SaaS SEO: An Outstanding Guide & Organic Growth Strategy for 2023

Ten years ago, you wouldn’t look for a SaaS SEO guide. Why? Because the competition was low enough that products in the SaaS niche could easily find their way to their target audience without much SEO effort.

However, that’s not the case right now. The SaaS market has become more crowded than ever, especially with the pandemic pushing the world towards digital transformation.

People have a plethora of options to choose from when they’re looking for a solution. Therefore, they’ve become more demanding, selective, and cautious.

It has become even more crucial to get – and stay – ahead of your competitors in this scenario. You need to build a full-proof customer acquisition and marketing strategy, and your SEO efforts should be a significant part of this strategy.

In this SaaS SEO guide, we’ll walk you through the entire customer acquisition process and help you understand how your software business should approach SEO and content marketing to get real results for your business.

In simple terms, SaaS SEO is the process of boosting organic traffic for businesses in the Software as a Service sector by ranking high on the SERPs for relevant topics.

SEO in itself is about increasing the quality and quantity of organic traffic to your company’s website. The key difference between building a traditional SEO campaign and a SaaS SEO marketing strategy is that your keyword research strategy, content plan, and other tactics may look widely different from other niches.

In the SaaS industry, your business primarily relies on ensuring your products are pushed in front of the right audience as much as possible. This means you need to build an SEO strategy to generate and convert organic traffic.

SEO drivs up to 77% of organic traffic for SaaS companies. However, only 11% of SaaS businesses are investing in content marketing.

More SaaS SEO Resources:

• How to perform an SEO competitor analysis for SaaS companies

• The Complete SaaS Technical SEO Guide

• SaaS Keyword Research Guide

• Link Building Guide for SaaS Companies

• Useful SaaS SEO Tools

• SEO KPIs for SaaS Companies

• How SaaS companies can improve their website usability

• Improve and measure your SaaS website load speed

• SaaS content marketing guide and strategy

   

Here are a few ways SEO benefits your SaaS business:

Spread word about your SaaS product

Even if you have a product that is out of the world, none of your efforts will matter if people don’t know about your product or business. And by people, we don’t mean your friends and family; you need to have a strategy to push your product in front of potential customers consistently. By leveraging SaaS SEO tactics, you can increase brand awareness and gain the attention of high-quality customers who are actively looking for what you have to offer.

Furthermore, when you appear on Google’s first page of search results, it builds credibility and authority in the eyes of your potential customers. It makes them more likely to trust you and remember your brand, thereby helping boost word-of-marketing, too.

Increases organic traffic to your SaaS website

SEO is a highly scalable and predictable growth strategy for any business if they know what they’re doing. These days, the first step for conducting any kind of products research is with a simple Google search, including individuals and business owners looking for a suitable SaaS product for their organization.

However, to get in front of this audience, you need to leverage SEO and gain a spot at the top of the organic search results.

 This is primarily because, according to Google, the first organic search result gets around 28.5% of all the clicks – which means gaining a massive chunk of traffic.

BuildFire, a SaaS company based in California, generated over 1 million product page views within 12 months of its release. And the best part? It was all organic.

With a SaaS SEO strategy, you can acquire a significant amount of traffic to your website over a long period of time.

Gain an edge over your competitors

Fifteen years ago, people would see your SaaS product, get on a call with your company’s representative, find out about all the features and functionalities and make a decision. The company could effortlessly guide a potential buyer through their sales funnel.

However, this entire power dynamic has shifted now. These days, people first look for what other customers have to say, compare different vendors, and do in-depth research on their own before they even get on a call with a sales rep from your company.

Therefore, if you don’t have an SEO strategy in place, you will lose out on the most powerful aspect of marketing – attracting inbound leads.

Inbound marketing is when you organically attract potential customers to your product using SEO or content marketing techniques.

With , you can uncover your competitors’ strategy and take steps to rank above them on SERPs to gain the lion’s share of inbound leads.

Reduce dependence on paid ads

For a lot of SaaS businesses, paid advertising is how they attain a significant part of their customers. This also means most of their marketing budget is spent on paid ads.

While paid ads can be an excellent way to send some traffic to your site when you’re just starting out, it doesn’t work as a long-term strategy. Paid advertisements only help you gain views while they’re running, which means, as soon as you stop paying, you’ll stop generating leads.

 However, suppose you’ve built your website with a strong SEO foundation. In that case, you’ll keep getting leads even if you stop actively optimizing for it after a while. Though it isn’t recommended to stop your , SEO does allow you to be more flexible with your budget depending on your company’s cash flow.

 The marginal cost for acquiring customers for long-term sustainability is lower through SEO than other marketing methods.

 Before we look into how you can implement SEO strategies to increase traffic to your SaaS funnel, let’s understand search intent.

Search intent, also known as audience intent or user intent, are simply terms that describe the purpose of an online query. It’s the reason behind someone looking for anything on the web.

Anyone on the internet is trying to find something when they enter a query. Are they looking for a specific answer to a question? Maybe they’re trying to find a particular website? Or perhaps they’re researching different options before buying something?

 There are different kinds of searches that oftentimes show their current position in the buying journey.

 Google has vigorously optimized its algorithm to identify user intent and rank pages that best fit what they’re actually looking for.

 If your web page isn’t optimized for search intent, you’ll have a hard time ranking on Google.

Iformational

A large number of searches on Google are done by people who are trying to find answers or simply looking for some information about a topic.

This could be about the weather, how they should change colleges or even information about building an SEO campaign for their SaaS business.

 The bottom line is, people with informational intent have a specific question in mind and want to know more about a particular topic.

Caption: Google’s search results for the query ‘Indian temples’

When you search for a particular topic, Google’s advanced algorithm shows you results analyzing your intent rather than simply showing results that’ll give you information about the term you’ve entered.

For example, when you search for ‘Indian temples’, Google knows that you’re likely looking for temples you can visit and not about the history of Indian temples.

Tip: Keywords with transactional intent can (but don’t always) include words like how to, information, the best way, what, and why.

Navigational

The second type of search intent is navigational. Sometimes, people know exactly where they want to visit, but they may not know the relevant homepage URL (or maybe they just find it faster to do a quick search than type out the URL in the address bar).

 For instance, someone who searches for ‘Youtube’ is probably trying to find their way to YouTube’s website.

 Therefore, it’s critical to ensure that your website is the top result when someone searches explicitly for your product or company’s name.

Google’s search results for the search term ‘Teranga digital marketing’

However, one thing to note is that ranking for a navigational term is beneficial if it is your website the users are looking for. Otherwise, even if you manage to rank number one, they’ll simply move past your result to look for what they want.

Transactional

Online shopping has just grown in the past decade. Many searches are simply about people looking to buy a specific product.

They don’t need to research whether it’s good enough or if there are any other options; they’ve passed that phase and are simply looking for pages they can click through to purchase whatever they want right away.

These searches are called transactional searches.

Google’s search results for the search term ‘buy hp chromebook’

Someone searching ‘buy hp chromebook’ isn’t looking for an extensive guide or a blog post comparing it to a Lenovo Thinkpad. They’re already sold on the product, so optimizing your product page for transactional intent will ensure you rank for these searches.

Pro Tip: Keywords with transactional intent will often include purchase, buy, discount, deal, and product names.

Investigational

This last type of Google search is a combination of informational and transactional searches. These searches are primarily done by people who are sure about the product they want, but they aren’t sure about where to get it from.

For example, someone may have decided to purchase an SEO tool, but they may not be sure about whom they should get it from. They may usually search something like ‘Ahrefs vs Semrush’ to compare their options.

As you may have guessed, ‘Vs.’ searches are pretty standard for searches with investigational intent.

Developing a successful SEO strategy for your SaaS business requires careful planning, research, and execution. By following the steps we outline in this section and using the right tools and techniques, you can improve your website’s visibility and attract more traffic, leads, and sales. All organically, too!

It’s also important to remember that SEO is an ongoing process! You need to continually monitor and adjust your SEO strategy based on changes in search engine algorithms and trends in your industry. This involves regularly tracking your website’s performance and making adjustments to your strategy as needed with tools like Google Analytics as well as Moz or Ahrefs.

Without further ado, let’s have a look at the steps to take to create a successful SEO strategy for your SaaS business.

1. Set Your Business Goals And KPIs

Setting your business goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) is a critical first step in creating a successful SEO strategy for your SaaS business. Without clear goals and KPIs, you won’t know what you’re working towards, or how to measure your progress.

When setting your business goals, it’s essential to make them specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (think “SMART” 😉). For example, your SEO goal might be to increase organic traffic to your website by 30% in the next six months.

Once you have your SaaS SEO goals in place, you need to identify the KPIs that will help you measure your progress towards achieving those goals. Some common SEO KPIs include:

• Organic traffic: Basically, this is the number of visitors to your website who arrive through organic search results.

• Keyword rankings: This is how well your website ranks for specific keywords in search engine results pages (SERPs).

• Backlinks: This essentially relates to the number and quality of external websites that link to your website.

• Conversion rates: This means the percentage of visitors to your website who take a desired action, such as filling out a form or making a purchase.

To measure your KPIs, you can use tools such as Google Analytics, SEMrush, or Ahrefs. These tools can help you track your website’s performance and identify areas for improvement.

2. Competitor Research

Competitor research is a crucial step in creating a successful SEO strategy for your SaaS business. By analysing your competitors’ SEO strategies, you can identify what is working well for them and what you can do better.

To conduct competitor research, you should start by identifying your top competitors in your industry or niche. You can do this by performing a Google search for your target keywords and seeing who shows up in the top results.

Once you have identified your competitors, you should analyse their SEO strategies to see what they are doing well and where there are gaps that you can exploit. Some factors to consider when analysing your competitors’ SEO strategies include:

• Target keywords: What keywords are your competitors targeting in their content and on-page optimisation?

• Backlink profile: What external websites are linking to your competitors’ websites, and how authoritative are those websites?

• Content strategy: What types of content are your competitors creating, and how are they promoting that content?

• On-page optimisation: How are your competitors optimising their meta titles, descriptions, and header tags for their target keywords?

To perform competitor research, you can use tools such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, or SpyFu. These tools can help you identify your competitors’ top-performing keywords, backlinks, and content. You can then use this information to inform your own SEO strategy.

3. Identify How Your Customers Will Find You And Build A Keyword Strategy

To create a successful SEO strategy for your SaaS business, you need to identify how your customers will find you and build a keyword strategy around those search terms. How would you know what to target if you don’t even know what you’re looking for? This involves identifying the keywords and phrases that your target audience is using to search for solutions like yours.

To perform keyword research, you can use tools such as Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, or Ahrefs. These tools can help you identify high-volume, low-competition keywords that you can target in your content and on-page optimisation.

When building your keyword strategy, it’s important to consider the intent behind the keywords that your target audience is using. For example, are they searching for information about a problem they’re experiencing, or are they looking for a specific solution to that problem? Understanding the intent behind your target keywords can help you create content that matches your target audience’s needs and interests.

In addition to targeting specific keywords, it’s important to consider long-tail keywords as well. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific phrases that are less competitive but can drive highly targeted traffic to your website.

To identify long-tail keywords, you can use tools such as Google Autocomplete or Google Trends. These tools can help you identify related search terms and phrases that your target audience is using.

4. Perform Keyword Research And Optimise Your Landing Pages

Once you have identified your target keywords, you need to optimise your landing pages for those terms. This involves creating high-quality, relevant content that incorporates your target keywords in a natural and organic way. You also need to optimise your meta titles, descriptions, and header tags to include your target keywords.

To optimise your landing pages, you can use tools such as Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack — which are very popular WordPress website plug-ins. These tools can help you optimise your on-page elements and ensure that your content is optimised for your target keywords.

When creating content for your landing pages, it’s important to keep your target audience in mind. Your content should be informative, engaging, and relevant to your target audience’s needs and interests — as always.

5. Create A Comprehensive Content Plan To Fill Out The Gaps Of Your Competitors’ Content

It goes without saying that creating a comprehensive content plan is essential for filling out the gaps in your competitors’ content and attracting more traffic to your website. This step basically involves identifying the topics and keywords that your target audience is interested in and creating high-quality, informative content around those topics.

To create a comprehensive content plan, you can use tools such as BuzzSumo or SEMrush. These tools can help you identify popular topics and trending keywords in your industry.

When creating content, it’s important to focus on quality over quantity. Your content should be well-written, informative, and engaging. It should also be optimised for your target keywords and tailored to your target audience’s needs and interests.

6. Technical And On-Page SEO

Technical and on-page SEO involves optimising the technical elements of your website, such as page speed, mobile responsiveness, and site architecture, as well as optimising your on-page elements, such as meta titles, descriptions, and header tags.

To optimise your technical and on-page elements, you can use tools such as Google PageSpeed Insights or SEMrush Site Audit. These tools can help you identify technical and on-page issues on your website and provide recommendations for how to fix them.

Some key technical and on-page elements to focus on include:

• Page speed: Your website should load quickly to provide a good user experience and improve your search engine rankings.

• Mobile responsiveness: Your website should be optimized for mobile devices to reach users on the go.

• Site architecture: Your website should be well-organized and easy to navigate to improve user experience and search engine rankings.

• Meta titles, descriptions, and header tags: These elements should be optimised for your target keywords to improve your search engine rankings and attract more traffic to your website.

7. Backlink Building and Strategy

Building backlinks is another creative way to boost your SaaS company’s SEO standing and increase your website’s visibility. In a nutshell, backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. A legacy aspect of SEO, backlinks remain an important factor in determining a website’s authority and relevance.

To develop a comprehensive backlink strategy, you need to create high-quality, informative content that other websites will want to link to. This could include writing blog posts, creating infographics, or producing videos that showcase your expertise and provide value to your target audience.

To identify high-quality websites to target for backlinks, you can use tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush. These tools can help you identify websites in your industry or niche that are authoritative and likely to provide valuable backlinks.

When reaching out to other websites, it’s important to be friendly and genuine. Introduce yourself and your business, and explain why your content would be a valuable addition to their website. Remember, building relationships with other website owners can lead to long-term partnerships and more backlinks in the future.

In addition to building new backlinks, it’s important to monitor your existing backlinks and ensure that they are high-quality and relevant. You can use tools such as Ahrefs or Moz to track your backlink profile and identify any low-quality or spammy links that may be harming your website’s reputation.

Sure, you know a lot about search intent, but how will this help you with your SaaS SEO strategy?

SaaS SEO is not about collecting a bunch of keywords and optimizing your website; it’s about diving deep into your buyer’s journey.

SaaS business’ marketing funnel looking something like this:

The primary objective of a SaaS business is to get people to move down their funnel. This is because they make most of their money when users reach the ‘Retention’ section of the funnel, i.e., renewal and referral.

However, when it comes to SaaS SEO, it’s not the retention sector that’s important.

Let’s reimagine the funnel structure to understand better.

Instead of thinking of the funnel as a rigid structure with just one top, think of it as a funnel split into three where each channel can be accessed separately.

Problem(s)

1. Solution(s)

2. Product(s)

Problem(s)

Your target audience enters the funnel primarily while looking for general information about something they need, something they need to get done, or while addressing a pain point.

These are people with informational intent.

For example: How to start a blog?

Solution(s)

Investigational searchers who are looking to gain in-depth information about different products and solutions enter the funnel from this marketing channel.

For example: SEO tools

Product(s)

Transactional searches enter the funnel here. Here, buyers have narrowed their searches and are actively comparing individual products.

For example: Ahrefs vs Semrush

Though we treat this as a funnel, you can’t assume that our target customer will follow through the journey from the top of our funnel, and you can nurture them via channels like email marketing to the bottom of your funnel.

This is the reason you need to build a robust SEO strategy for your SaaS business that takes into consideration each of these phases individually.

Don’t worry; we’ll walk you through each of these stages and help you understand how you can incorporate it into your SaaS SEO strategy.

Top of the Funnel SEO

Your target audience has a problem.

They may not be sure how they can solve the issue; they may not even be able to articulate the problem they’re facing. All they may know is that they feel like there’s an itch, and they’re trying to look for something that can relieve the itch.

This is their pain point.

So who do they turn to for a solution? Google, of course.

Let’s suppose your product is an AI-based platform that matches remote software developers with US-based firms.

These searches may be queries like:

1. How to find US-based software developer jobs

2. How to get a remote software developer job

3. How to work with an international company as a software developer

4. How do I hire a remote software developer

This is your opening. This is your chance to attract your target audience at the very beginning of their journey by targeting their pain point and creating content that answers their search intent.

You can create posts like:

1. How to work for a US-based software company?

2. How to be a successful remote software developer?

3. How much do remote software developers earn?

4. Can software developers work remotely?

Let’s now understand the goals you’re trying to achieve in this stage.

Goals of Top of the Funnel SEO

People at this stage of their buyer’s journey are not likely to purchase your products. They’re simply looking for a solution to their problem.

Therefore, this is not the stage where you try to hard-sell your product. Instead of trying to monetize the traffic you earn, focus on building trust and goodwill by providing valuable information.

Here are the objectives you should keep in mind while creating a content strategy for the Top of the Funnel stage.

1. Attract quality visitors by sharing information about topics and issues that your product can help solve.

2. Share valuable and detailed information with your visitors.

3. Add a warm-sell where you simply present your product as a solution that might help them solve their problem.

4. Encourage them to subscribe to your email list or download a relevant lead magnet. Our objective is to get them into our funnel by sharing their contact details.

Middle of the Funnel SEO

For a niche like SaaS, business owners usually spend a lot of time and effort in this stage of the funnel to research what product they should invest in.

At this stage, your target customers are aware of the problem they’re facing and the solutions available to them. However, they’re still researching which product will be the best fit for them.

Here, people are looking for specific information. So the generalized information you’ve created for the Top of the funnel stage will not work here.

They’re looking into things like product categories, features and functionalities, how these solutions work for their unique needs, requirements, implementation, and how easy it is to be integrated within their existing system

Here are six different types of content that you can create for this stage of the funnel:

1. Product category and explainer. This would include content pieces about your product’s basic features and explained guides on different categories of your product. For example, Guide to SaaS Keyword research

2. Product type comparisons. This is where you compare different types of products. These could all be products that you offer, and you simply try to help your customers differentiate between them.

3. Industry-specific content. Instead of simply creating a guide about keyword research, you can create industry-specific guides like Ultimate guide to B2B keyword research

4. Feature specific content. During your research, you will come across features that your customers are specifically looking for. Creating dedicated content around these features is an excellent idea at this funnel stage.

5. Integrations. In these blogs, you can talk about how your SaaS product can be integrated with third-party platforms.

6. Implementations. Content about specific use cases that your buyer may search for. This is an excellent way to hyper-target your audience by highlighting a particular use of your product — for example, Slack guide for small remote software development teams.

Goals of Middle of the Funnel SEO

Your target customers may enter this stage of your funnel through different means. Some may pass through the top of your funnel, while others may find their way directly through the search engine.

One thing to keep in mind is that not everyone who has entered this funnel has interacted with your brand in the past.

No matter where your traffic comes from, these are the objectives you should focus your efforts on:

1. Attract potential customers who are aware about possible solutions to their problems.

2. Educate them about the benefits, features, and integrations of your product.

3. Redirect brand-new traffic specifically to the middle of the funnel stage.

4. Nurture leads and encourage them to move towards the bottom of your funnel.

Bottom of the Funnel SEO

The leads you have at this stage of your funnel are very different from the other two stages. They’re fully aware of the problem they’re facing, the solution they will use to tackle the problem, and the different types of tools they can choose from.

Ideally, your SaaS product will be amongst them.

These people are very close to making the decision; therefore, the content you create for them should push them towards choosing your SaaS product over your competitors.

Here is a list of the different types of content you can create for the Bottom of the funnel stage:

1. Direct comparisons (X vs Y):  This is where the ‘Vs.’ blogs come in. You can create blogs that compare your products with those of your direct competitors and highlight why your product is a better choice. For example, Moz vs Semrush vs Ahrefs.

2. Case studies. Showing proof about how your product has helped clients in the past is an excellent way to convert leads.

3. Market trends. Share content about your market analysis and how your industry is evolving. This kind of information will interest product-aware consumers and help them ensure they’re making the right decision choosing your product.

4. Tutorials about your product. Showing your leads how they can use your product will eliminate the fear of the unknown and nudge them towards making the decision. You can create tutorials about new product features and updates, too.

Goals of Bottom of the Funnel SEO

People may have either passed through the other stages or directly entered this stage of your funnel. This means you’ll have to focus on both nurturing and converting these different types of leads.

Here are the goals you should keep in mind while creating a strategy for the Bottom of the Funnel stage:

1. Attract high-quality traffic that is ready to buy.

2. If your product is not a part of their research, you need to make them aware of your product.

3. Highlight your best features and showcase how it is better than your direct competitors.

There are several SaaS businesses that focus all their SEO efforts on the Top of the funnel, which is a huge mistake.

You need to create a well-rounded plan and focus on all aspects of your SaaS SEO funnel. Now that we’ve discussed SEO for different parts of your SaaS funnel, it’s time to bring them all together and create an actionable SEO strategy for your SaaS business.

1. Create a list of keywords segmented by the different stages of the funnel. Within each stage of your funnel, group together 1 to 3 similar keywords that you can use within a single web page or blog post.

2. Create a content plan based on the keywords you want to target within each stage.

3. Compare this plan with your existing content and find gaps that you can fill across the buyer’s journey.

4. Create a list of general topics that will interest prospective buyers at each stage.

5. Determine what kind of content you need to produce for each stage.

6. Determine which parts of your funnel should receive special attention.

Here’s the thing.

All successful SaaS businesses have a full-proof SEO strategy in place. It’s the number one way of driving organic traffic to your website.

With this guide, you should be able to scale high-quality inbound leads to your site all through the funnel. However, if you think you need a little help building an SEO strategy for your SaaS business, feel free to book a no-strings-attached discovery call with Teranga.