6 Steps to Get AI to Recommend Your Brand

Find Out What's Stopping You From Ranking Higher

An effective SaaS SEO strategy improves your visibility in search results, making it easier for users to find your site when they need what you’re offering. More visibility means more traffic, and more traffic often leads to more revenue.

Take Exploding Topics for example. Backlinko’s founder, Brian Dean, created this SaaS to help you find new trends with ease. And a solid SEO strategy has helped grow the website to 637K monthly organic visitors in just four years.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to create a SaaS SEO strategy, optimize your site, and outrank your competitors.

SaaS SEO Fundamentals: Audience, Product, and Conversions

SaaS SEO is the process of optimizing your website to improve its rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Like other SEO strategies, SEO for SaaS involves techniques like keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, and link building to help you:

• Attract potential customers searching for your target keywords
• Build awareness and authority for your brand
• Improve your conversion rate by creating content that meets the search intent
• Grow your traffic sustainably without spending money on ads

But there are three areas that are critical for making your SEO efforts successful:

1. You Need to Use Customer Personas

A customer persona is a detailed profile of your ideal customer. It helps you understand and relate to your target audience by including details like:

• Demographics: Location, age, family status, and education level
• Behavior: Preferred communication channels, content types, and topics of interest
• Psychographics: Personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle
• Needs: Main problems, motivations, frustrations, aspirations, and other factors influencing purchase decisions

To build your own customer persona, you can use a tool like Semrush’s One2Target. Just pop a competitor’s domain into the tool and find details about their demographics, behavior, and more.

2. You Need to Provide Value with Product-Led Content

Product-led content makes your organic visitors familiar with your product. It’s about covering the topic you’re writing about while using your product as a solution to the problem, matching the search intent.

Examples of Product-Led Content

• Notion's page on content calendar templates meets search intent while showcasing Notion as the solution.
• HubSpot offers a free email signature generator that helps them rank for “email signature.”

3. You Need to Tailor Your Strategy to the Marketing Funnel

To create the right content, consider the different stages in the marketing funnel:

1. ToFu (top of the funnel)
2. MoFu (middle of the funnel)
3. BoFu (bottom of the funnel)

Top of the Funnel (ToFu)

At the top of the funnel, visitors become aware of a problem your product can solve but don’t have a solution in mind yet. Content can include informational guides about the problem your SaaS solves.

Middle of the Funnel (MoFu)

At this stage, visitors explore different solutions to their problems. Consideration keywords might include specific services your product provides.

Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu)

Finally, visitors decide on a solution to solve their problem. Examples include specific product pricing information.

Why You Need SEO for Your SaaS Website

SEO is an effective way for SaaS businesses to attract potential customers. Organic traffic is cheaper to scale than channels like paid advertising.

Lower Your Customer Acquisition Costs

SEO lowers customer acquisition costs (CAC), making it a cost-effective long-term investment that attracts leads and customers over time.

How to Build a SaaS SEO Strategy

Here's a step-by-step guide for building a SaaS SEO strategy that drives sustainable growth:

Step 1: Find Keywords for Each Stage in the Customer Journey

Identify target keywords related to the problems your product solves. The four different types of keywords include:

• Informational keywords
• Commercial keywords
• Transactional keywords
• Navigational keywords

Top-of-the-Funnel Keywords tend to be informational, aiming to build interest and awareness about your product.

Middle-of-the-Funnel Keywords are generally searched by users exploring options.

Bottom-of-the-Funnel Keywords are usually transactional and specifically related to your product.

Step 2: Spy on Your Competitors’ Keywords

You can find keywords to target by analyzing your rivals in the SERPs. Use Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool to discover keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t.

Step 3: Create Product-Led Content for Your Target Keywords

Your SaaS content strategy will revolve around your product and its features. Create landing pages and blog posts that target specific keywords and align with customer needs.

Step 4: Boost Your On-Page SEO

Optimize aspects like keyword placement, images, and internal linking. Use your keywords strategically and write unique, keyword-rich title tags for each page.

Step 5: Run an SEO Site Audit

Analyze and fix existing SEO issues that could hold your SaaS back in search results. Use tools like PageSpeed Insights or Screaming Frog to perform audits.

Step 6: Use Video SEO to Rank Higher and Boost Conversions

Use SEO techniques to make your videos rank for targeted keywords. Create various types of video content that demonstrate how your product solves problems.

Step 7: Get High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are crucial for SEO. Explore strategies like broken link building or analyzing competitor’s backlinks to find opportunities for earning quality links.

Step 8: Measure Your SaaS SEO Results

Track metrics relevant to your goals, including organic visitors, impressions, clicks, and conversion rates. Continuously measure these metrics and adapt your strategy accordingly.

Execute Your Winning SaaS SEO Strategy

SaaS SEO is an ongoing effort. Continuously monitor performance and adapt your strategy to maintain keyword rankings, drive sustainable traffic, and keep up with competitors.