SaaS SEO for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide to Getting Found

Growing a SaaS company is challenging, but if you fuel it up with the right search engine optimization strategies, then it will drive significant organic traffic to your site. With SaaS SEO, your business will become much easier to find on Google and other search engines.

With the global SaaS market size that is projected to reach $307 billion by 2026, it has become essentially important to separate yourself from the pack. But achieving the top spot on search engine results is not a matter of joke, it can be tricky. This is where SEO comes into play!

Want to know more about some scalable ways of driving new biz to your SaaS business? Then follow this SaaS SEO guide till the end. Here you will get to know about SaaS SEO, its importance to your business, and some actionable steps following which you can create a winning SEO strategy for your business.

What is SaaS SEO?

SaaS SEO is the process of boosting the visibility and organic rankings of your SaaS website in search engines using different optimization strategies. This helps in attracting more organic leads and traffic to your site from those potential audiences who are looking for the software solution that the SaaS companies offer.

SaaS SEO allows you to optimize the pages of your SaaS website for relevant keywords. So when someone searches on Google using those keywords, your web pages can be ideally found on Google’s SERPs.

Some common SaaS SEO strategies include keyword research, site-wide audits, on-page, creating content, building high-quality links from popular & relevant sites, technical SEO, etc. When a perfect combination of all these strategies is implemented on your site, it helps you surpass the competition in Google’s SERPs.

Thus, SaaS SEO also acts as a good source of inbound marketing.

Why SEO is Important for SaaS Companies?

The majority of B2B buyers conduct extensive online research before making their purchasing decisions. This makes it indispensable for SaaS companies to rely on SEO to make their strong online presence and attract potential customers.

By establishing their solid presence in the digital marketplace, it becomes easier for your SaaS companies to stand apart from the crowd. In fact, it will also help them with targeting their potential customers through organic means without spending a lot.

Here we have discussed in detail some other notable reasons that clearly indicate why SaaS SEO is important for your business.

• Builds Credibility of Your SaaS Business

Buyers nowadays prefer getting any information from Google. Whether they are looking out for any products or searching for any specific information, they always prefer considering options that appear at the top-ranking results.

This indicates that buyers trust Google’s results when it comes to their purchasing decisions or gathering any information. So, with the right SEO efforts, if your SaaS business gets higher rankings on the search engine results pages, then it will build the trust and credibility of your business.

This will directly influence the purchasing decisions of the customers. Also, it will help the prospects discover your business more quickly through the sales funnel.  

• Brings Traffic to Your Site Consistently

Organic traffic usually comes from unpaid search results, and SEO can help you drive qualified and consistent organic traffic to your SaaS site. The traffic that comes from SEO is sustainable in two ways:

The first is those generated by search queries. Targeting evergreen keywords helps in this matter as it is responsible for driving consistent traffic to your site. However, it is not always possible to target evergreen keywords.

So, if you want to drive organic traffic consistently over the years, then you must target a mix of keywords. This will bring consistent results to your site.

The second resource to receive organic traffic for years remains the already published content on your site. The older the content gets, the better it ranks on your site. This is because, with the passage of time, your website acquires more links and significantly, its domain authority increases.

However, you need to update the content of your SaaS site from time to time to make it more relevant. This will bring sustainable SEO traffic to your site.

• Improves Omnichannel Marketing

According to a study, it has been found that in comparison to single-channel campaigns, omnichannel campaigns increase the order rates by 494%.

For an omnichannel marketing experience, SEO is a must-have because, without SEO, you won’t be able to make your place in the search engine results. So, if you want to target potential buyers who are looking for SaaS products, then SaaS SEO strategy is quite important.

This will help you with targeting more prospects who want to interact with your brand. As SEO enhances and complements other marketing channels like email, social media marketing, etc., it helps you with persuading more visitors to your site.

• Much Cost-Effective Practice

In terms of cost-effectiveness, search engine optimization is much more affordable than other paid channels like PPC. With PPC, your SaaS company needs to pay every time a user clicks on your ads.

The more the number of clicks on your site, the more price the owner needs to pay when they click on your ads. If more competitive terms are targeted, then it will skyrocket your prices for those terms. But the disadvantage of PPC marketing is that the moment you stop paying, it brings an end to getting search results.

But with SEO, it’s quite the opposite, you don’t have to deal with all these. Slowly but steadily, you can get your business on the top of the page organically. With SEO, you can get results even after you have stopped paying. However, SEO takes an average of 3-6 months to deliver results.

So, if want to rank your SaaS company for fewer bottom-of-the-funnel queries, then you must invest in SEO for generating more traffic and conversions.

• Establishes Your Domain Authority (DA)

Usually, the websites with a higher number of relevant and high-quality backlinks have higher domain authority. In fact, according to a study published by Ahrefs, a correlation is found between search engine ranking and domain authority. So, one should consider creating a solid backlink strategy.

SEO can help you with establishing your SaaS company’s domain authority.

That’s the significance of SaaS SEO!

8 Steps to Craft a Winning SaaS SEO Strategy

If you want your SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) company to grow over time, then you need a successful SEO strategy that can drive sustainable growth and traffic to your website. But creating such strategies that can help you win the organic search engine game is not that easy!

It requires excellent planning, execution via step-by-step processes, and reporting to analyze where exactly your business stands in the search engine results pages relative to the competition and your industry.

To create a world-class SEO strategy for your SaaS company that can help dominate the SERP rankings, you need to follow this 8-step process. This will help you effectively with launching your SaaS SEO strategy that can leg up and outrank your competitors.

1. Set Effective Goals and KPIs

You must possess a clear understanding of what goals you want to achieve with your SaaS SEO strategy. Whatever your goals might be, be it increasing organic traffic, boosting brand awareness, or any other, you must define clearly what you want to achieve.

Once your major business goals are clearly defined, you must set your KPIs ready for measuring your SEO efforts. These metrics should align with your business goals and it indicates from time to time how close you are to your goals.

Establishing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) like keyword ranking positions, organic traffic growth rate, etc. can help you with tracking your progress. It also provides your business with a clear direction of where it needs improvement for measuring your business’s success.

Your business must focus on setting relevant, realistic, and time-bound goals. The best way to achieve this is by using the SMART goal approach. With this approach, your SaaS business becomes profitable in mainly two ways:

• Get a clear insight into what exactly you want to achieve through your SEO for SaaS companies. More than half of the problem gets resolved by knowing this.
• Track your site’s performance by using accurate metrics and KPIs.

Also, ensure to be more focused and specific while setting your goals and KPIs. Avoid setting goals that are too broad, as it will make it difficult to achieve.

2. Conduct Keyword Research for SaaS SEO

After you have clearly established your goals and KPIs, you must ensure to identify relevant keywords related to your SaaS industry. While doing SaaS keyword research, keep in mind who your target personas are and what are their search intent.

One of the secrets to understanding your target audience’s search intent is to look for what challenges or problems they are facing. Brainstorm to look for their pain points or any specific goals that they have related to your business or products.

After brainstorming, you must have got some keywords relevant to the niche. In order to expand your keyword list and get more ideas, you can use popular keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc.

Here is how you can use the tool?

• You need to open the tool and enter any ‘seed keyword’ related to your industry.
• Doing so will provide you with a list of keyword ideas based on what you have entered.
• Depending upon the search intent of your target audience, you can also filter your targeted keywords results from the drop-down menu.

For example, if you are using the SEMrush tool to conduct particular keyword research for ideas and looking for informational keywords, then from the keyword list, you need to click on the “Intent” drop-down menu. From there, choose the “Informational” option from the menu. This will provide you with a list of keywords that have informational intent.

Following the same steps, you can identify a list of relevant keywords that your target audience is looking for. While choosing, ensure to focus on both long-tail and short-tail keywords and make sure that these target keyword strategies align with your SaaS offerings.

Also, keep in mind how competitive these keywords are in the industry, look for keyword variation and their search volume. Make sure to target the broad match keywords for each of your specific web pages based on their specific queries.

Doing so will not only attract the searchers who are looking for specific solutions but also drive more traffic to your web pages, and simultaneously increase conversions to your site.

3. Leverage On Page SaaS SEO

By on page SEO, we refer to the strategies that are being used for optimizing your website pages for search engines and users. On-page optimization should never be overlooked as when it’s combined with content strategy, it helps generate more web results in the search engines.

Here the optimization is mainly done on on-page elements of your site which include title tags, headers, meta descriptions, images, URL structures, etc. But before optimizing, you must conduct an audit of your on-page elements. This will make it easier for you to scan which elements need optimization and which do not.

Checklist of on-page tactics for SaaS SEO

1. Ensure to optimize the individual page titles of your website by including target keywords in it
2. Make sure that your web pages rank for the proper intent
3. Organize your header elements properly and hierarchically to make it more reader-friendly
4. Optimize meta descriptions of your web pages by including focus keywords in them. This will make it click-worthy
5. Ensure to include SEO-optimized alt-text to all your images on the site
6. Make sure to optimize your page’s URLs for search engines as well as for readers
7. Incorporate relevant images, graphs, and other visual elements to make your content more visually attractive
8. Include the keyword in your page’s URL structure
9. Add internal links to your site to make navigation for web pages easier for your visitors and make your page much more valuable and useful in the eyes of Google.
10. Optimizing all these on-page elements not only improves your SaaS site’s crawlability but also improves its click-through rates and search engine rankings.

4. Research Your Competitors

Conducting competitor research is another effective way to optimize your SaaS SEO performance. Analyzing your competitor’s SEO strategy is much better than simply shooting arrows in the dark!

Researching your competitors will help you know what’s working for similar companies like yours in the same niche. It will also help you identify what actually you have missed or what silly mistakes you have made during the research process. Thus, you will be able to determine your keyword or content gaps.

Explore the factors to be analyzed while researching your competitors

You need to analyze these factors by putting your competitor’s URL in the tool.

• Top keywords your competitors are ranking for
• Organic traffic trends their web pages are receiving
• Missing keywords for which your competitors are ranking but you are not
• Backlinks to which your competitors are linked to
• Their content that acquires the most backlinks
• Non-branded vs Branded traffic split

Not just that, you can even get more specific information about the backlinks from each referring domain. For that, all you need to do is click on the drop-down arrows. This will offer you with more extensive information like:

• The domain’s authority score
• The anchor text used for the link and their targeted URL

This information provides insight into analyzing what strategies might work for your competitors and accordingly, you can modify your roadmap. Also, ensure not to replicate the exact strategies implemented by your competitors.

5. Creating High-Quality Content

After you get a list of the relevant keywords, you need to focus on unique and better content creation for your SaaS website.

For any SaaS SEO strategy, content is the backbone as it helps your web pages rank for the relevant keywords in the search engine page results. So, you must ensure to create content on the same topics which your competitors are creating in a way that you outrank them.

While doing so, keep in mind to create content in a way that satisfies the user’s intent better than your competitors. You can also refine your content marketing strategy depending on what’s working for your competitors.

Tips to create high-quality content for SaaS website

Take a look at some of the best tips that can help you with creating high-quality and unique content:

• Always focus on writing for humans, i.e., write in a conversational, clear, and engaging tone.
• Avoid any fillers, errors, or jargon in your SaaS content
• Ensure to make your writing much more scannable for readers by using relevant headings, sub-headings, images, bullet points, small paragraphs, etc.
• Make sure that your content resolves the reader’s problems, it’s not only pitch your services or products. It must possess some examples, insights, case studies and practical tips
• Ensure to include your target keywords naturally in the content and make it search-engine-friendly
• Try to include short URLs in the content
• Make your content creation much more interactive by incorporating visual elements in your content. This might include videos, infographics, animations, etc.
• Create a catchy title to draw in more readers

While creating content, ensure to keep in mind that it passes the E-E-A-T guidelines. Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) is a quality ranking checker that assesses the quality of the web pages on the search engine results pages.

6. Conduct Technical SEO Optimization

There is more to search engine optimization than just finding relevant keywords and conducting on-page SEO, somewhat technical. Technical SEO refers to a range of optimization elements that focus on improving the user experience of your site both for users and search engines. These factors can either make or break your SaaS SEO success.

But again, before conducting any optimization, ensure to perform a technical SEO audit of your site. You can do so by using SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Search Console, etc. These tools will help you with checking various technical aspects of your site and you will get to know what improvements you need to make for optimizing your site.

Once a technical audit is performed, proceed with optimizing the technical SEO elements of your site.

1. Improve the Loading Speed of your SaaS Website

According to a testing report, it has been found that bounce rate increases by 32% as loading time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds. There can be a lot of factors responsible for this, one of the primary ones being server or database issues. You need to resolve this issue and ensure to make your site much easier to access and efficient for users.

Here are a few suggestions by the experts that you can perform on your SaaS site so that it passes Google’s Speed Test.

• Optimize your Server Response Time
• Limit the number of HTTP requests and resources to your site
• Set a browser cache policy on your site
• Reduce and optimize the size of the images on your site without hampering its visual appearance
• Eliminate the redirection loop to your site and try to lessen the number of redirects to your site
• Optimize CSS elements and remove the render-blocking Javascript

Following these technical SEO strategies will help improve your site’s loading speed time.

2. Optimize Your Website’s Functionality and Usability

The next thing that you can seamlessly focus on is improving your website’s usability and functionality in the search engines. You can do so by following some optimizations to improve your site’s crawlability and rankings.

Checklist to follow for improving your site’s functionality and usability:

• Review your site’s sitemap to ensure that it’s up-to-date
• Implement the HTTPs (more secured) protocol to your site
• Ensure that your site is mobile-friendly
• Make sure to build URLs that are search-engine-friendly
• Ensure that the 301 redirects have been correctly set up after the site’s migration
• Test the robots.txt file on your site
• Verify the indexability of your content
• Optimize the crawl budget of your site
• Use hreflang for language and regional URLs

3. Focus on Making your SaaS Site More User-Friendly

After you have fixed the technical SEO issues of your site like crawlability and indexability, make sure to make your site more user-friendly. This even includes some factors of content optimization.

Check out these optimization techniques for making your site more accessible to users:

• Remove duplicate content from your site
• Audit the internal links on your site to make it more relevant
• Use structured data to highlight your content
• Replace or redirect broken links on your site
• Ensure to keep a reasonable number of links on your page
• Add breadcrumbs to your site to ensure better navigation

After you have successfully optimized your site’s technical aspects, make sure to test it on different platforms and devices.

7. Acquire High-Quality Backlinks

In a competitive industry like this, if you want your SaaS company website to reach its peak in gaining organic popularity, then you must focus on link building. This off page SEO strategy involves acquiring links from quality referring domains in your niche.

Getting backlinks from highly authoritative sites will not only improve the authority of your site in the industry but it easier for your landing pages to gain a higher ranking in the SERPs.

If you want to improve your SaaS website’s ranking, then you can start with guest posting on relevant sites. This is one of the most effective ways to get high-quality backlinks to your site. For doing so, you must ensure to create stellar and unique content which includes case studies, infographics, market trends or reports, etc.

Adding these things to your site not only makes your content look more authentic but also makes it engaging to your readers.

Here are some other sure-shot ways of generating quality backlinks to your site:

• Partner strategically with other bloggers and share your best content with them. This will encourage them to link your content with theirs naturally whenever they create any new content for their blogs.
• Create linkable assets like case studies, infographics, white papers, or any other content forms that your competitors are not generating that much
• Create an effective outreaching SEO strategy following which you can send emails to some potential sites on your niche on a daily basis
• Ensure to analyze the backlink profile of your competitors using SEO tools like Moz, Ahrefs, etc. Ensure to use it as a benchmark for your site.
• Find out broken links of sites that are redirecting you to a 404 page. Pitch them with your content as an alternative one.

Following these simple tips will help you establish a robust backlinking portfolio. You can also grow your connections in the industry by networking with similar sites. This will help you with getting backlinks seamlessly with the least effort.

This will not just boost the visibility of your SaaS products but also improve its search engine rankings.

8. Measure and Analyze SaaS SEO Success

Once you have implemented all the strategies stated above, it is essential to track your SaaS SEO’s performance from time to time. As SEO is a long-term game, sometimes you need to adjust and tweak your SEO strategies so that it works well.

You can monitor and track various key metrics using various SEO tools.

Like, your SaaS-related keyword rankings on SERPs can be tracked using tools like SE Ranking, Mangools, Keyword.com, etc. Similarly, to monitor the organic traffic to your site, you can use analytics tools like Google Analytics. This will help you assess how well the target audience is engaging with your content via tracking key metrics like session duration, bounce rate, etc.

You can also track conversions to your site as well by using analytics tools like GTM (Google Tag Manager).

Apart from this, there are other tracking tools as well that provide you with an overview of your overall SaaS SEO performance. Some of these include Google Search Console, SerpWatch, Yoast SEO, SEOquake, SEMrush, etc.

FAQs

Wrapping Up

Running a SaaS business alone will not help you out with its growth and success. You need to step into the world of SaaS SEO to expand your business and optimize its search engine visibility.

Hope that if you create a solid SEO strategy after following the steps discussed above, your SaaS company will be able to make a solid online presence. You might take some time to learn in detail about SEO and then execute the strategies to make the most of your SEO opportunities.

However, if you want to speed up the SEO process, then rely on reputed SEO agency. They have professionals who will be continuously at your service to bring out long-term success for your SEO company.

Investing in a full-service SEO agency also brings in other advantages as well. Like, it prevents the need to invest in other tools, conduct competitor’s research, choose the best SEO strategies, etc.