SEO for SaaS Companies: Grow Traffic and MRR in 2024

For SaaS (Software as a Service) companies that do not sell physical products, having a strong online presence is simply essential, or else they won’t be able to effectively reach their target market and build awareness.

With that being said, SEO, or search engine optimization, is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your SaaS company’s online presence. 

SEO is the process of optimizing your website and its content to improve its ranking in Google’s (and other search engines’) search results. 

According to Forbes, 93% of online experiences begin with a search, and yet 73% of these searchers never scroll past the first page of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages.) This means when you rank higher on these search result pages, you can attract more organic traffic, generate more leads, and, ultimately, get more customers for your SaaS product.

In the competitive world of SaaS, effective SEO campaigns have proven to be game-changers. For instance, HubSpot increased its organic search traffic by over 50% within a year by focusing on high-quality content and technical SEO improvements. Similarly, Moz saw a 40% growth in organic traffic by targeting long-tail keywords and optimizing user experience. These examples highlight the potential of SEO to drive significant growth in organic traffic for SaaS companies.

In short, investing in SEO can help your SaaS company achieve success and sustainable growth, and in this guide, we will show you how you can build a successful SaaS SEO strategy.

By the end of this guide, you’ll learn the important foundations for planning and executing a successful SEO strategy for SaaS companies, and we’ll cover the following:

• The basics of SEO
• The benefits of SEO for SaaS companies
• Unique challenges for SaaS companies when implementing SEO
• Specific SEO strategies for a SaaS company
• On-page and off-page optimizations
• How to measure and optimize your SEO
• Best practices and do’s and don’ts when implementing SEO for SaaS companies

Without further ado, let us begin right away. 

What Is SEO for SaaS?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and as the name suggests, is the term used to describe any optimizations on a website to rank higher on the search engines’ results page—especially Google’s.

SEO has been around since the earliest days of search engines. Archie was the very first internet search engine—although very different than our modern search engines—, introduced in 1990. Many other search engines from Lycos to AltaVista to Yahoo bloomed on those early days of the internet.

However, it was the launch of Google back in 1996 that really triggered the start of SEO. Google was the first search engine that ranked websites based on relevancy and popularity rather than alphabetically (and paid listing), essentially allowing the possibility of SEO.

While search engines have continued to evolve over the years, the main principle of SaaS SEO is the same: optimizing all the possible aspects of your site so the search engines will perceive it as more relevant and more popular.

Technical Optimization for SaaS Websites

Technical optimization involves ensuring that your SaaS website is easily crawlable by search engines. Start by conducting a thorough audit using tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs. Key steps include:

1. Improve Site Speed: Compress images, leverage browser caching, and use a content delivery network (CDN).
2. Mobile Optimization: Ensure your site is mobile-friendly by using responsive design techniques.
3. Secure Your Site: Implement HTTPS to secure user data and improve trust.
4. Fix Crawl Errors: Regularly check and fix 404 errors, broken links, and ensure proper redirects.

For example, when Pinterest optimized their site speed, they saw a 15% increase in organic traffic. Similarly, Salesforce’s transition to a mobile-first design led to a 20% improvement in their search rankings. These examples illustrate the tangible benefits of technical SEO optimizations.

How Search Engines Rank Websites?

In practice, Google (and other search engines) use a complex algorithm that measures a variety of factors to rank a website, called ranking factors. There are over 200 ranking factors taken into account by Google, but the most important ones are:

• Content quality: Google measures content quality using a variety of factors, including but not limited to:
  • Relevance: how well the content matches the searcher’s search query or phrase
  • Expertise and experience: the expertise of the author of the content, the authority on the topic, and the experience in the niche/industry.  
  • Accuracy: the accuracy of the information contained in the article and how complete the information is.
  • Objectivity: how objective/factual the information provided in the content
  • Engagement metrics: like bounce rate, dwell time, how many pages the user visits, etc. 
  • Freshness: how recent or how recently updated the content is.
• Keyword usage: the use of target keywords in the website’s content. However, it’s important not to overstuff the content with keywords but rather use the keywords naturally while maintaining relevance.
• Backlinks: backlinks, or inbound links, refer to links from other websites coming to a website. Google treats backlinks as votes of confidence; when more high-quality and relevant websites link to a website, it will send a signal to Google that this website is trustworthy, credible, and authoritative.
• User experience: Google measures various user-experience metrics like bounce rate, CTR, dwell time, and others as ranking factors. Meaning, factors like mobile-friendliness, page speed, and others that affect user experience will also affect your site’s ranking.
• Domain Authority: Domain Authority, or DA, is a metric developed by Moz that measures a website’s authority and how likely this website will rank well in the SERP. Domain Authority is measured based on Moz’s data, taking into account dozens of factors like the domain’s age, quality/quantity of backlinks, and more. 

SEO is, simply put, optimizing your SaaS website so that it is as close as possible to Google’s ideal standards in these ranking factors. The more “ideal” your website and its content are against Google’s algorithm, the more likely it will rank high on the SERPs.

Nuances of SaaS SEO

SEO for SaaS companies requires a nuanced approach. Unlike e-commerce, SaaS SEO must focus heavily on demonstrating expertise and providing in-depth content that addresses user needs. SaaS companies often target niche markets, making it essential to optimize for specific, industry-related keywords. Additionally, building a robust backlink profile through partnerships and industry collaborations can significantly enhance authority and search rankings.

Contrarian Perspectives in SaaS SEO

Contrary to popular belief, focusing solely on high-volume keywords might not be the best strategy for SaaS companies. Instead, targeting lower-volume, highly-specific keywords can yield better conversion rates. Data from Ahrefs shows that long-tail keywords often convert better because they capture more specific user intent. Additionally, while conventional wisdom emphasizes frequent blogging, some SaaS companies have found success with fewer, high-quality, comprehensive posts that thoroughly address user queries.

SaaS SEO is a Long Term Game

It’s important to debunk the common misconception that SEO is ‘cheating’ the search engine, somewhat mystifying SEO like a get-rich-quick scheme or a holy grail secret tactic.

Instead, nowadays there’s nothing so secret about SaaS SEO. SEO is solely about optimizing the five factors we have discussed above, and being consistent.

It’s important to understand that SEO for SaaS companies is a long-term game and will take at least 6 to 12 months before you see significant results. However, not only is SEO relatively affordable than other marketing channels for SaaS companies—so it can be used to lower your overall marketing expenses—, the results will be worth it in the end as you’ll get a sustainable, long-term source of leads.

So, it’s better to start your SaaS SEO efforts as early as possible.

Why Do You Need SEO for SaaS?

While arguably SEO is important for any business, SEO for SaaS deserves a special import due to two main reasons:

First, SaaS businesses are exclusively online, and so we have to rely on online or digital marketing. SaaS SEO, as mentioned, is among the most affordable, accessible, and effective digital marketing channels available.

Second, content marketing—or inbound marketing—is an integral aspect of SaaS marketing, and SEO remains the most effective way to promote your content.

SEO is a very important digital marketing channel for SaaS, and again, it’s better to start early.

Measuring SEO Performance for SaaS

To measure the success of your SEO efforts, consider the following metrics:

• Organic Traffic: Track using Google Analytics to see the number of visitors coming from search engines.
• Conversion Rates: Measure how many visitors are converting into leads or customers.
• Keyword Rankings: Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to monitor your position for targeted keywords.
• Backlink Quality and Quantity: Track backlinks using tools like Moz or Ahrefs to ensure you’re gaining high-quality links.
• User Engagement Metrics: Monitor bounce rate, time on site, and pages per session to gauge content effectiveness.

How Can You Improve Your Website’s SEO

The fact that Google takes hundreds of factors shouldn’t overwhelm you. In the end, remember that Google’s mission—according to them—is to provide the most relevant and high-quality search results to the searcher. Thus, your main focus in SEO for SaaS companies should be to deliver high-quality and relevant content to your target audience.

With that being said, we can summarize that there are two main objectives of SEO strategy for SaaS brands:

1. Ensuring your website’s content is high-quality, valuable, and relevant to your human audience
2. Making sure Google’s crawler bots can properly crawl and index your SaaS site so that Google properly understands your content and its context

There are a wide variety of optimizations and initiatives you can implement on your website to achieve these objectives and improve your SaaS website’s SEO, but the basic ones are:

• Creating high-quality and relevant content. There’s no shortcut to actually creating informative, relevant, and engaging content for your target audience. 
• Keyword optimization: use keywords naturally in your content’s metadata (title tag, meta description, etc.) and the content’s body. Make sure to use the keywords in a way that is relevant to the content at hand.
• Backlinks quality and quantity: getting more backlinks from relevant and high-quality websites to improve your website’s authority.
• Optimizing mobile-friendliness and page speed: making sure your website loads fast on all devices and optimized for mobile devices.
• Promoting your website and content: promoting your website and its content on social media, email marketing, advertising, influencer marketing, and other channels to get more people to consume the content and gain more backlinks in the process.
• Regularly update your website: regularly update your website’s design to maintain engagement and stay on top of the latest trends, and regularly refresh/revamp your content.

Specific Challenges in Implementing SEO in SaaS Companies

Although implementing SEO is not easy for any website due to today’s competitive digital landscape, SEO can be especially challenging for SaaS businesses due to several key reasons:

1. Competition in the SaaS Industry. The SaaS industry, as we know, is extremely competitive, if not saturated. So, when attempting to target high-traffic and popular keywords, the competition can also be high, and ranking for these keywords may require a lot of time and effort.
2. The complexity of SaaS products: it’s often difficult to explain SaaS products in a way that is informative and engaging. So, creating high-quality content covering the SaaS product or surrounding niche can be challenging.
3. The constantly changing SaaS industry: meaning SaaS companies may need to constantly update their SEO tactics and content strategy to stay on top of the latest trends and stay ahead of the competition.     

To tackle these challenges, SaaS companies may also need to adopt unique SEO strategies specific to the SaaS niche, for example:

• Targeting long-tail keywords: due to the complexity of the SaaS product, relatively limited niche, and high competition, targeting long-tail keywords may instead be effective. Long-tail keywords include more phrases so they are more complex, more specific, and especially less competitive than short-tail/generic keywords. Targeting long-tail keywords may also help you attract more targeted/qualified traffic to your website.
• Leveraging infographics and videos: you can use infographics, well-taken photos, and videos to enhance your content. These visual mediums are more effective at explaining what your SaaS product is about and can help break up blocks of text, making your content more engaging and visually appealing. They may also help you rank for more image-based search queries and phrases. 
• Attending industry events: attending relevant industry events can be an effective way to learn about the latest industry news, partner up with other SaaS businesses in your area (which can be potential backlink sources) promote your brand and your website, and open even more opportunities.

For the rest of this guide on SEO for SaaS companies, we will also address these specific challenges and strategies.

Emerging SEO Trends for SaaS Businesses

Emerging SEO trends, such as the integration of AI and machine learning, are reshaping how SaaS companies approach their SEO strategies. AI tools can analyze vast amounts of data to provide actionable insights, helping businesses personalize content and improve keyword targeting. Machine learning algorithms help in predictive analysis, enabling more accurate targeting and personalization. Additionally, the rise of voice search is pushing SaaS companies to optimize for natural language queries, which often means targeting long-tail keywords and creating content that answers specific user questions. These trends are crucial for staying ahead in the competitive SaaS market.

Starting Your SEO for SaaS Campaign

So, how can you start an SEO campaign for your SaaS business? Admittedly, if you don’t know anything at all about SEO, this can be confusing. Combine that with the fact that starting and running a SaaS company is already difficult, so you might not have the time to start your own SaaS SEO campaign.

In this case, outsourcing to a SaaS SEO agency is probably your best bet. However, it is wise to still learn about the key steps of SEO—which we will discuss below— so you can make a better-informed decision in choosing an SEO agency.

Step-by-Step SEO Implementation for SaaS

1. Defining Your SEO Goals: Establish specific and realistic goals for your SaaS SEO campaign, focusing on increasing website traffic, lead generation, and conversions, with clear, achievable milestones to maintain team morale. Google Analytics and Google Search Console can help you on the way.
2. Keyword Research: Conduct thorough keyword research to identify the words and phrases your target audience uses, ensuring you target relevant, high-volume, and manageable competition keywords using various free and paid tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs.
3. Competitive Analysis: Analyze your competitors’ content, backlinks, and promotional strategies using tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush, aiming to create superior or uniquely angled content.
4. Develop an SEO-Optimized Content Strategy: Create a content plan based on keyword research and competitive analysis, focusing on high-quality, engaging content that is better or different from top-ranking competitors, and establish an editorial calendar.
5. Optimizing Your SaaS Website and Content for SEO: Implement on-page optimizations including keyword integration, metadata enhancement, internal and external linking, and a clear URL structure, ensuring content relevance and readability.
6. Technical Optimization: Ensure your website has a logical structure, is crawlable, secure, mobile-friendly, and fast-loading, addressing technical SEO components such as sitemaps, robots.txt, duplicate content, and HTTPS. You can use Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Google Mobile-Friendly Test, Google PageSpeed Insights, GTmetrix and Google Search Console for this purpose.
7. Backlinks Building and Off-Page Optimization: Focus on acquiring high-quality backlinks through creating valuable content, outreach, content promotion, and guest posting, and leverage social media and brand mentions to enhance your SEO efforts.
8. Evaluation and Further Optimizations: Consistently monitor and evaluate your SEO progress using various tools, re-optimize content and website elements, and continue building links and publishing high-quality content for long-term success.

SaaS SEO Strategy: Step-By-Step Guide

Here, we will discuss the necessary steps in formulating and executing an SEO strategy for SaaS, starting with the first and most important one:

1. Defining Your SEO Goals

What is the goal of your SaaS SEO efforts? No, SERP ranking is not the end goal, but rather just a means to an end. There’s no use in getting the no.1 rank on Google if SEO doesn’t bring you more traffic, more leads, or more conversions.

So, define clear and specific goals for your SaaS SEO campaign, such as:

• Increasing website traffic by X%
• Getting more people to sign up to your email newsletter by X%
• Increase sales by X%

Your goals should be specific and realistic—that is, achievable—. It’s okay to have big goals and visions, but in that case, break them down into smaller, more achievable milestones. This is important to maintain a sense of progress and the morale of your team.

2. Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of any successful SEO strategy.

Keyword research is the process of identifying the words and phrases your target audience uses when searching on Google or other search engines for information related to your business. 

Conducting thorough keyword research has several key benefits:

• Knowing which keywords to target helps you focus your SEO efforts. You can target keywords that are more likely to drive traffic to your website.
• In-depth keyword research helps you understand the language/terminology and search intent of potential customers, so you can tailor your content to be more relevant and engaging for this specific target audience.
• Whether you are targeting the right keywords (or not) may literally make or break your chances of appearing at the top of SERPs for relevant search queries.

How to Perform Keyword Research: Key Principles

While there are various techniques and approaches you can adopt in performing keyword research, all of them should follow these three basic principles:

1. Relevance: you should first list the keywords that are relevant to your SaaS business and the product you offer. Targeting relevant keywords will allow you to attract qualified visitors who are more likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
2. Search volume: search volume refers to the number of times a keyword is searched for a given time period (i.e., monthly,) measuring the keyword’s popularity. You should target keywords with a high enough search volume so you can get more traffic to your website.
3. Competition: the higher the keyword’s search volume is, typically the more competitive it will be. It’s important to find the right balance between popularity and competitiveness (keyword difficulty.) Based on your timeline and available resources, choose keywords with manageable competition.

Tools for Effective Keyword Research

There are a wide variety of free and paid tools you can use to help with your keyword research process, and some of the most popular ones are:

Free tools:

• Google Keyword Planner: a free and handy tool offered by Google, allowing pretty in-depth research for search volume, competition, and other metrics
• Ubersuggest: Ubersuggest has a paid version, but you can still perform limited keyword research functionalities for free
• Answer the Public: can give you keyword suggestions based on Google’s autocomplete data and others

Paid tools:

There are various SEO and keyword research tools that offer comprehensive SEO features like SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz, or KWFinder. Most of them offer pretty similar basic features, but each offers their unique features and different price ranges.

Choose the right tool based on your specific needs and budget, but if you are serious about SEO, consider investing in SEMRush or Ahrefs.

Different Keyword Research Techniques

There are a number of techniques you can use to perform keyword research while leveraging the tools we’ve discussed above. Some of the most effective ones include:

• Brainstorming: a ‘manual’ brainstorming can still be effective in identifying what keywords to target. Make a list of the words and phrases related to your niche/industry and your SaaS product. Try to put yourself in your target audience’s shoes and list the words and phrases that they might use when searching for information related to your product. You can then feed these keywords to your keyword research tools to analyze them further.
• Analyzing your website’s traffic: if you already have a working website, you can analyze incoming traffic (i.e., with Google Analytics) so you can get a clearer idea of the queries and phrases visitors already use to find your site. Identify the keywords that are driving the most visitors to your website, and identify opportunities.
• Competitive analysis: you can use tools like SEMRush or Ahrefs to analyze your competitors’ websites and identify the keywords they are already ranking for. You may choose to target the same keywords or find gaps and opportunities using this data.
• Google Autosuggest and related searches: leverage Google autosuggest feature by typing the keywords you’ve gathered via brainstorming on Google. Google will suggest additional queries to “complete” the keywords you’ve given, and some of them may be useful for you. You can also scroll to the bottom of the SERP to find related searches.

Leverage your keyword research tools together with these techniques, and you should be able to build a list of relevant and high-potential keywords for your SaaS business. Some additional tips:

• Consider targeting long-tail keywords instead of solely focusing on short-tail, generic ones. These long-tail keywords may have lower search volume but also lower competition, and they may be effective in attracting more qualified visitors who are already interested in your offers.
• Keep an eye on changing trends. The popularity of keywords may change over time, so keep track of them and adjust your keyword strategy accordingly.
• Don’t be afraid to experiment. There’s no one-size-fits-all keyword that will always work. Embrace trial and error, and see which keyword research approach works best for your SaaS business.
• Treat keyword research as a long-term, ongoing process. It may take time to establish a working keyword strategy, so be patient. Monitor your progress, make adjustments, and don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results.

3. Competitive Analysis

In SaaS SEO, your ‘competitors’ are especially those who are ranking on your target keywords.

The simplest, most affordable way here is to do a quick Google search for these target keywords and check those ranking on the first page (at least the top 3 results).

Alternatively, you can use various tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, and Moz Pro among others to perform a competitive analysis.

There are a few key areas to pay attention to here:

• Their approaches with the content: their content quality, technical optimizations, keywords usage, etc. Your goal is to create a better (or different content) than these. We will discuss this again further below.
• Their backlinks profile. The idea is that the sites that gave backlinks to these competitors might also be willing to give yours.
• Their content promotion. See how they are using social media, are they investing in paid ads? If it’s fairly old content, tracking the data can be difficult, but always possible.

The better you understand your ‘enemy’, the better you can develop your strategy. The main principle? If there’s something you can improve upon, do so. If some aspects are already really good if not perfect, emulate them.

4. Develop an SEO Optimized Content Strategy

Develop a content strategy based on your keyword research and competitive analysis.

As mentioned, the idea is to develop better content compared to the top-ranking competitors, especially the top-3 pages of your target keywords. There are two different approaches in doing this:

• Create content significantly better in all the different aspects: longer and more in-depth, newer information, better images and videos, better structure, more engaging tone, and so on.
• Find a unique angle and cover the topic in a different way. You can even argue against the facts presented in your competitor’s content, the controversy might attract readers.

The thing is, a little bit different is usually better than being a little bit better. If you want to take the former approach, you have to be better in significant ways. However, that’s not saying finding a unique, different angle is always easier, as sometimes it can be really difficult.

The principle, however, remains. If you can find a unique angle, do so. If not, aim to create better content. Remember that you must always use valid information in your content, and cite your sources.

Also, don’t underestimate the power of media diversification. Use images, infographics, and videos to enhance your content.

What about keyword optimization? Isn’t that the key to SEO for SaaS? It was, back in the day.

However, Google’s—and other search engines’— algorithms have dramatically changed over the years. Over-optimizations of keywords, in fact, can get you penalized.

Our advice is not to put too much attention on keyword optimizations: include your target keywords naturally, use semantically-related keywords, and focus on delivering valuable content for human readers.

There are three main focuses in developing a content strategy: defining your target audience, identifying goals, and developing an editorial calendar.

Step 1: Identify your target audience

A good piece of content is one that caters to its target audience’s needs and pain points. If you don’t know who you are trying to reach with your content, it’s simply impossible to succeed with your content strategy.

Consider:

• Who are you trying to reach?
• Their demographics (age, gender, location, income level, etc.) details
• Their interests and needs
• Their online behaviors and purchase behaviors
• Their pain points

It’s important to first conduct thorough market research and competitive analysis to identify who your target audience is and gather as much information as you can about them. 

Step 2: Identify your goals

Once you’ve identified your target audience, define the objectives and goals of your content marketing initiative. Your main focus may be to rank higher on the SERPs and generate more organic traffic but also consider the potential goal for each piece of content.

Common goals for content marketing include:

• Generating leads
• Building brand awareness and credibility
• Educating potential and existing customers
• Attracting new customers

Based on your goals, decide on the most suitable content types and formats that will effectively engage your audience and help you achieve your goals. For SEO, you should mainly focus on text-based content (blog posts, eBooks, case studies, whitepapers, etc.,) but now and then, you should diversify your content with other formats like videos, infographics, or even podcasts. 

Again, regardless of your goals, focus on delivering value and being relevant to your target audience.

Step 3: Develop a content calendar

A content calendar is a schedule/calendar to help you plan, organize, and keep track of your content creation and publication process. 

Since you are aiming to establish a long-term content marketing and SEO strategy for your SaaS business, aim to have at least a quarterly editorial calendar and a yearly calendar, if possible. This will allow you to plan and keep track of your content strategy in more detail and ensure alignment between your content with your overall business goals.

You can either use a basic spreadsheet (Excel or Google Sheets), a project management tool, or a content calendar template available online, but your editorial calendar should include the following information:

• Working title: tentative title for the piece of content
• Content type: blog post, video, infographic, etc.
• Author: who is responsible for writing/creating the content
• Timeline: the due date by which the content should be completed and published
• Target keywords: the keywords the content will be optimized to
• Description/outline: a description or an outline of the content

 

5. Optimizing Your SaaS Website and Content for SEO

SEO is, again, a series of optimizations made on the website and its content to ensure they are aligned with the search engine’s algorithms. 

We can divide these optimizations into two main categories: on-page SEO (optimizations made on the website) and off-page SEO (made outside the website). We can further divide on-page SEO into another two subcategories: content optimization and technical optimization. 

Below, we will discuss them one by one.

On-Page Content Optimizations for SaaS Websites

On-page content optimizations refer to the process of optimizing your content (assuming it’s already written as high-quality content) and its metadata, mainly to naturally include the target keywords.

Content is the most important factor in SEO, so it’s critical to make sure all the content elements are properly optimized according to the SEO best practices.

Optimizing the body of the content

To make sure the content’s body is properly optimized for SEO, it’s essential to:

• Make sure the content is valuable and relevant to its target audience. There’s no shortcut to this, and no amount of optimizations would help low-quality and spammy content.
• Naturally include the target keyword, semantically-related words/phrases, and similar keywords throughout the content. Yet, do not overstuff your content with keywords, which can be counterproductive.
• Format and structure your content to ensure optimal readability. Use headings and subheadings to break your content into smaller digestible sections, and use images/infographics/videos to break down blocks of text.

Optimizing content metadata

Metadata refers to HTML data included within online content published on the internet that provides information about this piece of content. We can use metadata to make it easier for search engines to index and understand the content by describing it or categorizing it.

There are many different elements of content metadata, but here are some of the most important ones and how to optimize them:

• Title tag: the main title of a web page, which will be displayed on the user’s browser and in the SERPs. If your title is compelling, it’s more likely searchers will click on the search result pointing to your website, so it’s important to make sure it’s informative and attractive. Include your target keywords, but don’t overdo it.
• Meta descriptions: a snippet of text that is displayed in the SERPs just below the title tag. Similar to the title tag, meta descriptions will also affect the click-through rate, so it’s important to make it compelling and informative so the searchers are more likely to click on it. 
• Keywords: you can add the list of keywords that you are targeting to describe the content for the search engines
• Heading tags: headings and subheadings (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are used to break up content and make it easier to read (and crawl). Make sure your headings are descriptive and accurately reflect the following content. Again, use the target keywords sparingly and naturally. In general, only use one H1 tag per page, use H2 only for major sections, and use H3, H4, etc., to add subsections as needed.
• Non-text content: optimize images, infographics, videos, etc., with alt text so that search engines can understand what the content is about. This practice can also help visually-impaired visitors.

Internal and external links

Having optimal internal and external links—both in quantity and quality— is an important aspect of content optimization.

Internal links are links to other pages on your website. These help search engines crawl, understand, and index the pages of your website so the crawler can understand its structure. Internal links will also help users with navigation.

External links, on the other hand, are links pointing to other websites. Linking to reputable websites tell the search engine that your content is well-researched and credible, so they can help improve your site’s authority. External links may also help attract new visitors to your website.

Here are some best practices and tips for optimizing internal and external links.

Internal links:

• Link to related content: try to link to other pages on your website that are related to the topic at hand. 
• Link to important pages: link to important pages you’d like people to visit, such as your contact page or homepage. Doing so can aid users in finding these important pages and send a signal to the search engines about the importance of these pages.
• Link to recent content: when you publish a new piece of content, add a link to it from other (popular) pages on your website. This can help users find this new page and promote your content.

External links:

• Link to reputable and high-quality websites: it’s important to only link to high-quality and reputable websites that are also relevant to your content. Doing so can help improve your website’s own authority.
• Cite your sources and support your claims: when making arguments, claims, or mentioning facts in your content, link to external websites that support these claims. This can help tell the search engine that your content is well-researched and credible.
• Use external links to build relationships: link to websites that are owned by businesses or people that you respect and/or may be influential to your SaaS business. You’ll never know how your link can be the start of long and fruitful relationships with them while also attracting more visitors to your website.

Optimizing URL Structure

A good and SEO-optimized URL structure should be easy to understand and remember by human users. Instead of using complex numbers or gibberish, make sure your URL is descriptive. A good URL structure will also help the search engines to index your website better. 

Here are some additional best practices for optimizing your URL structure for SEO:

• Keep the URL short, but it should properly describe what’s discussed on the page
• Use hyphens (-) to separate words in your URLs, do not use spaces, dots, or underscores
• Avoid using any special characters in your URL addresses

6. Technical Optimization

Contrary to content optimizations, technical optimizations focus on making sure your website is properly structured and coded so that:

1. The search engine crawlers can properly crawl and index your web page.
2. Visitors can enjoy your site with optimal user experience: it loads fast, all the images appear properly on their smartphones, and so on.

There are many different technical components that could be optimized on a website, and you can refer to our complete technical SEO checklist if you want to learn more.

Yet, here are some of the most important technical components you should prioritize to optimize:

Proper Website Architecture and Site Maps

First, make sure your website has a clear and logical website structure so the search engines can easily understand your website’s hierarchy and the relationships between your pages.

Here are some best practices on how to optimize your website structure for SEO:

1. Plan in advance. Before you start developing your website, it’s best to plan the website’s structure and organization in advance. Put yourself in your users’ shoes, and design how you want users to navigate your website and consider their journeys in finding information. Create a website structure that makes sense for both your content and your target audience.
2. Use a logical hierarchy. Structure your website in a clear and logical hierarchy. Start by grouping your main pages together under high-level categories, then group the subpages under these main categories. Aim to make it as easy as possible for users to find the information they might be looking for, which will also improve your site’s indexability.
3. Use internal links to structure your website. We have discussed the concept and importance of internal links in the previous section, and internal linking between your pages will also play an important part in ensuring optimal website structure. Make sure to use relevant keywords in the anchor text to help the search engine understand the context of each page.
4. Create and publish sitemaps. A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on your website, which can help tell Google and the search engines about your website’s structure. You can use a variety of tools (i.e., Google Search Console) to create XML sitemaps. Also, as you add new pages and content to your website, make sure to update the sitemap accordingly.

Optimizing Indexability and Crawlability

Here are some tips and best practices you can use to optimize your website’s crawlability and indexability: 

• Robots.txt file: the robots.txt file is a simple text file that tells Google and other search engines which pages on the website they should crawl (and which they shouldn’t.) Make sure to properly configure your robots.txt file so all important pages are crawlable.
• Use proper file names: make sure all files on your website are descriptive file names that are easy to understand by both users and the search engine algorithms. Include your target keywords, if possible, in the file names, but keep them descriptive and natural.
• Avoid using frames: frames (HM}ML elements to divide a web page into multiple different sections) can make it difficult for search engine crawlers to crawl and index your site. If you absolutely need to use frames, make sure to add a noindex tag on the frameset page.
• Create a 404 error page: when a visitor tries to access a broken or non-existent page, redirect them to a 404 page. This will send a signal to the search engine not to index this page.
• Keep your website up to date: Google and other search engines always prefer websites that are updated regularly. Keep adding new content and refresh existing content regularly, and make sure all of them are optimized so they can be re-indexed right away.

Preventing duplicate content issues

Duplicate content can confuse Google, and even if you are the owner of the original content, Google may be confused and can’t determine which page to rank for the target keyword.

Here are some best practices to prevent and handle duplicate content issues:

• Use a canonical tag to specify which URL is the canonical/original version of the content.

When there are multiple versions of the same page on your website,  use 301 redirects to redirect users and search engine crawlers to the original/canonical page.

• Use noindex tags so Google and other search engines will not index duplicate pages.

Optimizing website security

Google also takes how secure a website is into account as a ranking factor. Here are some things you can do:

• Use HTTPS/SSL Certificates

The SSL certificate is a secure protocol that ensures end-to-end data encryption between a user’s browser and your website. So, any information transmitted cannot be intercepted by cybercriminals and hackers.

When your site has an SSL certificate enabled, it will use HTTPS instead of HTTP, and there’ll be a padlock symbol on the address bar. Not only will Google only rank HTTPS websites, but Chrome browser prevents users from accessing HTTP websites and warns them about how the website is potentially dangerous, reducing traffic.

• Keep everything up to date

Software and firmware updates often include security fixes that will prevent attackers from exploiting known vulnerabilities. Install updates on everything as soon as they are available.

• Use a strong firewall

A firewall blocks incoming traffic from a specific range of IP addresses or ports. Make sure to use an appropriate firewall to protect your website from unauthorized access.

• Antivirus/antimalware

Invest in an adequate antivirus/antimalware solution, and scan your website regularly. Scan your site immediately after you’ve noticed any unusual activity on the website or when you receive suspicious emails or messages.

Mobile Optimization and Responsive Design

Ensuring your website is properly optimized for mobile devices is critical for two things:

First, is that Google now prioritizes mobile-friendly websites to rank on their SERPs. If your website is not optimized for mobile, your SEO efforts will simply go to waste.

Second, with more and more people exclusively browsing the internet from their mobile devices, including potential customers for your SaaS business, you wouldn’t want to miss out.

Use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to evaluate whether your website is already mobile-optimized, and if not:

• Make sure to use a responsive design. If you are using WordPress or a website builder like Wix, it’s just a matter of installing a responsive Theme or template.
• Make sure to use large enough and mobile-friendly fonts
• Optimize images or use smart, responsive images. Make sure images and videos are compressed so they load fast on mobile devices
• Use a mobile-friendly menu and navigation
• Use a mobile-friendly checkout process. If you use forms, make sure it’s easy to fill them on mobile devices and don’t include too many fields.

Optimizing Page Speed

Page Speed refers to the amount of time it takes for a web page to load, and it’s now an important ranking factor for SEO. If your website is slow to load, it may be penalized by Google and other search engines.

Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to evaluate your site’s speed and optimize accordingly:

• Compress images and videos, make sure they are all optimized and load fast
• Minify CSS and JavaScript codes, and delete redundant codes
• Use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to optimally distribute your content to users
• Enable caching
• Improve server response time. In most cases, this means investing in a private server or at least using a reputable web-hosting service

7. Backlinks Building and Off-Page Optimization

Backlinks are the most important commodity not only for SaaS SEO strategy but for the internet in general.  We can think of backlinks—or inbound links—, as votes of confidence. The more sites (and the more credible the sites) that give you backlinks, the more relevant and credible your site is in the eyes of Google and the other search engines.

So, backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors.

Yet, it’s important to understand that nowadays, quality is more important than quantity in link building. Getting just one link from a high-quality, relevant website in your niche can boost your ranking better than getting a lot of links from spammy, low-quality sites.

In fact, getting too many backlinks at one time can get you penalized.

So, focus on getting just 2 or 3 backlinks from high-quality sites every month:

• The best and most effective way to get backlinks is to actually develop relevant, valuable, and high-quality content. There’s no shortcut around this.
• However, how we promote our content is also important. Promote your content for two-fold benefits: getting more organic traffic and getting more backlinks.
• Build relationships and strategic partnerships with key influencers, press, and businesses in your niche.
• Give before you ask. Cite relevant websites in your content and give them backlinks. Let them know about it (via email outreach or social media conversation), and they might return the favor in the future.

So, how can we get these high-quality backlinks? There are a number of techniques and strategies we can try, but some of the most effective ones include:

• High-quality content: there’s no shortcut to link building than actually having good content worth linking to. However, we can further enhance the content’s ability to get links by including something attractive—a reason for them to link to this page—, such as:
  • Unique data not published anywhere else (i.e. research report_
  • Interesting stories
  • Aesthetically pleasing assets like infographics, well-taken photos, etc.
• Outreach: simply sending an email or calling a website owner and asking for a link can be effective, especially if your content is good. If you find a website that could be a good potential link source, don’t be afraid to contact them and ask for a link while offering something in return (a link back to their website, discount for your SaaS product, etc.)
• Content promotion: simply promoting your content on social media, email marketing, and other channels can help increase the content’s reach, improving the likelihood for it to be linked by other websites.
• Guest posting: guest posting is offering to write content for other blogs or websites. This can be a great way to build awareness in front of a new audience, and you can also get backlinks by linking back to your website in your author’s bio or within the content.

When attempting link building, it’s important to understand that link building often requires a long-term approach. Be patient, and don’t expect to reach overnight success. Be consistent in creating and publishing high-quality content, get more backlinks little by little, and you’ll eventually see results.

Social Media Marketing

You can leverage social media to promote your website and its content, and to improve SEO performance. 

Regularly share your content on social media to drive traffic to the website. When your content is seen by more people on social media, it will increase the chances of this page being linked to.

Use social media not only to share your content but also to engage/communicate with other users and establish credibility.

Brand mentions

Brand mentions refer to when other websites or online publications mention your brand–with or without linking your website. Even without a link, a brand mention can still contribute to your site’s overall SEO performance, sending a signal that your brand is relevant and credible and that your website deserves a higher ranking.

Monitor and keep track of brand mentions on social media, forums, review websites, and other platforms. When you come across these mentions, engage and thank the authors. Respond to comments (even negative ones) and aim to build positive relationships. Doing this can help encourage further mentions.

8. Evaluation and Further Optimizations

It’s important to remember that SaaS SEO is not a short-term tactic, but rather a long-term game where you’ll need to spend at least 6 to 12 months before you can see significant results (i.e. ranking on the first page of Google).

The key here is maintaining consistency of all the previous steps. Evaluate your progress using various SEO tools, track the improvements of your ranking, backlinks profile, traffic, and so on.

Re-optimize your content and website accordingly, and keep building your links while publishing more content.

End Words

In conclusion, SEO for SaaS is an intricate, yet essential component of digital marketing. By leveraging data-driven strategies, understanding emerging trends, and implementing comprehensive technical optimizations, SaaS companies can achieve sustained growth in organic traffic. This guide has outlined actionable steps and best practices to help you navigate the complexities of SEO. Future research and continuous adaptation will be key to maintaining competitive advantage. Proper citations and adherence to formal writing standards ensure the credibility and academic rigor of this guide.

In this guide, we have shared the tips and best practices to help SaaS companies plan and execute their SEO strategy, including:

• Consistent publication of high-quality content          
• Optimizing your website and content for target keywords
• Improving your site’s user experience and crawlability
• Building backlinks
• Promoting your website to build awareness and increase the chances of it being linked to

By following this guide, SaaS companies would have a solid foundation on how to improve their SEO and reach a wider audience.

Key Takeaways

• SEO is essential for SaaS companies to build an online presence and generate organic traffic.
• Technical optimization, high-quality content, and a strategic approach to keyword targeting are crucial.
• Regularly measure and adjust your SEO strategy based on performance metrics.