Beat the Competition with the best SaaS SEO Strategy
Aaron Levenstadt CEO & Founder
August 16, 2022 | 5 Min Read
Article updated on December 21, 2022
The Software as a Service (SaaS) industry is projected to grow to a global value of$720 billion by 2026 which makes it one of the fastest growing industries in tech today — which is probably leaving you wondering how to improve SaaS SEO so you can take advantage of this growth market.
SaaS companies provide businesses subscription access to software that they keep resident on their own servers. Companies like Adobe, which historically shipped their software, are now offering SaaS. In fact, Adobe, having leveraged its customer base and reputation, has become the top player in the industry followed by Salesforce, the leader in customer relationship management SaaS.
But dozens of players in each sector are vying for explosive growth over the next four years. As a SaaS provider, you’ll need the best SaaS SEO strategy to help build your business as quickly as possible and grab your market share in a deeply competitive marketplace.
Generate more leads with SEO for B2B SaaS
SaaS products are sold almost exclusively online, meaning that search engine results pages (SERPs) are a critical part of a SaaS marketing SEO strategy. SaaS businesses also face a very slow sales cycle, partially because businesses need to try out the software to understand if it’ll work for them. These cycles vary depending on the annual contract value (ACV). On the low end, a sales cycle can be about 40 days all the way up to 169 days for software investments of over$150 thousand.SaaS SEO convinces the customer
Another significant factor in the slow sales cycle is client businesses have so many choices. After the initial contact, prospects may continue to research or try out a couple of other competitors before they settle on yours. Transferring critical business processes online may make clients nervous, which could be a factor in customers ‘shopping around.’ If we put ourselves in our customer’s shoes, they generally want 1) to trust their service provider, 2) to completely understand how the services work, and 3) to feel like they are choosing the best provider for their needs. B2B SaaS SEO strategies can help get customer to a yes. High-quality content can answer all questions about the service. Increased online visibility will create a trust bond, and ranking at the top of a search engine result page will attract more customers with whom you can build a strong relationship. These techniques will go a long way to convincing your prospective customer that your service is their best choice.SEO for SaaS offers a lower cost per acquisition
B2B SaaS SEO, though not cheap, is less expensive compared to other methods like paid social advertising, PPC advertising, cold calling, and other digital marketing outreach strategies. The initial investment for SaaS SEO will be significant. Your company will have to rework its website, create content, build backlinks, and review and tweak SEO, monitoring and adjusting as necessary based on SEO results. After the initial costs, however, cost per acquisition will drop steadily to a comparatively low amount. Other costs, like PPC advertising, will continue to rise, especially in an extremely competitive market. Traffic for organic clicks costs nothing, but SaaS companies are reporting as much as$100 per click for competitive keywords, and these rates will only continue to climb.SaaS SEO creates synergy with other channels
Using SEO in combination with PPC ads results in higher clicks in both. Ranking organically on SERPs and targeting PPC with the same keywords means that prospects will see your company multiple times on SERP displays. The result is more clicks. SEO is a key element of a multi-channel digital marketing campaign, resulting in more leads for your SaaS business.How to create a basic SaaS SEO strategy
1. Start with the client
The closer you get to understanding your client, the closer you get to knowing how to reach and connect with them. Ask yourself what your client wants and needs so you can clearly identify their pain and pleasure points — allowing you to understand how to connect with this audience. This process is called creating the persona SaaS or buyer persona for SaaS.2. Learn how the competition is doing
SaaS competitor analysis offers major insights into your market. What is the competition doing in your niche in their marketing and advertising efforts? What is working for them and what is not? What have they missed? These may become your best opportunities.3. Perform keyword research
Based on your market analysis, execute a SaaS keyword research project to understand how people find services like yours. You’ll learn what keywords are in use, how many times these words are searched, and how much those keywords are in competition within PPC advertising.4. B2B SaaS Competitor Analysis
How can you convince traffic to switch directions towards your business and away from others? Competitors could be leveraging lead-converting strategies unbeknownst to others, due to a lack of B2B SaaS Competitor Analysis. The competitive analysis draws data from other businesses to outline strategies, marketing efforts, products, and main competitors. This strategy presents weaknesses that can be built on, strengths that can be mimicked, and mistakes that can be avoided. Conducting a competitive analysis outlines the unique value proposition of another product so that yours can be improved to stand alone. This analysis also tracks customer reviews of competitor products so that your product can be improved based on what another is lacking. Ultimately, a competitive analysis can lead to more satisfied customers who are more likely to purchase or upsell because your business stands apart from others and offers top-tier services.5. Build the content plan
During keyword analysis, you will identify keywords that you feel strategically are your best bet for attracting the most potential customers. Armed with this knowledge, your company can build a focused and effective content marketing plan for SaaS around these discovered words and phrases.6. Audit the website
Run a technical audit on your website, identify, and prioritize errors. Create a project plan to execute your SaaS SEO to ensure that Google and other search engines assess your site favorably and rank it well.7. Review page performance
Use Google Search Console to assess your website pages. In general, click-through rates (CTR) are key. The average CTR for SaaS is healthy — at a median rate of 10.1 percent (reflecting the growing public interest in the services) — but needs to be because on-page conversions can be low, suggesting potential clients are shopping and researching. If your CTR is low, build a plan for tweaking your value proposition to attract visitors to the site.8. Let the link-building begin
After two months of tweaking the site and building content, start link-building. Once the site is well optimized, you’ll find SaaS link building much easier because the site’s purpose will be clear, and the content will be strong.How does a B2B SaaS SEO agency help?
A B2B SaaS SEO service will help most by saving time on analysis and knowledge gathering and saving money on internal hiring. But an SEO agency will always be on top of the best way to implement SEO for SaaS (including the latest Google updates and SEO trends), and their SEO expertise will generate more leads than you would on your own. They’ll have stronger methods for keeping track of progress and insight into growth opportunities. As a side bonus, an SEO agency will have a team that can help with website design and social media skills. If you’re looking to maximize the impact of your SaaS SEO strategy and grow your business, contact us today.
Basic SEO Strategy for SaaS Product FAQ
How to improve SEO for SaaS companies?
- Know your target market and use keywords that they would be searching for to solve their problems.
- Keep up-to-date with competitors. Learn from their successes and address any blind spots.
- Analyze keywords and use the ones with high search volume, lower difficulty, and longer phrases.
- Embed SEO strategies on every landing page (metadata, meta descriptions, image alt tags, and HTML coding).
How important is SEO in SaaS business?
SEO for SaaS businesses can increase organic traffic. The first result on a search engine gets 31.7% of all clicks, so the higher the SERP rank, the more traffic a link gets. Organic searches influenced by SEO are also highly preferred over paid searches by 80% of decision-makers. Enhancing SEO strategies for SaaS businesses has a huge impact on raising website traffic and leading to sales.Categories:
Aaron Levenstadt
CEO & Founder
Aaron Levenstadt completed his degree in Statistical & Data Science at Stanford University. That focus has given him an unparalleled data-driven approach to search engine digital marketing. Prior to founding Pedestal Search, Aaron worked at Google at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View California. At Google he worked on the Organic Search, Paid Search and Google Analytics products, which equipped him with extensive knowledge of the mechanisms driving Google’s algorithm and other internet search engines.