Most B2B service firms know they should be doing something about SEO. Few of them know what that something actually is or whether it's even the right move right now.
In this edition of Brand3 Conversations, Brand3 copywriter Krees De Guia sits down with our SEO specialist Alex Tsygankov to dig into the reality of B2B search in 2026.
Alex has spent nearly a decade in SEO, including time as editor-in-chief at the Semrush blog, one of the most-read marketing publications in the industry. His take on B2B SEO strategy is unusually honest, including the parts most agencies won't tell you.
Krees De Guia:
You've been doing SEO for almost a decade. How did you end up specializing in it?
Alex Tsygankov:
Honestly, out of necessity. I started at Semrush as a content person — I was the editor-in-chief of their blog. I knew nothing about SEO. I had to learn it very quickly just to do my job well. And then it grew on me. I started pivoting from pure content work into the wider world of marketing strategy and SEO. About eight or nine years later, here we are.
Krees:
So you learned it by living inside one of the biggest SEO tool companies in the world.
Alex:
Which means I also saw a lot of what doesn't work.
Krees:
When a B2B service firm comes to you and says, "We're not showing up in Google," what's usually actually going on?
Alex:
The first thing I check is whether the site is even indexed. If Google hasn't found you at all, that's a technical problem, and we fix it there. But that's rare. More often, the issue is that the website is too small and under-optimized for Google to have much to work with.
Google needs signals — how old is the site, does anyone link to it, is it updated regularly, does it have more than one or two pages? If the answer to most of those is no, Google doesn't have enough to show users. It's not that you're being penalized. You're just invisible.
Krees:
So it's less about doing something wrong and more about not having done enough yet.
Alex:
Exactly. Google is trying to return the most relevant result for anyone searching for something. If your site can't demonstrate relevance and credibility through those signals, it's not going to surface. It doesn't matter how good your service actually is.
Krees:
Here's something I suspect a lot of people don't expect to hear from an SEO specialist. You've said that not every B2B company actually needs SEO. Talk me through that.
Alex:
It might sound strange, but I think it's one of the most important things a business owner can understand before they spend a dollar on SEO. SEO is a long-term project.
It can take months, sometimes over a year, to see meaningful results, especially in a saturated market.
Think about what it means to launch a new marketing agency and choose SEO as your main channel. You are now competing with agencies that have been building their websites for years, with hundreds of pages of content, and dozens of other sites linking to them as authorities. You are stepping onto a very crowded battlefield with a brand new name.
Krees:
So what should those firms be doing instead?
Alex:
It depends on where they are. Paid ads in Google can get you in front of searchers immediately — you pay for the placement, but you know it's seen. Direct outreach to decision-makers in your niche can work much faster in the short term. SEO should be in the picture, but maybe not as the primary channel until there's more foundation to build on.
Krees:
That said, there's a baseline level of SEO that every firm needs regardless.
Alex:
Yes. Every company needs to make sure that when someone searches for you by name, they find you — not a place with a similar name or a competitor. That's called branded search, and it's the floor. If you can't clear that bar, you have a problem worth fixing right away.
Krees:
Let's talk about content. A lot of B2B firms are publishing blogs and seeing nothing come from it. What separates content that ranks from content that disappears?
Alex:
The foundation is something called EEAT — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are the signals Google uses to evaluate not just a page, but your entire website. If your site sends low EEAT signals, individual pages struggle to rank, no matter how well-optimized they are.
What does that look like in practice?
Every blog post needs a named author who demonstrably knows what they're talking about. Not a ghost-written piece with no byline. Not something that looks like it was generated by AI and copy-pasted onto the site.
Krees:
And authority?
Alex:
Authority and trustworthiness are built when other credible websites link to yours as a source. If Wikipedia references your site as a primary source for something, that signals to Google that you are a legitimate voice in your space.
If you've published in industry media, spoken at conferences on the same topics you write about — Google connects those dots. It knows you're the real deal and not just publishing to game the algorithm.
Krees:
So the firm that publishes a thousand AI-generated articles with no strategy behind them is actually hurting themselves.
Alex:
Possibly, yes. You can optimize every article for a keyword set and still not rank because the website as a whole is sending weak signals on expertise and trust. Volume alone doesn't fix that.
Krees:
When you look at a piece of content and think "this will rank," what do you see?
Alex:
Content that solves a specific problem for a specific person. In B2B, your readers are decision-makers. They are busy. They are not browsing the internet for entertainment — they have a problem and they need to solve it. If your content gives them a clear path to a solution, they'll read it. If it looks like a wall of text with no structure or subheadings, they'll close the tab in ten seconds.
Structure matters enormously. So does specificity. Vague content that covers a topic at 30,000 feet serves no one.
Krees:
What about keywords? Do they still matter the way they used to?
Alex:
Twenty years ago, keyword stuffing worked because Google evaluated text in chunks — if "HVAC repair" appeared 200 times, it ranked for HVAC repair. That's completely dead now. Modern search engines understand the full meaning of a page. So if you know that 10,000 people search for a specific phrase, you should use it — because that's what they're searching for. But you're not cramming it into every sentence. You're writing for the person, and the phrase appears naturally because the content is actually about that topic.
Krees:
Walk us through how you approach keyword research for a B2B service firm. Where do you start?
Alex:
Honestly, the most accessible starting point is Google itself. Search for your primary topic. Look at what pages rank in the top ten. Read them. Figure out why they rank — what are they covering, what keywords appear throughout, what are they doing that you could do better or go deeper on? Build your keyword list from that analysis.
Tools help, and if you're hiring someone to do this work they should absolutely use them. But a business owner who wants to get a first impression of what's worth targeting can learn a lot just from those top ten results.
Krees:
And in B2B specifically, there's a real trap around chasing traffic volume.
Alex:
This is one of the most important things to understand about B2B SEO. Your goal is not to bring as many people to your website as possible. In some niches, a single contract can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That completely changes how you think about keywords. You're not going after the broadest, highest-volume terms. You're optimizing for the very specific searches your ideal client makes when they have the exact problem you solve.
Krees:
What's the biggest mistake you see B2B firms making with their SEO?
Alex:
Focusing on traffic numbers instead of revenue. I've seen companies increase their organic traffic by 1,000% in a year and bring in $0 from it. Is that a successful SEO strategy? No. It is not.
Before you build an SEO strategy, you need to define what success looks like in terms of leads and revenue, not sessions and pageviews. That question has to be answered before you write a single piece of content.
Krees:
And behind that mistake is usually a deeper one.
Alex:
Not having a strategy at all. If you are just doing things — publishing blogs here, optimizing a page there — and hoping something happens, it most likely won't. You need a plan. You need to know what you're targeting, who you're targeting, and how you're measuring whether it's working. Doing stuff and praying rarely gets you anywhere.
Krees:
Last question. If a B2B service firm has no SEO strategy, no audit, minimal content — what's the most important first step?
Alex:
Decide whether SEO is actually the right channel for you right now. That's not a cop-out answer — it's the honest one. SEO costs money. It takes time.
If that's not where you are, there may be faster channels that serve you better in the short term, and you can build toward SEO once the foundation is stronger.
If the answer is yes, SEO is the right move — then start with a clear definition of who you are trying to reach, what problems they are searching for solutions to, and what one contract from that client is actually worth to your business. That's where the strategy starts.
Being visible in search starts with being clear about who you are and who you serve. At Brand3, we help B2B service firms build the brand foundation that makes SEO work, so the right clients find you, not just more unqualified traffic. Schedule a conversation with our team, and let's look at where you stand.
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