SaaS SEO: How to Build a Winning Strategy

An effective SaaS SEO strategy improves your visibility in search results. Making it easier for users to find your site when they need what you’re offering.

More visibility means more traffic. And more traffic often leads to more revenue.

Take Exploding Topics for example. Backlinko’s founder, Brian Dean, created this SaaS to help you find new trends with ease.

And a solid SEO strategy has helped grow the website to 637K monthly organic visitors in just four years.

In this guide, you’ll learn everything you need to create a SaaS SEO strategy, optimize your site, and outrank your competitors.

SaaS SEO Fundamentals: Audience, Product, and Conversions

SaaS SEO is the process of optimizing your website to improve its rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Like other SEO strategies, SEO for SaaS involves techniques like keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, link building. To help you:

• Attract potential customers searching for your target keywords
• Build awareness and authority for your brand
• Improve your conversion rate by creating content that meets the search intent
• Grow your traffic sustainably without spending money on ads

But there are three areas that are critical for making your SEO efforts successful:

1. You Need to Use Customer Personas

Beyond driving readers to a blog, SaaS marketers need to attract visitors who are likely to convert and become customers.

To do this, you need to know what your ideal customer looks like. Find out by building customer personas.

A customer persona is a detailed profile of your ideal customer.

It helps you understand and relate to your target audience by including details like:

• Demographics: Location, age, family status, and education level
• Behavior: Preferred communication channels, content types, and topics of interest
• Psychographics: Personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyle (including hobbies)
• Needs: Main problems, motivations, frustrations, aspirations, and other factors that influence purchase decisions

To build your own customer persona, you can use a tool like Semrush’s One2Target.

Just pop a competitor’s domain into the tool (they are likely targeting a similar audience), and find details about their demographics, behavior, and more.

2. You Need to Provide Value with Product-Led Content

Product-led content makes your organic visitors familiar with your product.

What do we mean by product-led content?

It’s about covering the topic you’re writing about with a focus on using your product as a solution to the problem. While still matching the search intent.

Many examples of great product-led content come from SaaS companies.

Check out this Notion page that ranks for “content calendar templates.” It’s a list of Notion templates for content calendars. Which meets the search intent while showing off Notion as the solution.

With that page, they’re able to rank for a keyword searched by approximately 12.0K users every month:

You can also create product-led content by turning some features of your product into free-to-use pages that can rank for specific keywords.

Here’s an example:

HubSpot, a comprehensive marketing SaaS, offers a free email signature generator:

This helps them rank for “email signature.” A query searched by almost 100K users worldwide who could potentially benefit from HubSpot’s email marketing solutions (i.e., become paying customers).

Offering a free tool is a great way to let potential customers try before they buy. And using SaaS SEO best practices can help you rank these tools for high-value search terms.

3. You Need to Tailor Your Strategy to the Marketing Funnel

To create the right content for your users, consider the different stages in the marketing funnel (aka the buying cycle):

1. ToFu (top of the funnel)
2. MoFu (middle of the funnel)
3. BoFu (bottom of the funnel)

Top of the Funnel (ToFu)

At the top of the funnel, a visitor becomes aware of a problem that your product or service can solve (which is why this is often called the awareness stage). But they don’t have a solution in mind yet.

An example of top of the funnel content would be an informational guide about a problem your SaaS can solve.

Let’s use email marketing provider Omnisend as an example. They target ToFu terms like “how to send an automated email”:

Middle of the Funnel (MoFu)

The middle of the funnel is where the visitor explores different solutions to solve the problem.

Sticking with our Omnisend example, one of their MoFu terms is “mass email service” (a service they provide):

Bottom of the Funnel (BoFu)

Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, the visitor decides on a solution to solve the problem.

In Omnisend’s case, an example of a BoFu keyword would be “omnisend pricing” (the searcher is likely very close to buying):

If you need more guidance on creating your marketing funnel, check out our free sales funnel template.

Why You Need SEO for Your SaaS Website

SEO is an important (and effective) way for SaaS businesses to attract potential customers. Whether they’re directly looking for your product or not.

But there’s more: as a channel, organic traffic is cheaper to scale than others, like paid advertising.

Get Clicks Without Paying for Them

You need to invest some resources into creating SEO-optimized content in the first place. But once you do, it can continue to drive traffic and convert customers long into the future. Without paying for clicks.

Take this top-ranking page from CRM provider Monday.com for the keyword “crm with inventory management”:

It has ranked in the top 2 positions for this term for at least 12 months (probably driving highly qualified traffic to their CRM):

The Monday team has likely updated and maintained the post over time. But this illustrates the long-term benefits of using SEO for your SaaS business.

But the long-term value means it’s also a long-term investment. And if you’re used to paying for ads to get fairly quick results, adapting to using an SEO strategy requires thinking beyond just getting visitors to your site.

Great SEO can bring value in areas like brand awareness and impact how your potential customers view your SaaS product.

Here’s what Eliana Atia, content marketing group lead at Monday.com, had to say about it on the How the Fxck SEO podcast:

Lower Your Customer Acquisition Costs

SEO can also lower your customer acquisition costs (CAC). This is the money you spend to acquire new customers.

The initial cost can be higher, as you need to create the content and optimize it for SEO. But the cost per acquisition reduces over time as the content continues to attract leads and customers.

Without much investment beyond content maintenance and updates.

Whereas the CAC for paid ads can remain high over time. Potentially even increasing as the space gets more competitive.

(The same can of course happen with SEO, but the majority of the cost generally comes when you first create the content.)

How to Build a SaaS SEO Strategy

Here’s a step-by-step guide for building a SaaS SEO strategy that drives sustainable growth:

Step 1: Find Keywords for Each Stage in the Customer Journey

With SaaS SEO, you need to align your content with specific stages in the marketing funnel.

To do that, identify target keywords related to the problems your product solves.

We’ll start by introducing the four different types of keywords you can find:

• Informational keywords: The searcher wants to learn more about a topic
• Commercial keywords: The searcher wants to explore products or services
• Transactional keywords: The searcher has decided on a specific solution to their problem and wants to perform a specific action (like buying a product)
• Navigational keywords: The searcher wants to find a specific page or website

Now, let’s combine the four types of keywords with the three stages of the sales funnel to find opportunities to create content.

Top-of-the-Funnel Keywords

In SaaS SEO, ToFu keywords are usually related to high-level concepts, specific problems, or solutions to a problem.

Some examples include:

• What is net promoter score?
• How to create a content calendar
• What is a CRM?

ToFu keywords tend to be informational, and your target customer usually searches them when they aren’t searching for a specific product.

When you target top of the funnel keywords, your content should aim to build interest and awareness about your product.

To do this, answer the user’s questions and explain how your product can solve their problems.

Here’s an example: a project management SaaS like ClickUp can cover topics like “content calendar template” with articles that show off their own templates as a solution to the query.

To find ToFu keywords related to your SaaS, use a tool like Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.

For example, if your SaaS is a project management tool, you could search for keywords related to “agile methodology.”

Use the “Intent” filter to see only informational keywords (and consider applying a keyword difficulty filter to find keywords you’re more likely to rank for):

Middle-of-the-Funnel Keywords

MoFu keywords are usually searched by users who know that solutions exist. But they haven’t picked one yet.

Instead, they might be exploring and comparing their options.

These keywords are mostly commercial, and you find different types. Including:

• Comparison keywords (like “salesforce vs zendesk”)
• Product category keywords (like “ai image generator”)
• Keywords for product lists (like “best customer service CRM”)
• Keywords for product alternatives (like “Google trends alternatives”)

When creating content for this stage of the buyer journey, you need to persuade the customer to consider your product as a solution. Covering its benefits and differentiators.

Like how Canva does it for their AI image generator page:

Comparison keywords (like “jira vs clickup”) are great opportunities to show why your SaaS is better than your competitors. Here’s an example from ClickUp:

Once again, you can use the Keyword Magic Tool to find these keywords.

Just set the “Intent” filter to only show commercial keywords:

Bottom-of-the-Funnel Keywords

BoFu keywords are normally searched by users who have picked the specific solution to their problem and are ready to buy.

In other words: these have HIGH conversion potential.

These keywords are usually transactional (and/or navigational) and mention your product directly. For example, “Canva AI image generator,” “Semrush SEO tools,” or “Hubspot prices.”

When you create content for these keywords, give customers an incentive to take action and buy your product or service. Covering aspects like its benefits or pricing.

And make it as easy as possible for users to find the information they need and to sign up to your service.

Like Hotjar’s pricing page:

There is often a bit of overlap between MoFu and BoFu keywords. As some users searching for terms like “Mailchimp alternatives” are indeed ready to buy.

But because they don’t yet have a specific solution in mind, they’re not necessarily truly at the bottom of the funnel.

BoFu content typically comes in the form of pages for things like:

• Pricing overviews
• Reviews and testimonials
• Product demos
• Specific product feature pages

Step 2: Spy on Your Competitors’ Keywords

You can find even more keywords to target (and understand what kind of content to create for them) by analyzing your rivals in the SERPs.

To find direct competitors, search for the same keywords you’re targeting and check the sites that rank high.

It’s really that simple.

These sites likely offer similar products and services as you. And they’re probably competing for the same target audience.

Once you have a list of competitors, pop them into Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool (we recommend assessing 1-2 competitors at a time). Then scroll down and click the “Missing” filter.

This will show you keywords your competitors rank for that you don’t.

But this list isn’t always going to be that useful. So let’s narrow it down further with the following filters:

• “Position” > “Competitors” > “Top 10”
• Add a custom “KD” filter of 0-49 (to cover keywords that are “possible” or easier to rank for)
• Tick the boxes in the “Intent” drop-down for “Informational,” “Commercial,” and “Transactional”

Then head back to the “Missing” filtered list. Or select “Untapped” for a list of keywords any of the competitors rank for that you don’t.

These represent good opportunities for creating content. And for plugging gaps between you and your competitors.

Step 3: Create Product-Led Content for Your Target Keywords

Your SaaS content strategy will primarily revolve around your product and its features.

Here’s how to write great product-led content for your target keywords:

Build Landing Pages for Commercial and Transactional Keywords

To target commercial and transactional keywords, create landing pages and dedicated product or feature pages.

Design them with consistent calls to action (CTAs) to guide potential customers towards taking one specific action. Like making a purchase.

This means you’ll likely have many separate landing pages catering to specific features or search queries. And since they each have only one focused CTA that is consistent across the page, they can convert VERY well.

Here’s an example of a great landing page from video messaging platform Loom:

Notice the benefit-packed headline, the context provided (which includes a keyword like “async video”), and the social proof at the bottom showing other enterprises that use Loom.

It also has one clear CTA (“Contact Sales”), with no distractions.

When creating your landing page, make sure it:

• Answers the needs of your customer persona, explaining how your product can solve their problems
• Includes target keywords in the title, headings, and meta description
• Has calls to action for the user to perform an action (like signing up for a free trial)

Write Helpful Blog Content for Informational Keywords

Optimized blog posts can drive thousands of visitors to your SaaS website every month. But they require different tactics than landing pages.

Here are some tips for writing a blog post:

• Look at the SERPs for your target keyword to inform what kind of content you should (probably) create, such as a list covering multiple items, an ultimate guide, or a case study
• Write engaging headlines that entice the user to read your post
• Keep your introduction short and hook people with a preview of what they’ll learn
• Use active voice and keep sentences short and clear
• Add visuals like screenshots, pictures, and infographics to support your content and explain complex concepts

Here’s an example from Hotjar, where they cover a complex topic like psychographics and user personas:

Notice how the title presents such an abstract concept in a simple way. And the short introduction hooks the reader by explaining why they should care about psychographics.

Throughout the article, Hotjar showcases its products and features as solutions to the user’s problem. Like how Hotjar’s surveys can help users hear from their target audience.

Experiment with Content Formats That Showcase Your Product

The best SEO strategies for SaaS websites make use of a variety of content types beyond blog posts and product pages.

You can provide value to your users with other formats, including:

• Webinars
• Infographics
• Podcasts

Such as this podcast from market research platform Wynter:

It works well because it showcases the brand’s expertise in the marketing world. All while providing helpful content to a highly targeted audience.

But you can go one step further:

By creating content that incorporates part of what your SaaS has to offer.

This list of content calendar templates from ClickUp is a great example. Because you can use some of the templates in the list directly within their tool (for free).

Another example is Omnisend’s email subject line tester:

The tool sees 4.2K organic search traffic each month. And the page has attracted over 900 backlinks:

Users testing email subject lines are likely interested in sending marketing emails. And therefore are potential customers of an email marketing provider like Omnisend.

Consider how you can offer something related to your product free of charge. A bit like giving away something for free in traditional lead generation (aka lead magnets).

This can drive qualified traffic to your website with high conversion potential.

Step 4: Boost Your On-Page SEO

On-page SEO involves optimizing aspects of your pages like keyword placement, images, and internal linking.

Here are some simple ways to improve your on-page SEO:

Use Your Target Keywords Strategically

Include your keyword (along with synonyms and variations) in your main headings, introduction, subheadings, and throughout the article.

But avoid keyword stuffing: only use your keywords where it naturally makes sense.

For example, Canva keeps a good balance between “AI image generators,” “AI-generated images,” and “AI photo generator” on this page that ranks for the main keyword “ai image generator”:

Write Optimized Title Tags for Each Page

Next, make sure to write unique, keyword-rich title tags for each page on your site.

Title tags can be displayed in the SERP and on social media posts.

Here’s an example from an Exploding Topics article that ranks for “how to find trends”:

Note that it contains a slight variation of the search term (likely one of the page’s target keywords).

And it meets the search intent by making clear to the searcher the page contains a list of (free and paid) tools to help them find trends.

Optimize Your Meta Description for Clicks

Your meta description is the text that appears under the title tag in the SERP. It should summarize the content on your page. And give searchers a reason to click through to your page.

Apart from making it descriptive and short, you can also include a call to action or mention your own product.

Like in this example from a ClickUp article that ranks for “monthly content calendar template”:

Use Headings to Organize Your Content

Use the H1 tag for your headline, H2s for your main subtopics, and H3s and H4s for more specific sub-subtopics.

This way, you break down your page into readable chunks that are easy to skim. And it makes it clear to users and search engines what each section is about.

Plus, these headings can appear as extra links under your result in SERPs. Which could help boost your click-through rate.

Step 5: Run an SEO Site Audit

Next, run an SEO audit to analyze and fix existing SEO issues. Sorting problems here can provide relatively quick fixes.

And identify major issues that could be holding your SaaS back in the search results.

Here’s how to do it:

Detect and Fix Technical SEO Issues

Technical SEO makes your site load faster and makes it easier for both users and search engines to navigate.

If your site loads fast, users are less likely to bounce back to search results. Meaning there’s a higher chance they’ll find what they need. And ideally convert into a paying customer.

Check Your Core Web Vitals

Start your audit by checking your website’s Core Web Vitals. Do this using the free PageSpeed Insights tool.

Here are some common fixes if your site is failing the tool’s checks (you can see more by scrolling to the “Diagnostics” section of your report):

• Removing (or deferring) JavaScript
• Removing unnecessary third-party scripts
• Upgrading your web host to one with faster load times
• Removing large page elements and compressing your images
• Minifying your CSS

You may need help from a developer to implement some of these changes. For more tips and guidance to ensure your site loads as fast as possible, check out our guide to page speed and SEO.

Look for Indexing Issues

Next, check for indexing issues in Google Search Console. Click on “Indexing” > “Pages” in the left-hand menu.

You’ll see a report with pages that aren’t indexed and why.

Not all of these are “issues” you need to fix. But if there are pages appearing as “Not found (404)” that should be indexed, that’s a problem.

Also look at the URLs in the “Crawled – currently not indexed” section. As these are URLs that Google has found but decided not to index. Meaning there could be an issue with the page’s quality (or site’s quality) preventing it from being indexed.

To learn more about how to fix these issues, look at our step-by-step guide for using Google Search Console.

Perform a Site Crawl

You can use other tools to perform even more extensive audits across your entire site.

One example is Screaming Frog. You can use it to crawl up to 500 URLs for free.

It gives you insights on broken links, website architecture, title tags, meta descriptions, images, and more.

Another option is Semrush’s Site Audit.

This isn’t just a crawler: it’s an extensive auditing tool that scans for over 140 issues. From site performance to internal link optimization. And it gives you tips on how to fix each issue.

Step 6: Use Video SEO to Rank Higher and Boost Conversions

Video SEO is a largely untapped opportunity for many SaaS businesses.

Why?

Because 77% of people have been convinced to buy software or apps by videos.

You can use SEO to make your videos rank when people search for your target keywords. Like Canva does for “how to make an infographic”:

But it’s not just about ranking in search results. You can use videos to better showcase product features. And illustrate to potential customers how your product can solve their problems.

You can use various different types of video content, including:

• Product walkthroughs: To show high-detail explanations of the features in your product or service
• Customer testimonials: To present the result and impact that your product has on your customers
• Long-form videos: For dense topics like thought leadership content, in-depth guides, or detailed product demos
• Short-form videos: For topics where you can provide the best answer quickly

To find opportunities for video content, use Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool to find queries that display videos in the SERP.

Search for a keyword, then click “Advanced filters” > “SERP Features” and toggle “Video,” “Feature video,” and “Video carousel.”

Step 7: Get High-Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are links placed on another site that point to your site.

Google uses backlinks as a ranking signal. But not all links carry the same weight.

Quality matters alongside (and often more so) than quantity. So you want backlinks from popular, reputable websites that are relevant to your SaaS.

We’ve already published a detailed guide to link building that includes top tactics that work well.

But here are a few ones that are a great fit for SaaS sites in particular:

Find Broken Links and Reach Out to Prospects

Broken links are links pointing out to pages that give a 4xx status code.

With broken link building, instead of just asking for a link, you offer linking to your site as a solution that benefits you and your prospect.

You get the link, and their users get a better experience.

To do this, use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool. Enter a competitor’s domain and head to the “Indexed Pages” tab.

Check the “Broken Pages” filter. These are pages on your competitor’s website that return a 4xx status code. But some of them will have backlinks pointing to them.

Clicking the number in the “Domains” column will show you all of the websites linking to that broken page.

Analyze the sites in these lists to find reputable ones that are relevant to your SaaS. Then reach out to them and suggest a link to your website instead of the current broken link.

Spy on Your Competitor’s Backlinks

Like we did with the keyword gap analysis earlier, you can also perform a backlink gap analysis. To find sites that link to your competitors but not to you.

You can do this with Semrush’s Backlink Gap tool. Enter up to 4 competitor domains and you’ll see a list of domains that link to all of them but not you.

If these sites are happy to link to all of your competitors, there’s a decent chance they’ll link to your site as well. Making them lucrative link building prospects.

Create Power Posts and Original Research

When we analyzed close to 1 billion articles, we found that a small number of articles receive the most shares.

These are Power Posts: articles that are designed to drive backlinks and shares. Rather than to simply rank well.

They include lots of visuals, illustrations, and custom designs. And they cover everything there is to know about a topic. Like this Power Post from Hotjar all about heatmaps (a key part of their SaaS offering):

The article has plenty of custom illustrations, examples, videos, and real-world examples. It covers the topic with high detail, and this has helped Hotjar drive 8.5K backlinks to the page:

Now, creating these posts isn’t easy, and they require a lot of resources. So, you don’t need every post to be a Power Post.

But they’re still great for driving traffic to your SaaS.

Another type of content that naturally drives links is original research.

Other sites often use research posts as sources in their own articles. So they’re a great form of link bait.

Like this post from Mailchimp that covers email marketing benchmarks:

It has earned 12K backlinks from 4.4K domains.

Step 8: Measure Your SaaS SEO Results

The last step is to measure the impact of your SaaS SEO strategy.

First, consider your goals. These are high-level outcomes of SEO, like:

• Building awareness about your SaaS
• Driving organic traffic to key landing pages
• Converting readers into customers

Then, start tracking metrics relevant to those goals, like:

• Organic visitors: The number of visitors coming from search engines
• Impressions: The number of times your site is shown in the SERPs
• Clicks: The number of times someone clicks on your site in the SERPs
• Click-through rate: The percentage of impressions that resulted in clicks
• Rankings for target keywords: How well your site ranks for your target keywords
• Bounce rate: The percentage of users who leave a page without taking any action
• Conversion rate: The percentage of visitors who perform a desired action on your site

Continuously measure these metrics. And adapt your strategy accordingly.

Execute Your Winning SaaS SEO Strategy

As with any marketing strategy, SaaS SEO is not a one and done thing.

You need to continuously monitor your performance and adapt your strategy. To help you:

• Maintain keyword rankings
• Drive sustainable traffic
• Keep up with competitors

This can be tough to do when your resources are already spread thin. But investing in the right SEO tools can make things much easier.

From keyword rank trackers to site crawlers, automating your SaaS SEO processes can save you time AND improve your performance.

Find out which ones you should be using with our guide to the best SEO tools.