Google’s algorithm may constantly be in flux, but one thing is for sure…
More traffic on your SaaS website is always a good thing. And there’s no better way to capture it than with smart SEO strategy and engaging, artful, and quality content.
Turning website visitors into customers is what drives the economic engine of the internet. SaaS SEO strategy done right takes time and effort, but the execution of a well-thought-out plan can give your SaaS company an impressive ROI.
Partnering with a SaaS SEO agency to build an effective ongoing strategy is one of the best ways to foster long-term growth and acquire a steady stream of quality leads.
TL;DR
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We are LIVID, a creative digital marketing agency. Our SaaS SEO service powers brands just like yours with thorough research, smart strategy, and engaging content. We’d love to explore and share what opportunities are available for your brand to earn more attention, build a loyal audience, and win more leads.
Growth-Focused SaaS SEO Strategy
Growth is critical to the survival of any business from day one. As a SaaS business, if you’re not growing, you’re dying.
Only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more.
It’s often said that only 25% of new businesses make it to 15 years or more, illustrating how important it is to develop a system for sustainable growth. As a SaaS SEO agency, we handcraft beautiful brand content along with a powerful strategy to earn your brand attention in the Google Search Results and win you new customers.
Systemized Website Architecture
Any strong SEO for SaaS startups strategy should utilize a holistic approach that considers web architecture and how to best interlink all content. This is an important piece for receiving maximum value out of your SaaS technical SEO and will give an extra edge for eventually winning the top position in Google and other search engines.
Intervention is often needed to ensure that the website remains a valuable asset long into the future. Our recommendations are based on time vs. impact as well as cost vs. impact. We present clear solutions that your developers will quickly understand how to implement.
404s
‘Page not found’ errors create a poor user experience that can cause loss of customers.
Load Time
Slow spells trouble. If a page takes longer than 2 seconds to load, it will have a more difficult time ranking.
Responsive
Your site should work well on any screen size for optimal conversion.
Duplicate Content
Any content you create should be posted in only one place on your website and needs to be indexed before reposting on social channels.
Thin Content
Pages with little to no written content will have a much harder time achieving rankings for the desired keywords.
JavaScript Blocking Navigation
When the search crawlers can’t access the code of your website properly, it can cause indexing issues or reduce the page ranking power.
Missing Sitemap.xml File
Sitemaps help Google crawl your code and better understand the pages you should be ranking for.
Missing Robots.txt File
Robots.txt is what google checks to see what pages you want to index.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of the most powerful tenets of SEO for SaaS companies because it shines a light on the customer’s journey.
Insight on the search terms used by your target audience will give you a valuable perspective on their needs, which will help you decide exactly how to optimize your content. This task is incredibly important and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
You can start by gathering all of your existing keywords from a SaaS SEO tool like Google Search Console and putting them on a spreadsheet. You can improve your keyword list by finding more relevant, valuable keywords to target with other helpful SEO tools for SaaS like ahrefs, MOZ, or KWfinder.com. An SEO agency for SaaS, like LIVID, has extensive keyword research experience and can facilitate this process for or with you.
Some examples of keyword categories that are common for SaaS SEO strategy include:
Product Type (general)
This involves broad descriptions of your product or service. Find SaaS technical seo keywords like software, platform, tool, solution, service, etc.
Solutions
Consider terms that describe the solutions that you provide. Examples include content management, cybersecurity, web development, and graphic design.
Features
People often search for product features to find what they are looking for. Terms like scalability, client portal, export data, and cloud integration all apply.
Industries
You may want to target specific industries or clients that are likely to adopt your product. Some examples include Marketing, Engineering, Software Development, E-Commerce, Shipping, etc.
Competitor Alternatives
Most of the time, there is a competitor who has already cornered the market. In this case, it is useful to target people looking for alternatives. Examples include Dropbox alternative or Salesforce alternative.
Long-tail Search Terms
These are semantic strings that are close to the verbatim of phrases entered into the search bar. Examples include project management for web development, marketing automation for insurance companies, CRM for small businesses, etc.
Enterprise SaaS SEO should focus on the long game as well as the short game. Long-term goals include ranking for keywords that are competitive and valuable. It’s also important to capitalize on low-hanging fruit search terms that give you quick wins.
You can use Google Search Console to create a filter to find the ranking position of your keywords. For example, if you have a keyword with an average position of 14, just shy of the first page where the bulk of visitors can be reached, then it would be a great search term to target.
Search Volume
This metric measures how many people are searching for a query. It’s a handy SaaS SEO tool used to gauge the value and popularity of a keyword. But just because a keyword has a high volume doesn’t always mean it’s worth targeting. Other factors do need to be considered.
Search Term Difficulty
Not every keyword is worth the effort when it comes to SEO for SaaS startups. The higher the value of difficulty, the harder it is to rank for that search term. The difficulty will help you determine if and how you want to optimize your site for a given keyword. How quickly you will be able to rank depends on your competitors’ hold on the search term and the effort you put into your site.
SERP Overview
Doing your keyword homework pays off. This is the process of scouting the terrain and scoping out the competition. By looking at the SERP (search engine results pages) for a given keyword, you can see how likely it is to outrank the competition.
If your competitors are well-established, you may have a harder time making it to the top of the list. Still, there is always room for improvement and opportunity to beat higher authority competition.
Creative, Valuable and Engaging Content
All people want is a little understanding. Marvin Gaye put it best when he said, “Understand me, sugar.” Connecting emotionally with your audience isn’t always easy, but it is a sure-fire way to win people over and get your message across.
Content bridges the gap between the user and what you provide as a solution. If you affect people in a meaningful way, they are much more likely to choose you over a competitor that doesn’t. A well-defined SEO strategy for SaaS can help you consistently create a memorable experience that aligns with your audience’s values.
Crafting Creative Content
While blogs can be the boon of your SaaS creative content, it’s important to provide a delicious, well-balanced diet of media for your audience to consume. People learn in different ways. Plus, variety and novelty create dopamine.
We all love dopamine.
Webinars, videos, and white papers will add value to your brand and convert more strangers into email subscribers and, eventually, qualified leads. You can also repurpose different kinds of content into blog posts with a call-to-action (CTA) to drive engagement, increase rankings, and generate leads.
Content Relevancy
Google can detect how valuable an article, image, or video is based on user engagement. Google rewards sites that satisfy a user’s search query because it makes their search engine more valuable. Those rewards come in the form of higher rankings. First-hand user engagement metrics and content relevancy are the most accurate ways to measure value.
Content Organization
A serious cognitive overload from a poorly designed site can leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. As a rule, well-organized websites are more pleasurable to browse. In contrast, disorganized websites can send people running for the hills.
Have you ever been to a flea market that had no rhyme or reason to it? People sell all kinds of random junk, making it impossible to find anything specific no matter how hard you try. It’s kind of like that. One of Google’s criteria is user experience, which means that organization is a key part of search engine rankings.
Link Building
Link building is perhaps the most misunderstood and difficult part of SaaS SEO service to get right. It should be considered only after you have built a site full of valuable, relevant content that satisfies your target audience’s search queries.
Although user engagement is currently the most important factor for rankings, link building is next in line. The best SaaS marketing SEO tactic to get links for your website is to provide high-quality, relevant content. Typically, the more effort you put into your B2B Saas SEO content, the easier it is to get links from people who trust your site.
It’s important to align your business with legitimate websites when you are building backlinks. We choose our publishers very carefully when we ask them to provide our content as a resource. It’s fairly easy to get publishers to use your brand as an authoritative resource if you have valuable, high-quality content.
Track Your SEO Results
The most objective measurements of success and failure of a digital marketing agency come down to equity.
In life, it could be your stock portfolio, how much food you have in the fridge, or how many miles you can run. With SEO, it’s all about the performance metrics. Useful stats for SEO for SaaS startups include rankings, organic traffic, and website conversions.
Page Rankings
This shows you how well your site performs for specific search terms. It’s important to know where you stand to plan your SEO strategy for SaaS.
Organic Traffic
In SEO for SaaS companies, organic traffic takes the most work, but it typically converts better than any other channel, including paid search, paid social, organic social, and referral traffic.
Monthly reports help you monitor your progress. Once your rankings climb toward the first 10 spots of the SERPs, you will notice an increase in organic traffic. Low-hanging fruit keywords will be responsible for initial gains before you begin to rank for more competitive search terms.
Website Conversion
Organic traffic shows you how many people visited your site, but the conversion rate will indicate how many people are interested in your products. It doesn’t always mean sales; it could also mean any engagement that leads to building your audience or contributes to the success of your brand.
Driving undecided prospects through a funnel of engaging content is a time-tested way of increasing conversions and encouraging engagement. Different levels of the funnel can be seen as different stages of the buyer’s journey.
People who’ve just landed on your site may still be on the fence whether they want to buy your product or not. Others may be ready to buy right away. You can create different types of content that address each type of customer’s needs with a sales funnel.
Win Google with the Best SaaS SEO Strategies
Goals can be abstract, and even the best-laid plans of mice and men go awry, making it difficult to predict the future. That’s why we start with simple, proven SEO strategies for SaaS to optimize your content.
Most of the decisions we make at the beginning are all standard choices based on best practices for B2B SaaS SEO, but once you begin to grow, the real game begins. It becomes more and more important to walk the fine line between consistency and flexibility.
Are you ready to partner with an SEO agency for SaaS? Talk to one of our SaaS marketing SEO experts to see how you can unleash your brand’s true potential and grow your business.
