THE ULTIMATE BUYER PERSONA GENERATOR

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SEO for SaaS is a strategy using Content Marketing to drive traffic to a Software as a Service (SaaS) company’s website.

Understanding how search engines and keywords work will help you develop an effective Content Marketing and SEO strategy to drive leads to your SaaS website.

This article will explore why SEO is essential for SaaS.

The Anti-Software Company
What Is the Big Deal About SaaS
Why SaaS Companies Should Invest in SEO
What Makes SEO for SaaS Different
10 Steps to Create a Successful SaaS SEO Campaign
Wrap Up
The Anti-Software Company
The Anti-Software Company
Marc Benioff, Founder, and CEO of Salesforce.com. Source: Nira
Over twenty years ago, Salesforce.com, a San Francisco-based start-up, disrupted the conference held by a large enterprise software company and essentially launched the Software as a Service (SaaS) revolution.

SaaS companies now dominate the marketing and sales technology industry and continue to grow.

What Is the Big Deal About SaaS
For one, SaaS transformed software delivery. Companies didn’t need to spend millions on complicated software and hardware. Maintenance contracts disappeared.

Delivering internet-based software as a subscription included upgrades and maintenance, driving the cost of computing down, so millions of people could access the same software enterprises used.

Why SaaS Companies Should Invest in SEO
Investing in performance advertising often backfires as SaaS companies burn through investment cash before the business scales.

SEO and Content Marketing don’t require as much investment as performance advertising, so the cost is much lower. However, it takes time and well-thought-out strategies to build successful SEO campaigns.

What Makes SEO for SaaS Different
Retail businesses focus on products and brands to drive traffic to their website. Healthcare companies may focus on specific diseases or ailments their patients may encounter. However, SaaS companies that are starting up don’t have a popular brand or product to use to drive traffic to their site.

SaaS businesses must develop keyword strategies that focus on the problems buyers need to solve.

“Generate more leads without advertising” may be a keyword phrase SEO SaaS vendors use to drive traffic to their websites.

These long-tail keywords generate less traffic but are also less competitive. Building a library of these phrases will improve search results in the long run.

10 Steps to Create a Successful SaaS SEO Campaign
1. Set Realistic Goals
Creating realistic goals is the crucial first step for building a successful SEO campaign. Goals should be measurable and attainable.

For instance, if you create your first SEO campaign, setting a goal to appear in the number one slot on a Google search result within the first month is not an attainable goal.

SEO and Content Marketing need time to develop traction, and goals should reflect that reality. A more realistic example is placing three keyword phrases in the top 10 within six months.

2. Identify the KPIs
Once you set your goals, you need a way to measure results. Key performance indicators are metrics or statistics to measure performance.

Website visitors, search result placements and monthly searches are all great SEO KPIs. These indicators can be measured using any number of free and paid search marketing software.

One of the most important KPIs is to compare how your SEO ranks versus other SaaS competitors.

How does your website rank on Alexa, a website comparison software? How many keywords are ranking in the top 10 on Google compared to your top two or three competitors?

It is helpful to pay attention to growth in addition to raw placements. It is satisfying to watch your rankings improve as you promote your keywords through blogging and social media.

3. Create Buyer Personas
Identifying the characteristics of your buyers is the next step in developing an effective SEO program. Your buyers will break down into specific key categories.

For business products, your buyer might be an IT Director or Marketing Manager. For consumer or e-commerce products, your buyer may be a female millennial living in Chicago who enjoys gardening.

It is best practice to include extensive details about your buyers, including social media habits, what software they use, and if they own an iPhone or an Android.

For instance, HubSpot may identify their key customer as Marketing Manager Mary or Business Owner Bob.

Buyer personas are essential for keyword research. Your buyers will search for different keyword phrases depending on their needs and challenges.

Marketing manager Mary may want to increase lead generation while business owner Bob wants to sell his business.

Interviewing salespeople, dealers and customers will shed pakistan phone numbers light on the audience you need to target to generate more sales.

4. Research Your Competition
You can learn a lot from your competition. What keywords do they use? Do they spend money on pay-per-click advertising or do they use content marketing?

Understanding how your SaaS software competition uses SEO will give you insights into their strategies and goals.

You don’t have to research all of your competition. Select the two to three closest competitors and investigate their keywords, spending habits, and search results.

You also don’t need to hire a marketing research firm. Instead, use the same SEO software you use for your keyword research.

SEMrush is a popular tool for paid search advertising research. Create a table comparing your program with your competition.

top pages on semrush
Source: SEMrush
5. Conduct Keyword Research
Keywords are the fuel of SEO for SaaS companies. Finding the right keywords to use is part art and part science.

A keyword might seem to be a good fit for your SEO campaign, but if it is too competitive or doesn’t generate enough traffic, you may not want to use it to build your campaign around.

Competitive keywords are expensive to use for paid advertising. It will also be challenging to rank in the top 10 search results in organic SEO.

For instance, let’s say you sell a SaaS video content editor and you want to rank for the keyword “YouTube”.

You have over 180 million competitors since YouTube is the number one keyword in the world according to Ahrefs Top 100 Google Searches blog post.

Once you start your SEO program, you will want to track your search rankings. Google displays 10 search results per page and provides rankings for the top 100 related search terms.

You will increase your rankings as you generate more content around that keyword phrase. Every page counts, including landing pages, blog posts, and website pages. Be sure to include the keyword in your website page title at least one or two more times.

Use variations of the keyword term. Avoid keyword stuffing, which is the use of the same keyword over and over again.

Google will penalize you for this tactic. In fact, if you keyword stuff or use other prohibited strategies, Google will place you on their blacklist.