What is online visibility?
Online visibility means that someone who types in a question ends up with you. That can be in Google, in an AI answer or on LinkedIn. Reach works the other way round: you show up for people who did not ask anything, for example with an ad in their feed.
The difference lies in who takes the initiative.
- With visibility, the buyer searches and you are the answer.
- With reach, you go looking for the buyer and have to be worth their attention.
Online visibility is often discussed straight away in terms of your website: keywords, copy, technology and links. That work matters, but in B2B there is one step before it.
Why does online visibility work differently in B2B?
In our keyword research for clients we often see the same picture. Few people search for the name of the product or service. A handful of searches a month is normal in a B2B niche, and sometimes there are none. We call that zero search volume.
That does not mean buyers have no questions. They just ask different questions than you might expect:
- A buyer searches for the problem they need to solve, not for a product name.
- A technician searches for a standard, a fault or a comparison between two solutions.
- A director often does not search at all, but asks someone they trust.
On top of that, only a small part of your market is buying right now. If you steer on keywords alone, you only reach that part.
How do I improve my online visibility?
In B2B you improve your online visibility by making choices first and building afterwards. We work in four steps:
- Choose your customer's questions. Decide which questions you want to be found for: what a buyer types in before they know they need you.
- Build demand. Become known among the companies in your customer profile that are not searching yet, through LinkedIn and content.
- Capture demand. Make sure your pages and search ads are the answer as soon as someone does search.
- Bring the enquiry to sales with context. An enquiry from search traffic goes to the account manager with company details.
As an SEO agency for B2B, we therefore treat visibility as part of one approach, together with advertising and sales.
Which customer questions do you want to be found for?
Start with the conversations sales is already having. What question does a customer ask in the first meeting? Which misconception does an account manager keep correcting? Those are the questions you want to be found for, even if a keyword tool says nobody searches for them.
With our clients, three sources produce the most questions:
- the sales and service inbox, with the questions customers literally ask;
- the expertise of employees, because what they explain to a customer is often nowhere online;
- the reasons behind lost deals: why did someone choose another supplier, or do nothing?
Then make a choice. One page that answers one question well works better than several pages that repeat a product name.
How do you build demand before it exists?
If nobody searches, waiting makes little sense. You build the demand yourself. Demand generation means becoming known among the companies that fit you, well before they look for a supplier.
In B2B you do that mainly with LinkedIn ads and with content that names a problem the buyer had not seen that way yet. You target job titles and companies, not keywords. The goal is recognition: when the problem later reaches the agenda, the buyer knows your name and your way of looking at it.
Then search behaviour starts. People search for your company name, for the term you use or for the question you raised.
How do you capture demand afterwards?
You capture demand with pages that answer the search question, search ads on terms with buying intent and a website that is technically sound. We call that demand capture.
In B2B you mostly capture what you built yourself earlier:
- one page per chosen customer question that answers it, with the information a competitor leaves out;
- search ads on the terms people do search for;
- an enquiry that reaches sales with company details, so someone follows up within a day.
What we saw with clients without search volume
In our SEO projects we see that the pages that bring in enquiries rarely talk about the product. They are about the question a customer asks before they know which product they need.
At Allround Hekwerk we therefore started with what customers type in, not with product names. We gathered the expertise from the people in the company.
more organic traffic on fencing search terms
At DBT-Energie the niche is even smaller. Few people search for transformer substations, and they search for a technical question rather than a brand name. The knowledge base answers those questions, and LinkedIn makes the company known among decision makers who are not searching yet.
more organic traffic and better positions in Google
See the Allround Hekwerk project
Start with your customer, not your website
Online visibility in B2B starts with your customer's questions. Build demand first among the companies that fit you, then capture it with pages that answer their questions. In the reverse order, you build pages for searches that may never come.
