The digital space is filled with numerous software solutions. This large number can impact your rankings in the SERPs. The main factor that can make your SaaS company actually visible on search engines is a solid SEO strategy.
SEO is one of the most affordable ways for steady and long-term growth. If you are curious to learn about SaaS SEO, you are at the right place.
This blog dives into how SEO for SaaS helps you achieve victory on SERPs and discusses its important aspects to help you create an effective strategy.
30-Second Summary
If you run a SaaS business, you must be aware of ranking high on SERPs. For this purpose, you need a solid SaaS SEO strategy. It will help you gain your desired results by driving organic traffic, attracting good leads, and creating a loyal clientele.
But how can you create a strong SaaS SEO strategy? This blog helps you out. It discusses every vital aspect of an effective plan that will make your SaaS business thrive.
What is SaaS SEO?
SaaS SEO includes all the processes that improve your website’s visibility and make it rank higher on the SERPs. The main goal is to climb high on the search engine result pages, so that the target users can find you when they search for services or products related to your SaaS solution.
Once you get a high ranking, you get a steady stream of organic traffic. An ideal sales funnel with this strategy will easily generate leads and grow your customer base, without you putting in much effort.
Why is SaaS SEO Important?
Below are the reasons why it is necessary to have an SEO strategy for your SaaS business.
Extended Sales Cycles
The decision-making time of users for SaaS products is extensive. They make sure that the subscription model and integration capabilities are upto their expectations. Roughly, the sales cycle length for SaaS is 84 days.
It means that buyers have enough time to change their minds plenty of times before reaching the final decision. If your target customers see your website in SERPs and keep engaging with it, many of them will consider buying from you.
Customer Acquisition Costs
SaaS SEO is a lengthy process. Many business owners and marketers try to take shortcuts through ads. While you might think it will work as sponsored posts show above the others, here are two major issues with relying solely on ads.
- The first sponsored result gets a click-through rate of only 2.1%. The click-through rate of the first organic result is 39.4%. It shows that people mostly ignore the ads and favor SEO-friendly results.
- Paid ads work for you as long as you keep pouring money into them. The result stops the moment your campaign does. However, once you rank a piece with SEO, it keeps bringing organic traffic without heavy investments.
Global Reach
An excellent quality of SaaS products is that they can reach your target customers across the globe. You can make this happen by tapping into diverse markets through your online efforts.
SEO is a great way to achieve it. You can optimize your content for specific global areas. This approach allows consumers to find your products from anywhere in the world easily.
SaaS SEO Checklist
Before diving into the strategy, make sure it has the following aspects.
- Keyword research and mapping
- Optimizing meta tags, URLs, and headings
- Fixing technical issues
- Building authoritative backlinks
- Publishing high-quality and relevant content
- Monitoring the performance and adjusting accordingly
Understanding SaaS SEO Strategy
An effective SaaS SEO strategy does not only focus on keyword ranking. It also helps in attracting the right type of consumers and guides them through a proper customer journey.
This strategy should help you achieve qualified leads rather than just traffic. The core SaaS SEO framework includes the following aspects.
Audience Targeting
Analyze different aspects of your audience to create your ICP (ideal customer profile). These aspects include demographics, industries, company sizes, and problems your software solves.
When you define your audience clearly, you will be able to target the right keywords and content messages.
Search Intent Mapping
Categorize your keywords according to the customer’s journey.
- On the “awareness stage,” the keywords should be educational and focus on problem-solving.
- On the “consideration stage,” the keywords should focus on comparison and solutions.
- On the “decision stage,” the keywords should be branded and high-intent.
This mapping will ensure that each piece of content is tailored to address the user’s mindset at every stage.
Full-funnel Content Planning
Your content planning should address the first stage till the last (which is the signup). The content should include blog posts, in-depth guides, and webinars.
Case studies and product descriptions also make the decision-making process quick for the users. Your goal should be to provide answers and avoid ambiguity at every stage.
Measurable KPIs
You should have clear KPIs to evaluate your growth. These performance indicators include organic traffic, conversion rates, trial signups, lead quality, and customer lifetime value (CLV).
These KPIs will show the areas of the strategy that are working and the ones that need further optimization.
SaaS Keyword Research Best Practices
No matter if you are producing excellent content. It will fall flat without the right keyword optimization. SaaS keyword research should focus on high-intent commercial terms and informational queries that solve problems.
Keyword research is important for:
- Link building
- New content topics
- Content promotion
- On-page SEO
How to Find the Right Keywords?
To target the right keywords for SaaS SEO, here’s how you can find the right keywords.
Define Customer Personas
SEO keyword research aims to give your target audience what they are looking for. Therefore, defining your customer persona is an important task. You can only provide the best SaaS service or product by knowing the right audience.
- Research which group your competitors are directly targeting.
- Conduct surveys to get a rough idea about your customer personas.
- Next, do in-depth research about the demographics, likes, dislikes, goals, and aspirations, etc, to better understand the customers.
Identify their Problems
After getting a complete picture of your target audience, you need to start identifying the problems they are facing. Your keyword strategy should revolve around these challenges and how you can help overcome them.
Seed Keywords
You need to start your keyword list with “seed” keywords. They are the starting point for your keyword research. Seed keywords are around one to three words long and act as the basis of your other keywords.
For instance, a person providing email marketing services will start with the seed keyword “email marketing.” You can then expand it further, such as “email marketing tool”, etc.
See Competitors Keywords
You need to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for. As they are already targeting these keywords, outperforming them will be excellent. You can use multiple tools for that purpose and identify what keywords you should also use in your list.
Map Keywords to the Marketing Funnel
Categorize your keywords based on the search intent. You can use the marketing funnel for this purpose.
TOFU: It includes informational and broad keywords for users who are on the awareness stage (e.g., what is SaaS SEO).
MOFU: These keywords are solution-focused for people in the consideration stage (e.g., best SaaS SEO tools).
BOFU: These keywords are branded with high intent for users who are in the decision stage (HubSpot SEO pricing).
Technical SEO for SaaS Platforms
Technical SEO is the most important aspect. Other SEO strategies work only if the tactics of technical SEO work well. Without proper indexing and crawling, other SEO strategies will have zero effect on search engine visibility.
Crawling: Search engine’s crawler goes through the content of your page and links to find relevant information and subsequent pages.
Indexing: Search engine crawlers go through the pages of your website and index the information to make it visible for users.
Technical SEO Strategies
Let’s see the effective technical SEO strategies.
Check Indexing
If you want your audience to discover your website’s pages through Google, make sure that they are getting indexed. You can opt for Google Search Console, Semrush, and Ahrefs to see the indexing.
Reclaim Lost Links
When you change your website’s URL, you lose all the inbound links directed toward it. To fix this issue and reclaim your lost links, you need to add 301 redirects from your old URL to the new one.
Add Internal Links
Internal linking is the best way to redirect link authority from one page of your SaaS website to another. The crawlers of search engines can better understand the context of your content through internal linking. Additional information on a topic results in enhanced user experience.
Add Schema Markup
Schema markup also helps search engines like Google understand your content better. Adding different schema markups is useful and optimizes your content for Google’s rich snippets.
SaaS Content Strategy for SEO
Content marketing acts as a backbone for SaaS businesses.
The SaaS consumers are always looking for thought leadership-driven, innovative services. Content marketing makes you the top choice of users, creating a loyal customer base.
However, creating content is not enough. You need to see what is working for your competitors. You can use different tools to see traffic on your competitors’ content.
Review their best-performing pages and notice the patterns.
- Do they write only blog posts or other content as well?
- Is the content mostly short-form or long-form?
- Are they using lots of videos?
Tips to Create Better Content for SaaS SEO
- Always create content thinking you are doing it for humans, not only for search engines. Use charts and images to break up the content. Do not use fillers or jargon.
- Create value for the readers. Do not only pitch your products but also solve their problems. Use examples, case studies, and practical tips for the readers in the content.
- Optimizing content for search engines is extremely important. Use target keywords naturally and relevant to the context. Make sure to add primary and secondary keywords throughout the content.
Link Building Strategies for SaaS
Link building is another important aspect of SaaS SEO. Your website can never gain visibility on the SERPs without relevant and good quality backlinks.
Moreover, it is crucial for brand recognition as well. When users see your website linked with an authoritative one, they instantly trust your brand.
Link Building Strategies
See the link-building strategies below.
Email Outreach
You can ask other websites in the industry to link to your website. Add a note on how your content will provide value for their audience.
A good tactic is to reach out to sites that are linking to your competitors’ websites. If your content is better, it is likely that they will link to your website.
Unlinked Mentions
Sometimes, websites use your charts, images, graphs, and infographics without mentioning your page. Find those unlinked mentions through Google Alerts. Reach out to them and ask them to mention your website. It is excellent to get lots of backlinks.
Broken Link Building
Broken links are those that no longer work. Many top sites in your industry may have broken links. These links are not good for any website and can hurt its SEO.
You can find these websites with broken links and pitch them with an alternative link: the link to your website. This way, you can generate tons of backlinks.
Guest Post on Relevant Sites
Guest posting is an excellent and least spammy way to get links for your web pages and blog posts. Guest posting means that you publish content on other relevant websites.
These websites let you add links to your website within the content. It is an ideal way to generate numerous high-quality backlinks.
Find Resource Pages
Many top websites have a “Resources” page that has tons of links to useful tools and content. This information is helpful for their audience.
It means that you can also reach out to them via cold emailing, stating how your content can add value for their readers. As these websites look for helpful content, it is likely that they feature your link as well.
Enterprise SaaS SEO Techniques
Large enterprises often face different issues, such as websites with numerous pages, numerous product lines, and audiences from around the world.
In this case, enterprise SaaS SEO techniques are necessary.
International SEO: To attract and retain an international audience, use “hreflang tags.” It ensures that the right content appears in the right language and region.
Automated Reporting: Manually checking thousands of URLs can become difficult. Automation tools can show indexation issues, crawl problems, and more. It allows teams to take proactive steps to solve these problems.
Content Governance: A content governance system enables a consistent tone of voice, SEO guidelines, and keyword research across all content.
B2B SaaS SEO
B2B SaaS SEO does not target a single individual. It targets entire teams and decision-making committees.
You should consider the following aspects in B2B SaaS SEO.
- A single keyword or content is not enough to convert. Design content that nurtures over weeks or even months. Your content should be relevant to stakeholders at different stages.
- High traffic does not equate to high ROI. In B2B SaaS SEO, it is wiser to attract fewer but high-quality leads by targeting niche-specific keywords.
- When the users are in the consideration stage, they need in-depth information. Provide them with whitepapers, webinars, and ROI calculators.
SaaS SEO Examples
Have a look at some real-world examples that have implemented successful SaaS SEO strategies.
- HubSpot: It has massive content libraries and dominates inbound marketing keywords.
- Ahrefs: It combines product-led content with free SEO tools to generate organic signups.
- Notion: It uses templates and tutorials generated by the community to increase visibility.
Choosing the Right SaaS SEO Agency
If you do not have an in-house team, you can outsource. Look for the following things in a SaaS SEO agency.
- Proven SaaS case studies
- Their approach to on-page, off-page, and technical SEO
- Their understanding of your buyer journey
Work with them on a short-term project instead of committing to a long one.
Conclusion
SaaS SEO is not a one-time task. It is an ongoing investment to make your SaaS business thrive in the industry. Combine the right SEO strategy with a strong technical foundation to create long-lasting visibility in the SERPs.
In this guide, we explored all the important aspects of SaaS SEO. Start with one task and see your website’s improvement. Interested in more SaaS-related information? Explore the Latest SaaS Updates.
FAQs
What is SaaS SEO?
SaaS SEO is the procedure to optimize SaaS websites to enhance organic traffic, get qualified leads, and reduce customer acquisition costs.
What makes SaaS SEO different from Traditional SEO?
SaaS SEO focuses on subscription pricing models, longer sales cycles, and product-led content. On the other hand, traditional SEO is broader and focuses less on recurring customer acquisition.
What type of Content is best for SaaS SEO?
Educational blogs, case studies, comparison pages, and product-led tutorials are important for SaaS SEO. They guide users through every stage (awareness, consideration, and decision).
Should SaaS companies hire SEO agencies?
Yes, it is ideal to hire an SEO agency if you do not have an in-house team. These agencies can save time and increase your organic growth faster.
