75% of the users never go past the first page in search engines; so that brings you to make sure your SaaS product is on the first page in SERPs. To do so, search engine optimization (SEO) is what we do. 

What’s SEO?

SEO is the art of getting your website to show up prominently in search results when users look for relevant keywords. 

In other words, it’s a process that helps you get more visitors from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo by using specific techniques and best practices that drive traffic to your website. 

In this blog post, we will cover everything you need to know about SaaS SEO so that your burgeoning venture has a fighting chance against entrenched competitors. 

We have crafted the following 6-step path for you to walk your SaaS tool straight to the first page in search engines: 

  • Step 1: build a solid foundation for your SaaS with a great product
  • Step 2: define your target audience and find their pain points
  • Step 3: find the right keywords to focus on
  • Step 4: optimize your site’s user experience and functionality
  • Step 5: do stellar content marketing 
  • Step 6: don’t forget about off-site SEO

Before we explain what you’ve to do at each step, let’s see what does a successful SaaS campaign look like: 

What does a successful SaaS campaign look like? 

Well, for one, its owners will have generated a sizable amount of revenue from selling their SaaS product. But that’s only half the story. Growing SaaS is a constant balancing act between attracting new users and retaining existing ones.

For any SaaS to be successful, the number of people who know about it has to be greater than the number of people who use it. That’s where marketing comes in. 

While there are many marketing channels you can use to attract new customers, there are only a few that are still genuinely effective. Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of these channels. 

SaaS SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content to entice users to click on your organic listing in search engine results pages. 

Essentially, SEO helps you reach more people by getting your website to show up in search engine results even before they’ve typed in a query, which essentially means that you’re targeting people who are actively looking for what you have to offer.

Is recruiting SaaS B2B SEO agency your go-to solution?

If you’re a fledgling SaaS startup, we suggest you hire a SaaS B2B SEO agency because they have years of experience doing SEO for businesses like yours and have expertise perfectly tailored to your SEO needs. 

Or, if you’re large enough to hire your own team of SaaS SEO specialists, then go for it. However, there are a few things you must consider while doing so: 

  • Hiring is costly and takes time
  • You may end up hiring a person that isn’t a right fit for your company 
  • You need to set up a great employee onboarding process to improve your new hires’ retention
  • You must provide incentives and benefits to keep your new hires motivated 
  • You may need to further train and tailor them 

To hire your own team, create a career page. Make it comprehensive so that those looking for work can find out what you need on your career page. It must also be well-designed and easily understandable, so that job seekers don’t move away without even giving it a full read.

Alternatively, post on job posting sites such as LinkedIn and Indeed, or advertise in e-papers. 

We just gave you an idea of available options you have, now it is your job to calculate which option yields higher utility for you. Nonetheless, an agency with good reviews and experience would be a safe option to go with. 

A 6-step SaaS SEO Guide to Getting Traction on Google

  1. Build a solid foundation for your SaaS with a great product

If a house is built on a sandy foundation, it’s not going to be very sturdy or reliable. You can have the most beautiful and ornate facade in the world, but if the core structure is flawed, that house is not going to stand the test of time. 

The same principle applies to your SaaS. If you don’t have a product that solves a real problem for your users, you don’t have a business. Period. 

Before you start trying to juice up your SEO, you’ve got to make sure that you have a product that is catering to users’ pain points, is already generating revenue, and has been proven to do what it says on the tin. 

If you don’t, you’re wasting your time trying to go after new clients. You can’t build a thriving business on hype alone.

Define your target audience and find their pain points

If you don’t know who your target audience is, how are you going to sell to them? 

Every business has to make strategic decisions about whom they want to target. Your SaaS is no exception. 

Before you start optimizing your website for search engines and trying to rank for particular keywords, you need to figure out what you’re going to optimize for. That’s where your target audience comes into play. 

Ideally, you want to target an audience that is actively looking for solutions to a problem that your product solves. 

To find your ideal customer, you have to do a little research. Try running some surveys. Or, you can also use tools like Facebook Audience Insights (Meta for business) to find out who your audience is and what they care about by looking at the demographics of your current fans.

Find the right keywords to focus on

Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into search engines when they’re looking for information on a particular topic. 

SEO is essentially a game of trying to outrank your competitors for the best keywords that drive traffic to your website. 

A good place to start is by looking at your top-level category and sub-categories. You can also use keyword research tools to find out which terms people are actually typing into search engines and how many people are searching for those terms. 

For example, let’s say that you’re running a marketing automation SaaS and your primary category is “Marketing.” The core sub-category is “Marketing Automation.”

So, try to search for these terms using keyword research tools. These tools will provide you details like how many times these keywords were searched for, what is competitiveness level to rank your webpage on these keywords, and much more. 

Optimize your site’s user experience and functionality

While you want your SaaS to rank in search engines, you also want to make sure that it’s a pleasant user experience for people visiting your site. 

You’ve probably clicked on a website or two in your life only to get super annoyed because what you found was either poorly designed or so poorly written that you didn’t want to stay on the site. 

Well, you don’t want to be that website. There are a lot of different elements that go into creating a great user experience, including: 

Text: you want your website copy to be well-written, easy to understand, and lead readers to the conclusion that using your product is their best option.

Images: you can’t forget about images. They add another dimension to your website and are especially important in B2B where you want to show that your product is trustworthy and meets all necessary certifications. 

Structure: A poor navigation structure can drive away readers faster than a toddler who’s just spotted a cat. Your website needs to be easy to navigate so people can find what they’re looking for and read it without getting frustrated. 

Mobile-friendliness: With more and more people browsing the web on their mobile devices, it’s important to make sure that your website is responsive and easy to read on all devices.

Do stellar content marketing 

Content marketing is the strategic creation and distribution of relevant and valuable content to attract and retain an audience. 

It’s one of the best ways to get your name out there and establish your authority in your industry. More importantly, it’s crucial if you want to rank well in search engine results.

To have your content ranked high, you must make sure your content is: 

  • Easy to read and understand 
  • Well-organized into topics or headings and subheadings 
  • Unique and original
  • Crafted in a way that fosters trust and authority 
  • Written to the point and around the subject
  • Not for promotional purpose solely 

Don’t forget about off-site SEO

While you’re focusing on your site’s content and functionality, you also want to make sure that you’re doing things like building links. 

Links are a crucial part of SEO. They’re basically an invitation to other sites to link to yours. More links make your website more trustworthy and can help you rank higher in search results. 

The best way to get other sites to link to you is to create content that’s valuable to your readers and has some type of call-to-action. 

Wrapping up

So are you ready to take your SaaS product to the first page of search engines? Now you have a path to follow. It will surely take your SaaS SEO game to the next level if you’re doing it the way we’ve explained in this article. 

Simply put, you’ve to: 

  • Have a great product in the first place. 
  • Then, define your target audience and find their pain points
  • Find the right keywords to focus on
  • Optimize your site’s user experience and functionality
  • Do stellar content marketing 
  • Do off-site SEO

Once you’ve saved all of these steps, you’re all set to harvest the fruit of your hard work—your SaaS product at the top of the SERPs. 

Also Read: 5 Top Tips To Improve Your SEO Rankings