There are few better traffic sources for SaaS companies than organic search. You can acquire users for free, they often come with an intent to make a purchase, and you can scale it easily.
But how can you make sure that your website dominates the SERPs? And once it does, how can you make sure that visitors stay on your site and become customers?
SEO for SaaS companies must take into account the unique features of the industry. SaaS brands have a very different target market and customer journey than, say, a local business or a law firm—and your SaaS SEO strategy needs to reflect this.
In this post, I’ll show you how to build one. We’ll discuss the benefits of SEO for SaaS businesses, why SaaS SEO is so important, and how you can build a strategy starting today.
What Is SaaS SEO?
SaaS SEO is a form of search engine optimization that helps software-as-a-service brands rank higher in Google. It’s all of the activities that help increase search engine traffic like:
Keyword research
Content creation
On-page SEO
Link building
The difference is how you approach them.
While Google’s ranking factors remain the same, you need to factor in the opportunities and challenges that are particular to the SaaS industry.
Let me explain…
The SaaS Industry and What Makes It Unique for SEO
The SaaS industry has its own specific quirks and needs, and it’s important to be aware of these nuances when optimizing your SEO strategy.
For one, competition is fierce—there are a lot of businesses offering similar services—some with significantly larger marketing budgets. There are also comparison sites like Capterra and G2 that have such strong domain authority that they regularly rank for product-related queries.
Oh, and don’t forget that your competition is global, not local.
Additionally, the customer journey can be lengthy due to research and decision-making processes that may take weeks or months.
This means that it’s important to focus on long-term SEO strategies, such as content marketing and technical optimization, rather than a “quick fix” approach.
It also means you need to create content for every stage of the journey. It’s not enough to create top-of-the-funnel content to attract people and hope they convert. You need to create product-focused content to show readers why they should choose your tool over a competitor.
It’s unlikely that you’ll get a conversion the first time someone visits your site—just look at the image below from Salespanel—so you need to design your SEO plan to build sustained authority in your space over time. That way, your website will continuously be visible in search engine results, and you can determine how to best attract potential customers to your site.
It’s not just new customers you have to think about, though.
Because SaaS brands use a subscription-based business model, you need to be constantly thinking about how to retain customers. Your B2B SaaS SEO strategy will need to reflect this by creating content that simultaneously attracts new users while educating existing customers and showcasing your authority.
Benefits of SEO for SaaS Businesses
When done well, SEO can have a huge impact on your SaaS marketing efforts. It helps you get found by potential customers who are actively seeking out the services that you provide. And in a world where it seems there are a million software solutions out there, SEO matters more than ever.
Here are some benefits of SEO for SaaS brands:
Increased brand visibility and credibility. The more your content appears in the search, the more reputable your brand will become. This can be a deciding factor when potential customers are choosing between you and a competitor.
Scalable traffic. There is a huge compounding factor with SEO. The more content you create and the more links you build, the more your month-on-month traffic will grow.
Lower-cost acquisition. Putting more effort into your SEO reduces your dependence on paid marketing. And as an industry with high ad costs, anything to alleviate some of that spend will be helpful for SaaS companies.
Increased product awareness. The more your product shows up in search engines, the easier it will be for your sales team to talk about your product because customers will have probably seen it before.
Helps to convert prospects from other channels. The content you create for SEO is multipurpose and can be used by sales teams to convert prospects from other marketing channels like social media and PPC ads.
Improve your user experience. A lot of SEO tasks will also improve user experience like optimizing for speed, navigation, and readability. This helps ensure that potential customers stay on your website longer and are more likely to convert.
Devoting time to SEO will also help your company stay ahead of the competition. Search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, so regular updates to your content and new links will keep you ahead of the game.
Why SEO Is Important for SaaS
A SaaS SEO strategy isn’t optional for most brands. It’s essential.
The SaaS market is so large and competitive that you can’t afford not to have an SEO strategy. End users are expected to spend in excess of $232 billion on SaaS solutions by the end of 2024. If you want a piece of that pie, then you have no choice but to invest in SEO in order to compete.
More and more buyers are searching online for products, too. Over a quarter of buyers’ time is spent researching independently online. That means if you want your product to be on your audience’s shortlist, you need to be appearing in search engines.
Finally, SEO is pivotal in dealing with the long sales cycles that are typical in the B2B industry. The average length of the B2B sales cycle is just over two months. A single paid ad isn’t going to be enough to keep your prospects on the hook. You need a regular stream of content that showcases your authority and keeps your prospects in your funnel if you want to succeed. Only SEO can achieve that.
Best Practices for Improving Your SaaS SEO Strategy
SEO for SaaS companies is about more than just updating content and hoping for the best. Here are a few tips to ensure you see results from your SEO efforts:
Research keywords that your target audience is using to find products and services like yours.
Utilize on-page SEO techniques such as title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags to help search engines understand the content of your website.
Produce high-quality content that provides value for your readers and features keywords related to your services.
Build high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites.
Optimize your website for speed, as search engines factor loading times into their rankings.
Take advantage of local SEO to increase visibility in geographic areas where you do business.
Let’s dive a little deeper into some of these.
Best Practices for SaaS SEO Keyword Research
Before you can begin optimizing your website for SEO, it’s important to do keyword research to understand what terms and phrases potential customers are using when searching for your SaaS tool.
Start by creating a list of relevant keywords related to your business and the products or services that you offer. This can include words and phrases related to the features of your software, as well as general topics that are related to your industry.
Once you’ve created a list of possible keywords, use a tool like Ubersuggest to research their search volume and competition to determine which terms are worth targeting.
For example, if you search for the term “customer data management platform,” you’ll see how many searches that keyword gets and can use this information to dive deeper into keyword research.
Additionally, use Google’s autocomplete function to get ideas for long-tail keywords that may be easier to rank for.
What’s autocomplete? Start typing into the Google search bar. As you type, Google will start suggesting terms related to what you’ve already typed. These are known as autocomplete keywords.
Don’t worry if you can’t find many relevant keywords at first. A perceived lack of keywords is one of the biggest issues for digital marketers of SaaS brands. Because these companies work in highly focused (and often highly competitive) areas, there usually aren’t a huge amount of keywords at first glance. Luckily, there are a couple of things you can do to get around this.
First of all, don’t worry about volume, too much. Even a dozen visits per month can result in a sale that delivers a return on your investment.
Second, focus on your product’s features and the problems they solve for customers. These kinds of queries may be hyper-specific, but they are also high-intent, meaning searchers are much more likely to make a purchase. You can also create vs. pages that compare your product with your competitors. Again, these bottom-of-the-funnel keywords are great at driving high-intent traffic.
Third, look at what your competitors are ranking for. Use a tool like Ahrefs or Semrush to mine your competitor’s websites and find relevant keywords you can rank for, too.
By doing keyword research and optimizing your website accordingly, you can greatly increase your chances of ranking in SERPs and driving more organic traffic to your website. This ultimately leads to more conversions and a higher ROI for your SaaS SEO efforts.
Best Practices for On-Page SaaS SEO
On-page SEO is an important part of any successful SaaS SEO strategy. On-page optimization involves making changes to the content and structure of your website so that it is optimized for both search engines and users.
To improve on-page SEO, start by optimizing page titles, headings, meta descriptions, images, and other page elements. Use keywords in these elements to ensure that search engines understand the relevance of your content and can accurately crawl and index it.
In addition, make sure to include internal links to other pages on your website so visitors can easily navigate around the site. The more relevant information you provide on a single page, the better chance you have of ranking in the SERPs.
By far the best way to boost your on-page SEO is to improve the quality of your content. It’s imperative you have better content than your competitors.
What does this mean in practice?
First, your content must address your audience’s needs. It needs to go beyond surface level information and give them everything they need to solve their problem.
Second, it should provide an exceptional user experience. It should be well-structured and easy to read, broken up with headings, lists, images, and other elements to make it easier for users to scan and digest information quickly.
This blog post from ClickUp is a great example:
Best Practices for Technical SaaS SEO
Technical SEO involves making changes to the back end of your website that are not visible to users but can still have a major impact on search engine visibility.
To optimize your technical SEO, start by optimizing site speed and ensuring that your pages load quickly. Next, create an XML sitemap and submit it to search engines so they can easily crawl and index your pages.
Make sure to also set up structured data such as schema markup to better understand the content on your page and help with improving Google rankings. This helps search engines determine what each page is about, which in turn helps them return more relevant results for user queries.
It’s also important that your website is mobile-friendly and works properly on all devices. This will help to improve user experience and enhance your chances of ranking in SERPs.
Best Practices for Off-Page SaaS SEO
Off-page SEO involves activities away from your website that can help you increase search engine visibility and rankings.
Your focus should be on building links to your website from other high-quality, authoritative websites. Search engines use these links as a signal of trust and credibility and can help boost your rankings in the SERPs.
Below is an example of how a backlink looks in the wild on Segment’s website:
How do you find backlink opportunities?
One of the easiest ways is to fire up an SEO tool like Ubersuggest, enter in a competitor’s URL and mine their backlink profile for potential opportunities. Here’s an example using Segment’s website:
Note: If you click the orange “one link per domain” button, it will remove repeat domains and give you a much more manageable list.
Another option is to build relationships with influencers in your industry and collaborate on content that will help you reach new audiences. You can also take advantage of social media to increase brand awareness and engage with potential customers. This is important for backlinking because it enables you to get your link on content that is already influential in the space.
Above all else, create engaging content that stands out from the competition and attracts backlinks. There are several forms of content that are backlink magnets, including:
Surveys
Whitepapers and reports
Infographics
Videos
Make sure you focus on creating content that is useful, informative, and attractive to both search engines and users. This will help you drive more website traffic, leads, and conversions in the long run. In addition, more effective and prominent content is more likely to earn backlinks.
Creating Your SaaS SEO Strategy: Step-By-Step
Creating a content-based SEO strategy for your SaaS business is essential to improve organic search visibility, increase website traffic, generate leads, and build authority in your industry.
This process can be broken down into 8 steps:
Set goals and KPIs
Identify your target audience
Identify their pain points
Analyze best-fitting keywords
Set campaign goals and tracking abilities
Produce content
Distribute content
Monitor results and optimize based on findings
Start by setting tangible goals that will help you measure the success of your efforts. Goals for SaaS SEO differ in that they are typically focused on attracting prospective buyers, driving traffic to free demos and converting them to paid users, and helping educate and retain your current users.
You’ll also want to set KPIs to track the progress of your SEO efforts. These include metrics like organic search visibility, keyword rankings, website traffic, lead generation rate, and other KPIs. This will help you determine whether or not you’re on the right path to achieving your goals.
Then, determine who your target audience is. Are they engineers? Marketing operations leaders? Business owners? Knowing who you are targeting will help you create content tailored to their needs.
Next up, you must understand the needs of your target audience and what kind of content they are looking for. Identify topics that are relevant to them and create content that offers value, solves their problems, and answers their questions.
Once you have identified relevant topics, research the best-fitting keywords and create content around them. Make sure to include those keywords in your titles, headings, body text, and URLs so search engines can easily identify what your page is about.
In the example below, I searched for “customer data management platform.” You can see that Segment used that keyword in the title, URL, and meta description—a surefire way to show up high on the SERPs.
Before you start creating content, set measurable goals for each campaign so you can track performance. You should also establish a tracking system to measure the success of each piece of content you produce and make changes accordingly.
When creating content, focus on producing high-quality pieces that are useful and engaging for users. Break up large chunks of text with visuals such as photos, videos, GIFs, and infographics to make it easier to read.
Once you have created the content, distribute it through your website, social media channels, newsletters, etc. Monitor how well each piece of content performs and adjust accordingly to maximize performance.
By following these steps and regularly optimizing your content based on analytics data, you can significantly improve your organic search visibility and get closer to achieving your SaaS SEO goals.
Successful SaaS SEO Strategies
Need some inspiration to get your SaaS SEO campaign off the ground? I’ll recap some success stories of three SaaS brands that dominate the SERPs.
Adobe XD
In a bid to raise awareness and generate traffic to its vector design tool, XD, Adobe created a content-focused community targeting design professionals.
With the help of my agency, they created an intent-based content strategy, backed by in-depth keyword, competitive, and content gap research. We also incorporated technical best practices, optimizing page speed, schema markup, and internal linking.
The results? A 648 percent increase in page one rankings and over 25,000 downloads in the first six months, with just under half of all traffic coming from search engines.
Canva
If you want an example of how to improve your SaaS SEO through backlinks, look no further than Canva.
The design platform has created hundreds of backlink magnets in the form of its template pages. Covering everything from letterheads and invoices to coupons and invitations, these pages give users everything they need to create a great-looking design. And this means that websites provide a lot of value to their readers by linking to them.
As a result, Canva has acquired backlinks from incredibly high authority domains like The Next Web, Yahoo, and Thrillist.
But they don’t just wait for the links to roll in. Canva engages in personalized outreach to win those backlinks from target websites.
The result?
They have over 25 million backlinks from 280,000 domains and rank for over 5 million keywords, according to Ahrefs.
Smartlook
Product analytics and insights tool Smartlook used a product-focused keyword research strategy to break into the U.S. market and take on established goliaths like Hotjar.
They achieved this via several strategies.
The first was to improve existing landing pages that targeted competitor-style keywords like “Hotjar alternative.” While these pages were well designed, they lacked the depth of content to rank in Google. Smartlook added a lot more information to these pages to meet searcher intent and created new pages that comprehensively covered each topic.
The second was to go after low-volume use case keywords. These are keywords (like “tracking user activity on website”) that center around tasks people need to complete without mentioning a product name or feature. While volume for these keywords is low, so is the competition. Better still, intent is incredibly high, meaning they only need a small amount of traffic to see a return on investment.
As a result, the company now gets over 600 conversions from search.
FAQs
SEO is an important factor for all businesses, especially for SaaS companies, since it helps to bring in organic search traffic and leads. SEO will help you increase your visibility in SERPs, drive more website traffic, generate leads, improve user experience, and ultimately boost sales, which is a driving factor of SaaS success.
SEO also helps companies deal with some of the unique challenges of the SaaS industry, like long and complicated sales cycles, independent buyer research, and fierce competition.
SaaS SEO is different from traditional SEO because it requires a more specialized approach. SaaS companies need to focus on content tailored to their audience and keywords that are relevant to their product or service in order to rank high in SERPs. Google ranking factors are the same, but the SERPs can be much more competitive in the SaaS world, so it’s important to focus on SEO as much as possible.
You can optimize your SaaS website yourself by following the best practices I’ve outlined in this post. That includes creating great content around relevant keywords, improving your site’s technical SEO, and building high-quality backlinks. You can find a complete list of ways to optimize your SaaS site for search engines by reading my SEO checklist.
Alternatively, you can use a SaaS SEO agency to do the hard work for you. My team has optimized dozens of SaaS websites to improve traffic, rankings, and sales.
One of the basics of a SaaS SEO strategy is targeting relevant keywords. Research and find out which keywords are most relevant to your product or service and use them in your titles, headings, body content, and URLs so that search engines can easily identify it. Additionally, include those same keywords in your social media posts to boost visibility.
Conclusion
SEO is an important factor for all businesses, especially SaaS companies looking to increase visibility in search engine rankings and drive more website traffic.
To optimize your SaaS website for SEO successfully, you should create a content strategy tailored to your target audience, research relevant keywords, and create high-quality content that appeals to both users and search engines.
While your industry may be more technical than others, creating valuable content coupled with following the basics of SEO and regularly optimizing your content should help you achieve better organic search visibility and get closer to achieving your goals.
Are you a digital marketer in the SaaS field? What do you think makes the industry unique for marketers?