Key Takeaways
This article will walk you through a core SEO strategy built around pain point keywords—those that reveal a specific need or challenge. You’ll learn how to identify these terms so you can focus your mid-funnel content on people who feel a real urgency to solve a problem. That sense of urgency often translates into higher conversion potential.
Most SEOs and agencies will tell you that you NEED SEO.
They’ll sell it to any business, at any stage, regardless of whether it actually drives results.
But the truth is, SEO isn’t the right growth channel for everyone.
In fact, it can be a major waste of marketing dollars if your business isn’t ready for it.
It’s not that SEO doesn’t work.
It does.
But only when the right conditions are in place.
Solid positioning. Clear messaging. Conversion-ready pages.
And, most of all, an audience that actually uses search to make decisions.
This isn’t a “why SEO is great” article.
It’s meant to help you gauge whether SEO will move the need for your business.
1. Your Audience Isn’t Primarily Active on Search, Especially When They’re In-Market for Your Solution
Before investing in SEO, you have to understand your audience and what their buying behavior looks like.
Especially in B2B, buyers’ journeys aren’t always linear.
B2B customers aren’t googling a product they need, picking a search result, and placing an order like B2C customers.
They have long deal cycles, multiple stakeholders to report to, and much higher stakes if they choose the wrong solution.
For many B2B brands, potential customers might turn to:
- LinkedIn for insights and recommendations from industry leaders when they’re open to considering new products
- Slack communities to see what people are using to find which one would be the best value for them
- Reddit for feedback from others when they’re in their final research phase
- A newsletter from a brand or influencer they trust
Search MAY play a role in this journey, but it’s not always guaranteed.
Sure, SEO can provide touchpoints throughout their journey in the form of:
- ToFu articles that build awareness
- MoFu content that influence consideration
- BOFU that may act as sales enablement
But the real question is whether your audience turns to search engines or other channels during their final decision-making stage.
That 5% of your audience that’s in-market for your type of solution and ready to move forward.
There’s nothing wrong with going after the other 95%, but these are users who may consider using your product in the future.
These prospects aren’t fully guaranteed to convert.
Whereas the in-market prospects need a solution now and are actively looking to make their final decision.
While you can’t track your prospects’ activity outside of your site, you can interview them directly to get an idea of where they’re hanging out.
You can ask questions like:
- “Where did you go for information when you were comparing final options?”
- “What resources did you trust most when making your final decision?”
- “Did you use search engines when evaluating us against competitors?”
- “What convinced you to ultimately choose our solution?”
- “Which platforms or communities did you consult before purchasing?”
- “How much time did you spend researching on Google vs. asking peers?”
- “What was the final thing that pushed you to make a decision?”
Once you identify where users are primarily active when they’re in-market, you can then double down on that channel.
First and foremost, you want your product and brand to stand out where those decisions are happening.
Sometimes it’s SEO, sometimes it’s other channels.
If your prospects are mostly active on LinkedIn, then paid social and influencer marketing (both internal and external) might be a better investment than SEO.
It all depends on your audience.
2. You Don’t Have a Defined Product Market Fit or It’s Ever-Evolving
Product-market fit should always come before investing in SEO.
Meaning:
- Your product has a clearly defined value proposition that resonates with your target audience
- You have consistent customer feedback validating your product solves a real pain point
- Your messaging and positioning are rock solid – not constantly changing every month
- Your ideal customer persona (ICP) is well-defined and proven through actual sales data
This is especially true for SaaS brands where SEO typically starts with high-intent terms targeting those in-market prospects.
These high-intent terms will usually be based entirely around your product’s category and use cases.
If your product or its positioning changes frequently, your content can easily become outdated.
This is something that happens more often than you might think.
It even happened to one of my clients recently.
They had a defined niche and were well known within that niche, but wanted to broaden it to include more of their market.
We expanded their site messaging and repositioned their SEO efforts to fit both niches.
But just a few months later, the expansion was abandoned, and those changes were scrapped.
Which results in some serious problems:
- Having to completely remove pages you invested in
- Needing to overhaul content repeatedly
- Potentially confusing your audience with mixed messaging
- Losing traffic and rankings when content changes direction
Either way, it’ll be a waste of time and money.
While you can target broader middle-funnel topics tied to the problems your product solves, it’s unlikely that content will drive meaningful conversions early on.
If your PMF isn’t defined, then you’re better off starting with demand-generation channels that can build hype for your brand.
Contentlike founder-led thought leadership on LinkedIn or PR on what your company is working towards.
That way, you can build existing demand for when your product launches.
And, you’ll save your SEO budget for when you are confident in what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to.
3. You’re Operating in a Crowded Market Without a Proper Differentiation/Positioning Strategy
SEO success depends heavily on your ability to stand out from the competition.
For both ranking and positioning.
If you’re a project management software that can’t properly explain why a prospect should use your tool over ClickUp, Asana, Monday, SEO won’t move the needle.
Your potential customers need to understand exactly why they should choose your solution over competitors.
This differentiation needs to be crystal clear.
Not just in your sales content but throughout your content messaging as well.
Without a defined unique value proposition, you’re fighting an uphill battle for attention and consideration.
If you want to see success in positioning and SEO, you can:
- Niche down: Focus on a specific segment of your market rather than trying to compete with everyone. For example, become the project management tool specifically for creative agencies instead of all businesses.
- Identify unique features: Highlight capabilities your competitors don’t have or don’t do as well. Make these central to your main messaging.
- Specialize in solving specific pain points: Position your solution as the best answer to a particular problem your target audience has.
- Own a unique perspective: Develop and promote a distinct philosophy or methodology that sets your approach apart.
Identify your core differentiators first, then align your SEO strategy to amplify them.
4. Your Site isn’t Optimized for Conversions
One of the most common reasons I turn companies away from SEO is that their site isn’t optimized for conversions.
And I don’t just mean loading quickly and looking good.
I mean giving visitors/prospects/leads/customers everything they need to sell themselves on your solution.
It seems small, but it is something we HAVE to do before starting anything SEO-wise.
If you want to see success from SEO, your site has to act as a funnel that educates your users at each buying stage.
It needs to cover:
- What your product does (in clear, simple terms)
- Who your product is specifically designed for
- What results your product has delivered for others
- Why someone should choose your solution over competitors
- How much your product costs (transparency matters)
- A straightforward way to get started
This means your website needs to fully match user intent across the entire customer journey.
If you don’t have this set in stone, then SEO is largely going to be a waste of time for you.
Fix your conversion path first, then focus on driving more qualified traffic through SEO.
5. The UX of your Site Needs to Be Updated
You’d be surprised how important a good first impression is for in-market prospects.
With SEO, that starts with your website.
And if you’re lucky, it won’t end with a bounced visitor.
Even with solid positioning and CRO, a clunky or outdated site can quietly kill your conversions.
How does your site compare to your direct competitors in terms of design and user experience?
If your competitors have modern, recently designed websites while yours looks old and rusty, prospects may lose some indirect trust in your brand.
Customers want the most modern, cutting-edge tools available to them.
Not something that looks out of the late 2010s.
Trust can come from CRO, but it also comes from feelings about a brand image and design, too.
The worst thing is for a prospect to “feel” something is off about your brand, especially when they’re close to making a decision about your product.
CRO is certainly more important here, but UX is a subtle thing you have to nail down.
Again, SEO becomes an uphill battle if we’re not instantly conveying trust when a user lands on the site.
6. Bonus Point: You’re Relying Entirely on AI for Your Content Creation
AI isn’t a magic content button.
Far too many founders think they can just prompt ChatGPT and instantly have high-quality content that ranks.
It doesn’t work that way.
While AI is an incredible tool for scaling content operations (I’m using it here with speech-to-text), there’s a massive difference between:
- Using AI to enhance your content process
- Using AI to replace your content process
The first approach draws on your expertise.
The second dilutes it.
It comes down to this.
Purely AI-generated content without a human element lacks the core elements that actually drive results:
- Authentic brand voice that resonates with your audience
- First-hand expertise that can’t be synthesized from scraping the web
- Original insights based on real experience with your product and industry
- The subtle nuances that make content feel genuinely helpful rather than generic
And even beyond that, we’re forgetting the most important question of all.
Is this content helpful for my audience?
It doesn’t matter how much content you publish or how long it is, all that matters is if it resonates with your target audience.
And that’s something people seem to neglect with AI content.
Your audience can feel when something was written by someone who genuinely understands their problems versus content churned out by a prompt.
AI works best when it helps humans create better content faster.
Not when it creates mediocre content without human input.
Unfortunately, I think this is only going to get worse before it gets better, which is why I’m already seeing a growing need for recovery situations.
In the end, search engines want to serve their users the best results possible.
If you settle for “good enough,” don’t be surprised when Google disagrees.