SEO, or search engine optimization, is essential for any business that wishes to acquire customers through the internet. More so for SaaS companies, given that they deal with software that’s accessible online.
SEO can ensure that your website gains consistent traffic, which in turn brings in more customers, and results in more financial gain. It is a massive chain effect, and that is why it is so important to have an effective strategy in place.
SaaS SEO entails attracting customers who are interested in utilizing your company’s software or who simply want to find out more about it. The ultimate goal is to increase brand awareness, spark interest, and gain more leads.
Why Is SEO So Important For Your SaaS Company?
Having a good SEO strategy is beneficial for many different reasons, such as boosting the growth of your organic traffic and reducing your cost per acquisition. It is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing strategies. SEO is the lifeline of businesses that depend on traffic from the internet.
8 Effective SEO Strategies For SaaS Companies
So you’re aware of the importance of a good SEO Strategy, now let’s take a look at a few strategies that you can implement to help grow your SaaS business.
1. Set Your Goals
Setting goals is important in every aspect of business (and life). If you are unsure of what you are reaching for, then you will not have a clear vision and things will inevitably become complicated. This also includes setting your KPIs so that you have something to measure your improvement against.
For instance, if you’ve just launched your company, a realistic SEO goal can be to increase organic website traffic by at least 1,000 every month. So by the end of your 12th month, you should be receiving well over 10k monthly visits, which is quite decent.
2. Define Your Target Audience
Since you’ve now got goals in place, it is time to figure out who your target audience is. If you’re unsure of who your business is targeting, you won’t know how to solve their problems, or how to create content that appeals to them.
But once you know this information, you can answer their questions on your website and create more opportunities for higher traffic. Check out our guide on how to create a buyer persona.
A buyer persona is simply a fictional depiction of your target customers. Once you know who exactly they are, you’ll be able to shape your marketing strategies, tone of voice, imagery, etc. in a way that resonates with them.
3. Steal Cues From Your Competitors
This is also a very crucial part of your SEO strategy as a SaaS company. You need to do some research on your competitors and know their strategies in order to improve upon them. This goes for both your direct and indirect competitors. You can never go wrong with too much information.
Knowing what works and what doesn’t for your competitors will help you avoid costly mistakes by not having to test everything out yourself. For instance, if you notice that your competitors are investing heavily on a certain keyword, then it’s probably something worth looking into.
4. Keyword Research
Keyword research can make or break your entire SEO strategy. When you have the right keywords, you’ll be able to create content around them that actually gets you relevant traffic.
There are many tools out there that can help with your keyword research. Semrush is by far the most popular. Such tools will give you an estimation of how frequently each keyword gets searched every month.
Ideally, you should target keywords with high traffic and low competition because they are the most valuable and easiest to rank for. Think about all the potential phrases your target audience might be searching on Google while looking for your software, and then use the tools to see whether they’re worth creating content on.
5. Incorporate The Keywords Into Your Website
Once you’ve done your keyword research, the next step is to incorporate them into your website. Make sure to use the keywords on your page title, body, and meta description. That way it’s clear to Google what your page is about.
6. Comparison Articles
Another great SEO strategy is creating blog posts that compare you to your main competitors. Most people research numerous companies before deciding which one to spend their money on.
By doing the comparison articles, you will list the advantages of your company and what it can offer, and why you are the better choice compared to your competitor.
7. Content Creation
This may seem obvious, but one of the steps in creating a solid SEO plan is to ensure that the content on your website is more informative and engaging than your competitors’. As the saying goes, content is king in SEO.
8. Link Building
Backlinks are another important ranking factor in SEO. They indicate to Google and other search engines that your website contains valuable content and therefore deserves a higher ranking.
Put together a link building strategy that will help you earn the right links to your content. The safest and most common strategy is doing guest posts, however it’s not very scalable. Most SaaS companies prefer to outsource link building to agencies that specialize in it, so they don’t have to worry about it.
The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher the ranking your website will achieve, which will ultimately result in more traffic and sales.
