SaaS SEO: How SaaS Companies Can Get 10x Faster SEO Results

In this article, we will provide a comprehensive SaaS SEO guide and discuss the key considerations and tactics that SaaS brands should keep in mind when developing their SEO strategy.

The Global market share for SaaS brands is estimated to grow from USD 272.0 billion in 2018 to USD 628 billion by 2023 at a Compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18%.

“Page one results attract a remarkable 95% of all the search traffic”

In this growing market and increasing competition, an estimated 92% of SaaS companies fail within 3 years despite growth and funding. 

How can you avoid being one of them?

In order to avoid being a part of the 92%, you need to work up on your  SEO, and to help you with—. 

Here’s your complete Guide to SaaS SEO. 

Ready? Let’s go.

What is SaaS SEO?

SaaS SEO is a type of search engine optimization specifically for software-as-a-service companies. The goal is to increase visibility and organic traffic from search results. SaaS SEO includes on-page optimization, technical optimization, link building, and content marketing.

SaaS SEO is the process of generating more organic traffic from sites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo to your SaaS brand.

Why is SEO important for SaaS brands?

Githlab ranks for 3024 keywords generating an estimated 11000 sessions a month. All thanks to their SEO and organic traffic.

It’s estimated Google processes approximately 63,000 search queries every second. 

People are searching for queries in order to get their problems solved. Solving their queries by providing value to them creates potential business opportunities. As a matter of fact, 68% of all online experiences start with a search engine. 

So in order to attract the right traffic to your website is really important and SEO plays a major role in it. Right traffic gives you an opportunity to convert them into happy customers.

Especially for SaaS brands, SEO is ultimately important because there is a lack of physical products so the only way for you to reach out to people is through online channels.

According to stats SEO leads have a 14.6%  close rate.

Source: firstpagesage

As compared to any other marketing method organic SEO generates the highest number of leads.

A higher number of leads decreases the cost per acquisition. 

How does Shopify use SEO for unparalleled growth?

Valued at $174 billion and one of the most successful e-commerce platforms. Shopify grew its revenue by almost 110% in the first few months of 2021. Every month Shopify gets 3.5 million organic monthly visitors from Google and ranks for more than 1.1 million keywords. 

This could be done because they follow the three fundamental pillars of SEO which are explained below.

Three Fundamental pillars for you to be ranked  #1 on Google.

1. Keywords.
2. Killer Content.
3. Quality Links

Let’s get into each one of these parts in detail. 

Keywords

Why are Keywords Important for SaaS companies?

92.42% of keywords get ten monthly searches or fewer. 

The relevance of the right keyword in SEO is as important as the role of marketing when building a greatly successful product. 

Even if you build the best product in the world but if people don’t need it or know it then it’s a failure.

Start with 5 to 6 keywords related to your topic and then we will analyze whether those particular keywords are what people are searching for. 

Targeting a volume of more than 1000 search queries per month could be a good strategy.

In the process, you will easily be able to find other related or suggested keywords that people are searching for. 

Role of keywords in driving traffic.

0.78% of Google searches click on results from the 2nd page. 

Since the traffic that goes to the second page of Google is so less. This means that most of the traffic lands on page one and this means that analyzing the right keyword according to your topic is really really crucial.

Is the keyword you are Targeting a traffic magnet or not?

0.16% of the most popular keywords are responsible for 60.67% of all searches.

You can analyze this by checking how much search volume a particular keyword has on average over a month. Search volume with more than 1000 search queries per month is good to start with.

Different types of keywords.

Different types of keywords have different search intents. In order to target the right kind of keywords, and satisfy the search, you need to understand the different types of keywords. 

• Transactional keywords
• Informational keywords
• Long-tail Keywords.

13.53% of keywords with ten searches per month or fewer consist of only one or two words

  Source: semrush

• Short tail keywords 

70.87% of keywords with more than 10,000 monthly searches consist of only one or two words. 

Source: semrush 

Keywords are useful only when they’re accompanied by content. To create content that attracts the right kind of audience, and brings targeted traffic to your website, you need to understand certain things. 

Saaslinko Pro Tip:

At Saaslinko, We start with following SaaS keyword research framework to get the maximum ROI in short time:

1) Alternatives to ‘X’ – You talk about alternatives to your competitor
2) Pricing of ‘X’ – You talk about alternatives to your competitor
3) Reviews of ‘X’ – You write reviews about your competitor by aggregating from various sites like G2, Capterra
4) Comparison posts: this framework objectively compares your product to your top competitors
5) Best product or service lists: this framework helps searchers discover the best products in the category they’re searching for.
6) Product or Service Use Cases: this framework helps searchers figure out how to solve a problem they have and presents your product or service as a potential solution.

After this, the articles that would be on page 1 and page 2 of google, we would re-write them (into the best articles on the internet) and secure more backlinks on them, so we consistently stay at the top.

These signups will never dry, even if we just get some backlinks. This is the Content Marketing for you. It scales slow but gives consistent results.

Content 

Why is content important for SaaS brands?

Content is one of the most important strategies or investments for a SaaS brand. People have problems and in order to solve them, they are looking for solutions. 

Your role as a brand is to solve their problems by providing them value through your content. Educating them with your valuable content and gaining trust that your solutions and services are valuable. 

It’s a way to make your audience believe in you and trust you. 

After gaining trust and providing them value then you can think about a business transaction. 

The only way to reach your ideal customer is through content. 

Content can turn you into a SaaS giant as 98% of the SaaS giants create quality blogs.

Source:Neilpatel.com

• 61% of consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post that they read.
• 60% of consumers feel positive about a company after reading its blog.
• 70% of consumers learn about a company through its blog versus ads.

How gusto used blogging to rank #1

Gusto is a role model to prove that blogging and long-form content are still relevant.

With metrics like,-

• 2.3M Backlinks
• 10M annual organic visits
• $13M worth of organic traffic
• Ranks for 191,000+ keywords

Blogging has been one of the driving factors of Gusto’s insane traffic. It gets around 1.09 million visits annually.

Gusto appears on rank #1 often.

How can you do the same?

E-A-T of Google can help you do the same. 

E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This basically means Google’s algorithm uses these parameters in order to rank a page to #1 . 

In order to reach #1, you need to create content that matches E-A-T. This helps Google rank which website is more trustworthy or can better solve the queries of the searcher. In order to leverage this target your content around these three things.

According to QuickSprout, domain trust/authority represents 30% of Google’s ranking algorithm.

Creating authentic content leads to 97% more links to your website.

Here are some things you need to keep in mind while creating content.

Understanding search intent.

Search intent is the probable reason or a problem with which a query is asked. Asking questions is one of the best ways to figure out the search intent of your viewer.

Think about questions like- 

• Why would a person search this?
• What problem is the person trying to solve?
• How can the problem be solved?
• What is the underlying desire regarding the query?

Developing a buyer persona.

The buyer persona is a representation of an ideal customer through data, surveys, interviews, stats, and research. It’s done to understand your buyer’s pain points and thought process. It’s a way of targeting people who need your product, who are willing to pay, and who are capable of subscribing. 

It’s one of the great ways to delight your customer so that the customer becomes a permanent user. A delighted customer brings in more people through referral and marketing.

3 reasons for you to paint a buyer persona. 

• Increase traffic by up to 210%.
• Boost organic search by 55%
• 82% of the companies observed a better value proposition after undertaking the strategy.

How to create a buyer persona?

Start with basics. Identify who your target segment is, demographic, age, countries, income level, industry, companies, occupation, education, pain points, needs, and interests.

With the help of data, stats, surveys, and talking to your real customer, you develop a general and broad idea of the customer. 

‘Questioning is going to get you where beliefs can’t ‘

Free tools to get you started with creating a buyer persona.

• Hubspot make my persona tool.
• Filestage’s buyer persona template 

Bonus tips on creating amazing content.

• Researching- Publishing your own data and stats makes it irreplaceable and leads to people linking more to your website.
• More charts and infographics – adding more charts and video content to your website makes it more interesting and compelling.

Link Building

We’ve already discussed how to incorporate keyword and content in your SaaS SEO strategy, it’s time to talk about Backlinks!

Backlinks? How are they important?

Backlinks act as a vote of confidence for your site. Backlinks are other sites pointing to your site which establish trust for your website. This not only establishes trust for your website but it helps your website reach #1 on Google.

 According to stats, 43.7% of the top-ranking pages have some reciprocal links. 

Some of the biggest SaaS giants have millions of backlinks to their blogs and that drives them immense traffic. Gusto has 2.3 million backlinks to their blogs and gives them $13M worth of organic traffic.

Source:contentwriters.com

The following chart shows you the more backlinks the higher the ranking on Google. Having more quality links to your websites establishes you as a domain expert and authority.

We at Saaslinko helps you in building relevant high authority backlinks with proven strategy.

Tools for you to get started with SaaS SEO.

These SEO tools will help you get started with SaaS SEO easily. 

• Google keyword planner.
• Ahrefs
• Google Search Console
• SEMRush
• KWFinder
• Moz Pro
• Answer The Public
• SpyFu

Bonus tips on increasing your audience base.

• User experience: User experience is the experience a user has while visiting your website. An engaging and attractive interface is very important for you to keep your traffic hooked to your content. The longer they stay on the website the better your chances of you getting massive organic traffic.

source:econsultancy 

• Page speed –  You would not want your audience waiting for your website to load for quite a long time. As a matter of fact, people are not that patient. A longer loading time sends away your traffic to other pages and you would not want that to happen, so the longer it takes for your website to load the less traffic you get to your website.

source:section

My 2 Cents

The three fundamentals are what companies like Gusto, Hubspot, Shopify, and many more use to rank #1 and appear on featured snippets. 

For your SaaS website to rank #1, you need to follow these strategies but also execute them wisely. 

SaaS SEO is a long-term game and will surely take patience. But once you establish your SaaS brand to #1 rank on Google there is no going back.

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