Software as a Service (SaaS) products have become integral to both business and consumer markets.
With countless SaaS solutions available, it’s essential for providers to enhance their product visibility to attract potential customers and stay ahead of the competition.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in achieving this goal. By following SEO guidelines, SaaS companies can elevate their website’s presence and bring more organic search traffic.
In this article, we’ll walk you through SEO practices that should be applied to SaaS websites to increase product visibility.
Understanding SEO for SaaS Products
SaaS products are software applications that are delivered over the Internet as a service. Users can access SaaS products through a web browser, which eliminates the need for software downloads and installations.
Users typically pay a subscription fee to access and use the software on a pay-as-you-go basis, making it a cost-effective and scalable solution for businesses and individuals.
Because SaaS products are based entirely on the Internet, you need to find ways to get people to your site for them to try your product or make a purchase. That’s why your content is very important.
SaaS companies can leverage their online content as a great marketing tool to boost their visibility and brand awareness. Their content can show up at the top of search engine results pages given a search query. So people can just click on the link to get to the SaaS website.
See what happens when I search “email marketing”. A blog post by Mailchimp, an email marketing platform, shows up on the first page of SERPs:
But for SaaS companies to reap the benefits of SEO and ensure this online visibility, they should follow best practices. Let’s break them down.
Building High-Quality Backlinks through Guest Posting
Backlinks are an important aspect of off-page SEO. Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are links from other websites pointing to your SaaS website.
High-quality backlinks are a significant factor in search engine algorithms, as they indicate the credibility and topical authority of your website. As a result, websites with a higher number of quality backlinks are more likely to rank higher in search engine results. In other words, you need to implement a link building strategy.
SaaS providers can acquire high-quality backlinks through various content marketing strategies, such as guest posting on reputable industry websites and creating shareable content on their own marketing platforms. We’ll talk more about this last one in the next section.
Guest posting involves collaborating with other websites and contributing content to their blogs.
When guest posting, though, choose a site that doesn’t only have a high Domain Authority (more than 50). It should also have an audience you can turn into paying customers. Your goal in guest posting, after all, is not just to improve your SEO for increased product visibility through SaaS link building. You also want to get your guest post readers to your website then and there so they can, ultimately, purchase your offering.
That said, it wouldn’t make sense to guest post on a recipe site if you sell email marketing software. Even if readers of that site click on your link in your guest post and get to your website, they’re not likely to buy your email marketing software.
Check out why it makes sense for this guest post by Voila Norbert to be published on Plecto, which offers business dashboards for marketers.
Plecto’s readers are marketers, who are also more likely to buy Voila Norbert’s email tool when they click on that brand’s backlinks.
If you’re new to the guest posting game and don’t know where to start, you can always leverage the services of a reputable SaaS SEO agency. It will conduct the outreach campaigns on your behalf and even write the quality guest posts for you.
Leveraging Other Types of Content Marketing for SEO
By creating content on their own marketing platforms, SaaS companies can attract a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, drive profitable customer action. It can help amplify website traffic, enhance search engine rankings, and, ultimately, ensure SaaS product visibility.
We briefly talked about how this works with our Mailchimp example above. Now let’s use Trello as an example.
Trello has a blog that features a variety of content related to project management, remote work, and team productivity. These blog posts align with the interests of their target audience. So, when they search for relevant keywords, Trello’s blog posts pop up in SERPs. The result is SEO traffic to the Trello website.
Publishing SaaS content on your social media platforms can also be an effective way to boost SaaS SEO. By creating social signals such as shares, likes, or comments, you may alert search engines that the content you create is relevant to users. So search engines may surface your content given a search query. If you promote your website content on social media and it becomes viral, authority sites may also link to your original website content, therefore again boosting your SEO.
YouTube is another one of the many content marketing channels you can use. It allows you to demonstrate your product in more depth and reach an audience that prefers video format. YouTube videos can display in SERPs, so they can support your SaaS SEO strategy if you optimize them correctly. You can also host webinars and live streams on YouTube.
A great example of a SaaS company using YouTube in its content strategy is Canva. Canva regularly uploads educational tutorials and how-to videos. These videos demonstrate various design techniques, tips, and tricks, helping users make the most of their platform.
You can generate content ideas by looking at your own competitors’ strategies. You can also ask your audience for content topic ideas. Now if you don’t have enough time to write that much content, why not leverage AI templates? AI can easily generate blog titles, case studies, and other pieces of content with just the right prompts.
Optimizing SaaS Content
SaaS companies should optimize their written content for related keywords. Keywords help search engines understand that this content is topically relevant and related to other similar topics. As such, they will surface the content in SERPs given a relevant query.
To select the best keywords for SEO, you must conduct keyword research to help you uncover words and phrases that are commonly used in your niche. The keyword research process also involves choosing relevant keywords that have a low search volume but can have a huge potential. You can use a keyword research tool like Ahrefs for this.
Optimizing your written content is as easy as incorporating these target keywords naturally into it. Optimize, not just your guest posts and blog articles on your own site, but also your website copy, whether it’s on a home page, landing page, or product page. Your homepage content should include broad keyword phrases, also known as head keywords or main keywords. On the other hand, the content on your product pages and landing pages should include more specific keywords that are descriptive of the product. You can use tools such as SurferSEO to help you in your overall content optimization.
As part of your SaaS content optimization, ensure it’s also engaging for the user. So avoid keyword stuffing and use simple language that resonates with your target audience.
Implement on page SEO strategies as well. Make sure you structure your content in a way that is clear for search engines and users. An SEO-friendly product page content structure, in particular, involves using descriptive headings, bullet points, and clear formatting. This makes the content more scannable for users and search engines alike, leading to improved user experience and better rankings.
For example, Slack’s homepage provides a user-friendly overview of the product’s benefits. The copy is broken down into headings and additional text that makes the page clear. The numbers and data grab the user’s attention and evoke a sense of trust.
Lastly, don’t forget about mobile users, as they make up 57% of online searchers.
You have no control over the websites where you guest post, but you do have control over your own site. Optimizing your own website for mobile entails using a responsive layout. This way, your written content and other visual elements won’t shift when opened on different devices. This helps ensure high engagement rates and lower bounce rates, which help boost SaaS SEO performance.
Technical SEO Considerations for SaaS
Technical SEO is a critical aspect of a comprehensive SaaS SEO strategy. As a crucial component of a solid SEO strategy, it lays the groundwork for the website and increases its chances of achieving a high ranking in the SERPs.
By optimizing the technical components of their websites, such as site speed, crawlability and indexability, and security, SaaS companies like yours can improve their search engine rankings and drive more organic traffic.
The first thing to look out for is website speed. Ensuring fast load times and optimal performance on both desktop and mobile devices enhances user experience and search engine visibility.
To monitor your website speed, you can use various online tools. Google Page Speed Insights and Lighthouse (see below) allow you to check what causes the slower loading time. Then just follow the recommendations. Factors that affect your website speed include the website’s layout, large file size, or bloated code. Moreover, your website provider can
Other technical aspects of SEO include ensuring proper website indexing and crawlability. You can do this by:
- Submitting XML maps
- Creating a clear website navigation
- Uploading robot.txt files
- Optimizing URL structure
- Fixing broken links and 404 errors
Use the Google Search Console to see any indexing problems your pages might have and address them.
You should also ensure website security. Using HTML protocol is an active ranking factor for Google, and you should implement it if you want to improve your rankings.
However, monitoring your entire website’s security is just as important as it helps Google to deem your website as trustworthy.
To ensure website security, SaaS companies should use strong passwords, keep software up-to-date, regularly back up data, and routinely scan for malware. By addressing these security considerations, SaaS companies can provide a safe and secure browsing experience for their users, something Google appreciates.
Monitoring
Monitoring is crucial to optimizing strategies. It can help SaaS companies identify trends, uncover opportunities for growth, and adapt to stay ahead of the competition.
SaaS businesses like yours can leverage tools like Google Search Console to regularly monitor website performance and make the necessary adjustments to improve it.
You should also monitor engagement metrics through social media or email analytics. You want to see which content resonates with your audience and is more likely to bring them to your site.This will allow you to tweak your content strategy accordingly.
When SaaS companies gain insights into their website’s performance and identify areas for improvement in their content creation processes, they can ensure better SEO and, therefore, better SaaS product visibility.
Staying Up-to-Date with SEO Trends
SEO is an ever-evolving field, with search engines continuously updating their algorithms. So, SaaS providers must stay informed about the latest SEO trends and best practices to maintain a competitive edge and adapt their strategies accordingly.
There are several ways businesses can stay informed in the SaaS space. They can:
- subscribe to reputable SEO blogs and email newsletters
- participate in communities and forums
- read new SEO reports
By staying up-to-date with SEO trends, SaaS companies can adjust their strategies and ensure their products remain competitive in search engine rankings.
Conclusion
SaaS businesses can increase their products’ visibility, drive organic traffic, and, ultimately, grow their customer base. All they need to do is optimize their content for search engines, guest post, leverage other types of content marketing, and address technical SEO considerations,
SaaS businesses like you should also monitor your SEO performance every step of the way. As the last of my SEO tips, stay up-to-date with the latest SEO trends and best practices.
If you implement these tips, your SaaS business will reap the best SEO results. Your product’s visibility will, ultimately, see a huge boost. Your product will stand out in the SaaS industry.
