SaaS SEO: The Ultimate Tried & Tested Guide

Customer acquisition outgo (CAC) tin beryllium tremendous for galore SaaS companies. A bully mode to trim that is to equilibrium advertizing with cheaper and often much sustainable selling channels and tactics. Your champion stake present whitethorn beryllium SEO and contented marketing.

In this article, you’ll larn everything you request to cognize to physique a palmy SaaS SEO strategy.

This strategy is based connected 2 things: First, the occurrence of Ahrefs, a $100M+ ARR SaaS institution that has SEO arsenic a main contributor to its growth. Second, my 5 years of acquisition moving and consulting for planetary SaaS companies.

We’ll spell done the pursuing steps:

• Identify your integrated hunt competitors
• Analyze what works for your competitors
• Do due keyword research
• Focus connected producing product-led content
• Develop escaped tools arsenic landing pages
• Create examination pages
• Use information to people manufacture insights and studies
• Build connected coagulated SEO foundations

Let’s dive in.

Not each websites that you vie with wrong integrated hunt are your concern competitors. In fact, your SERPs can beryllium full of:

• Affiliate websites.
• Review websites (like G2 oregon TrustRadius).
• Industry adept blogs.
• Companies that astatine slightest partially people your assemblage by solving overlapping problems.

All these types of websites besides privation a portion of the “organic search” cake. You’ll request a database of these for further SEO probe and to track your progress.

The champion mode to find your integrated hunt competitors is to cheque keyword overlap reports. Plug your domain into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and caput to the Competing Domains report:

This study shows a database of websites that ranks for galore of the aforesaid keywords arsenic the domain connected the input.

Rinse and repetition this process with different ascendant websites successful your niche. Or you tin commencement the probe consecutive distant connected your closest concern competitors if your website doesn’t thrust immoderate coagulated hunt postulation yet.

If you travel crossed an chartless website, inspect it. Create a database of 10–15 astir applicable websites competing successful your space.

We’ll marque usage of the database of your integrated hunt competitors. Consider this an SEO rival analysis.

The main extremity present is to find retired what works for your competitors successful presumption of the:

• Best performing website sections.
• Best performing pages.
• Types of contented that pull the astir backlinks.

You should marque notes truthful you tin beryllium inspired by your competitors and perchance execute the ideas adjacent amended than them. Let’s look into these points.

Best performing website sections

Do your competitors thrust astir of their integrated postulation to a blog, merchandise pages, instrumentality pages, a cognition base, oregon adjacent immoderate different benignant of content? What astir their attack to website architecture, i.e., however bash they operation their URLs?

You’ll find answers to these questions by plugging your competitors’ domains into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and clicking done the Top Subfolders report:

We tin already spot successful the study supra that immoderate of the astir important subfolders are placed connected HubSpot’s blog subdomain. Many different websites besides person contented connected subdomains, truthful marque definite to cheque the Top Subdomains report as well:

Best performing pages

Now that we’ve looked astatine the high-level representation of a website’s integrated performance, it’s clip to beryllium much granular. In the end, you program your contented portion by piece, truthful knowing what pieces of contented thrust the astir integrated postulation to your competitors is invaluable.

To get this data, simply unfastened the Top pages report successful Ahrefs’ Site Explorer:

Go done this study for each rival and constitute down contented ideas worthy covering connected your website as well.

However, support successful caput that oftentimes, pages that make the astir postulation don’t person good due to the fact that they screen top-of-the-funnel problems. Make definite those contented ideas are applicable to your people audience.

Types of contented that pull the most links

You’ve astir apt heard that backlinks are 1 of the astir important ranking factors successful SEO. It’s nary wonderment attracting and gathering bully links to your contented is hard.

Some pieces of contented tin get links overmuch easier than others, though. In SEO, we telephone this linkbait content. This benignant of contented doesn’t needfully request to thrust integrated traffic, but it’s valuable, interesting, oregon unsocial capable to marque different radical notation it connected their websites.

As with the erstwhile reports successful Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, you tin besides find retired which of your competitors’ pages get the astir links. Open the Best by links report, prime the 200 presumption codification filter to lone amusement unrecorded pages, and marque notes astir the benignant of contented that could beryllium considered linkbait successful your niche:

We’ll speech astir creating linkbait contented later on.

Getting inspired by competitors is indispensable successful SEO, but truthful is coming up with your ain ideas and probe data. Keyword research is the astir important portion of this.

Keyword probe is the process of knowing the connection your people customers usage erstwhile searching for your products, services, and content. It past involves analyzing, comparing, and prioritizing the champion keyword opportunities for your website.

If you’re caller to this, marque definite to spell done our beginner’s usher to keyword research. I’ll conscionable absorption connected the SaaS SEO facet here.

First of all, we should speech astir search intent. It’s the “why” down a hunt query. Search engines ever effort to supply the astir applicable results—be it a quality article, a regular blog post, a guide, an interactive tool, a YouTube video, and so on.

For example, the keyword “how to cheque backlinks” has 2 hunt intents, according to the apical 10 hunt results—searchers privation a usher that tells them however to bash this (in blue) and/or a instrumentality that checks backlinks close away (in green):

In general, keywords successful SaaS tin beryllium divided into 4 main categories, each representing a benignant of contented that appears connected the SERPs:

• Blog posts – “saas seo guide” oregon “how to build links”
• Knowledge basal pages – “ahrefs domain rating” oregon “4xx mistake meaning”
• Product and work landing pages – “backlink checker” oregon “free seo tool”
• Comparison and reappraisal pages – “best seo tools” oregon “ahrefs vs moz”

Anytime you bash keyword probe oregon stumble upon a database of keywords applicable to your business, prevention the keywords to a database that you’ll travel backmost to aboriginal erstwhile readying content.

We’ll beryllium moving with the aforementioned contented categories, truthful labeling the keywords similar this close distant tin save time.

Here’s however it looks similar successful Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer, but you tin bash the aforesaid successful Ahrefs’ Site Explorer reports too:

There volition beryllium galore overlapping keywords with mixed hunt intent, e.g., “saas seo” is applicable to some guides similar this and agencies/freelancers offering SaaS SEO services. Stick with the statement (search intent) much applicable to your business.

You tin besides statement each keyword with its intent successful the much accepted consciousness arsenic navigational, informational, and transactional searches. But the SaaS-specific labels are overmuch much utile erstwhile you get backmost to your keyword research.

That’s it for creating a database of keywords that you’d similar to fertile for. We’ll beryllium gathering connected this instauration successful the next steps.

Now it’s clip we commencement turning each the probe and competitory investigation into contented creation.

This full usher is simply a large illustration of product-led content. In this case, it isn’t imaginable for maine to constitute this usher without mentioning Ahrefs tools.

In fact, product-led contented selling is our main selling tactic. Our blog drives much than 300K integrated visits each period to articles similar the 1 you’re speechmaking now. In our articles, readers larn astir a definite SEO oregon broader selling taxable portion discovering however our products tin help them:

If your keyword probe unveiled tens, hundreds, oregon adjacent thousands of antithetic topics radical are searching for that subordinate to the problems your merchandise is solving, you tin leverage connected integrated hunt and marque it your #1 selling transmission as well.

Of course, the grade to which you tin transportation your merchandise wrong an nonfiction varies. It’s ever amended not to notation your merchandise if it feels unnatural oregon too pushy.

That’s wherefore we internally usage a metric called “business potential.” For each keyword we’re reasoning astir covering connected our blog, we springiness it a concern imaginable score. This people is an estimation, showing to what grade a keyword tin fto america people transportation our product.

Obviously, this isn’t the lone metric we wage attraction to erstwhile prioritizing contented creation. There are 3 much aspects we instrumentality into account: postulation potential, keyword difficulty, and the worth we tin supply to the reader.

You whitethorn beryllium utilized to the thought of judging a keyword based connected its hunt volume. But there’s a amended approach.

That’s due to the fact that each portion of contented ranks for galore keywords with antithetic hunt volumes. And the 1 keyword you’re looking astatine whitethorn lend to conscionable a tiny fraction of the wide traffic.

This is erstwhile the archetypal aspect, postulation potential, comes into play.

Here you tin spot the overview of the keyword “content selling strategy” from Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.

Our Traffic Potential metric tells america that the leafage presently ranking astatine the apical for “content selling strategy” gets 11K integrated postulation a month. That’s overmuch higher than its hunt measurement of 1.8K successful the U.S. and comparable to its 12K planetary hunt volume.

Secondly, there’s the Keyword Difficulty (KD) metric on the left. It’s an estimation of however hard it is to fertile for the fixed keyword connected a standard from 0 to 100. The little the score, the easier it is to fertile astatine the apical for the keyword.

And lastly, we person the expertise and worth aspect.

Look astatine the contented presently ranking successful the apical 10 SERP positions. Then inquire the following: Can you constitute a amended portion of contented than that? Can you supply unsocial insights oregon adhd comparative worth successful immoderate different way? It’s ever overmuch easier to fertile good with contented that’s objectively amended than what you tin find connected the SERPs.

Let’s sum things up here.

Your “low-hanging fruit” contented opportunities are recovered successful topics with precocious postulation potential, reasonable keyword difficulty, and precocious concern worth that tin bespeak your expertise.

However, successful reality, you’ll astir ne'er find a keyword that meets each these criteria, truthful you’ll person to marque compromises. Be prepared for that.

Now we’re onto the merchandise pages. Many companies person recovered making products (or conscionable a fraction of them) accessible without immoderate friction to beryllium a palmy selling tactic. These landing pages can thrust traffic, pull backlinks, marque radical acquainted with your product, generate leads, and adjacent person immoderate visitors.

At Ahrefs, we person seen important occurrence successful offering escaped tools. These besides play an important portion successful our SEO strategy and wide growth. So far, we’ve released 13 escaped SEO tools that you tin effort right away:

All these landing pages of escaped tools combined make astir 365K integrated postulation per month:

But the immense postulation imaginable isn’t the lone payment of having a spin-off of our merchandise arsenic a landing page. Our tools tin besides enactment arsenic linkbait, which we explained earlier.

Many of these pages person a precocious URL Rating (UR) that is simply a proxy metric to a page’s nexus illustration strength:

The aforesaid principles of prioritizing contented instauration use present arsenic well. Some tools volition beryllium much invaluable than others due to the fact that they whitethorn pull a much applicable audience. Some SERPs volition already beryllium afloat of tools that bash much oregon little the aforesaid thing, truthful it volition beryllium hard to get to the apical if you don’t innovate.

On apical of the regular SEO prioritization criteria, you’ll besides request to deliberation astir developer resources. They’re scarce for america SEOs, truthful you’d amended allocate them to a leafage that tin wage disconnected nicely successful the future. Luckily, astir of these pages are an SEO gold mine.

Signing up and paying for a SaaS merchandise usually requires rather a spot of research. It’s nary wonderment there’s a coagulated hunt request for keywords with merchandise examination hunt intent.

Just instrumentality a look astatine these examples of keywords with examination hunt intent that 1 of the biggest bundle reappraisal websites, G2, is ranking for:

To beryllium honest, we did defy creating a examination leafage for a agelong time. It’s a portion of contented that’s easy manipulated. (A large happening for america is being ethical with our selling efforts.)

With this successful mind, we yet gave it a changeable and created our version of a examination page.

While the keywords whitethorn not person the astir awesome hunt volumes and postulation potential, 1 happening is for sure: These pages are incredibly invaluable due to the fact that radical looking up these keywords are adjacent to making a purchase.

As hinted earlier, you should beryllium cautious with the transcript here. Most SaaS businesses’ examination pages are centered astir a array with features and prices designed to marque their products look amended than the alternatives.

Of course, this usually involves cherry-picking and/or omitting amended products from the listing altogether. You tin bash amended than that.

If you privation inspiration to make thing different, check our examination page. There, we absorption connected word-of-mouth marketing and stress our unsocial information and features.

We’ve covered the main usage cases for keyword research. But there’s inactive a benignant of contented that doesn’t needfully request to beryllium driven by postulation potential: manufacture insights and studies.

The quality of SaaS businesses is that they often person tons of information that tin beryllium analyzed and interpreted into manufacture insights. For example, 1 of my latest information studies is astir the mode Google handles rubric tags aft 1 of its arguable updates:

The survey isn’t expected to thrust immoderate integrated traffic. But it is simply a large accidental to get much links that tin assistance our regular title tags article (and others) fertile amended connected the SERPs, acknowledgment to the backlinks it got (and will get).

We’ve published rather a fewer of these studies and insights. They’re without a uncertainty the champion benignant of linkbait contented connected our blog:

It’s nary surprise. Claims with information oregon absorbing findings are pieces of accusation that find their mode into galore articles.

As with the escaped tools, this is simply a benignant of contented that a writer can’t usually nutrient alone. You’ll astir apt request assistance from your information subject team. Just marque definite that the hypotheses and imaginable findings genuinely basal out; this volition assistance you execute your desired SEO outcomes.

One much thing. Content organisation plays an adjacent much important relation present (as compared to contented organisation for your modular articles). In the end, if there’s nary hunt volume, past you request to actively propulsion the contented successful beforehand of people’s eyes to get clicks. Here are a fewer tips for that:

• Plan an outreach campaign to get backlinks and/or vulnerability from salient radical successful your niche
• Promote the contented utilizing societal media ads connected apical of the modular integrated societal posts that usually person constricted reach
• Share it with your email subscribers
• Repurpose your content into societal media posts, answers connected Quora, newsletters, etc., and past stock repeatedly
• Update your internal links so readers of your different articles tin click done and pages tin walk their nexus equities

Last but not least, we person to speech astir technical SEO briefly. Everything that we went done truthful acold is related to on-page and off-page SEO for SaaS businesses.

But if your method instauration isn’t right, it whitethorn beryllium each for nothing—no substance however bully your contented is oregon the links you get.

You request to marque definite that hunt engines tin easy entree and decently process the contented that you privation to fertile with connected the SERPs. Yes, this tin impact galore things, but it isn’t rocket science.

The champion happening you tin bash is to acceptable up regular crawls successful Ahrefs’ Site Audit (free successful Ahrefs Webmaster Tools). Our crawler volition spell done your website and make a broad study that volition archer you what’s perchance incorrect and however to fix it:

A bully proxy to your wide authorities of method SEO is past the Health Score:

You’re besides successful luck here. SaaS websites aren’t usually analyzable from a method SEO position due to the fact that they’re mostly alternatively small. Anyone who does e‑commerce SEO and works connected websites consisting of millions of pages volition apt laughter astatine our method SEO problems.

Final thoughts

Providing the champion SaaS SEO tips I tin deliberation of is 1 thing. But making definite that each of this makes consciousness successful the large representation of selling is another.

Make definite that everything you bash pertaining to SaaS SEO aligns with your wide marketing strategy and objectives. It’s besides important to track your SEO progress.

On apical of that, it’s utile to broaden your skills and cognition successful different areas related to SaaS SEO. So if you similar this article, you’ll besides find the pursuing articles adjuvant and relevant:

• Content Promotion Link Building for B2B SaaS Companies
• What Is SaaS Marketing? 8 Tactics We Use astatine Ahrefs
• B2B Marketing: The Beginner’s Guide
• The Beginner’s Guide to Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
• How to Use & Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• How to Calculate Churn Rate + 9 Ways to Decrease It

Got immoderate questions? Ping maine on Twitter.