SEO for SaaS: How to Improve Organic Traffic Growth and Take Your SaaS to the Next Level

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SaaS SEO is a strategy that uses Content Marketing and keyword research to drive traffic to the website of a company that offers software as a service .

Understanding how search engines and keywords work will help you develop an effective content strategy and solid SEO to attract leads to your blog and portal.

In the following lines of this article we will explore in business owner database can help greater depth SEO for SaaS, its great importance and the best practices to apply it.

But first, let's briefly review the emergence of software as a service and its value proposition from a technological and functional point of view.

The Conventional Anti-Software Company
So what did the SaaS model bring with it?
Why SaaS companies should invest in SEO?
What makes SEO for SaaS different?
10 Steps to Creating a Successful SaaS SEO Campaign
The Conventional Anti-Software Company
"Salesforce declared the end of software 20 years ago, and with it came the cloud."

Marc Benioff, Founder and CEO of Salesforce.com

The Anti-Software Company
Source : Business Insider
When he argued for the "end of software," Benioff was referring to the conventional system of storage and operation restricted to a given network of computers, which is increasingly less used due to its limitations.

More than twenty years ago , Salesforce.com, a San Francisco-based startup, disrupted a conference held by a large traditional enterprise software company and essentially launched the software-as-a-service (SaaS) revolution.

SaaS companies now dominate the marketing and sales technology industry and continue to grow.

So what did the SaaS model bring with it?
On the one hand, the SaaS model transformed software delivery. Companies no longer needed to spend millions on complicated software and hardware, and maintenance contracts disappeared.

This Internet business model based on subscription-based software services included upgrades and maintenance, which reduced computing costs and gave millions of people access to the same software that businesses used.


Why SaaS companies should invest in SEO?
After this introduction and anecdotes about the SaaS model, it is time to talk about why companies in this sector need to invest in search engine optimization.

Investing in performance advertising often backfires as SaaS companies burn through investment cash before the business scales.

SEO and Content Marketing do not require as much investment as performance-based advertising, so the cost is much lower.

However, it takes time and well-thought-out strategies to create successful SEO campaigns within this methodology.

What makes SEO for SaaS different?
Retail companies focus on products and brands to drive traffic to their website. Healthcare companies may focus on specific diseases that their patients may suffer from.

But SaaS startups don't have a popular brand or product that they can use to drive traffic to their website.

Therefore, SaaS companies must develop keyword strategies that focus on the problems that buyers need and want to solve.

" Generate more leads without advertising " can be a keyword phrase that SaaS SEO providers use to drive traffic to a page of interest.

These long-tail keywords usually generate fewer visits, but they are also less competitive and allow traffic to be qualified, which optimizes investment.

Building a library of these phrases will improve your search results in the long run.

10 Steps to Creating a Successful SaaS SEO Campaign
It's time to focus on the practical! If you are in charge of Digital Marketing for a SaaS and want to create a powerful and precise SEO campaign, we recommend following these steps:

1. Set realistic goals
Creating realistic goals is the first step to establishing a successful SEO campaign. Goals should be measurable and achievable.

For example, if this is just your first SaaS SEO campaign and your blog is still in its infancy, setting a goal to appear at number one in a Google search result within the first month would not be realistic.

SEO and content marketing take time to build traction, and goals should reflect that reality. A more accurate goal would be to rank three keyword phrases in the top 10 within six months, for example.

2. Identify the KPIs
Once you have set your goals, you will need a way to measure the results. Key performance indicators are indispensable metrics for this.

Website visitors, search result placements, and monthly searches are all great SEO KPIs.

These indicators can be measured using different analytical tools, both free and paid.

One of the most important KPIs is to compare how your SEO ranks against other competitors in the SaaS market.

How does your website rank on Alexa, a website comparison software? How many keywords are in the top 10 on Google compared to your top two or three competitors?

It's helpful to pay attention to growth. It'll be satisfying to see your rankings improve as you promote your keywords through blogs and social media.

3. Create buyer persona profiles
Identifying the characteristics of potential buyers is the next step in developing an effective SEO program. Therefore, it is a good idea to divide your prospects into different categories.

For commercial products, for example, your buyer might be an IT director or marketing manager. For consumer or e-commerce products, it might be a millennial woman who lives in a popular part of town and who enjoys gardening.

It's a good practice to include extensive details about your buyers, including their social media habits, the software they use, and even whether they own an iPhone or Android.

For example, HubSpot might identify its key customer as marketing manager Mary or business owner Bob.

Buyer personas are essential for keyword research. Your buyers will search for different phrases depending on their needs and challenges.

Marketing manager Mary may want to increase lead generation, while business owner Bob wants to sell his business.

Interviewing vendors, distributors, and customers will shed light on which audiences SaaS SEO should target to generate more sales.

4. Research your competition
You can learn a lot from your competition. What keywords do they use? Do they spend money on pay-per-click advertising or do they use content marketing?

Understanding how your SaaS software competitors use SEO will give you insight into their strategies and goals.

You don't need to research every company in your niche. Select two or three that are close and especially relevant and research their keywords, spending habits, and search results.

You are also not required to hire a market research company. Instead, use the same SEO software that you use for your keyword research.

SEMrush is a popular tool for paid search advertising research. It creates a table comparing your campaign to your competition.

top pages on semrush
Source : Semrush
5. Conduct keyword research
Keywords are the fuel of SEO for SaaS, just like for any other type of business. Finding the right keywords is a mix of art and science.

A keyword may seem like a good fit for your SEO campaign, but if it's too competitive or doesn't generate enough traffic, you may not want to use it to run your campaign.

Competitive keywords are expensive to use for paid advertising. It will also be challenging to find a position in the top 10 search results in organic SEO.

For example, let's say you sell a SaaS video content publisher and want to rank for the keyword "YouTube."

You'll be up against over 180 million competitors, while "YouTube" is the number one keyword in the world, according to Ahrefs .

Once you start your SEO program, you'll want to keep track of your search rankings. Google displays 10 search results per page and provides rankings for the top 100 related search terms.

You will increase your rankings as you generate more content around that keyword phrase. Every page counts, including landing pages, blog posts, and website pages.

Make sure to include the keyword in your website page title at least once or twice more. Use variations of the term.

On the other hand, avoid keyword stuffing, which is using the same keywords over and over again, without introducing them into the text in a natural and coherent way.

Google is very hard to fool and will penalize you for this tactic by placing you on its blacklist .

6. Generate content in different formats, always with an SEO focus
For a SaaS company, the most important KPI is revenue growth.

To make money, you need to generate leads. But how do you do that on your website?

When your buyers are in the awareness stage of the buying process , they want to find a solution to their problem and turn to Google.

They find articles based on the keywords in your questions and visit companies' landing pages or website pages that provide those answers. That's great, but it's not everything.

You have the audience and you need to turn them into leads. To convince someone to give you their personal information, such as email, name and company, you need to provide value.

That's where content marketing comes in. There are many types of content, and you need to combine different formats to get the best results. Below you'll see some of the most popular types.