Decoding SEO for SaaS: Strategies to Drive Growth
SaaS businesses rely heavily on organic search and good rankings to attract high-quality leads.
To do that, they need good SEO.
SEO that goes beyond integrating keywords on top pages.
A solid SEO strategy looks at all aspects of a website and develops a structure that looks to drive business growth by establishing trust and authority in the industry.
Your paid marketing efforts may already be achieving great results, but SEO is the single most effective organic marketing you can do.
Plus, the more customers that come to you organically, the less you’re paying for advertising and the better your ROI – it’s a win-win.
Understanding SEO for SaaS
No matter your business, SEO is vital for signposting to search engines that your content is relevant, useful and legitimate.
However, SaaS companies rely heavily on their online visibility for user acquisition, making the role of SEO even more key to their overall company growth.
With well-optimised SEO, SaaS companies can put themselves above competitors, with better rankings for products and services, based on potential customers’ keyword searches.
This increased visibility is the first step in engaging potential customers and beginning their journey to conversion.
Unlike traditional businesses that often focus on one-time purchases, SaaS companies often run on subscription-based models that rely on recurring revenue.
That means SEO for SaaS needs to be positioned carefully to cover every stage of the marketing funnel and drive long-term retention as acquisition is usually a slower, more drawn-out process.
If a business owner is looking for a new SaaS product for 3D modelling, for example, it’s crucial that they can see what makes your software different from every other product on the market. By targeting keywords that address user pain points, or specific unique software specialisations, a SaaS company increases its SERP (search engine results pages) rankings and answers the user’s search intent.
This is done by carefully choosing keywords and putting together a strong content marketing strategy that addresses these points, improving your company’s overall visibility.
A lot of companies treat SEO as a “one and done” type project, but the most successful understand that, like evolving marketing trends and updated software capabilities, SEO too develops and changes over time.
Rather than relying on traditional SEO, its success is in continual optimisation and monitoring.
That way any issues can be identified immediately, and any keyword gaps or opportunities that arise can be taken full advantage of.
Why Choose a Dedicated SEO Agency for SaaS Companies
One of the best ways to stay on top of the ever-updating world of SEO is to hire an SEO agency that’s experienced and accustomed to its changes.
After Google’s Helpful Content Update in 2023, it’s even more important to ensure your SEO isn’t just done, but done well.
The days of adding a few keywords to a post and hoping that’s enough for it to rank are past, and a dedicated SEO agency knows that and can tackle those changes with ease, increasing visibility and online rankings.
By choosing one that specialises in SEO for SaaS, rather than a general agency, you’re also ensuring their knowledge is highly relevant and that its experts have a very good grasp of the industry.
This expertise is invaluable for SaaS’ who usually face unique challenges that aren’t transferable to other industries, such as subscription-based model retention.
With their expertise, an SEO service can tailor SEO strategies across the entire business pipeline to encourage growth.
That means not just focussing on keyword research but on the whole process of SEO including a site’s technical issues, UX design, rich snippets and both on and off-page optimisation.
Dedicated SEO agencies will have access to all the tips, tricks and tools to tackle SEO holistically so it supports marketing and KPIs.
For example, Common Ground recently worked with SaaS platform Thomas International to identify specialised long-tail, relevant keywords and link-building opportunities to bolster its SEO, focussing on quality over quantity. As a result of our specialised knowledge, we increased the number of ranking terms by 200%.
So, an SEO agency = access to industry expertise, specialised strategies, and a full holistic understanding of how to raise your SEO profile.
Key SEO Strategies for SaaS Website Growth
We’ve spoken a bit about using an SEO agency for SaaS, as they know their stuff, both on and off-page.
The most common strategy employed is, of course, keyword research, but many make the mistake of believing it exists in a vacuum and fail to consider the bigger picture.
We’ve broken down some of the most effective SEO for SaaS techniques:
SEO content marketing
Every site nowadays has a blog – and there’s a good reason why. Content marketing is perfect for getting in a ton of extra keywords, improving rankings, legitimising your site, and most importantly, driving higher volumes of website traffic.
Educational pages can drive a potential customer through multiple stages of the funnel, from general information posts to more specialised product information pages dedicated to case studies or user guides (for example).
With this structure, you can target not only your primary keyword but long-tail, more niche keywords that are lower competition and thus improve your chances of ranking.
Landing pages
Landing pages are where you can niche down, targeting specific buyer persona types or commonly searched pain points with precisely targeted pages.
Using your long-tail keywords and industry knowledge, you can expand product page information and highlight key features and USPs.
On-page and technical SEO
Other factors other than content impact your site’s ability to rank. For example, technical issues like slow loading speeds, page errors or large file sizes impact the user experience and are taken into account by Google.
Make sure to run regular SEO audits using dedicated SEO tools like Ahrefs, but also to check Google’s free Lighthouse Speed Test to identify any other factors impacting your site’s ability to rank.
And remember that 58% of users access information from mobile not desktop, so it’s important to check your site is optimised for mobile and local search.
A super effective, and often underutilised element of SEO is Schema Data Markup.
Schema Data Markup uses code to break down a page’s elements and signpost the structure and content of a page to search engines. Without plugins, it can be a complicated and fiddly process, so it’s often avoided by general marketers.
However, pages using Schema Markup are 2.7 times more likely to receive organic traffic than those without, due to the increased likelihood of delivering rich snippets in search results.
Utilising user-generated content
We all love a good review (just check out Common Ground’s testimonials), but often SaaS companies fail to use helpful user-generated content like this to its full effect.
Don’t be afraid to send out calls to action requesting reviews on your site, Google, or other listings. This builds trust and authority, with both the search engine and your audience.
SEO Consulting for SaaS Companies
If you’re not looking for ongoing agency support, SEO consulting can be an effective middle ground. SaaS companies can use an SEO consultant for audits, identifying issues, providing strategic guidance and offering customised recommendations.
Anyone can go online and search ‘SEO best practices’, but to get personalised, specific help you need someone who understands the nature of your business and can ensure increased visibility and site traffic (if that’s the goal).
They can work closely with your business to tailor strategies to specific KPIs, and through competitor audits, backlink audits and content audits identify your site’s specific strengths and weaknesses.
Your SEO needs to align with your business goals, and KPIs and your SaaS SEO strategy needs to reflect that.
SEO is a huge behemoth and if your company can’t cover everything, SEO consultancy can help you identify the most important areas to target, and provide measurable results.
Leveraging Content Marketing for SaaS SEO
High-quality content SaaS marketing can be broken down into stages that also reflect the user journey through a marketing funnel:
Top-of-the-funnel content: This includes informative blog posts about industry pain points, pillar articles that answer the most searched-for questions, and topic clusters that demonstrate expertise in the overall field.
For example, a survey marketing SaaS company like Customer Thermometer has blog posts like “How to get fewer negative reviews for your product”. This addresses a pain point and targets a long-tail keyword, giving plenty more opportunities for ranking.
Providing tangible, useful information that’s not a direct sales piece or related to your product builds customer trust and your authority as a brand.
Middle-of-the-funnel content: This is where you would highlight product-specific answers to pain points.
This could be by writing comparison guides or highlighting your best case studies, for example.
This gives the added advantage of targeting your competitor’s high-ranking keywords as well as establishing your product.
Bottom-of-the-funnel content: By now you’re looking to convert the user.
Well-optimised product pages, landing pages and offers of free trials or demonstrations are all integral to pushing your user through to purchase.
You can improve your site’s clickthrough rate and visibility by ensuring these pages are optimised for rich results and featured snippets in SERPs.
With any content creation for your SaaS SEO strategy, however, it’s important to look beyond keywords and check you’re following SEO best practices for content such as H2s, optimised meta tags and descriptions, and including relevant alt text.
Content marketing also allows you to build out and develop your linking strategy.
It provides authoritative articles for third-party sites to backlink to, as well as ways to build a solid network of internal links.
Both of these are taken into account by search engines that use backlinks and site structure as ways to help define an overall site’s ranking.
The more articles you have on a topic – the more Google will recognise you’re an expert on it.
Technical SEO
We’ve touched on the importance of technical SEO.
You can have the best keyword-optimised site in the world, but if it’s brimming with technical issues impacting its overall speed and loading times, then search engines will act accordingly and place it lower down in rankings.
As well as using Google’s Lighthouse Speed Test to check for mobile and desktop responsiveness, speed and pain points, you can also try running a Screaming Frog test that will identify any other problems impacting your site.
A good overall sitewide SEO audit will also bring up issues like duplicate content, broken links, indexing issues and error codes.
Things to watch out for include:
Meta-tags: Poorly optimised meta titles and descriptions, or those with keyword stuffing can negatively impact a site’s clickthrough rate.
Crawlability and indexing issues: These can also be identified using Google Search Console.
They will highlight any issues with your robots.txt files that are preventing your pages from indexing correctly.
If your page isn’t indexed, it’s not ranking, so it’s crucial to check these elements are up-to-date.
Site architecture and navigation: The better your site’s structure, the more sense it makes to search engines and users.
It should follow a logical user journey and have an optimised URL structure.
Adding an XML sitemap helps break down your site’s navigation, and should always be submitted to search engines like Google to provide them with a roadmap of your company site.
Local SEO: If you’re a SaaS company that targets local markets, inconsistent NAP information across directories and Google My Business profiles can negatively impact your ranking as it delegitimises your authority.
Backlinks: During a backlink audit, you should make sure to disavow any links from spammy or questionable sites.
As a basic rule, you can usually identify these by their low domain authority ratings.
Mobile usability errors: Sometimes site functions don’t translate well to mobile.
Check to ensure nothing is blocking your site from succeeding on mobile, such as usability issues or poor formatting.
Implementing HTTPS Protocols: Changing your site from HTTP to HTTPS signals to search engines that you care about user privacy and security.
It’s become a standard requirement on most browsers and not using HTTPS can negatively impact your sites’ visibility and damage user trust.
To sum up…
A holistic SEO strategy that integrates with overall marketing campaign goals and KPIs is one of the most effective things your company can do to drive visibility and growth.
With regular audits, improvements and keyword integration, any site can massively improve its rankings and search engine reach.
The next step is to craft your actionable strategy for SEO growth – luckily we have a webinar that tells you how to do just that.
