Choosing keywords a young B2B site can rank for

Members of the SEO work group debate keyword tools, customer language and break-even math.

Updated October 13, 2026

Start from the problems buyers describe in their own words, then use the tools to size topics and avoid fights that incumbents already win.

Search volume is a poor first filter. Nate Turner and Ethan Smith start from the problems the product solves. Late-funnel, long-tail searches are easier for a young site to rank for and closer to a purchase.
The group splits on keyword tools. Eli Schwartz would build the list from customer conversations. Kevin Indig uses the tools to map where incumbents already win, and Ethan sizes whole topics with them, which often run 10x the head term. Eli accepts both uses, as long as customers wrote the list.
Give each keyword a break-even. Marcos Ciarrocchi estimates how many conversions a page needs to pay back its cost, so a query the tools show at near-zero volume can still earn a page.
Expect three to six months. Ethan reads rankings in the top 20 as the early signal, then publishes more in the topics that are moving and drops the rest.

Group chat with Kevin, Eli, Ethan, Nate, Marcos — the SEO work group

Question:

How do you pick keywords a young B2B site can realistically rank for?

Nate TurnerCo-founder and CEO of Ten Speed. Former VP Demand Generation at Sprout Social

Start with existing demand. A young site has little authority, so search volume is the wrong filter. We point new B2B sites at MoFu and BoFu terms first and add a few ToFu topics around them. Late-funnel queries tend to be longtail and specific, so they're easier to get onto page 1, and the people searching them are closer to buying.

tenspeed

This is the process we use with clients:

Pick one product feature. List the pain points it solves, then research the queries buyers type when they have that pain. These pages get ranked by a young site, and they let you bring up the product naturally without putting off the reader.newsletter.tenspeed
Pull vocabulary from customers and SMEs, then check it against the tools. On one of our sessions, a guest described a six-figure software purchase that began with "we're only going to talk to people who have a real-time bidirectional sync with Salesforce." That query probably shows near-zero volume in a tool, and it's still the shortlist moment.YouTube
Prioritize comparison and alternatives queries. In our study of B2B evaluation-stage prompts, comparison-format queries were about 20% of prompts but drove roughly 27% of AI citations, and product pages earned about a quarter of all citations. A young site owns those pages and can control them from day one.
Fill in with FAQ, glossary, and help-center questions pulled from your support team and from People Also Ask. These are narrow, so a new domain has a real shot at ranking.tenspeed

Before any of this, fix crawlability, indexability, and speed. Otherwise a technical problem can stop even a well-chosen keyword list from ranking.

Ethan SmithCEO of Graphite. Teaches SEO at Reforge and IE Business School

I'd stop using keyword difficulty as the filter. A keyword isn't hard or easy on its own. Your domain is either topically authoritative for it or it isn't. At Graphite we built a topical authority score that measures how related a topic is to your domain, and that score predicted faster ranking and more traffic. That matters because 5% of topics commonly drive 95% of the impact, and a young site can't afford to spend its first six months on the other 95%.

So for a young B2B site, this is the order I'd work in:

Start with the problems your product solves. Pull them from product marketing and sales, then use search volume to refine the list. If you start from volume, you end up with high-volume, low-intent topics you won't rank for and that wouldn't convert anyway.
Keep the topics closest to what the site is already about. Those are the ones where your thin authority still counts.
Size each topic by all its keywords. One page ranks for hundreds of variants, so the real volume is often 10x the head term's. That stops you from writing ten articles where one would do.YouTube
If you're creating a new category ("AI for X"), target the old queries people actually type and keep the new category for your brand positioning. Nobody is searching for the new category name yet.
Expect three to six months on a new site. The early signal is ranking in the top 20, around positions 15 to 8, before any real clicks come. Once you see that, publish more in the topics that are moving and drop the ones that aren't.YouTube

Mid-funnel and long-tail content, including listicles, works well right now. Low-intent "what is X" definitions are where I'd cut.

YouTube

Eli SchwartzAuthor of Product-Led SEO. Former Director of Growth at SurveyMonkey

Start by closing the keyword tool. Every term with volume and a difficulty score in Semrush or Ahrefs is a red ocean: it shows up in the tool because established sites already compete for it, and a young domain will lose that fight for years. The words a young site can own are the blue ocean ones. Your customers use them, your sales calls are full of them, and the tools show them as zero volume or don't list them at all.

YouTube

Nate's Salesforce sync example is exactly the kind of query I mean. I'd go further than checking customer vocabulary against the tools: some of the best SEO teams I've worked with barely touch keyword tools anymore and spend that time mapping customer journeys instead.

Next, look for queries your product can answer at scale. Zapier is the B2B example I always use. When I was at SurveyMonkey, they ranked for "survey tools" with a blog post, and their lasting win came from pages pairing one tool with another. Those integration terms were long tail and too specific for anyone else to bother with, and only Zapier had the data to fill thousands of them.

Apple Podcasts

Don't forecast from volume multiplied by a CTR curve either. I've seen position 5 pull an 80% click-through rate and position 1 pull 10%, so those spreadsheets are fiction.

YouTube

A lot of young B2B companies should put the budget into paid first. If buyers already know the three vendors in your category before they search, SEO won't be the channel that closes them, and you can revisit it once you have the resources.

productledseo

Kevin IndigWrites Growth Memo. Former Director of SEO at Shopify and VP SEO and Content at G2

I disagree with Eli on closing the keyword tool. For a young site, its best use is as a map of where incumbents already win, so you know which fights to skip. Start from where incumbents aren't, then filter by your product advantage.

Going head-on with incumbents that have more links, more brand and more topical coverage is a losing battle for a young site. So my process looks like this:

Export the incumbents' top pages and keywords (Semrush Organic Research → Pages, or Ahrefs Top Pages) and map where they win. Then look for keywords that fit both their topics and your product but that they don't cover.
Filter that list through your product advantage. If you sell a faster database, skip "relational database" and go after "fast database". The volume is lower, but so is the competition, and the traffic converts because it matches what you're actually better at.growth-memo
Score the list instead of eyeballing it. I weight customer mentions, conversion history, MSV × KD / CPC, and trend growth, so a near-zero-volume query like Nate's Salesforce sync example still floats to the top.
On "alternative" and "vs" queries, check the SERP first. Google tends to hand "alternative" SERPs to review sites like G2, so a young site often wins faster by getting onto those review sites and listicles than by trying to outrank them.growth-memo

The longtail data backs this up. Longer queries are more likely to show 9 or 10 organic results and fewer SERP features, so there's more room for a newcomer to rank.

growth-memo

Also, segment your list into quick wins and slow wins before you forecast anything. Treating every keyword the same makes the forecast miss and costs you credibility with leadership.

New sites also have a speed advantage: no legacy CMS, so you can ship and iterate pages faster than an incumbent can. Use that speed on topics nobody covers yet, because those are the keywords you can win first.

Ethan SmithCEO of Graphite. Teaches SEO at Reforge and IE Business School

I'm with Kevin on keeping the keyword tool, for a different reason than his. Tools report volume for one keyword, and a page ranks for a whole topic. When we sized "best camera" as a topic, it was at least 10x the head term's volume. A lot of what looks like zero volume is really a long-tail variant of a topic with real demand. So I'd keep the tools and use them at the topic level, which also tells you whether one page covers the whole cluster or you need two.

YouTube

Eli's point on forecasting matches what I see. Bottom-up forecasts built from keyword volume times a CTR curve produce numbers that are wildly off and set false expectations with leadership.

On Nate's glossary and FAQ pages, I'd be selective. Narrow help-center questions tied to the product are fine. Generic "what is X" definitions are the low-intent content I'd cut first, because they don't convert and the big publishers already own them.

YouTube

Kevin's G2 point extends to AI answers too. A new domain usually doesn't rank in Google or show up in ChatGPT for anything at first. For head questions like "best X for Y," the AI answer goes to whoever gets mentioned most across Reddit, review sites and media. Webflow wins "best website builder for designers" through TechRadar and Reddit mentions while its own URL isn't ranking first. So while the owned pages build topical authority over three to six months, getting mentioned on those third-party sites is the fastest way into both the SERP and the AI answer.

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Marcos CiarrocchiCo-founder of Graphite. Former Head of Growth at Yummly

I put a break-even number on every keyword before we write anything. For each candidate, estimate the conversion rate or LTV, then ask: if this page costs ~$50 to produce (copywriter, content manager, assets), how many conversions does it need to pay back?

YouTube That's how you justify Nate's Salesforce-sync query. The tools show near-zero volume, but one closed deal pays for the page many times over. Evergreen topics also keep paying after break even. Paid stops converting the day you stop paying.

Eli is right that volume × CTR forecasts are shaky. So I use the model as a go/no-go threshold. If a keyword only works at position 1 with 40% CTR, skip it. If it breaks even at 2 conversions a month from position 8, it's a realistic bet for a young domain. That also gives you Kevin's quick-win vs slow-win split for free. Then check it against real data once Ethan's top-20 signal shows up.

Two more filters for picking the realistic ones:

Within the gaps Kevin describes, favor queries where the ranking pages are weak on the experience. A young site wins those on the page itself: comparisons, feature details, trust signals. That's how we've seen small startups beat Mercado Libre in narrow verticals.YouTube
Map the question variations buyers ask in AI search engines. Those variations are far more complex than keywords, and we call this "Topical SEO". Perplexity queries average 10–11 words, which brings Eli's blue-ocean terms to the surface.

Eli SchwartzAuthor of Product-Led SEO. Former Director of Growth at SurveyMonkey

Kevin, I'll take that amendment. Using the tool as a map of what to skip is a fair use of it. The trouble is that everything on that map, including "fast database," is still a list of queries the tool already knows about, so your incumbents are looking at the same export and will cover the gap the moment it shows traffic.

The tools have also gotten worse at the job since conversational search arrived. Keyword databases are built on short, fragmented phrases, and buyers now type full sentences into Google and full problems into ChatGPT. In about two thirds of the potential consulting clients I meet, the keyword strategy still assumes people search like it's 2015. A young B2B site's opening is those long, specific problem statements, and no volume column will ever surface them.

Volume also tells you nothing about why someone typed a query, which is the part that matters for a B2B site with a sales team to feed. I built a workbook around starting from the search user instead of the tool output for exactly that reason.

productledseo

Ethan's topic sizing is a better use of the tools than single-keyword volume, and I'd still run it on a list that customers generated. So I'm fine with Kevin's step 1 as a filter at the end. The list itself should come from customers.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where should a new B2B SaaS site focus its SEO in year one?
On a narrow set of searches close to a buying decision, with use-case, comparison and integration pages built from what buyers ask sales and support. Scale once a small batch ranks and brings qualified demand.
Is programmatic SEO worth it for a B2B company?
When each page answers a distinct buyer question with data the company has. Pilot one page pattern, check quality and indexing, and judge it on qualified pipeline.
When does early content marketing pay off?
Search traffic can appear three to six months after launch. Eli Schwartz budgets 12 to 18 months for SEO to become a dependable channel, while Kevin Indig and Nate Turner expect several quarters. Track sign-ups and sales conversations alongside rankings.
How do you get your brand cited in ChatGPT?
Answer the questions buyers ask before they choose, one clear page per question with evidence they can check, and earn mentions on the review sites, communities and media that AI answers cite.

All seo and ai search questions →

Frequently Asked Questions

Where should a new B2B SaaS site focus its SEO in year one?

On a narrow set of searches close to a buying decision, with use-case, comparison and integration pages built from what buyers ask sales and support. Scale once a small batch ranks and brings qualified demand.

Is programmatic SEO worth it for a B2B company?

When each page answers a distinct buyer question with data the company has. Pilot one page pattern, check quality and indexing, and judge it on qualified pipeline.

When does early content marketing pay off?

Search traffic can appear three to six months after launch. Eli Schwartz budgets 12 to 18 months for SEO to become a dependable channel, while Kevin Indig and Nate Turner expect several quarters. Track sign-ups and sales conversations alongside rankings.

How do you get your brand cited in ChatGPT?

Answer the questions buyers ask before they choose, one clear page per question with evidence they can check, and earn mentions on the review sites, communities and media that AI answers cite.

Choosing keywords a young B2B site can rank for

SEO

Frequently Asked Questions

Where should a new B2B SaaS site focus its SEO in year one?

Is programmatic SEO worth it for a B2B company?

When does early content marketing pay off?

How do you get your brand cited in ChatGPT?

Your ideas, super powered.

Choosing keywords a young B2B site can rank for

SEO

Frequently Asked Questions

Where should a new B2B SaaS site focus its SEO in year one?

Is programmatic SEO worth it for a B2B company?

When does early content marketing pay off?

How do you get your brand cited in ChatGPT?

Your ideas, super powered.