The SEO & AI Search Playbook to Help B2B Brands Win in 2026

The B2B SEO playbook is changing. And if you’ve watched the NBA evolve over the last decade, the pattern is familiar.

The game is getting faster and more spread out. New data is reshaping strategy. But the teams that keep winning don’t just take different shots on offense. They take better shots while doubling down on the fundamentals that continue to work.

AI search is changing the playbook for B2B SEO in the same way.

For B2B, growth still comes from the fundamentals that have always mattered. These include helpful content, a strong technical foundation, and authority built over time. That hasn’t changed.

What has changed is how people search for and discover content. They now evaluate and consume it differently as AI-powered platforms surface content in new ways.

Winning in this environment doesn’t require a reset. You don’t need to abandon proven plays or start forcing low-percentage shots. You need high-quality content that genuinely helps your customers. That means you must prioritize what works, execute with more discipline, and be intentional about creating content.

Below is an SEO and AI search playbook that will help your B2B organization compete—and win—in this new environment.

10 Winning SEO and AI Search Plays for B2B Organizations

1. Target real customer conversations

What questions are your customers asking your sales and product teams? What pain points are they trying to solve for? Answer those customer questions and turn them into problem-solving content that supports discovery, evaluation, and decision-making.

How to Execute: 

  • Pull questions directly from sales calls, product demos, onboarding, and support tickets

  • Use customer language sourced from real conversations (not internal jargon)

  • Map each question to a stage of the buyer journey to build your content plan

Customers are searching for answers the same way they would ask you. Make your SEO strategy more about conversations, and less about keywords. 

2. Scale expert content without burning out your team

Most B2B teams already have expert content created—it’s just trapped in other formats. The fastest way to scale authority, improve SEO, and earn more AI search citations is to repurpose what already exists, not to demand more net-new writing from your experts. 

How to Execute: 

  • Repurpose sales webinars and product demos into articles and FAQs

  • Turn podcast appearances and conference talks into long-form content

  • Break internal sales and marketing decks into educational website pages

Turn your experts into authors by repurposing the work they’ve already done for your website. 

3. Format content for AI extraction and human clarity

Modern search rewards clarity over cleverness. If your content is hard to scan, summarize, or quote, it’s harder for people to understand. That’s always been the case. But now, it’s also harder for AI crawlers to extract and serve as a citation in a customer search on ChatGPT or Perplexity. 

How to Execute: 

  • Use direct questions that customers are asking as subheadlines or headers

  • Place concise answers near the top of each section

  • Rely on bullets and short paragraphs

  • Avoid walls of text and leverage the AI tokenizer tool for guidance

If both a human and an AI can quickly understand your page, it’s working.

4. Add schema markup throughout your site

Schema markup provides essential context for search engines and AI crawlers. It helps systems understand what your content is about—and when it should be shown. Use this schema to communicate or summarize what your content is about. 

How to Execute: 

  • Use Article and Blog schema on editorial content 

  • Add an FAQ schema where questions are answered

  • Apply WebPage, Product or SoftwareApplication schema where relevant

  • Use the HowTo schema when instructional content applies

Add schema to help maximize the SEO performance and AI visibility for your content. 

5. Content is only as good as its technical platform

Great content can’t perform on a weak foundation. Technical SEO and UX determine whether search engines and AI systems can access, trust, and reuse your content. It also determines how long a person is willing to spend engaging with it. 

How to Execute: 

  • Ensure pages are crawlable and indexable

  • Improve site speed and performance

  • Maintain clear site architecture

  • Prioritize UX across devices

People won’t wait for pages to load. AI crawlers won’t wait either. 

6. Refresh, expand, or remove old content

Stale content quietly loses relevance and wastes crawl budget. Maintaining content quality is just as vital as publishing new pages. When search engines or AI crawlers visit your site, be sure to serve the content that is most important to your business. 

How to Execute: 

  • Update outdated stats, examples, and references

  • Expand thin or incomplete pages

  • Align guidance with how buyers evaluate solutions today

  • Remove or consolidate content that can’t be improved

More content is not better. Quality will consistently beat volume now and in the future. 

7. Think beyond Google

Google still matters—of course. But it’s no longer the only discovery layer. Customers and Language Learning Models are influenced by conversations happening across the web. Reddit, for example, is driving more and more value for B2B brands than ever before.  

How to Execute: 

  • Monitor Reddit and engage in related threads while providing value to the community

  • Invest in YouTube and long-form video

  • Leverage podcast opportunities and expert panel discussions to engage a larger audience

Make sure your B2B brand finds and participates in the conversations your customers are having wherever they are. 

8. Integrate AI search KPIs into SEO reporting

Traditional SEO KPIs still matter—but they’re no longer enough on their own. Visibility now extends beyond rankings and clicks. Monitoring citations and mentions on ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude is critical to understanding what customers are asking and how your brand is being served in responses. 

How to Execute: 

  • Track impressions, clicks, traffic, and conversions

  • Monitor AI citations and brand mentions

  • Measure visibility across non-Google platforms

Use these insights to guide what content to create next, and measure visibility growth moving forward. 

9. Invest in evaluation stage content

Discovery is increasingly automated. Decision-making isn’t. Buyers still need help comparing options and understanding trade-offs before they commit. Position your expert content to describe value, compare features, and highlight the benefits of your solutions. 

How to Execute: 

  • Publish comparisons and alternative content 

  • Create “best for this use case” pages 

  • Clearly explain trade-offs and limitations

Language-learning models dominate top-of-funnel queries. But the mid-funnel is still wide open.

10. Publish original insights AI can’t recreate

AI summarizes existing content. It can’t invent human experience. Original insights turn your website into a primary source, not just another summary. Emphasize case studies, customer surveys, and industry analysis. 

How to Execute: 

  • Publish case studies and customer stories

  • Share survey results and benchmark data

  • Offer first-person insights from practitioners

This is how you earn citations and authority over time.

Final takeaway

The future of B2B SEO isn’t about chasing algorithms, keywords, or search volume.  It’s about: 

  • Creating content that engages in a conversation with your customers 

  • Building clear, experience-driven content

  • Supporting it with strong technical foundations

  • Making it easy for both humans and AI to understand, trust, and reuse

Do you know how your business is showing up in AI search? Contact us for a free AI assessment. 

B2B, AI Search, SEOBrendan Bowersai search, b2b, seo