Helpful summary
Overview: We provide insights on optimizing SEO for SaaS companies, focusing on targeting keywords that convert, boosting website traffic, and ultimately increasing revenue.
Why you can trust us: We’re an SEO agency specializing in SaaS, marketplaces, and other online startups. We showcase our proven expertise through successful case studies such as Cleanvoice, a SaaS podcasting tool. We strategically targeted trending topics in AI, resulting in a significant improvement in their online presence and a remarkable 300% increase in their monthly recurring revenue (MRR).
Why this is important: Effective SEO for SaaS is important for attracting high-intent users, improving search engine rankings, and scaling revenue growth.
Action points: We recommend identifying and targeting high-converting keywords, optimizing website content for these keywords, and continuously monitoring and adapting SEO strategies.
Further research: To complement this learning, explore more of our case studies and insights on advanced SEO techniques tailored for SaaS platforms.
Need help in SEO for SaaS?
SEO for SaaS is somewhat unique compared to other businesses, but it can potentially allow SaaS businesses to scale their revenue growth and acquisition strategy significantly. In fact, several highly successful SaaS companies owe their growth in large part to SEO.
As content marketing specialists at Embarque, we’ve put together this guide to explain what makes SEO for SaaS different and give actionable insight into the key SEO framework for SaaS:
- How is SEO for SaaS different from other businesses
- How to strategize SEO content for SaaS
- How to do SEO keyword research for SaaS & the importance of search intent
- Creating SEO landing pages for SaaS
- Link building for SaaS
- SEO ranking factors for SaaS
Why listen to us?
SEO has the power to transform SaaS businesses—a truth we've experienced firsthand at Embarque. As an SEO agency, we specialize in catering to online businesses like SaaS, understanding their unique needs in organic search, and creating content that resonates globally. Our expertise has led to significant success stories, such as Cleanvoice achieving a 300% increase in MRR. Additionally, our collaboration with Upscribe, a subscription management app, resulted in a 4x increase in organic traffic in just 5 months!
Embrace the potential of SEO for SaaS with Embarque, and let's achieve your business growth together.
What is SEO for SaaS?
Search engine optimization (SEO) for software as a service (SaaS) is a tailored marketing discipline focused on enhancing the online discoverability of a SaaS company's platform or products. The primary goal of SEO for SaaS is to increase organic (non-paid) traffic from search engines, boosting the number of potential customer touchpoints, which can lead to higher conversion rates and sustained business growth.
Being digital and often catering to niche markets or solving specific problems, SaaS products require a nuanced SEO strategy that addresses the complexities of marketing software delivered over the internet. Here's a more in-depth look at some of the components and strategies involved in SEO for SaaS:
- Keyword research and optimization: Discover and incorporate high-value keywords that match your SaaS offerings with the search intent of your target audience.
- Content marketing: Produce and optimize various types of content to engage potential customers and position your SaaS as a solution to their needs.
- Technical optimization: Ensure your SaaS website is fast, secure, and accessible to search engines for better indexing and ranking.
- On-page and off-page SEO: Optimize web pages and content with strategic keyword usage and HTML enhancements to improve visibility and search relevance.
- User experience (UX) and conversion optimization: Enhance the user journey on your site to support seamless navigation and conversion actions like free trials or demos.
- Backlink profile development: Acquire high-quality backlinks to establish your SaaS site's authority and improve search rankings.
- Analytics and measurement: Monitor SEO performance through analytics to refine strategies and improve customer acquisition.
SEO for SaaS is about crafting a digital presence that speaks directly to potential customers' needs and interests. When executed effectively, SEO for SaaS improves search engine rankings and builds trust with prospective clients, nurturing them through the sales funnel to become long-term users of the software.
Look at our work with Flick, an Instagram hashtag management and analytics tool. Our SEO strategy for our SaaS client involved comprehensive keyword research to find high-volume, low-competition keywords relevant to Flick’s target audience and create an optimization workflow. This workflow consisted of:
- Creating a content calendar covering various core topics related to Instagram growth.
- Producing high-quality SEO articles, focusing on primary and semantically related keywords.
- Implementing strategic internal linking to enhance site architecture and guide users to crucial pages.
- Updating existing content to push them to the first page quickly.
- Building high-quality backlinks, focusing on securing ten 30+ DR backlinks each month.
All our efforts helped Flick reach 9.6 million annual search visits in 6 months and achieve a domain rating of 60+. This case study shows that a tailored content marketing strategy for SaaS businesses is crucial to growing organic traffic and driving more revenue.
How is SEO for SaaS different to other businesses?
SaaS companies have a unique opportunity to compete in organic search results with SEO. Because the SaaS business model is based on non-tangible products that can be modified and pivoted for different industries and uses, they can target multiple audiences and have consistent opportunities for new content.
Due to the nature of their offerings, SaaS companies tend to have a more global reach than traditional businesses that may be constrained by geography in terms of getting customers. By creating helpful content around highly lucrative keywords, they can create a brand people want to follow and convert search traffic into paying customers.
SaaS in-house dev teams can handle the technical side of SEO that other businesses might struggle with. Plus, with small website sizes compared to e-commerce, marketplaces, and other sites, it’s easy for these companies to create an SEO-friendly structure and robust content that Google can crawl quickly, allowing the site to rank faster.
At Embarque, we use SEO tools to perform keyword research for our clients, including Ahrefs (keyword research and linkbuiding), Frase (semantic optimization), Keywords Everywhere (keyword and trends research), SEO Scout integrated with Google Search Console data (rank tracking), and Google analytics (Website traffic).
Unless you have time and resources to fully invest in SEO, we wouldn’t recommend investing in expensive SEO tools such as Ahrefs that you’re just going to be using once or twice. SEO for SaaS can involve a lot of moving parts, so it might make sense to invest in a freelancer or an agency to execute on your SaaS SEO strategy.
SEO content strategy for SaaS
To boost traffic and conversions to your site, you need a robust content strategy:
- Audit your website for content gaps around your keywords, your SaaS’s features and uses, and your users’ search intents.
- Create varied content types: Informational guides, lists, feature and product articles, interviews, comparison pages, etc. Remember that Google likes fresh content, so post regularly. Content creation is a long-term investment with ROI increasing over time, so outsourcing it to a professional agency like Embarque will never be in vain.
- Leverage your old content: By re-writing and re-optimizing your previously published blogs and pages, your old content may get the chance to rank on the first page for target queries. At Embarque, this is a key part of our content strategy and has helped our clients rank on the first page of the search results for relevant queries.
- Increase your word count, whilst keeping quality high: There’s more room to pack in essential information to answer your users’ search queries in longer posts. When Google recognizes your content as in-depth and authoritative, you rank higher.
- Share your content on social media, newsletter, and relevant groups! The more traffic, the better, and it can lead to new backlinks.
Keyword research for SaaS
With so many potential opportunities for SaaS companies to rank in the search results, user search intent is key to your SEO keyword research, as well as your content and landing page creation.
Why is search intent so important?
Google’s algorithms recognize the intent behind what users are searching for and its SERPs will only display what those searchers want to see. Therefore, you need your content to be as relevant as possible to the search query in order for it to rank.
Different types of search intent
We recommend focusing on who your potential customers are and what they’re looking for, rather than what you can rank for. Create content that answers all relevant queries for different search intents and map it to your marketing funnel:
- Informational searches: For example, “what is SEO” or “how to do SEO for SaaS”. Incorporate guides and informational blog posts into your content strategy that target short and long-tail keywords to prove your authority to Google, and convert readers into email subscribers (and eventually paying customers).
- Navigational searches: When users know exactly what they’re searching for and Google it rather than typing in a full URL: e.g. “Embarque content marketing pricing”.
- Transactional searches: When a user is already ready to buy, they don’t need guides or information, they want to be able to click through to a page where they can purchase what they want: “buy SEO blog content for SaaS”. Make sure your product and landing pages are optimized for branded and purchase-intent keywords.
- Investigational searches: Combining informational and transactional searches, this is when a user knows they want to buy a product but hasn’t yet decided who from. Include comparison articles in your content strategy to demonstrate to searchers that your product is best, targeting keyword modifiers like “vs”, “review”, “alternative”, and “comparison”, for example, “Copify Review & Alternative”.
Because of the flexibility of SaaS products, it’s also key to optimize your content for multiple target users. Take our case study of online mentoring platform MentorCruise, for example. Embarque overhauled its SEO strategy, ensuring its content targeted all its key customer segments. As a result, its MRR increased by 107%.
Target keywords that convert
Your keyword strategy should focus on targeting different types of keywords that are relevant to your niche. This will allow you to take note of which keyword types convert better than others. From our experience with SaaS clients, here are the most important types of keywords for SaaS businesses.
- Long-tail and question keywords for informational searches: Low-competition terms that answer specific search queries from your different target user segments will help you rank higher
- Competitor comparison keywords for investigational searches.
- Product, feature, and service keywords for transactional and navigational searches: Target high-purchase intent terms to convert searchers who are ready to buy
- Relevant high-volume terms that generate traffic even if you rank on page 2.
As an example of effective keyword research in action, Embarque got ScrumGenius to rank in the featured snippet. They reached position 0 on Google for a +17k traffic keyword with no backlinks.
SEO landing pages for SaaS
With so many different target uses and users, creating multiple optimized landing pages is crucial for SaaS companies. Here are some best practices:
- Understand, do keyword research for, and target your users’ different search intents with different landing pages
- Create a scalable landing page structure: make a template so you can easily replicate landing pages for different search intents
- Keep adapting and creating new landing pages in line with trends, new demand, new features, etc.
One SaaS company that has successfully capitalized on its landing page strategy is Canva. They have different landing pages for different use cases and are quick to leverage new trends. For example, when remote work became the norm for many around the world during the pandemic and Zoom use rose, Canva was straight in with a targeted landing page which now ranks #1 on Google for “create Zoom backgrounds”.
Link building for SaaS
Last but by no means least, SEO link building is essential to demonstrate your site’s authority to Google and increase the chances of it ranking. This includes internal and external links:
- Anchor text: using unique, natural, and relevant anchor texts for each link is essential to show Google the relevance between pages. Your SEO keyword research will help you find long-tail terms to diversify your anchor texts and pass Google’s algorithms.
- Internal linking structure: to allow Google to crawl and index your site, it should have a clear linking structure. Ensure you have a parent-child relationship between relevant landing pages and link to related content within your blog posts.
In doing so, you also facilitate a great UX, show Google your expertise and authority by demonstrating contextual links, and pass authority between pages. All of which help you rank higher.
- Backlinks: one of the most important ranking factors for Google is having a high number of high-quality, relevant backlinks to your domain from other websites. Some successful SaaS companies employ people specifically to do SEO link outreach, but we know not every startup has this luxury!
Embarque’s white-hat backlink generation service can save you the hassle of link outreach. We find appropriate backlinks for your SaaS site, reach out to bloggers, and implement link swaps, link insertion, and ABC linking to boost your ranking on the search engines.
In fact, we achieved a remarkable 60x increase in organic traffic for our Technical SaaS client within a year by adhering strictly to white hat link-building strategies. Our approach also centers on identifying and collaborating with high-performing technical link-building partners. These partners were carefully selected based on stringent criteria, including a Domain Rating (DR) of over 30 and a monthly organic visitor count exceeding 1,000 from the US and UK, ensuring the effectiveness and relevance of the links.
Why SEO is Important for SaaS businesses?
SEO is critical for SaaS businesses for several reasons. Here, we outline the benefits and advantages of a solid SEO strategy:
Cost-effective customer acquisition
SEO is one of the most cost-effective marketing strategies because it targets users actively looking for your product or service online. Unlike paid advertising, SEO provides long-term organic growth, reducing the cost per acquisition over time.
For example, we assisted Cleanvoice, a SaaS platform that leverages artificial intelligence to eliminate filler words from audio recordings, in attaining more than 30,000+ in SEO monthly traffic, surpassing 1 million impressions, and achieving an average click-through rate (CTR) of 7.9%. These impressive metrics significantly increased their customer base and increased revenue.
Increase market visibility and brand awareness
By ranking highly in SERPs, SaaS companies can significantly increase their visibility in the market. This leads to greater brand recognition and can establish your SaaS as a leader in its niche.
This occurred during our work with SignHouse, a SaaS provider specializing in user-friendly eSignature software.
Implementing our tailored SEO content strategy, which prioritizes high-quality content aligned with their target audience, SignHouse experienced a remarkable x60 increase in organic traffic in just 6 months, soaring from 0 to 100 monthly visitors to nearly 66,000 organic visitors per month.
Targets high-intent users
SEO allows you to target users based on their search intent. Users who find your SaaS offering through a targeted search are more likely to be in the consideration or decision stage of the buying process, leading to higher conversion rates.
For example, we increased Upscribe’s organic traffic by 4x in just 5 months by identifying appropriate topics and leveraging high-performing keywords to write SEO-optimized content to attract high-intent users from their target audience. To further enhance performance, we also strategically incorporated high-quality, topically relevant internal and external links to achieve rapid ranking improvements.
Enhances user experience
SEO isn't just about keywords and links–it's also about providing a great user experience. Google values websites that are user-friendly, fast-loading, and mobile-responsive, which all contribute to keeping visitors on your site longer and encouraging them to convert.
Builds credibility and trust
Users often consider websites that appear on the first page of Google more trustworthy. A strong SEO strategy can help your SaaS build credibility, essential for attracting and retaining customers.
We did this for Stagetimer, wherein we grew their organic traffic by 3x from scratch in just a year. We accomplish this through systems-based SEO keyword research and SEO content that targets landing page (LP) queries, blog post queries, and programmatic SEO queries. The massive growth in organic traffic enhanced their credibility and authority and significantly contributed to increased revenue as a surge of new users engaged with their website and subscribed to the service.
Long-term growth
Unlike paid campaigns that stop generating traffic when you stop paying, SEO efforts have a lasting impact. Ranking high in search results can provide sustained traffic growth, helping to scale your SaaS business over time.
Important ranking factors & what they mean for SaaS SEO strategy
User engagement
How it’s measured: Clicks, interactions, time on page, pages per visit, pages viewed, and bounce rate.
Best practice: Create high-quality content that answers users’ questions so they stay on your site longer.
Content
How it’s measured: Pages and titles optimized for keywords, length of content, linking within content, use of other relevant keywords to demonstrate authority to Google.
Best practice: Optimize your landing pages for different user search intents, increase content word counts, practice link building, and target secondary keywords.
Link metrics
Best practice: Backlinks are still one of the most important ranking factors on Google and are used to measure domain authority. You need a high number and quality of backlinks and an effective internal linking structure to rank.
Technical SEO
Best practice: Don’t overlook technical SEO: fix structural issues on your site affecting page loading speeds, HTML errors, and non-optimization for mobile impact ranking and UI.
After you’ve resolved any technical SEO issues on your site to ensure efficient web design, work on keyword research, engaging content, targeted landing pages, link building, and data analytics to produce an optimized web presence for your SaaS.
Take your SaaS SEO to the next level with Embarque
SEO for SaaS is a long-term game. Even after auditing and optimizing your site, you should be analyzing your ranking and traffic data and continuously adding content and landing pages in response to new features, trends, and search intents.
We know that SaaS SEO strategy can seem overwhelming, especially if you don’t have an in-house content marketing team to handle it. That’s where Embarque comes in. We use our SEO expertise to craft a content strategy that’s tailored to your SaaS and proven to boost search traffic and increase revenue.
Intrigued? Check out our content marketing services or email julian@embarque.io to learn more about scaling your content and taking your SaaS SEO to the next level.