With so many products, tools, and software available, it’s more difficult than ever for SaaS customers to find the right product or service at the right time – especially when they are not always sure exactly how these products will solve their problems. Enter SaaS SEO; the best way to educate audiences and increase the visibility of your brand online. For SaaS companies, SEO can be the difference between digital visibility and obscurity. 

Boost brand awareness

While there are factors that make SaaS products and services unique in the search landscape, one truism remains; an effective SEO strategy can vastly increase the visibility of your company in SERPs. When ranking on the first page of search results, you will make it easier for potential clients to find your product, which in turn boosts your brand awareness and enables you to reach a wider audience. This is as true in SaaS as in any other industry. 

Targeted acquisition 

Prospective SaaS clients are often looking for products with intricate feature sets and functionalities. An effective strategy that uses content that explains the nuances of these products and why it will benefit them aligns with their search intent and is optimised for search engines (meta description, keywords, technical SEO etc), reaping rewards in terms of highly targeted traffic. SaaS SEO will finally allow you to engage with people who are actively searching for solutions – and see your product as the answer. This will increase the likelihood of converting leads into paying customers.

Cost-effective competitive advantage

Traditional advertising channels are expensive, especially if you are a startup or small business. That’s why it makes sense to build a strategy around affordable organic content marketing and SEO to promote your products and services. While paid campaigns can deliver returns immediately, you won’t be able to rely solely on them for your business to succeed in the long term. SaaS companies need to establish a strong online presence. This starts with your website, its product and service pages, and blog and news content. This content can help to keep you at the vanguard of the industry and differentiate yourself from competitors.

Build trust and authority

Clients crave reliable and trustworthy partners when purchasing SaaS products. SEO can play a crucial role in building credibility and trust in an industry. When you rank at the top of SERPs for a keyword or topic, other websites will also link to your pages as an authoritative source. Building domain authority will then make it easier to rank for new content. This snowball effect is incredibly valuable. Target audiences will see you as a go-to source for information, which will make it easier to move them from A to B in the sales cycle.

Still not convinced? Here are a couple of stats to consider: 

• 75% of people don’t navigate past the first page of search engine results when looking for products and services.
• Up to 80% also ignore paid advertising; organic results are the first port of call for the vast majority of online users.

How is SaaS SEO different?

There is a common misconception that there is an SEO “canon”; a list of sacred tactics and techniques that if implemented correctly will increase the visibility of all web pages in Google Search, regardless of the company type or industry. SaaS SEO counters that myth and highlights how different strategies are required to succeed in ultra-competitive search rankings.

SaaS is a complex service in a primarily business-driven industry. The products also have a wide range of features and functionalities, and as noted earlier, may solve problems that target audiences are not even aware of yet. SaaS SERPs are competitive, too. You will need a tailored, technical strategy that prioritises specific keywords to align with user intent. And even if you succeed once, you must match a buyer’s intent at each stage of their journey; data from HubSpot found the average sales cycle for SaaS products is 84 days.

 Brands in this industry also have to contend with ultra-competitive keywords. Optimising content for primary keywords such as “SaaS” or “SaaS products” is unlikely to be effective unless a website has an exemplary domain authority (DA) score. On the flip side, there are also long-tail keywords – terms with three or more words that have very limited search volumes. This makes it difficult to pinpoint strategies that will deliver the returns you need to drive growth.

Don’t worry though, there is a solution. By focusing on content that matches search intent, you can succeed. Forget about stuffing generic SaaS-related keywords onto a page. Instead, start thinking about the buyers’ journey and how you can assist them.

What are the best SEO strategies for SaaS?

Creating content that aligns with search intent is crucial in the SaaS industry, as buyers will need to be engaged at several stages before a sale. The intent is generally broken down into four categories: informational, commercial, navigational and transactional. When buyers are researching, they will usually have informational search intent; they want to learn something. The best content to align with this intent is thought leadership pieces.

SaaS customers are also big on comparing products, feature sets and pricing. This commercial intent is again best served by blogs that outline different software options, such as their pros and cons, as well as ‘best of’ lists and guides to top tech and tools. Next, navigational intent involves a searcher looking for a specific page for a SaaS product or service, such as a feature or demo page. Finally, transactional searches at the end of the cycle see users on the cusp of making a purchase. At this point, they are eager for free trials, demos and sign-up information.

The complexity and constantly changing nature of SaaS services pose a challenge here again. This requires content to be laser-targeted to solve a buyer's specific pain point. Build “pillar” pages that broadly cover a topic, and then branch out into “cluster” content where you target specific keywords related to your products. Keyword research is vital to everything here, as is link building. You want to use internal links effectively to support the structure of your site while also attracting backlinks to enhance your authority. You can then start thinking about making improvements to the UI and UX of your site, and improve technical factors to ensure seamless navigation and swift loading times.

By mastering the principles of SEO and adapting them to the unique SaaS industry, you can start reaping the rewards of greater online visibility and enhanced authority. This visibility will enable you to better educate and serve your SaaS customers, which will pave the way for long-term success in this ultra-competitive digital space.