If you run a business, chances are you’ve got a “blog” tab tucked away on your website. And if you’re like a lot of small B2B companies, that blog is probably gathering dust and cobwebs. Maybe a couple of articles are pulling in the odd visitor from Google. The rest have likely been buried in the content graveyard. RIP.

You launched your blog with great optimism, but the publishing momentum died somewhere along the way. And so did your blog’s performance. 

Most underperforming B2B blogs are making the same basic mistakes

You’re not alone.

As a content marketer, I spend a lot of time peeking behind the curtain of corporate blogs. Some are thriving, while others are total ghost towns. After years of doing this, I’ve noticed clear patterns that separate the winners from those that never quite take off.

And here’s the thing: these aren’t advanced SEO tricks or marketing wizardry.  These are the beginner-level mistakes. If ignored, these issues will undermine your blog, regardless of how good your writing or ideas are.

Luckily, most of the problems I see are entirely avoidable and fixable. So let’s walk through the most common reasons B2B blogs underperform, and what you can do to fix yours.

1. Weak Technical SEO Foundation

Strong technical SEO is the bedrock of a successful blog. Without it, you’re basically shouting into the void. You can produce the best quality content—well-researched, with perfect spelling and grammar, and an ideal tone—but if Google can’t crawl and index your site, nothing will be pushed onto the SERPs (search engine results pages).

Technical SEO encompasses the unglamorous yet essential aspects: page speed, mobile friendliness, clean site architecture, and all the hidden factors that make your website and blog easy to find and navigate. Skip this step, and your content won’t even get a chance to compete.

If you want to understand technical SEO a little deeper, here is a useful guide from SEO expert Brian Dean.

2. Publishing Without Targeting Keywords

Many companies write blog posts on industry topics they find relevant or interesting. That’s fine if your only goal is to fill space. But if you’re hoping to bring in traffic from Google, “just publishing” won’t cut it.

Without keyword targeting, your shiny new post is basically doomed to the content graveyard before it even has a chance.

Planning around keywords means you’re using a tool like UberSuggest, Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz to find target keywords that have some search volume associated with them. In other words, you know that potential customers are opening Google and searching for that specific keyword. This will ensure you will get some level of ROI for your blog post. When you hit “publish,” it won’t just go out into the internet to die, but hopefully rank on Google for that target keyword, and bring in traffic to your website.

Best case scenario, you write content that continues to gain traction and traffic for not just weeks, months, but YEARS to come. Yes, with proper keyword research, a single piece of content can yield consistent traffic and ongoing value for your business in the long term. 

3. Your Posts Ignore SEO Fundamentals

Targeting keywords is a good start, but it’ll only get you halfway there. To actually rank, you need to follow SEO best practices.

When Google crawls or “reads” your article, it needs to figure out what your article is about. If your on-page SEO follows best practice, you’re weaving your target keywords into the various titles, headers, content body, URL, and meta description in a natural way, Google will be more likely to figure out what your content is about and more likely to push your article to the top of the results page. Here’s a begginers guide to on-page SEO from Ahrefs I’ve found helpful in the past.

It’s all about balance. This is the kind of thing you don’t want to overdo. Keyword stuffing is an outdated and shady practice. In my experience, you want to aim to incorporate your target keywords naturally, in a way that pleases Google without compromising the readability and tone of your text. Think of it this way: you’re writing for people first, and Google second. If readers find your article helpful, Google will too.

4. Poor Formatting & Structure

It’s 2025, and everyone has the attention span of a fly. So nothing repels a reader faster than clicking on a blog post and being hit with a wall of text. No headers, subheaders, no structure, just a long, meandering wall of words. That will result in an instant bounce. Even worse? Articles that do use headers but use them inconsistently, leaving readers just as lost.

Most readers these days are skimming. It’s critical to format your content with this fact in mind. People want to be able to pick up the info they need and promptly leave quickly. You want to use clear headers, subheaders, bullet points, and white space. The goal is to create content that is inviting, clear, practical, and easy to digest.

Search engines love structure, too. They use headers and sub-headers to understand what your content is about. In my experience, naturally incorporating your target keyword into your header and subheaders helps improve the on-page SEO factor and maximizes the ranking potential of your blog posts. 

5. Lack of Links to Research or Credible Sources

Nothing says “low effort” like a blog post with zero citations, zero sources, and no voices of the SMEs (subject matter experts)—just a faceless byline from “The Team at Zoomtree.” You reach the end of the article, if you can even make it that far, and think: What did I just read? No new ideas, no fresh perspective, and barely even a clear answer to the question that brought you there in the first place.

This unfortunately happens quite often. When companies and marketing teams prioritize quantity over quality, they usually lack a clear goal for their content beyond the act of creating it; this is likely because everyone else is doing the same. So they blindly hop on the bandwagon. 

Great content marketing is about building credibility, trust, and authority. It’s not about inciting someone to buy that day. The B2B buying process is complex and involves a lot of time and decision makers. To position your company as a trusted authority, you need posts backed by research, credible sources, and the perspective of a subject matter expert. Quality always wins.

6. Poor Design & UX

I’ll admit, design isn’t my area of expertise. But it matters more than most people realize. Even the best-written blog post will fall flat if the design and interface are unattractive.

One red flag? You’re ranking for target keywords, getting clicks, but visitors bounce after a few seconds. If the content itself is solid and follows the best practices listed above, in other words, is well-researched, well-formatted, and your intros have a strong hook, but people still leave quickly, the problem might be the look and feel of your blog.

Elements such as your fonts, colors, spacing, and balance are all crucial. Is the layout and design of your website and page friendly, inviting, and easy to read? A quick way to benchmark is to audit your top three competitors. See how their blogs look and feel compared to yours, then identify where you can raise your design game to match (or beat) the standard.

7. You’re Trying Too Hard to Sell

Your blog isn’t meant to be a sales pitch. Most people who land on your blog are in problem-solving and research mode. They are far from being ready to buy. They might not even know your category of solutions exists.

The purpose of a blog is to educate, build trust, and establish authority. If buyers trust your brand, they’ll know where to find you when the time is right. You don’t need ten call-to-action buttons, flashing banners, and pop-ups screaming at them. Aggressive tactics don’t work; they drive readers away. The same thing happens when you mention your product excessively and unnaturally throughout the body of your content. 

To be clear: I’m not saying that all marketing tactics are bad. But there’s a difference between including one thoughtful CTA like a “newsletter subscribe” form at the bottom of your page and bombarding your reader with a dozen product mentions and pop-ups that end up distracting from the content and undermining their experience. 

Remember: Blogging and content marketing are a long game. Treat it like a quick sales pitch, and you’ll only frustrate your readers and sabotage the trust you’re trying to build.

8. Your Blog Lacks a Clear Strategy

If you zoom out and look at the big picture, a blog that is struggling is built on a weak foundation.

The marketing team just started writing about topics that seemed relevant in their industry. Over time, the blog evolved into a collection of random articles with no keyword targeting, no distinct theme, no clear direction, and no internal linking. Dozens of articles, maybe even hundreds, bring in bits of traffic here and there, but together, they feel like a disjointed hodgepodge of good intentions and poor execution.

On the other hand, successful blogs focus on key topics within their industry, aiming to establish themselves as experts and build upon that foundation. A successful blog is akin to a highly organized library of information. Content is grouped into clusters, keywords are chosen strategically, and an editorial voice ties everything together. The result? A blog that feels coherent, credible, and worth returning to.

Reviving The Blog

You launched your blog with so much hope because you believed in the power of SEO, or because this was a common marketing tactic in your industry. In other words, you assumed it worked for everyone else, so it must also work for your business.

But a blog isn’t some abstract content initiative. You can’t just post for the sake of posting and expect to get results. Not when everyone and their competitor is churning out content and fighting for the same keywords. The “post and pray” approach simply doesn’t work in today’s content climate.

The good news is that most of the issues holding your blog back are completely fixable. Start with the basics—tighten up your SEO, clean up your structure, do some research, and treat your blog like something worth perfecting.

Momentum comes back when you stop treating content as filler or something to check off the to-do list. With that mindset change, you’ll not only attract clicks but also earn trust, authority, and maybe even some loyal fans along the way.