What is B2B?
B2B stands for Business-to-Business. B2B is a type of commerce where businesses sell products or services to other companies (rather than directly to consumers). This can be done through online platforms, such as websites and marketplaces, or offline via brick-and-mortar stores.
More About B2B
In a B2B transaction, the customer is another company. That changes who you write for, how long the sale takes, and how buyers find you, so a B2B website needs its content and strategy tuned to business buyers rather than individual shoppers.
Examples of B2B transactions
A few common shapes:
- A wholesaler sells stock to retailers: a food distributor supplying grocery stores, for example.
- A manufacturer sells components to another manufacturer: a parts maker supplying an appliance brand.
- A software company sells team licenses to businesses, priced per seat.
- A B2B marketplace moves the wholesale model online, connecting business buyers with suppliers.
Many companies sell in both directions: a laptop maker sells one machine to a student (B2C) and 500 to a company’s IT department (B2B). The label describes the transaction, not the business.
B2B vs. B2C
The difference that drives everything else is the buyer. Here’s how B2B compares with B2C, its consumer-facing counterpart:
- Buyer: a company, often a buying group where several people have to sign off, vs. one consumer deciding alone.
- Sales cycle: there’s no universal length; it depends on deal size, complexity, and how many approvals the purchase needs. Highspot’s sales-cycle guide (updated July 28, 2026) puts the average for B2B sales teams at 60 to 120 days, with enterprise deals stretching longer through legal approvals and procurement, while a self-service purchase can be near-immediate. Consumer purchases usually close faster, though complex ones can take weeks or months too.
- Purchasing process: business orders often pass through approvals and procurement, with quantity-based or negotiated pricing, vs. a consumer paying the listed price at checkout.
- Keywords: business buyers search with intent modifiers like “wholesale,” “supplier,” and “for teams,” while consumers search the plain product phrase.
If you sell to both, treat them as separate funnels with separate keywords and landing pages.
SEO for a B2B website
For B2B websites, SEO best practices are the same as for any other site. What changes is intent: you’re after organic traffic from searches a business buyer would actually make, and those keywords look different from consumer ones.
The difference shows up in the modifiers. A consumer searches “buy office chair”; a B2B buyer searches “wholesale office chairs” or “office chair supplier.” Modifiers like “wholesale,” “bulk,” “supplier,” and “for teams” signal business intent, so build your keyword list around them instead of the plain consumer phrasing.
Backlinks and partnerships
B2B SEO can also mean earning backlinks through business partnerships: co-created content, integration and case-study pages, and industry directories. Avoid straight link swaps. Google’s spam policies treat excessive link exchanges and partner pages that exist only for cross-linking as link spam, which can get the links ignored or earn the site a manual action.
The test for a partner is simple: they serve the same buyers you do without competing for them. Industry publications, trade associations, and vendors of complementary products all pass. A site whose audience wouldn’t recognize your product category doesn’t, however good its numbers look.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Amazon a B2B or B2C company?
Both. When a consumer buys on Amazon's retail marketplace, that transaction is B2C. When an organization buys through Amazon Business, Amazon's B2B store with quantity discounts and multi-user purchasing, that's B2B. The labels describe the transaction, not the company, and many businesses run both models.
What is the difference between B2B, B2C, C2C, and D2C?
B2B is business-to-business (a wholesaler selling to retailers). B2C is business-to-consumer (a store selling to shoppers). C2C is consumer-to-consumer (people selling to each other on auction sites). D2C is direct-to-consumer (a manufacturer selling its own products without retailers in between).
What does B2B mean in a job?
In a job listing, B2B means the role sells or markets to companies rather than consumers. That typically implies longer sales cycles, higher-value accounts, and relationship-based selling, so expect more time nurturing a few accounts than closing many quick transactions.
