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SaaS or software as a service company is the organization that uses software to provide services to customers. The SaaS companies own the software products from creating to developing to hosting to updating them. Some of the top SaaS companies like Hubspot, survey monkey, canvas, Mailchimp, zoom, etc, all provide their software as a service to the customers. Though all the top SaaS companies are popular worldwide and also rank on top search engines, but do they need SEO? That is the question.

The answer is YES, every SaaS company whether small or big needs SEO or search engine optimization to spread brand awareness, drive traffic, generates leads, backlinks, more subscription, and lots of things that SEO does to a company. While bigger SaaS companies hire an SEO agency to do SEO kinds of stuff but the average or smaller SaaS companies do it themselves to gain better output. This article is for those SaaS companies who cannot hire bigger agencies for doing SEO.

What is SAAS SEO?

SaaS SEO is the process of positioning a SaaS (Software as a Service) company's website to rank for a set of specific keywords and increase its organic traffic. While you can hire a SaaS SEO agency or expert for this, and you can also do it yourself.

With the competition is growing between the SaaS companies to sell their products or software, SEO can be a great thing that not only produces great results but also helps to lead the industry in many terms. Several SEO techniques can be used for SaaS companies’ strategy like keyword research, content marketing, and most importantly user experience.

SEO for SaaS companies is a lengthy process and may take 6 to 12 months to see some improvements in website rankings. SEO is affordable as compared to other digital marketing channels for SaaS companies and can lower your expenses.

SaaS SEO Ranking Factors

Growing SaaS businesses can be tuff most of the time without any high-quality SEO strategies. After all, SEO is the main source for attracting customers and more than 75% of the organic traffic is being driven through only search engine optimization strategies for SaaS companies.  

Most of the SaaS startup companies and also the established ones focus mainly on reaching the customers. Since the customers trust those companies who are on top rankings on search engines which is an organic way or by running ads. But the credibility and trustability of a SaaS company depend on the SEO ranking factors. And SEO strategy allows the SaaS company to achieve the best organic method of rankings.

In SEO, the ranking refers to the position of any content on the search engine results pages (SERPs) that may be Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. And when people search for a particular term or word on search engines, your website appears on the top. Those terms or words know as keywords which is one of the top SaaS SEO ranking factors, but there are some more to add to the lists are:-

• A secure and accessible website that is well coded, SSL enabled, sitemap created and of course robots.txt file for search engines
• Page speed is considered as one of the top SEO ranking factors for SaaS companies those having fast loading web-pages and interactive user experience.
• Mobile-friendliness is nowadays becoming most necessary for every business and for SaaS companies also it will be a proven SEO ranking factor as well.
• When it comes to SEO ranking factors, domain age, URL, and also page authority matters.
• Content optimization is the next big thing for SaaS SEO ranking factors, with fresh and original content can skyrocket your website rankings.
• Technical SEO can be equally important as other SEO ranking factors that include improving your website by using better titles, meta descriptions, tags, schema markups, keyword phrases, etc.
• A good user experience can also be a good ranking factor meaning low bounce rate, high CTR (click-through rate)
• Links are always the best SEO ranking factor for any business and they can also affect the SaaS companies as well with inbound links, outbound links, and internal links.
• Social media sharing of content is becoming popular these days as it also affects the SEO ranking in many ways. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and more can be used for social sharing.

Importance of SEO for SaaS

The importance of SEO for SaaS companies or any other businesses can’t be overlooked in this online age where more than 50% of people prefer everything online. And the better SEO strategies you apply for your company, the more are the chances of appearing on top search results including the terms or phrases. This will help to attract more visitors to your website and becomes a paying customer for your business.

So, if you are looking at reaching large audiences worldwide then SEO is most important, as it helps in building a reputation as well as a client base. While the majority of theSaaS businesses marketing efforts are online that includes email marketing, social media marketing, but SEO is also effective.

Here are some of the importance of SEO for SaaS that can be effective:

• It can help raise brand awareness if ranks higher on search engines
• Increase organic growth by driving more traffic and more conversions
• Builds credibility to SaaS businesses
• Helps reduce the cost spent on sales and marketing
• Off-page SEO helps to generate leads from various platforms
• On-page SEO helps to optimize the webpages to rank higher
• Being ranked on the top of SERP gains trust for the audience in your business.
• SEO also helps boost conversions and bring in paying customers for products
• It’s a long-term solution for any SaaS companies

SAAS SEO Strategy

SEO is the best practice of optimizing a SaaS website to rank high in search engines, increase visibility and also drive traffic that helps convert leads into customers. There are three main pillars for success to any SaaS organization are on-page SEO, content marketing, and backlinks. Although the SEO strategies are not limited to this and can be implemented more as the process goes on.

With so many SaaS companies out there in the market, so for to succeed as a brand, you need to stay ahead of your competitors. To grow any SaaS business, you need to follow a successful SEO strategy and guidelines. And the main aim for any SaaS brand would be driving more traffic to the website and converting them for best-selling products. SEO is considered to be vital in the SaaS field, more than in any other marketing channel.

A valuable SEO strategy can be very effective whether created by own or by any SEO agency to mainly focusing on SaaS company growth and success. If you want to do it in-house then use the below said SaaS SEO strategies that will help you go ahead with your competitors.

Saas SEO Framework

SEO is the most vital strategy when it comes to expanding a SaaS company’s marketing reach.SEO involves various activities like technical audits, keyword research, content marketing, link building, and more. And the SaaS SEO Framework provides the steps required to implement the most important SEO activities that can be effective and provides long-term success.  

SaaS SEO framework is best described by identifying and breaking down the several components of an SEO strategy. These components of SEO work combined to generate powerful, and measurable results for SaaS companies. SaaS SEO framework allows to implementation of the best SEO practices and strategies that will help grow a business.

The SaaS business model is one of the models that allow customers to access a software product, tool, or bunch of tools for a specific purpose and also charge some fee. The customers can modify, update, improve, according to their needs.

This SaaS SEO framework helps the website to rank higher on search engines and visible to the most potential audiences looking for the same. So, let’s dive into five of most of the pillars of the SaaS SEO Framework.

Technical Audits for SaaS company website

Technical audit means optimizing a SaaS company site’s technical or internal structure to perform better in search engine algorithms. It can be the code or HTML elements like site speed, HTTP security, crawlability, mobile-friendliness, and more.

Many SaaS businesses choose to go for a technical SEO audit checklist before they begin their SEO campaign. It’s better to go for a technical audit first using the best and popular tools available online. The technical audit can help you check and identify all the errors or any issues on your website and allows you to fix them easily.

Technical audits for the SaaS company website involves:

• Checks mobile-friendly websites
• Make sure google indexes your website
• Speed up your website
• Find and delete the pages not useful or dead pages
• Identify and fix indexing problems
• Checks your organic traffic from various other channels
• Improve your on-page SEO
• Set up keyword rank tracking
• Analyze backlinks and fix broken links
• Check for competitor analysis
• Make your content 10x better
• Display the website architecture​

Keyword Research for Saas company website

The most crucial step in SEO is keyword research where the key phrases or terms are identified that will help to rank a SaaS company on search engines. To start with the keyword research process you’ll have to brainstorm ideas of the SaaS product, target customers, locations, as well as the volume of those keywords using any keyword searching tool.

This is what the SaaS SEO framework is designed for and brings most of the SEO opportunities for your business. Follow the steps below to put it in action for a SaaS company.

• Brainstorm with some potential keywords, for example, accounting software, accounts software, or choose from the alternative terms accordingly.
• Go for the best keyword research tool available online like Google keyword planner, keywordtool.io, or uber suggest for getting keyword ideas with their search volume, clicks, difficulty, ranking, etc.
• Create a spreadsheet for each category of the terms and fill it with expected search volume, no of clicks, sign-ups, traffic estimation, revenue, etc.​

See Also: Top 21 Keyword Research Tools

Blog Post Strategy

Blogging is the best way to establish a website's online presence and in the form of content marketing as well. Blog post strategy for SaaS companies helps create attractive content and also gives a tuff fight to the competitors on the same niche. Not only that but SaaS blog content also grabs the attention of your readers and helps better engagement.

However, for any blog post to be successful, requires planning, that’s why SaaS companies should follow the blog post strategy technique. While blogging is a long game but proven to be effective for many top SaaS companies in the market.

• Know who are your target audiences, their pain points and find any common industry or search for your SaaS product-related questions to generate blog topics
• Conduct keyword research using keyword planner tools, long tail or short tail keywords, LSI keywords, etc.
• Perform competitor analysis to get blog post ideas
• Create a content calendar with the keywords
• Start writing a blog with an attractive headline and a compelling introduction
• Focus on creating long-form blog posts about 1,200 to 2,000 words
• Keep your content varied with infographics, ebooks, webinars, etc
• Optimize the blog post for SEO by inserting keywords
• Promote your blogs on various social media platforms on your SaaS company niche
• Monitor and track blog post performances using various analytics tools​

See Also: Step by Step on how to Increase brand Awareness for New Blog Post

Content Strategy

Content is the king is an old proverb and content strategy is the most important tool for a SaaS company that can be used to attract and convert audiences. Whether it’s a blog content, product page, case study page, or any website page, a proper content strategy can help boosts your traffic as well as conversions.

A better SaaS content strategy's main goal should be to educate the customers about your products and guide them properly for usage.

• Create and analyze your target audience their gender, age, location, etc.
• Build awareness by creating contents targeting the top industry keywords and promote them on multiple channels
• Perform competitor analysis using tools to see their content strategies are and follow them
• Identify the keywords to target the audiences using keyword research tools
• Campaign goal setting and tracking using some key performance indicators like a free trial of products, software demo requests, etc.
• Content production by researching topics related to the industry, and scheduling the content for promotion
• Content distribution on social media sites, third-party sites, guest blogging, etc.
• Monitoring and optimizing the contents regularly​

Link Building for SaaS Companies

Backlinks are still the game changer for many businesses that help outrank their competitors. Building high-quality backlinks for SaaS companies can be very productive in so many ways, it not only helps go ahead the competitors but also gets the trust from Google search engine.

Link building strategy for SaaS companies can help build overall website authority by getting more links. Some of the common links building strategies that most SaaS companies use are content marketing, email outreach, building broken links, and public relations.

• Guest blogging can be done on trusted platforms for getting links
• Creating and promote visual content that may be infographics, video contents, etc
• Post and share images, blogs, or any updates on social media
• Use resource links from top sites like Forbes, Huffington, and copyblogger to create your write-ups
• Broken link building by finding pages on blogs that have dead links
• Create brand identity by consistent blogging
• Check competitors backlinks using tools to replicate their backlinks
• Track and monitor your backlinks
• Connect directly with the audiences or experts to get backlinks

See Also: How to Build High-Quality Backlinks? 8 Proven Methods

Conclusion

SEO for SaaS companies is the most effective and cost-efficient online marketing channel. Overall these SEO strategies are designed basically for the SaaS companies that need to improve their organic growth on search engines. Many SaaS companies are following the SEO strategies in-house which leads them to success. Attracting visitors to your SaaS website and boosting sales begins with an effective SEO strategy. And the key to success is maintaining consistency of all the steps in the SaaS framework, use several SEO tools, track website ranking, backlinks, site traffic, and so on.