The Ultimate Guide to SaaS Keyword Research

If you are a Software as a Service (SaaS) business owner or a digital marketing team member in a SaaS company trying to improve a website’s organic performance, we have a guide for you. In these positions, the basics of SEO and best strategies are understood. The missing link is how to conduct successful SaaS keyword research so the keywords used outperform competitors and draw in new leads.

What is keyword analysis for SaaS?

SaaS keyword research is the backbone of all SEO efforts. Without researching relevant keywords, online marketing is unfocussed and it’s guesswork when it comes to the needs of customers.

SaaS keyword research can:

• Uncover the needs and wants of customers

• Give SEO strategies direction

• Highlight new content topics to consider

• Track the ROI of SEO strategies

How does keyword research work to find the best keywords?

Successful keyword research isn’t as simple as choosing keywords to embed in content. Keywords have different factors that generate lead intrigue and aid in ranking content highly on SERPs.

There are many SaaS keyword research tools to choose from like:

• Keywordtool.io

• Ahrefs

• SEMRush

• Ubersuggest

• Moz

• Google Ads

If a keyword is searched in one of these SaaS keyword analysis tools, they’ll outline clicks, difficulty, search volume, search queries, and suggestions to pinpoint relevant keywords.

Clicks

This is the search percentage of this keyword that result in a lead clicking the link. The higher the click through rate (CTR) the better the chances that a lead will follow the link to the associated landing page.

Difficulty

Keyword analysis for SaaS ranks a keywords difficulty. Difficulty is based off of how many times that keyword has been used in online content. Keyword difficulty varies greatly.

Some can have a difficulty of 10 which means while there is not much competition, there also might not be that much of a niche for it. A keyword with a difficulty of 85 is extremely competitive, and while there might be many more searches for this keyword, unless content is already well-established, it will be hard to compete.

It’s best for each individual business to decide how much they want to invest in keywords and find a happy medium in terms of difficulty so that there isn’t too much competition, but at the same time there’s enough searches.

Search volume

Search volume is the amount of people searching for a keyword and how often. Low search volume makes keyword performance more difficult because fewer people are searching for those terms. Small adjustments could be made to improve the keyword if it’s necessary to a business.

A high search volume means consumers have a high need for something and there’s a large pool of interested people to present a service to. Use keywords with a high search volume.

Search queries

Search queries are the actual language people are using to search keywords. If the target audience is B2B marketers, they might be searching for more advanced SEO content for SaaS, for example. SaaS keyword research tools can outline small tweaks to a keyword to highlight how people are searching. A quick and simple Google search of the intended keyword can also show what alterations customers are using.

Suggestions

Similarly to search queries, SaaS keyword analysis can also offer suggestions based on the chosen keyword. For example, analyzing the keyword “lead generation” might suggest “B2B lead generation”, “lead generation best practices”, or “B2B SEO lead generation”. Normally, specified keywords perform better than general keywords. Would you search for “marketing” or “content marketing tips”?

6 steps to find relevant keywords for SaaS businesses

Here are six tips to follow to gather a list of powerful keywords for any industry.

1. Brainstorm across departments

In a business there are generally different teams working on different aspects of the company. If there are sales, marketing, and customer service teams, all of these groups should work together to create a master list of keywords to be whittled down.

Each team witnesses a different part of the customer experience and thus knows what different stages of the pipeline generate in terms of queries. These teams should pool together common questions and terms that they hear to cover any keywords that their target audience might search.

If the list is very long, prioritize the most important keywords for that business/industry to take into the next step.

2. Research competitors

Of the chosen keywords, use a SaaS keyword analysis tool to compare to competitor keywords. If a competitor has a solid foundation and high ranking with a keyword, use it to bring that same traffic over to your website. Find out what makes a competitor successful and model that behaviour to gain a competitive advantage. If there’s anything a competitor is lacking, take advantage of that blindspot.

3. Use a SaaS keyword analysis tool

Avoid keywords with high difficulty scores, focus on long-tail keywords (especially to profit from voice searches), and ignore keywords that have fewer than ten searches per month.

If there are recommended keywords or keywords found along the way with better results that still correlate with the list, add them to it.

4. Assign intent to each keyword

Keywords can be used in different campaigns depending on the goal. Keywords can be sorted into different buckets: informational, navigational, commercial, and transactional. Organizing keywords into these categories makes it easier to choose a focus keyword for various campaigns.

5. Prioritize the keywords

Based on the SaaS keyword analysis results, rank the keywords in terms of priority considering trends, search volume, backlinks, popularity, and what stage of the sales funnel it addresses.

6. Add keywords to content

Whether it’s content that is already published or content in the works, start using these optimized keywords to profit from them.

Pedestal helps with SEO for SaaS companies so that they can get found when and where it matters and convert traffic into results. Our SaaS SEO services, PPC management solutions, and powerful digital marketing programs drive our clients further. Contact us!