Don’t hire a SaaS SEO Team until you read this!

Having an in-house SEO team is not the only option for SaaS brands looking to improve their online presence and drive more qualified traffic to their website. There are several alternatives to consider, such as hiring an SEO consultant, or using an SaaS SEO agency. These options can provide access to specialized expertise and resources that may not be available in-house. In this article, we will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of these alternative approaches to SEO for SaaS brands and provide tips on how to make the best decision for your business.

Are you thinking of hiring a full-time, in-house SaaS SEO team?

If yes, then stop and read this blog before you do so. 

Why? Because this blog outlines everything you need to know about building a SaaS SEO team, even if you’re a startup or an enterprise.

From different roles to whom you hire at what stage of your business, we’ve got you covered!

Ready? Let’s go!

How to build a SaaS SEO Team?

To build a SaaS SEO team, you need to focus on these three steps:

Determine your goals and hiring purposes

Your business goals and hiring needs depend a lot on how you build your SaaS SEO team. Before you start hiring team members, you need to outline your business goals. 

• What do you want to achieve this year?
• What roles are you looking to hire for?
• What’s your focus area? Do you want to focus on marketing your content, or building links?
• Do you have the budget to hire an in-house SEO team?

Ask yourself these questions before you start creating any job descriptions. Doing this will ensure that you only hire the right person for the job.  

Find your talent

Next, you need to determine where you’ll find your people. Are you going to do a LinkedIn post, or post a job on Upwork?

To find the right pool of candidates, you need to understand where these people are most active. Chances are, candidates for your content team aren’t present on Instagram, but LinkedIn and your design team might be more active on Instagram. 

You need to understand where your candidates are, and then reach out to them. This is more of a manual job, that’s why we prefer to post a job on LinkedIn or other hiring platforms like Indeed or Glassdoor.

Setting up your task management software 

Once you put up your hiring post, you’ll receive lots of candidates and their resumes. To filter out and keep an eye on the hiring process, you need to set up your task management software. 

Tools like ClickUp help you create a task management database, where you can easily take a look at the hiring process. 

Different types of roles in an SEO team

SEO Manager

SEO Managers help in creating personalized custom SaaS SEO strategies that help brands appear on the first page, preferably the first spot in search engines like Google. 

They work closely with the brands and create more opportunities for building brand awareness, generating more leads, and getting traffic to their website. They work closely with the Marketing and Content Team to create content and campaigns that fuel their SEO efforts and bring in the most results.

SEO Lead

An SEO team lead is like the leader of the SEO pack. They help in handling the team, and responsibilities, and possess good technical and analytical knowledge. SEO leads have experience with digital marketing, so they’re the usual point of contact between the company and the team.

An SEO Lead ensures that the work done by the team members is accurate, consistent, and of high quality. They manage the SEO team members of strategists and analysts and help them come up with new SEO growth strategies with the help of brainstorming sessions. 

They’re well versed in all aspects of SEO, plus experienced in digital marketing. 

SEO Strategist

The responsibility of an SEO strategist on the team is to create and execute the strategies that bring in the most ROI. SEO strategist creates strategies that help the company hit its KPIs goal.

They conduct audits of the previous strategies used, check on what worked and what hadn’t, and create better strategies that help the brand move forward. They make sure that the work is completed and the deadlines aren’t missed. 

SEO strategists are problem solvers who create opportunities for cross-channel collaboration with the help of seamless and minimal friction SEO strategies.  

SEO Specialist

SEO Specialist work involves optimizing content and product pages for spiders. SEO specialists perform keyword research for all TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content, and manage all search engine optimization across all marketing channels. 

They work closely with the content team, and link-building team to increase their rankings on SERPs. An SEO specialist also works on optimizing the company’s content for Yahoo, and Bing as well.

Tech SEO Analyst

The technical SEO Analyst is the person who solves all the problems related to technical SEO. They work towards fulfilling, analyzing, and strategizing all the technical issues that might arise. They can easily handle the technical stuff, take insights and ideas to make the tech part of SEO strong, and communicate it to the internal and external stakeholders.  

Link building Team 

The most important and by far hectic job is of a Link building team. A link-building team manages everything from-

• Identifying potential collaboration opportunities between brands and bloggers. 
• Shortlist the brands/bloggers they want to reach out to. 
• Find the person of contact.
• Send them personalized emails on mass pitching the link-building opportunity. 
• Following up with the brands. 

All of these tasks are done manually and not automated. Further, a Link building team is also divided into many categories and responsibilities. 

Link building Manager 

The role of a link-building manager is a tough one. It requires finding potential websites that are relatable to the content you publish, and highly authoritative while reaching out to them with a potential opportunity to collaborate. This job is mostly done manually to get the best results. 

This is the main reason why these jobs are highly paid. Most SaaS startups can’t afford to hire in-house link-building managers, that’s why we at SaaSLinko provide our SaaS customers with the most affordable link-building services. 

Read our case studies here to learn how we helped brand grow their traffic by %. Want us to help you bring the same results? Reach out to our Link Building Experts by filling out this form, and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.  

Outreach Manager

The chief responsibilities of an Outreach Manager are to find potential content collaboration opportunities and link-building opportunities. They reach out to different marketers, and brands in order to build long-term relationships and strengthen their SEO strategies. They help in improving a brand’s organic reach and support the planning of marketing campaigns. 

List Builders 

List Builders help the outreach manager in researching and generating leads for SaaS businesses. They create lists of all the brands, and thought leaders they can reach out to help the growth and development of sales and marketing. 

Researchers

Researchers are the primary person responsible for creating a database of all the potential collaborations. Researchers create a database keeping in mind the company’s objectives and goals and create a data research base containing the information of everyone who can help the company achieve its goals.

Off-page Content Specialist 

Guest Posting is the best way to build links and credibility, and an Off page Content Specialist, help you do that. They write, structure, and visualize the content according to the website’s guidelines, make sure that your brand image stays positive, and build backlinks in the most authentic way. 

Content Team 

The Content Team is one of the most important foundations for growing your brand. Without content, there’s no meaning for links or SEO. You need to give your readers a reason to stay with you, and keywords are not the way you make your readers stay.

That’s where the Content Team comes into play. The Content team is also divided into various categories. 

Content Marketer 

The content marketer manages the distribution of the content. They assist in creating a brand guide, discovering content distribution platforms, and making sure the content you put out reaches your audience. 

Content Strategist

Content Strategists help in creating a strategy for your brand. You can’t just put out content, hoping it will attract your customers. You need to be strategic about it. Content strategies create content and editorial calendar, proofread the content written by the writers and make sure that the company stakeholders approve the content. 

Content writers

Content writers are the people who bring the strategies to life. They do the research, interview SMEs, and write the content. Writers refer to the brand guide, and strategies created by the strategist to create content that attracts new customers and turns them into product subscribers. 

Copywriters

Your product pages, landing pages, and website copy need a copywriter. Copywriters create copy that converts. They optimize your website copy, product pages, and landing pages with persuasive copy that converts visitors into leads and leads into sales. 

Graphic Designers

Content and design go hand in hand. Reader’s attention span is 5 seconds. In those 5 seconds, you need to hook the with words and designs. The job of a graphic designer is to make the content and website look aesthetically clean and pleasing to maintain brand consistency, as well as give visitors more visually appealing content. 

How to structure your SaaS SEO Team.

Your SEO team structure needs the following four roles:

• Manager/team leader
• Web developer(s)
• Content team
• Outreach team

For Small-Sized SEO Teams 

If you’re a SaaS startup with not enough budget, then you should consider hiring one member from different roles and categories. Many Content Strategists know how to write content, the same way many SEO leads know how to do SEO. 

You can take this as a starting point and hire 1-2 persons for the above-mentioned roles. You can also consider hiring freelancers for your content purposes. That’s a more cost-efficient way of hiring. You can also hire a Link Building agency, like SaaSLinko, to help you with link building and outreach. It’s more cost-effective and affordable for startups. 

You can book a call with us here. 

To recap, you need to hire-

• SEO Manager
• Link Building 
• Content Marketer 
• Graphic Designer 

For Medium Sized SEO team 

For any SaaS brand, it’s important to have an SEO team where work is delegated to the right people. The difference between hiring preferences for startups and established brands is the option to let the expert do the job. 

Sure, the content marketer can help with writing, but are they the best at writing? No. That’s why brands who have the budget to hire, as well as the will to grow fast hire writers as well as marketers. 

If you’re looking to build a medium-sized SEO team, then you’d need to hire these people:

1. SEO Manager
   • SEO Lead
   • SEO Analyst 
   • SEO Specialist 
   • Technical Analyst 
   • SEO Strategist 

2. Content Team
   • Content Marketers 
   • Content Strategist 
   • Content Writers
   • Copywriters 

3. Graphic Designers

4. Link Building Team
   • Link Building Manager 
   • Outreach Manager 
   • Researchers
   • List Builders 

Do you know a better way to outsource your link-building team? It’s having SaaSLinko do the work for you, without having to hire unique members for these roles. SaaSLinko experts are your one-way agency to help you build relevant and authoritative links. 

Fill up this form, and book a 1:1 Call with our experts now! Meanwhile, you can also browse our case studies. 

5. Off-Page Content Specialist 

For Large Sized SaaS SEO Team

SaaS Enterprises can benefit from having a full-fledged SEO team at their disposal. Enterprises that have the funding, and want to take their SEO growth to the next level, should consider hiring these roles:

1. SEO Manager
   • SEO Lead
   • SEO Analyst 
   • Technical Analyst 
   • SEO Strategist 

2. Content Team
   • Content Marketers 
   • Content Strategist 
   • Content Writers
   • Copywriters 

3. Off-Page Content Specialist 

4. Link Building Team
   • Link Building Manager 
   • Outreach Manager 
   • Researchers
   • List Builders

5. Graphic Designers

My 2 Cents 

Before you decide to take the big step of hiring a team, you need to understand that a minimum of $30K-60K salary per team member, plus an additional $2.5K to $4.5K per year on SEO tools is spent by teams. 

This implies a team of 10 members will cost you around $32.5K to $300K+ annually. To reduce this cost, you can consider outsourcing your link-building team to a link-building agency. Hiring a Link building agency will reduce your overhead spent on finding and training employees, and will ensure you’ve got an expert dealing with the most important aspect of SaaS SEO.  

If you’re looking to outsource to a link-building team, fill out this form and we’ll get back to you within 24 hours.