Software as a Service (SaaS) is a very unique but profitable business model when combined with a successful marketing strategy.
As the cost of hosting cloud networks and applications tends to decrease with additional customers, SaaS companies need to grow their subscriber base quickly to thrive in a competitive market.
Over the years, I’ve found that many SaaS companies focus more on paid acquisition to ensure a steady stream of traffic and conversions. While this strategy certainly has short-term profitability, once you turn off the faucet, the traffic won’t come back.
For this reason, I recommend that most SaaS companies invest more in SEO than an overarching growth strategy.
Additionally, the SEO strategies listed below will only improve your existing marketing efforts, whether you’re marketing your business through PPC, email, or social media.
With that in mind, I’d like to discuss some of the unique challenges that SaaS companies face in the digital space and how SEO can overcome these challenges.
Then I’ll share nine practical tips to help you improve your online presence and grow your business.
5 Unique Digital Challenges For SaaS Companies
Contents
1. Economies Of Scale
As I said in the introduction, SaaS marketers face a tough challenge to comfortably scale SaaS businesses to offset the cost of hosting their cloud applications.
To achieve lower total cost of ownership (TCO), SaaS companies need to build effective network scale that:
Unfortunately, paid advertising only increases the cost of this model and does not bring in new customers outside of your narrow focus window.
Instead, what is needed is a multi-channel strategy that builds awareness organically through multiple channels.
2. Levels Of Service
Many SaaS providers use different business models for customer support, including self-service, managed service, and automated service models.
These models are tied to the support provided by the SaaS vendor, which significantly affects the cost of managing and operating these platforms.
In some ways, a managed or automated troubleshooting model can be a positive marketing tool.
But if your SaaS platform has a notoriously high learning curve (like Salesforce) and you use a self-service model for customer support, you may need to invest heavily in learning materials and tutorials to help customers learn about your products.
3. Customer Acquisition Vs. Retention
While we focus heavily on customer acquisition to grow a SaaS provider’s network, keeping customers online is just as important.
Whether you use a one-time purchase or a subscription model, constant iteration of new products, releases, and ongoing customer support is critical to maintaining steady growth for your business.
For this reason, SaaS companies must invest in a comprehensive marketing strategy that appeals to new and existing customers in different ways.
4. Competing For Branded Keywords
Most of your keywords may be branded, which can be difficult to scale if no one is aware of your software or brand.
For this reason, a combination of PPC, link building, and high-quality content is critical to building your brand name and people’s engagement with your products.
5. Optimizing For Search Intent
Finally, when you’re dealing with branded products and multiple keywords, deciphering intent can be difficult.
As we’ll discuss, strategically optimizing your funnel and content for intent is essential to your overall SEO strategy.
Benefits Of SEO For Sustainable SaaS Growth
As SaaS companies rely on creating economies of scale to reduce costs and increase profits, a long-term strategy like organic SEO makes the most sense for SaaS companies.
Some of the benefits of SaaS SEO include:
The last point is interesting because most SaaS companies typically use email marketing and paid media to attract and retain customers.
As a result, high-quality content is a great marketing material to promote through these channels and attract user engagement.
Finally, building brand visibility around your software is perhaps the most important aspect of SEO.
Many products, such as Microsoft Office and G-Suite, benefit from having more users on a platform because it reduces friction between people trying to communicate through two different products.
So if you establish yourself as a thought leader and build a loyal customer base using a combination of content and SEO, you can build a large network of users that lowers your hosting costs and accelerates your growth.
We’ll start by discussing seven actionable SEO strategies for SaaS businesses.
7 Actionable Ways To Scale SaaS Businesses With SEO
1. Establish The Fundamentals
First, you need to create a user-friendly site so that people can download your products, contact customer support, and simply read your content.
Some of the technical basics your website needs are:
Once established, it will be easier for you to rank your website for authoritative content and for users to stay on it after visiting.
2. Create Your Buyer Persona
Next, your team should create a list of the buyers you’re looking for using multiple conversion tools. Buyer persona input can be based on the following sources.
Now your buyer personas or avatars will be different whether you are targeting the B2C or B2B space.
In the B2C space, your buyer persona is based on several demographic and psychographic inputs, including:
For example, if you were selling photo editing software, you would probably create separate avatars for professional/freelance photographers as well as hobbyists.
On the other hand, your B2B persona is likely targeting specific people in the organization, such as executives, founders, or everyday users.
For example, one marketing campaign and person may focus on a software solution for sales teams and sales managers. At the same time, another campaign in the SEO field may target SEO managers looking to switch from existing products.
Once you have a list of buyer personas and avatars, you can create strategic campaigns with actionable solutions that appeal to those personas across both paid and organic channels.
3. Optimize Content For All Stages of the Funnel
As a SaaS provider, you likely need to create separate content for separate buyer personas, as well as new and existing customers.
In terms of acquisition, creating specific content at each stage of your individual sales funnel will increase your chances of conversion.
Create awareness that the user has a problem and that your software can solve it. Common marketing materials include:
Raise interest in your products and find ways to interact with users.
For example, encouraging users to sign up for your newsletter or email service can be a great way to engage with users over time.
At this stage, you can send users emails or show them a pop-up promoting a free eBook, white paper, or other high-level content that talks about your products.
Engage with users further to move them closer to conversion. Some common tactics include:
Once a user has purchased one of your products, continue to engage them with special offers or educational content that improves their experience and satisfaction.
Hopefully, at this stage you can build strong brand loyalty by encouraging word of mouth to grow your network.
4. Focus On The Right Keywords
With the incredibly high cost of acquisition for early-stage SaaS providers, it’s important to build a strategic organic keyword strategy that brings qualified traffic to your website.
Some strategies for creating high-converting keywords and using them appropriately include:
Once you’ve established a list of keywords for your funnel and a content strategy to implement, it’s time to execute.
Since SaaS products are quite complex and highly competitive, it is ideal to follow Google’s E-A-T guidelines (Expertise, Authority and Trust) when creating content.
Additionally, I recommend creating topic clusters around topics with similar content that reinforce the main topic to build authority and answer as many user questions as possible.
HubSpot is a good example of a blog and SaaS platform that creates very complex content clusters around its core products, including blogs and user tutorials.
To create a topic cluster, start with a seed keyword that serves as the main topic (eg “Photography”) and create a series of related topics.
For example, Adobe offers a number of photography tips designed to educate users about and sell their products, such as Photoshop.
Screenshot from Adobe, January 2023
By creating rich resource content, you can build a community of people who come to your brand not only for products, but also for thoughtful advice.
As a bonus, use community forums to further engage and educate users on common troubleshooting issues with your products.
6. Don’t Forget About Links
While links are still a valuable ranking signal, I see backlinks as a more valuable advertising strategy.
If you follow my content tips above, you will create a lot of linkable assets that will naturally collect backlinks and can be used for advertising to earn more.
For example, white papers, e-books, surveys, studies, and tutorials provide excellent resources for educating people and citing information for their own research.
However, to gain early exposure and build links to your content, follow the helpful tips below.
7. Tie Everything Together Across Multiple Channels
Finally, combine all these strategies into an omnichannel strategy.
Using a combination of PPC for brand exposure, content authority, and organic SEO to increase customer acquisition is the best strategy for growing an early-stage SaaS business.
Additionally, promoting high-level content such as a white paper above ads, email, social media, and all other channels is a great way to earn exposure, build links, and drive traffic to your site.
Combine your PPC and SEO keyword research to optimize your funnel and create a cohesive marketing strategy that nurtures users from awareness to decision stage.
In Conclusion
SEO and SaaS don’t just sound similar, they actually go hand in hand.
While paid ads may be necessary for early brand exposure, these SEO strategies offer the best way to reduce your paid budget and grow your online presence organically.
What is SEO and why is it important?
What is the main advantage of SEO? The purpose of SEO is to improve the quality and quantity of traffic to your website through on-site modifications. This isn’t just about stuffing your pages with relevant keywords, it’s about focusing on important web elements like site speed, mobile-friendliness, interactivity, and web page content.
What are the top three benefits of SEO? Let’s look at 10 important benefits of SEO for your business and how you can realize them.
- This will increase your credibility. …
- It doesn’t have to cost you anything. …
- It supports content marketing. …
- It maximizes PPC campaigns. …
- This gives you a competitive edge. …
- This can help you reach more people.
What is SEO and how does it work?
Well, SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization,” which is getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results on search engines. Its purpose is to improve your website’s position on search results pages. Remember, the higher a website is, the more people will see it.
Can I do SEO on my own? If you have been wondering can I do my own SEO? The answer is definitely. You don’t need to hire an outside agency to improve your SEO, and this guide will give you some basic SEO tips to get you started.
What is SEO and how does it work for beginners? SEO is the process of growing organic search traffic to a website. You can do this by ranking in organic search results. SEO is important because without it you are unlikely to rank well. A high ranking gives you free, passive and consistent traffic month after month.
What is SEO in simple terms?
Search engine optimization is the science of improving a web page to increase its visibility when people search for products or services. The higher a website’s visibility in search engines, the more likely it is that the brand will capture business.
How do you explain SEO to a child? SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is very similar to the iTunes rankings of the internet, websites rank higher in search engines based on how good they are, and SEO is the practice that gets them up there. similarly, a musician writes a song and puts certain hooks or lines in it to make it…
How enterprise SEO will help your business?
It helps you rank better in local searches and almost 80% of local mobile searches lead to conversions. Local SEO strategies help you attract those searchers who are often ready to buy. The first step to getting started with local SEO strategies is to create a Google My Business account.
How does SEO benefit your business? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Simply put, good SEO optimizes your online visibility. This means that the more people see your website, the more your web traffic will increase and the better your chances of offering your product or service to more people.
Why is Business SEO Important? Business SEO is important because strategies that work for smaller businesses won’t work for larger businesses. One of the main strategic differences between the two is that small businesses typically don’t target highly competitive short-tail keywords, while larger enterprise organizations do.
What is enterprise SEO?
Enterprise SEO is search engine optimization for large companies. It is the practice of applying SEO techniques to thousands or even millions of pages to improve a site’s overall organic presence. The size, scope and impact of enterprise SEO require new skills and more resources.
How is enterprise SEO different from traditional SEO? A significant difference between traditional SEO and enterprise SEO is the number of pages a business needs to optimize and the scope of content publishing. MarTech and automation are key to a successful enterprise SEO strategy that can be scaled.
Can I learn SEO on my own?
It is a fact of learning that all education is self-education. While others can facilitate learning, no one can teach you anything – they can only inspire you to teach yourself. This means that if you want to learn search engine optimization (SEO), you need to take matters into your own hands.
How long does it take to learn SEO? According to experts, it usually takes one to three months to learn the basics of SEO and a year or more to fully master the practice. The amount of time it takes to learn the basics of SEO depends on several factors.
Is SEO hard to learn? SEO isn’t that hard to learn, but getting started can be confusing and overwhelming. Learning SEO means learning about a long list of individual digital marketing strategies, which can feel like adding new weapons to your arsenal as you learn to use them.
Can I learn SEO for free? Thanks to the hard work of many generous SEOs, you can learn how to do search engine optimization for free. All you need are strong tools written or created by SEO experts. We’ve compiled a list of the 50 best SEO blogs, courses, videos, podcasts, conferences, and tools to help you get started.
What makes a strong SEO?
Quality, authoritative content is the number one driver of your search engine rankings and there is no substitute for great content – this is especially true when it comes to SEO marketing. High-quality content created specifically for your desired user will increase site traffic, which will improve your site’s authority and relevance.
What is effective SEO? One of the most effective SEO tactics that can help your rankings is extensive competitor research and analysis. The first step is simply to identify your main competitors either by industry, geography, keywords or other relevant factors.
What are the 3 pillars of SEO? Focusing on these three pillars of SEO will increase the chances of your content and attract more organic traffic over time.
