The organic channel was generating traffic. A lot of it, actually — the SEO programme had been running for eighteen months and was producing a meaningful volume of monthly visitors across the content properties. But the pipeline from organic was thin and the leads that did come through were low quality. The sales team was spending significant time qualifying out prospects who had found the company through informational content but had no genuine intent to buy.
The diagnosis from the client's internal team was that "SEO doesn't work for our business." The actual diagnosis, when we looked carefully at the data, was that SEO was working fine for generating traffic from top-of-funnel informational queries — it just wasn't generating traffic from the queries that indicated genuine buying intent. The content strategy had optimised for volume, not for intent. The result was lots of browsers and very few buyers.
Every B2B category has an intent spectrum. At one end are queries with purely informational intent — people trying to understand a topic, not trying to buy anything. At the other end are queries with clear commercial intent — people who have identified a problem, decided to solve it, and are actively evaluating solutions. Most content strategies focus on the informational end because the volume is higher and the content is easier to produce. But the commercial-intent end is where pipeline comes from.
When we audited this client's content library, the intent distribution was roughly 85% informational and 15% commercial. The 15% commercial content was generating 60% of the pipeline. The 85% informational content was generating 40% of the pipeline from 85% of the content investment. The mathematical case for rebalancing was unambiguous — but it required understanding specifically which commercial-intent topics were most valuable and building a targeted content programme around them.
We spent the first three weeks mapping every commercial-intent keyword in the client's category. Not just the obvious "buy [product]" and "[product] pricing" queries — but the full range of decision-stage search patterns that indicate active evaluation. This included comparison queries ("[competitor] vs [our client]"), alternative queries ("[competitor] alternatives"), use-case-specific queries ("[category] software for [specific industry]"), implementation queries ("how to implement [solution type]"), and outcome queries ("how to [achieve specific result] using [solution category]").
The audit revealed hundreds of commercial-intent keywords with meaningful search volume that the client had zero content targeting. These were queries where buyers were actively evaluating solutions, and the client was entirely absent. Every one of these was a gap where a competitor was getting first consideration simply by having relevant content visible.
We built a dedicated content programme around the commercial-intent keyword gaps. The centrepiece was a competitor comparison hub — individual pages comparing the client's product directly against each of the top five competitors. These pages were written with deliberate balance: acknowledging where competitors had genuine advantages, being specific about where the client's product was stronger, and providing enough information for a buyer to make an informed comparison without needing to talk to a sales rep.
Alongside the comparison hub, we built use-case-specific landing pages for the five most important industry verticals — pages that spoke directly to how a buyer in that specific industry context would use the product to solve their specific challenges. These pages referenced industry-specific terminology, cited industry-specific benchmarks, and featured case studies from companies in those exact verticals.
We also produced a series of "how to achieve [specific outcome]" guides targeted at buyers who had already decided to solve their problem and were researching how. These guides naturally positioned the product as a solution without being promotional — the connection was made contextually rather than through sales copy.
The content was distributed through organic search as the primary channel — we optimised every piece for its target commercial-intent keywords and built internal linking from the existing high-authority content to the new commercial pages. We also ran targeted paid retargeting campaigns showing the comparison and use-case content to users who had previously visited the site but not converted — warm audiences who were demonstrably aware of the brand and likely in an active evaluation process.
Every piece of commercial content was also added to the sales team's enablement library with guidance on when and how to use it. Comparison pages became standard resources that reps shared during competitive deals. Use-case pages were sent to prospects in those specific industries early in the sales conversation.
Within four months of launching the commercial content programme, organic became a genuine demand generation channel rather than a pure traffic source. Pipeline quality improved measurably — the sales team noticed a significant increase in the proportion of organic leads who arrived having already done substantial research and who had specific, well-informed questions rather than generic inquiries. CAC from organic dropped as the conversion efficiency of commercial-intent traffic significantly exceeded the conversion efficiency of the informational traffic that had previously dominated organic. The client's internal view of SEO shifted from "doesn't work for us" to one of the most strategically important channels in the mix.
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