Spending more than $500 a month on search engine optimization (SEO) has made many businesses “extremely satisfied.”
SEO serves as an excellent practice that helps gather users organically—if it’s done right. Wasting money on cheap SEO services won’t only waste time, but also potentially damage your search engine rankings.
Whether you outsource your SEO services or do it yourself, you will need to understand what strategy you’ll need as a SaaS company. As you read through this guide, you’ll learn how to make an SEO plan for your marketing campaign.
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SEO for SaaS is a set of practices that help “software as a service” or SaaS businesses increase organic traffic. How? When ranking for a specific keyword, your website will more likely appear on the first page of search engine result pages (SERP).
The goal of your SaaS business model should be to make it to the first spot. That’s because over 25% of searchers will click the first search result. You will need to prove that you are an expert, an authority, and trustworthy in your niche.
As with any website, as a software as a service provider, you will need to prove that you are an authoritative source in their niche. Otherwise, how can users trust you to deliver results?
Not only does SEO for SaaS show leads that you’re authoritative and trustworthy, but it also helps you match the user's intent. For SaaS companies, catching a user when they’re ready to shop will increase their chances of landing more subscribers.
To maximize your SaaS SEO, you will need to develop a strategy. Each point throughout this next section will cover some of the most important tasks that you should do to optimize your product’s website.
Before doing any SEO for SaaS, you will need to understand your current rankings. You will want to figure out infrastructural issues, where you rank on search engines, and who links to your website.
While tools like Google Search Console can give you a rough idea of some of the above information, you will need more robust tools. Or, you can outsource your work to experts, who will have the best tools and the knowledge to interpret your results.
If you haven’t already done this, you will need to understand who you want to find your website through search engines. That way, you can meet a user’s intent, reduce bounce rates and customer acquisition cost.
Part of your SaaS model should be to build a profile for a customer by figuring out information like:
Once you gather customer data and figure out who you’re targeting, you’ll know how to answer your users’ questions and address their concerns with your product.
How do you want leads to find your website? To figure that out, you will need to address various keyword categories to find what you want to rank for. First off, think in general terms. What type of tool do you offer?
Figure out what solutions your product offers. For example, software that reduces the risk of someone hacking into an account. From there, a user may want specific features or integrations for their software. Find keywords in this area.
You’ll also want to include industry-related keywords and competitor alternative phrases. What does the latter mean? If you provide a search engine tool, you’d want to target keywords like “alternatives to Moz.”
To find these keywords, you will want to use a keyword tool. That way, you can understand the general search volume for the keyword you want to target. If your phrase has no demand, you won’t have much traffic.
You will also want to understand the competition surrounding your keyword. The less competition you have, the easier it’ll be for your website to earn a spot as the first result.
Condense your research into a plan. You will want to include content you will create like blog posts, landing pages, and product pages. To better organize your content, you will first want to segment your keywords by funnel stage on each page.
Be patient for it’ll take a while for your keywords to help your content rank. The best way you can increase your chances putting your page within the top 10 results on the SERP, is through on-page SEO.
Unlike technical- and off-page search optimization, which focuses on areas away from your content pages, this type of SEO will require you to:
When combining these practices with other types of SEO, search engines will have an easier time indexing your website.
Without having links to your content, search engines will less likely consider you an authoritative source. Because of this, you will have a harder time ranking your content. Google considers efforts to manipulate page ranks with links as a violation, which can penalize your website.
While their rules include various ways to generate links, there are “legal” ways you can gather links like:
These efforts require more work than producing written content. With more competing websites trying to reach the top, you will need to create content that will provide users with more value.
Like SEO with other businesses, you will need to target relevant keywords that users are searching for when optimizing for a SaaS business. You will also need to know what type of intent your user will have.
When you combine these factors with on-page SEO and build an authority in your niche, you are bound to pull in more users. Do you need marketing experts who will help you uncover opportunities to help you generate more sales and leads? Order a quick SEO audit with us today.
