Software-as-a-service is unarguably a core business model in modern IT, both in B2B and B2C scenarios. Yet, a good offer is not everything that makes a successful SaaS.
Quite the opposite – this is where your marketing strategies come to the forefront. You need to find ways to increase interest in your brand and products.
Our answer to this need? SEO for SaaS.
Below, you will find everything you need to know about SaaS SEO strategies and, more importantly, why SEO is important for SaaS websites and how you should approach it. Read on!
What Is SaaS SEO?
This is a good question to start our guide with. From the outside, SaaS SEO is not much different from traditional SEO in any other industry.
If you want to increase your visibility in Google and other search engines, you need to build links, create content that ranks well, solve any technical SEO issues on the way, and you can enjoy your free-flowing organic traffic.
The devil is in the details, though.As a SaaS business owner, you’re probably well aware of how intricate the SaaS market is. Even if you’re selling a seemingly unique SaaS product, you still have to compete with other SaaS companies.
The same goes for your SaaS SEO efforts. Your content cannot be just decent, it has to go beyond what your actual and potential competitors can achieve. The links you use to grow your SaaS brand awareness can’t be just from any website. They have to be acquired from websites that are actually relevant to the SaaS industry.
In other words, effective SaaS SEO means a solid SEO strategy made with the very specific needs of your SaaS brand in mind.
Why SEO Is Important for SaaS Businesses
At this point, you might be wondering why SEO is important for SaaS businesses. After all, SEO is just about boosting your position in search results, right?
In the traditional sense, yes. However, modern-day SaaS SEO campaigns are much more than that.
Just look at the two case studies we have here.
689,135 More Visitors for FinTech SaaS Website
After a two-year campaign with NoN Agency, a fintech SaaS client bounced back from a pandemic-related decline, stabilizing revenues at $2.5 million despite initial heavy losses in traffic and revenue. The agency’s tailored SEO measures included in-depth analysis, content strategy, and quality link building, leading to a significant reduction in traffic loss.
In the following year, despite the client’s unconventional request for seasonal SEO work, the agency’s strategies yielded a 124.45% increase in visitors and a 119.39% surge in sessions. The adjustments made during the active SEO months set the stage for remarkable year-over-year growth, readying the client for a notable boost in revenue in the future.
141.68% Increase in Traffic with US Market Expansion
The client, a growing brand in the e-commerce SaaS industry, contacted us with two goals in mind: to improve the site’s overall optimization and to expand its reach in the highly competitive market of the USA.
Through a goal-oriented SEO strategy, we managed to achieve significant success over the course of a year.
Our efforts didn’t end at SEO either, we also focused on enhancing the website’s user experience and sales funnel, implementing on-site changes and off-site initiatives tailored to target the US market.
They illustrate the importance of SEO in SaaS quite well. The message of the one on the left is quite straightforward: without good visibility, your SaaS website fails to reach its full potential, and with it, your business goals. The second has a little more to it.
The client had a great product – you have to trust us on that – but it wasn’t this successful on the global market. Quite the opposite, it hadn’t managed to reach its full potential in its native market either.
While just a little shy of 150% growth may not sound like a huge improvement, it was achieved after opening to the global market. In other words, this extra 141.68% included much better leads and many more opportunities!
How Is SaaS SEO Different?
Apart from more focused business and marketing goals, SaaS SEO is unique in two more ways: content and links.
Here’s what we mean by that.
SaaS SEO Content: Complexity and Opportunities
SaaS content is difficult to create. It very often requires specific knowledge and in-depth understanding, not only of the product or service you offer but also of the use case your potential customers have in mind.
But, SaaS companies have much more potential when it comes to content than other industries. Chances are you have at least some of those on your SaaS site:
- Changelogs – lists of updates in your product or service.
- API documentation and knowledge bases – they are of big interest to developers, a uniquely SaaS audience.
- Use cases – tell a story of how your SaaS product can help solve real-world problems.
- Technical explanations – of how your tools work and what problems they solve, another great opportunity for your SaaS content marketing strategy.
- User reviews – you can re-use user-generated content in your content strategy as well – and they are a great proof of your trustworthiness.
They are already a part of your SaaS content strategy! So, use SEO to expand their visibility and build your expertise. After all, E-E-A-T rules do not only concern people, but also brands.
Robert SurdelGoogle is all about expertise and authority - and that’s exactly what explainers and how-to guides offer. They directly address users' queries and resolve their problems, allowing you to show mastery in your area.
Make sure to create author pages - this will highlight the brains and expertise behind your work - and showing off your real-life experts is a powerful move that resonates with both Google and your audience, cranking up your site’s trust factor and ranking potential.
Lead Editor/Content Coordinator
SaaS Link Building: the Core of a Successful SaaS SEO Strategy
Your digital authority and brand image are at the core of a successful SaaS SEO strategy. To create a credible image for Google and your visitors, you obviously need quality backlinks.
However, you can’t optimize your SaaS website with links from random other websites.
Sure, you can argue that a lifestyle blog could post an article that talks about modern payments and link to your payment gateway service – it will help your SaaS website a little, but it can backfire in the future.
Valentina CetkovicYour SaaS gains valuable validation by securing backlinks from reputable, relevant websites. This link relevancy ensures you're reaching a targeted audience already interested in similar solutions, which signals expertise to search engines and ultimately boosts your conversions.
Outreach Manager
Instead, the link building strategy for your SaaS business should be much more focused.
For instance, think about directories or review pages. A link from such will be much more natural than a link from a website focused on topics just slightly related to your niche, like the lifestyle blog from our previous example.
Link building opportunities for your SaaS don’t end there. You can also get backlinks from:
- Press releases announcing new features, products, or services.
- Trade publications and industry-specific digital magazines.
- Webinars and digital conferences.
- Partnerships and collaborations with other related SaaS businesses.
- User-generated content platforms like Quora, Reddit, and Medium.
- Niche-specific forums and discussion boards where your target audience is hanging out.
Implementing such a link-oriented SEO strategy for your SaaS website might seem time-consuming. However, investing in SEO for SaaS is a long-term strategy with measurable results.
Trust us – as an SEO agency that has helped build many SaaS brands, we know it’s worth the effort.
SaaS SEO and the Marketing Funnel
As you create content, manage on-page SEO, and expand off-page SEO with links, you grow your SaaS business in terms of sales.
We already have an in-depth article on the stages of the sales funnel, so there’s no point in repeating the basics here. Instead, let’s talk about how SEO influences the marketing funnel, specifically for SaaS companies.
Depending on whether you operate as B2C or B2B SaaS, the stages in your sales funnel can vary, but your SEO efforts apply to all of them:
Awareness – Compelling and original content engages leads at the top of the funnel. The right SEO tactics can improve organic visibility and draw relevant traffic to your SaaS site.
What’s worth noting here is that the awareness stage of your content plan should not only focus on your potential customers. Building awareness of your SaaS brand among other people in the industry (who aren’t likely to purchase from you) can be valuable as well. They can share your content, invite you for a joint webinar, or mention your brand online. This builds your authority and attracts new visitors to your site.
Consideration – SEO-optimized product descriptions, customer testimonials, and case studies can highlight the unique selling proposition of your SaaS product or service.
This goes without saying: SEO is vital here. This is where it helps increase your SaaS website’s lead generation potential and move site visitors through the consideration phase.
Decision – This is where your on-site optimization comes into play. The potential customer is already on your page, so you need to make sure that everything runs smoothly here. From internal links to site performance, everything matters. Your on-page SEO metrics – like bounce rate – depend on it.
Retention – A successful SEO strategy for SaaS will make your website a source of valuable information, a place where users can find solutions to their problems. The right content strategy will keep your customers engaged and reassure them about your SaaS brand’s expertise and authority. This is the path to customer loyalty and brand advocacy.
Our Four-Step SaaS SEO Strategy
Now that you know the importance of SEO for SaaS websites, you’re probably wondering what it takes to create a robust SaaS SEO strategy.
Given how complex the process is, we could go as far as to say that SEO for SaaS companies may be different for every one of them – there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
Instead, we decided to divide our SaaS SEO strategy into four steps. Here’s a comprehensive guide to help your SaaS grow with highly targeted organic traffic.
Step 1: Research and Planning
Yes, it’s a cliché to say research is important, but it holds true for SaaS SEO.
The more you know about your website and your competitors, the better. This is a part of our SEO discovery service.
When we tailor your SEO strategy, we need to know what needs to be done on your website – what kind of content you should develop or improve, what keyword targets are best for your products or services, whether there are any technical SEO issues that need to be fixed…
This is also where your competitors come into play. If they rank for a term you want to dominate, we must know how and why.
This data lets us create your SaaS SEO strategy. And once we’re done, we can proceed to the next phase.
Check our example SEO Audit Checklist!
Step 2: Implementation
Next, we move on to the fun part of the SEO campaign. In this step, we take care of the initial strategy and implement changes.
Here, you publish the content you create for SEO, nurture relationships with other websites for the sake of off-site SEO, and fix any technical issues that affect your on-site SEO.
This is, understandably, easier said than done. But, implementing SEO for SaaS can be smooth and manageable if you have a good SEO agency or a seasoned SEO expert on your team. And remember, SEO is a long-term strategy. You can’t rush it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your online presence.
Step 3: Monitoring and Management
Once your SEO strategies are in place, it’s time to do a thorough reaudit and assess the impacts of the implemented actions.
As an SEO approach, this would mean analyzing your website’s KPIs, tracking how your targeted keywords are performing, checking the analytics, and reporting back about what is and isn’t working.
This elaborate report, along with numerous smaller reports made during the second step, gives you a clear view of what works and what doesn’t. This leads to the next step.
Step 4: Revision and Updates
The last step in our four-step process is all about acting upon what we learned from the third step.
Did the initial strategy underperform? That’s a sign that something’s not working and needs fixing.
On the other hand, if it worked, you might want to explore what boosted its performance. Could it be replicated in another area of your SEO project? Maybe it’s a sign that you should push it even further.
This way, the fourth step feeds back into the first one, creating a continuous revision-update-implement-monitor cycle that we maintain for the entirety of our partnership.
Continuous Development: the PDCA Cycle
This is precisely the PDCA cycle or Plan-Do-Check-Act model that we talked about earlier.
As part of your long-term strategy for SaaS growth, SEO is perpetually evolving. Your needs change, the market changes, Google’s algorithm changes. This constant motion requires regular SEO updates and reassessments, whether you’re a SaaS startup or an established business.
Our role in on-page SEO transformations, off-page optimization, and keyword decisions become a continuous process of planning, implementing, monitoring, revising, and updating your SEO strategy.
Summing Up
It’s an understatement to say that SEO is important for SaaS businesses.
SaaS SEO is the long-term process of making your SaaS brand more visible to potential customers.
Whether you’re a SaaS startup or have an established presence in the SaaS industry, a successful SaaS SEO strategy needs to be part of your overall plan.
After all, the game is about increasing visibility, attracting relevant traffic, and converting that traffic into paying customers.
Our method of meeting this goal is mastering SEO for SaaS businesses. Curious to know how we can help your SaaS business? Get in touch!
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