If you are a SaaS startup and you just launched your brand or service in the sea of other Software as a Service companies, what you want next is to get noticed.

Growing your SaaS company, however, can be hard since, unlike other traditional companies, you are marketing something without a physical product, something that exists only in the online space.

One of the best things that can help your SaaS business grow after your launch is if you somehow manage to bring organic traffic to your site. This can only be done through thorough and quality digital marketing. Specifically, you need an effective SEO strategy to do this.

But how do you jumpstart your website for SEO without drowning in the jargon and complicated procedure?

Here, I’ll discuss an SEO framework for SaaS startups that you can understand and other tips that you can apply to your own SaaS business.

But first…

What is SaaS SEO?

It is the search engine optimization process specifically for a Software as a Service company. It means growing the volume of organic traffic for a SaaS company website. You can do this either by getting top rankings on a search engine results page for target keywords or by initiating SaaS marketing campaigns that will lead prospective users to your website.

Why use SEO Strategy for SaaS Marketing?

Remember, unlike other traditional businesses, SaaS companies are pitching products that are not tangible and are only present on the internet. If you want to get noticed, you have to dominate the search terms of the number one online search engine – Google.

Usually, SaaS companies rely on pay-per-click options and social media advertisements to gain site visitors. Although these methods are effective, they are also really expensive in the long run. The traffic stops once you stop paying for the advertisements. If you are a startup company with limited resources, this is not a very practical way to go. And even if you are a well-funded company, it is still wise to invest in a process that will get your steady traffic in the long run.

If you invest in SaaS SEO, the volume of organic traffic that you will reap later will be worth it – even more. But if you do not optimize your site, you will risk getting buried in the search engine results pages.

That is why you need to start your SEO process as early as possible. Either you risk something for growth, or you risk nothing and end up as nothing.

How to start the SEO for your SaaS company?

Let’s keep this simple. How do you put together the best SEO strategy for your SaaS company? The first thing that you have to do is to find a framework that works.

SEO is one of the most efficient strategies to build your SaaS business since it automatically places your services in front of a relevant audience. If a SaaS website isn’t developed with SEO in mind, the firm is losing out on a lot of prospective consumers. Let’s look at how to create an SEO plan that will help you attract more of the ideal new subscribers to your site.

Use a proven SEO framework that is best for your SaaS business.

Here we discuss an SEO Framework that helped background removal SaaS grow its traffic from 0 to 700,000 visitors in just four months of intensive campaign. What made it so successful? The SEO framework included thorough keyword research, technical optimization, quality content, and outreach campaigns for link building.

1. Research your keywords thoroughly.

When researching for your keywords, you must take into consideration three important things: the right keyword, your competitor, and your target user intent.

The right keyword. Before you can start an effective SEO campaign, you’ll need to first pin down your most valuable keywords. These keywords are going to be the ones that your target audience searches for the most, and the ones that you want to rank for in search results.

It’s crucial to keep in mind that certain keywords are more difficult to rank for than others. Long-tail keywords, or keyword phrases, for example, are significantly easier to rank for since they are considerably more specific and pertain to a smaller group of individuals.

Because these keywords account for a significantly lower percentage of search inquiries, there is less competition when it comes to ranking for them. Examples of long-tail keywords are “SaaS company for background removal” or “SaaS marketing business in Vancouver.”

General keywords, on the other hand, will be considerably more difficult to rank for. Your competitors will aim to rank for them as well. These broad terms may include things like “SaaS marketing” or “SaaS business.”

If you are a Software as a Service company, you should thoroughly research the keywords that you want to rank for. Check the search volume and competition level, as well as the related keyword for each term. There are a lot of solid keyword research tools in the market right now that will make your research process easier. Once you find the right keywords, you should incorporate them on your anchor links, H tags, content, and metadata.

Your competitors’ keywords. If you are researching your keyword, try to find out the search terms your competitors are trying to rank for and the search terms that they are already dominating in the search engine results page (SERP).

There are several ways that you can do to determine your competitor’s keywords. One of the easiest is methods you can do is going to your rival company’s homepage, hit the right-click button, and click the view page source option. You can then scan their code to find the keywords that they are optimizing. Another thing you can do is to use tools to analyze your competitor’s keywords.

Your target user intent. Search intent, also called user intent or keyword intent, is the reason why a person is looking for something in a search engine.

Search intent (also known as user intent) is the primary goal a user has when searching a query in a search engine. Many times, users are searching for a specific type of answer or resource as they search. When doing an SEO campaign, you should understand the search intent of each keyword you are optimizing for. This means understanding the needs of your users. To have an idea about search intent, you can put in a keyword in the search engine and analyze what the top 10 results are all about. Are they predominantly homepages of websites? Informative content? How-to articles? Or are they about a product? Google will rank up relevant content that satisfies user intent.

2. Take technical optimization seriously.

Once you have your roster of target keywords, the next thing you have to fix is the technical structure of your site. The technical structure of your website is usually your web developer’s field. It is the foundation of your site and if some of its aspects are broken or not functioning as expected, it can affect indexing, your content, or worse, your user experience.

To start, analyze the technical structure of your website by running a site audit. Get some tools like SEMRush or AHREFs for this. You can also search around for free technical structure auditing sites online, but they might not be as comprehensive as the paid ones. Once the audit is done, you will have an idea of the problems in your website that need to be fixed and the issues that you will need to address relating to SEO concerns.

If the audit report revealed a lot of issues, prioritize the crucial errors first and then work your way to other issues. A good audit site will usually give you a list of concerns classified into an order of priority.

Once the major issues are addressed, you can run your site for audit again to determine if your SEO score has improved. Remember to continue checking your site for bugs or issues now and then.

3. Invest in quality content.

Content is the creative aspect of your SEO framework. This is where you engage your audience and let the world understand your brand.

Good content must have the following characteristics:

• It is in-depth.
• It has related videos or images.
• It contains an organized topic structure.
• It has related images and videos that break the monotony, summarizes a topic, or further enhances user understanding of the topic.
• It has new or interesting information.
• It has a tone specific to your brand.
• It must not have awkward keyword placements.

As a SaaS company with several established competitors, you can start by taking a regular topic and giving it a new angle, or you can even be more straightforward and counter some information presented by a competitor website. The bottom line is, find something unique to talk about. If not, create better and informative content that answers user pain points,

Now, sometimes, you get too busy managing your business that you would not have time to write your own content. This happens and that is okay. What you have to do now is to find a writer who can be your voice to the world.

Investing in quality content also means investing in a quality writer. Let’s be honest, if you need to generate five articles per week, you would probably outsource most of it because you have a lot of things on your plate. You can start with allotting $100 for five articles per week – that’s the lowest rate you can go without compromising quality or exploiting some non-native English writers. For experienced writers, the rate can go anywhere between $50 – $100 for one article with a minimum of 1,000 words.

4. Come up with a content outreach strategy to gain high-quality backlinks.

Link submissions worked more than a decade ago, but not anymore. If you are still using this method to build your links, don’t wonder if you are not ranking well on search engine result pages.

The best thing you can do to get high-quality backlinks and establish your authority is to create a content marketing outreach strategy.

Content outreach is the process of distributing valuable content to capture your target audience. Most of the work you spend in content outreach is building relationships with site editors and influencers.

Once you think you have the proper content to engage your target users, you have to find a platform that ensures your voice is heard. To do this, you have to research different influencers or high-traffic blog sites that are relevant to your SaaS product. People who are already interested in your business niche have a higher probability to publish your content. Prepare a list of those people or websites and connect with them using a good pitch.

Once you have a roster of websites that regularly publish your content, you will notice an increase in organic traffic to your website and this can improve your SEO, help you rank your target keywords, and establish your authority among your target audience.

Conclusion

A proven SEO strategy framework can be hard to come by, especially one tailor-fit to SaaS companies or startups. This tried-and-tested framework may be the right one for your Software as a Service business. Start planning your campaign using this strategy today.