The Ultimate SaaS SEO Guide -  Strategies, tactics, tools

By: Arik Marmorstein, Spectroomz founder

In this SEO for SaaS guide I’ll cover:

1. What is SaaS SEO and why it’s trending now

2. SaaS SEO strategies

3. What can you do to stay ranked high

4. Relevant content - keyword research

5. Making sure Google can access and understand your content

6. Initial ranking - gaining site authority with link-building

7. Staying ranked high

8. FAQs

9. Your turn

SaaS SEO is search engine optimization for SaaS companies. Since Facebook/Instagram ads prices have increased in recent years, and since COVID showed software companies that their dependence is performance marketing is risky in times when you need to cut marketing expenses (you get traffic only as long as you pay for it), more software companies are diversifying their marketing channels and turn back to good ol’ SEO. Below you can see the trend from Exploding Topics. 

The idea is to create assets that will last even when you don’t spend money.

While you can hire a SaaS SEO agency or expert (in many cases your focus justifies it), you can also do it yourself. This is what I’ll teach you in this post. 

There are generally four types of contexts you can meet your potential client. Based on that you can choose how to build your SEO strategy. 

1) They search for your software specifically - this one usually requires fewer efforts from your side. People already know you and what you offer and have a strong intent to visit your site. 

2) They search for information about the type of software you offer - they don’t necessarily know you, but have a strong intent for what you offer. An example would be “team task management software”. These types of queries are usually highly competitive since they include general keywords all your competitors want to rank for. It is possible to rank for these keywords, but it takes longer in most cases (below is a reference from Ahrefs to how long does it take to rank into Google’s first page). 

3) They are looking to purchase your type of software -  these are searchers who are already educated about what you and your competitors offer, they know they need it, and now they search for a quote. Example queries would be “automated contract review software pricing” or “medical billing software pricing”. 

4) Peripheral content - this type of content doesn’t relate to either of the above, but rather to the people you are targeting. Those who might be interested in your SaaS, but are not currently searching for it. The idea is you target keywords that are relevant to your target audience but in the periphery of your service. For example, Spectroomz is a new autistic-friendly freelancing platform focused on SEO and content projects. I needed to get businesses to post projects on the platform, but getting organic traffic from keywords like SEO services or SEO agency would be too competitive when I launched. So I started writing content like Sparktoro review, Mixamx review and Calendly Alternatives which caters to marketers and entrepreneurs. These people are not searching for SEO services now, but while they get to Spectroomz for one reason, many subscribe to my newsletter as well as get familiar with my brand. In the long term, it gets clients to post SEO related projects as well.

I really like the peripheral content strategy, as it’s both less competitive (you target long-tail keywords) and it enables you to produce more content (there is only so much you can write about your SaaS). Click to tweet

While Google doesn’t share its algorithm, there’s a lot we can understand. Let’s think about it as a mathematical equation:

Getting ranked high = R + G + FC + SI + RF + AE + UE

No worries, I’ll explain. 

R - Relevancy. You need your content to be relevant to what your potential customers search queries. This is done by knowing your users and with the right keyword research. 

G - Gate. You need to get to “Google’s gate”, meaning Google needs to be able to find your site (crawl it) and to understand it (index it) so it can return your content for the relevant search queries. This belongs to the world of Technical SEO and on-page SEO. 

FC - First Chance. Generally, anything that isn’t on Google’s first page is buried in the “content graveyard” (CTR for Google’s first page ranges from 30% for the top result to 3% for the last result on the first page, see source, so you can imagine what happens after the first page). In order to get a fair chance for a certain keyword, you need to have authority. The primary way to gain authority as a website is to get backlinks from other relevant websites (link-building). 

SI - Search Intent - your content needs to answer the real intent of the searcher. Some time people type one query but end up their search journey (i.e. find what they were looking for) with slightly different content. You need to be able to identify that real intent, and I’ll show you how to do that. 

RF - Right Format. Your content needs to be in the right format. It could be a long guide, a step-by-step guide, a video, a quote, and more. 

AE - Additional Elements. You need to identify additional elements that are relevant to the content you are writing. For example, if your client is a Locksmith in Brooklyn, the query typed by the person who needs someone to get him back into his locked apartment at 3 am has a strong locality element. If you are looking for health-related content, there is a strong authority element since Google understands health content can significantly affect your life, and therefore returns content from trusted sources. 

UE - User Engagement. Google sees how people interact with your content and based on different indications decides if it answers the need of the searcher. If it does, your content will stay ranked high. Basically, this means you need to give real value with your content. 

Let’s elaborate on the different elements of the formula. 

The content you write needs to be relevant to your potential customer’s search queries. There are generally two phases for doing keyword research. 

1 - Get to know your potential customers. Get into their shoes in order to know what they might be searching for. You can use HubSpot’s make my persona tool for creating user personas like this one

Of curse talking with your users and learning about them and the problem you are trying to solve for them is the best way get to know them. Below is a suggestion on how to talk to users (I created a form you can use based on a YC startup school lecture).

2 - Keyword research. A data-driven approach to understanding your potential users’ search queries. There are free tools like Google’s keyword planner, AnswerThePublic, Ubersuggest and paid tools like Ahrefs (which I use) Moz and SEMRush that help you do your keyword research (I’d also pay attention to Clearscope). If you know what your potential clients or users are searching for, you can tailor the right content to get them into your site. 

I showed the process of launching Spectroomz through SEO and content marketing (including screenshots and templates). There are additional 15 tactics I use which are not shown there (that’s for a different post), but you’ll get a good sense of what is keywords research and how to do it. 

Spectroomz now offers advanced keyword research services, you can

1) Crawling - finding your content. Once Google’s spider gets into a website it crawls it (not all of it in many cases). Links to other websites direct Google’s crawler to crawl these websites too. You can think of links (backlinks) as recommendations. A sitemap, robots.txt file, submitting your site and new pages to Google Search Console are all part of making sure Google crawls your site. This is called Technical SEO and is pretty straightforward and simple. 

2) Indexing - The process of understanding your content. Google sees your website in a different way your users see it. When you use a meta title, meta description, alt text for images, H tags and generally write in an SEO friendly way,  you help Google understand your content, and index it properly so it will be able to return it for the relevant queries. Below you can see how Specroomz looks and how Google sees it. 


The process of helping Google understand your content is pretty simple if you use Wordpress (with Yoast plugin), or other website builders like Wix, Squarespace or other alternatives (although Wordpress should be better for SEO than Wix/Squarespace), since they do most of the work for you.

There are additional on-page SEO elements like writing short URLs, phrasing your headlines, the readability, and more. We’ll get to this in a different post. 

3) Returning your content for the relevant search queries. 

Getting your content through the “Gate” requires work, but it’s simple.

To get an initial chance from Google (meaning to get impressions to your content) your site needs authority (or domain authority). The main way to get authority is by getting relevant backlinks from other websites to the content that includes the keywords you want to rank for. If I have a new website with no domain authority, you should write valuable content and try to get websites to link to it. If I have a new email marketing software startups, then getting a link from ESPN or the Washington Post would be less valuable then getting a link from Hubspot’s blog. If a high authority website in my domain links to my site, it’s more valuable. I previously showed, among other things, how to get backlinks to your site (including screenshots). 

If you already have authority in your domain, then new content you publish in this domain gets more credibility (and therefore first chance from Google).

In order to stay ranked on Google’s first page following the first chance your content gets, you should write the “right content”. This is how to do it. 

Real intent

Your content needs to address searchers’ real intent. How can you learn about this intent? From Google.  Google returns content that performs well (meaning people found what they were looking for) for different queries. The gaps between your initial query to what Google returns can teach you about searchers’ real intent. Let’s see an example. 

Let’s say I’m an email marketing software company and I want to target the keyword “improve email open rate”. Let’s see how the SERP (search engine results page) looks like:

While I typed “improve email open rates” the results Google served back are a bit different. 

• 3 results (even more) are guides or complete guides. 

• 3-4 results are about the simplicity (I would say the last green results also imply for simplicity).

• 4 results include a # of ways (to improve the open rate). 

So if I would write content for this company it would probably be something in the nature of: “Improve your email open rates using these X simple methods” or “the complete guide to easily improve your email open rates”. I use SERPSIM to make sure my title won’t get cut-off on the SERP.

Right format

Google serves different content formats for different queries. Some are complete guides, some are step-by-step guides, infographics, videos, quotes, and more. Before we write our content, we should type our query and see what Google returns (in terms of format). When we type the query “How to play poker” Google’s top results are videos. This means the right format for such content is video. 

Additional elements 

There are additional elements we should take into consideration. If I type the query “NYC locksmith” I see the top result is a map, meaning locality is an important element we should take into consideration. If I’m typing the query “stock market” the top results are from well-known financial publications and from the recent hours. That’s because there are additional elements of authority (Google knows the stock market can affect your financials and therefore wants to serve reliable content) and recency.

Searcher engagement 

In order to stay ranked high, you need to provide real value. There are several indications for the value your content does or doesn’t provide:

• Average session length - if people get into your 4,000 words article but stay for 25 seconds on average than they probably didn’t find what they are looking for. 

• CTR (click-through-rate) - of all the people who saw your website on the SERP, what percentage clicked on it. 

• Bounce rate - the percentage of people who viewed only one page on your site after getting in. This gives Google an indication people don’t find your site useful. If they would have, they’d probably browse more results (I can argue differently in some cases, but generally it makes sense). 

• How many concluded their search after visiting your site -  this is a very strong indication that they found what they want after visiting your site. 

Spectroomz now offers the We Own Your SEO package, in which, well… we own your SEO and content marketing (keyword research, content creation and backlink generation).

What is Saas SEO

SaaS SEO is search engine optimization for SaaS (B2B) companies. Companies do that in order to drive traffic, leads, and sales through organic search engines. 

What is the best Saas SEO Agency

Here’s what you can do in order to find the best SaaS SEO agency for you. Find SaaS companies you like their search presence. You can look for your competitors as well. Check on Linkedin if these companies have in-house SEO employees. If they don’t, it’s more likely they have an SEO agency. Then do the following Google search: "[Company Name]" intext: "SEO agency" - [company’s website]. 

What is a good SaaS SEO strategy?

There are many, but generally, you can target high competitive keywords (for example, running shoes), which generally have higher intent. But if you are a new site without relevant authority, it will probably take a lot of time. Another strategy would be to target keywords with weaker intent that are less competitive and therefore easy to rank for. For example, barefoot running vs shoes. You would still target your potential customers, but at a different state of mind. Once they are on your site, you can offer them to subscribe to your newsletter and convert them later. You can also retarget them later using social ads. With the first strategy, you will rank later, but once you do, your visitors will be more “cooked”. With the second strategy, you will rank faster, but your visitors will need more “cooking”.

This is the SEO course (and training) every freelancer on Spectroomz takes to learn SEO. If your focus is important to you, you can hire outstanding SEO professionals here.