SEO for SaaS: A No BS Guide

SEO for SaaS is somewhat unique compared to other businesses, but it can potentially allow SaaS businesses to significantly scale their revenue growth and acquisition strategy. In fact, several highly successful SaaS companies owe their growth in large part to SEO.

seo for saas

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SEO for SaaS is somewhat unique compared to other businesses, but it can potentially allow SaaS businesses to significantly scale their revenue growth and acquisition strategy. 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 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 SEO strategy.

SEO Content Strategy For SaaS

To boost traffic and conversions to your site, you need a robust content strategy:

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

Focus 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:

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 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.

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:

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:

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.

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.

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.

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