90 days. And the
reason we say 90 days is often,especially on Google, if you
publish net new pages orcontent, it usually takes
(24:33):
roughly 90 days for rankings tosettle. So that's tends to be
why we use that as a benchmark.So the I suppose, to set some
context is, if you're a smallmarketing team and you want to
kind of make SEO or organicsearch a good bet from both LLMs
and Google as soon as possible.So one is starting where you win
right now. That's the firststep, and that's basically
(24:57):
mapping out who the industrieswe've historically sold well
into. Like, what theyaccounting, finance sports,
whatever, and those are the onesthat have the crisp and specific
problem that we solve. Aremotivated to solve it we've sold
well into before and can easilyafford our offer. And kind of
map that out.
Once you've done that, you kindof got to look to build a moat.
(25:20):
So you know the industries, youshould also know the problems
that dream clients might searchfor when they need your
solution. So we talked a bitabout that before. Great
framework for this is jobs to bedone, knowing what kind of
struggling moments your prospectface when they're evaluating
solutions like yours, or theyget so frustrated with what
they're working with, whetherthat's the incumbent or whether
(25:44):
it's a botched together orcobbled together solution
internally that gets so annoyingthat causes churn, or causes
revenue loss or causes timeloss, that they need to evaluate
a solution like yours to map outthose industries, map up those
those problems, I'd also say,map out the main competitors
that often get raised on salescalls, almost to an annoying
level. There's always three orfour that you're sick and tired
(26:07):
of. Heard of hearing of thatyour sales team always say,
Look, we're up against theseagain. Map those out.
And the fourth is probably mostimportant. What is, what are
actually your category terms? Sowhat do folks call your solution
or your service? So if you areproviding payroll software, they
might call it best payrollsoftware or best payroll
(26:30):
solutions. Or then you could tapinto your industries, like best
payroll software for nonprofits,or best payroll software for HR
teams or finance teams, theindustries you've established
there's money in because you'vesold well into them
historically. And the reason wedo that exercise, this is a
simplified version, but thereason we do that is to build
out the long tail potentialsearches, queries, keywords or
prompts that dream clients arelooking for, not when they're in
(26:52):
information gathering mode, butwhen they're in buying mode. And
that's how they could look atthose kind of industries or
solution based searches, but ifthey were those sometimes take a
little while to rank, andusually what will rank well for
those is kind of landing pages,or what's called product
listicles, where you evaluatetop 10 vendors in the space. But
(27:14):
ones that can often rank evenfaster is alternative pages. So
this works especially well intech and SaaS like if you know,
there's three or four vendorsthat often get raised on sales
calls, if you can make thatcompetitor alternative page, and
again, usually that's the top10x alternative vendors of 2025,
or something like that. And theway you build those in simple
(27:36):
terms is it's kind of a list.You position your product or
services number one, but youshare why folks choose you
problems you solve that othersdon't. How you stand out your
differentiators. You weave insocial proof, and then you put a
fair comparison of the othersbelow those rank really well for
those kind of terms. So map outall those terms. Look to build
out all those pages in as muchdepth as possible. Make sure
(28:00):
when you're building these otherarticles, industry pages,
landing pages, product pages,comparison pages, that you're
leveraging customer research.
One of the biggest mistakes inSEO is just trying to optimize
for search when really youshouldn't just optimize for
search. You should do that, butyou should think about your end
user, and that's why a lot ofthe stuff I talk about is
(28:21):
regularly having a feedback loopof talking to your dream
clients, whether they'rerecently won, target prospects
recently churned, so you have agood pulse on what their
problems are, why they choseyou, what they like about the
offer, the features they careabout, and more. So that's
ingrained into the content youbuild. So yeah, basically we're
(28:41):
talking about step two isbuilding out a moat like no
other. So you have all theseuseful pages that are actually
money pages, like highcommercial, high sales intent,
pages that cover industries, usecases, the product itself
features alternatives, maybecompetitor one versus competitor
two, all this kind of stuffthat's high sales intent, that
all these lines in the waterthat people could search for
(29:04):
that could position your productas the solution.
And then step three is kind oflooking at quick wins to craft
and improve. So you mightalready have, if you've got a
website that's been around awhile, you might have pages that
already have commercial value,and tools like Ahrefs will let
you easily look at these. Ithink they call it like low
hanging fruit keywords, or stufflike that. And you can basically
(29:25):
look at the pages that arelagging on page two or bottom
page one, and benchmark againstwhat's ranking top and look for
gaps. I basically have astrategy called the blow out the
water strategy. So evaluate thetop ranking pages. Look for
gaps. If it was landing page,maybe they've built out the
landing page with the problemagitation solution framework,
and I'd say, Well, how can Iblow this page out the water,
(29:46):
leveraging our customerresearch? Maybe I'll add in a
nice YouTube video that talksabout the topic. Maybe I'll go
into more depth on the problemmy dream client might be facing.
Maybe I'll weave in, weave insome relevant case study. Maybe
I will add an FAQ section at thebottom that talks about kind of
real difficult questions we getleveraged on, we get asked on
sales calls, and kind of reallyweave those in. Like, why are
(30:09):
you so expensive? How long iscustomer onboarding? What's your
refund policy? All that stuffthat everyone else is scared to address.
So improve those pages that arelagging. Step four is, like, one
of the cheat codes I touched onit a bit, and that's that's
listicles. So especially in B2BTech and SaaS and B2B service,
if you're doing prompts on LLMs,like I mentioned payroll, like,
(30:31):
show me the best payrollsoftwares for this specific use
case, this specific feature set,in this budget, the small links
that get cited on there areoften listicles like we evaluate
at the top 10 payroll softwareas these articles. So two angles
to this. One is build out allthose articles, those listicles,
on your own website, so you ownthem. And the second part is
(30:53):
reach out to those, thoselisticles that are often cited
on LLMs, or those list schoolsthat are ranking well on Google
organic search, reach out to tryand get featured placements on
those, ideally in the top three,because not many people scroll
past like the first 123, whenthey consider options. And a lot
of folks think these are onlypay to play. But we've had quite
(31:14):
good success by value exchange.So you kind of reach out to
these listicles you want to getplacements in, find out who's
the best person to speak to.Maybe find them out. Search for
them on LinkedIn. I'm a big fanof painfully short connection
request messages, so I'll findout maybe the author of the post
or who manages content for thepage. And might say something
(31:35):
like, Hey, Jess had a weirdidea, if you're listicle, you
against a conversation. And thenshe'll probably connect with me
on LinkedIn and say, like, Sam,what the heck are you on about?
And I'll probably send her aquick loom video that would just
be like me, on their list, ontheir article, like top 10x
software page. And I'll just saylike, I've enjoyed this recent
(31:57):
read. Was having a look. Iwondered what it would take to
get a placement here. Perhaps Icould have you as a guest on my
podcast, or maybe we couldfeature in an article writing
for this. Or maybe you've gotanother idea of a fair value
exchange, and that'll separateyou from probably the masses of
wall of text emails that they'regetting and get, likely get your
(32:18):
response, whether it's no way,or it's pay to play, or, yeah,
we can actually do a valueexchange, at least you're going
to get straight to the point.
So we've had good success withthat for our own company,
breaking B2B, and also forclients. See, I'm making a
process to steadily reach out tothose listicles is super
powerful. One, because LLMs lovethem, and two, because LLMs
(32:40):
really like brand mentions. Soif you get your brand mentioned,
along with your category reallystrong, also you can get a
backlink, which is going to helpyour SEO. And also, the chances
are those listicles already getgood traffic, so they can, they
can drive you direct leads,direct inbounds as well. That's
step four.
Step five is leveraging pastmedia. So if you've got a
(33:02):
founder or someone in your execteam, maybe a marketing or
revenue leader, or IT leader,whoever it is that's done a lot
of podcasts or press or articlesor stuff like that in the past,
what you can do is tools likeAhrefs SEO tools, you can
literally just copy and pastetheir LinkedIn profile into that
tool, and it will come up withall the press that they've been
(33:23):
on, and then look for thosearticles or those podcasts or
similar and they've probablyjust in the article, just put in
their LinkedIn profile. Sosimilar process to before reach
out to whoever wrote the articleand just say thanks again for
including our founder, orwhoever it was in the article.
And I wondered if you couldchange this and actually mention
(33:43):
our brand and possibly give us abacklink back to one of our
focus pages and keywords, andthat'll give you a nice little
boost again on both LLMs and SEO.
Step six out of seven is againreally big. Reddit is getting
cited like crazy, both on Googleand ChatGPT and other LLMs. So
looking to really control thenarrative, a lot of people ask
(34:07):
me on sales calls, like Sam,what's the best way to ramp up
our LLM visibility? And I'll saywe just need to go back 10 years
and build a brand. So yeah,nothing difficult. But
unfortunately, not many peopleare able to do what Back to the
Future did in the DeLorean so.
No, at least not yet.
So controlling the narrative isreally important, because LLMs
I mean, that might be comingsoon. Might be a new SaaS tool,
(34:28):
go back in time for 10 years,but the next best thing is to do
love to cite from all over theweb, not just your website,
all this stuff that we talkedabout, to really look to control
places like Reddit, Quora,Wikipedia could be YouTube,
the narrative. So try and gueston industry relevant and niche,
relevant podcasts. Make sure,when they publish the article,
could be elsewhere to buildthinking, which could be to be
that they're uploading atranscript, mentioning your
marketers have done anywhereanyway. They've known the
brand and also giving a linkback to your site. Maybe, if
channel from customer research.They've known the channels that
(34:48):
you've got resource, you buildout your own podcast, niche,
relevant show and YouTubechannel. If you've got someone
their dream clients get trustedinformation, and they're trying
in your team that knows howReddit works and they. Many
tools now that can actuallynotify you when someone's
to build positive affinityaround the problems they're
talking about your niche foryour industry, and Reddit, if
solving, and how their brand'spositioned to solve those and
you can get involved in thoseReddit threads and have someone
why they should choose them onchannels outside of their
from your team that actuallyknows how to use Reddit, knows
(35:11):
how to add value, and when I sayadd value, I mean, be a useful
website. So having a process todo that, it's going to help you
resource like give tips aboutyour industry, actually answer
control that narrative. And thenthe last thing is to is speed.
the questions people care about,talk about problems that they
might want to solve. Give themthe step by step, and then only
So a lot of this goes outsideSEO, but the thing that slows
mention your brand whererelevant. So give real,
down SEO programs the most iskind of building out what those
tactical, useful advice and kindof avoid getting your comments
(35:31):
instantly deleted, which iseasier said than done.
money keywords we talked about,what stream client actually
searching for on Google ABM whenthey need your offer now.
Building out that content atspeed pace that you can keep up
with, whether that's a couplearticles a week or a couple of
(35:51):
landing pages a week, whateveryour team can manage, and then
getting those published as fastas possible, because it'll take
a while for them to get indexedor Google get visibility on a
lens. But often what hamstringsSEO progress is this is very
common in enterprises. You cankind of build a strategy for
(36:15):
SEO, work out what you'retargeting, or work out the
updates you've got to do toexisting content, and likewise,
net new content, build thisclear plan of action roadmap,
which is priority based, andthen that might take a couple
months to get approved. Couplemonths later, the contents
(36:38):
written couple months later,it's checked by legal. Couple
months later, web design and devteam have got it, and a couple
months later, you're a year downthe line that's eventually got
published. Your advantage of asa scrappy startup or kind of
smaller marketing team is youcan do everything we've talked
(37:03):
about in this episode, but speedand meanwhile, these slow moving
giant competitors are slowlypublishing. You can get stuff
out the door, see how it tracks,see how it goes. Like does it
show up in LLMs? Does it show upin Google. Great. Let's do more
(37:23):
of it. All right? It didn't goas well as we did. Let's go back
to the drawing board. Update it,ramp it up, refresh it. Okay,
now it is. Let's keep going. SoI think that's such a massive
advantage as a smaller marketingteam that you can really outpace
(37:44):
these slow moving giants just bydoing things done at speed. They
don't need to be perfect. Theyneed to have the strategy we
talked about and be wellexecuted. But it's better to get
out the door and then see how itfares and then update it if you
need to. That's kind of a highlevel seven step progress or
(38:08):
plan. Rather that we encourage alot of our clients to do that
kind of can actually drivepipeline from LLMs and Google as
quick as 90 days.
Dynamite stuff. Dynamite stuff.Yeah, I've been, I've been just
writing down the stuff furiouslyhere, and I hope the audience
does the same thing. Or ifthey're too lazy to write them
(38:30):
down, they can just usetranscription AI, right?
True, true that.
Yeah, yeah, no, I haven't,because I was like, hey, palace.
All right. Um, two morequestions before I let you go.
All right. So the bonus questionis, for those of you in the
Um, if you have the opportunityto take this series because
audience that don't know, um, soSam has this video series on
LinkedIn called I asked thepublic. So you've done this
video in many places, and Ithink one of them was outside
(38:51):
you've been doing this, um,you've been doing this mostly in
Buckingham Palace, if I'm notmistaken.
I forgot about that one.
Do you know where? For somereason, I don't even know why.
the UK, right where you live.But if you had the opportunity
to take this series abroad,where would you go? And why?
(39:12):
It just came into my head.Literally, as you said it,
what's the place in Americawhere they've got those paving
slabs with the stars name instars?
Oh, it's an, um, it's in LA.
For some reason, when you saidthat, that just came into my
head, yeah. And maybe I'd do it.Maybe I'd do it like, we'd
(39:35):
Photoshop, or we'd AI workfamous marketers into those
stars. And I'd say, like, Idon't know, for example, have
you heard of Adam Robinson, orhave you heard of Chris Walker,
just famous B2B SaaS folks onLinkedIn, and just do some kind
of spoof or something like that,confusing the public.
(39:55):
That'll be awesome.
Probably getting some abusealong the way, as usual.
Yeah, you can. Cut those out inthe post production. Fantastic.
Sam, thank you so much forcoming back on the show and for
sharing these excellent tipswith the listeners. So please a
quick introduction to yourselfand how people out there can get
in touch with you.
No, I really appreciate havingme back on there's. Yeah, three
(40:18):
main ways. One is LinkedIn. I'mshowing daily ramblings on SEO
and SaaS marketing. The secondis the podcast called breaking
B2B, much like this, weinterview B2B marketing leaders,
share tips, and we have soloepisodes on SEO as well. And
then the third is, if you'reperhaps a little frustrated that
Cheers.
All right. Thanks. Bye for now.
your website is not driving asteady flow of organic pipeline
(40:39):
through SEO. LLMs, we might beable to fix that. It's
https://www.breakingb2b.com/Happy to have a chat.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!