What Is Saas SEO?
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization”. It’s the process by which your website gets seen and ranked on search engines. Put another way, it is the art and science of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.
Search traffic is an incredible source of traffic and leads. According to a study by Conductor. 64% of people who conducted product research on mobile devices ended up purchasing the products they researched within five days. Search drives more traffic than social media and email combined. Of all referral traffic, 69% comes from organic search results. As you can see, search is a major player when it comes to acquiring new leads and customers.
SaaS SEO is a way to optimize your website or blog for search engines in order to get more organic. Free traffic from the search results.
What Is SaaS?
SAAS stands for “Software As A Service.” It’s basically any type of software that you use on an ongoing basis without having to install it. SaaS has become increasingly popular over the past couple of years and will only continue to grow as time goes on.
What’s The Difference Between SEO And SaaS SEO?
You may have noticed that I’ve used both “SEO” and “SaaS SEO” to refer to the subject of this guide. That’s because it is important for you to understand that both “SEO” and “SaaS SEO” are seperate subjects.
The term “Search Engine Optimization” (or just plain old “SEO”) refers specifically to increase your website or blog’s rankings in organic search results. Search Engine Optimization is a process that anyone can do provided they follow the right steps and avoid making SEO mistakes.
In contrast, “SaaS SEO” refers to optimizing your website or blog for search engines in order to get more traffic from paid advertising on sites like Google Adwords.
SaaS SEO is more difficult than SEO because you are working against the search engines (Google, Bing, etc.), who all want to provide their users with organic listings. That said, SaaS SEO can be extremely lucrative if you know what you’re doing.
There are some additional terms that need defining in order for this guide to make sense:
“Clicks” – Refers to the number of times a user clicks on a search result, ad or sponsored link.
“Sales” – Refers to new customers or users acquired from organic listings. “Conversion Rate” – Refers to the percentage of visitors who perform a desired action as a result of viewing your website. Such as filling out a form, clicking on a link or making a purchase.
The Basic Process Of SaaS SEO
SaaS SEO is similar to traditional SEO in the sense that both are processes that must be followed in order to increase your website’s rankings and traffic from search engines.
That said, the process of optimizing for search engines is different when you’re optimizing for paid advertising on sites like Google Adwords. Paid advertisements are bought by advertisers who want to increase their sales or leads through common advertising platforms. Generally speaking, the advertiser will pay each time someone clicks on their ad.
On the other hand, organic search results are considered “free” listings because they are paid for with your hard-earned “clicks.” I’ll explain more about how clicks work in the next section.
The basic process of SaaS SEO looks like:
1: Choose a keyword to target.
2: Write an in-depth article or blog post around that keyword so you can show up for it when people search on Google, Bing, etc.
3: Submit your article to directories
4: Go through each page of your website or blog and make changes so that the content is not only relevant to the keyword you are targeting. But also so that it answers the questions people who searched for that keyword are looking to have answered.
5: Link internally to other relevant pages on your website from within your new blog post or article using contextual links. This allows search engines to crawl through your site and see which pages are related to each other.
6: Register for Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. These tools give you insight into how your website is being found and indexed by search engines. Which allows you to adjust your optimization strategy accordingly.
7: Start a blog or create a website with a free blog plugin like WordPress or Tumblr if you don’t already have one so that all future content gets listed on your Google My Business page.
8: Create an Adwords account and buy one ad unit (space for text, image or video).
9: Promote your content through social media like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit to drive traffic directly to the blog post or article you wrote around the keyword. Link externally to your website using anchor text that matches your target keyword to help boost your rankings in organic search.
10: Monitor your campaign’s clicks, leads, and sales to see which keywords are performing best for you.
11: Revise your content around the keywords that are driving the most traffic to make it even better.
Steps 1 through 7 are what is traditionally considered “SEO” while steps 8 through 11 are what is traditionally considered “SEM.” Generally speaking, you will need to do both in order to be successful.
Understand How Clicks Work
It’s important that you understand how clicks work when deciding whether or not SaaS SEO strategy is the right marketing strategy for your company. Just like paid advertising platforms like Google Adwords. Organic listings on search engines like Google and Bing are also paid for by click.
What this means is that if someone types in a word or phrase related to your website’s topic. And your listing appear as one of the first few results. You’re charged every time someone clicks on your website’s link. The more frequently your site gets clicked. The more money you will have to pay for your listing.
This is why it’s important to choose keywords that are relevant to your website so that when people type them into a search engine they see you as one of their top results. However, just because these words and phrases are highly competitive doesn’t mean that rankings can’t be achieved for them. Rankings can be achieved by writing articles and blog posts with long-tail keywords in the title and throughout the text.
More keywords = more clicks = more money (if you don’t bid as high as your competitors).
There is a lot of risk involved in SaaS SEO because there are no guarantees that the number of clicks you receive will translate into a positive return on investment. This is why it’s important to test your keywords. And pay attention to which ones are driving the most traffic by monitoring your Google Analytics account closely.
In order for SaaS SEO to be worth your time. You need to have a target keyword phrase that has the potential of getting clicked on over 1,000 times in a month. Even if you are only able to achieve the first page of search results for this highly competitive keyword phrase. You will have achieved enough clicks to make it worth your while.
Strategic Clicks vs. Opportunistic Clicks
When deciding which keywords are right for your company’s SaaS SEO strategy. You should choose keywords your competitors aren’t targeting. This will increase the likelihood of ranking for these phrases. And getting more clicks than the amount of money it costs you to rank on search engines.
This is why it’s important to understand where in the buyer journey someone types in your keyword phrase in order to determine if they are strategic or opportunistic.
Strategic marketers are people who have already made up their minds to purchase a product or service. And are looking for the most suitable providers. They typically ask questions like, “What is your pricing model?” or “Can you send me a quote?” Opportunistic marketers on the other hand tend to ask questions like, “How much does it cost?” or “How much does it usually run?”
Strategic keywords are more likely to get clicked on if you’re trying to boost your company’s SaaS SEO efforts. Opportunistic keywords, on the other hand. Are lower-hanging fruit that allows for less investment of time and resources with a greater chance of reward.
Optimize Your Content
Now that you have an understanding of which keywords are likely to get your business the most traffic. It’s time for you to optimize the content on your website. Make sure that each page is optimized with its own title and description tag.
Your title tag should be between 45-60 characters long. And contain one or more relevant keywords that are close to the beginning of the tag. The description tag should also contain your chosen keywords within 70-160 characters.
Don’t be afraid to truncate words or phrases if this will make your title and tags more relevant to your existing contents. It’s better to have something highly relevant on page 1 of Google instead of an underperforming tag with a bunch of characters that don’t engage your readers.
Always include an exact match keyword phrase in the URL for each page on your site. This will make it easier to understand what keywords are driving traffic to each content piece. Which in turn makes it simpler to optimize future content with these highly relevant key phrases.
Be sure to place one or more of the chosen keywords in the body of your content throughout at least 300 words. As mentioned above. Don’t be afraid to truncate your chosen key phrases. If this will make your title tags more relevant to existing contents.
No matter which keywords you choose for your SaaS SEO strategy. Always provide valuable information related to these topics so that you are seen as helpful, not self-serving.
If you want to create the best content possible. Don’t be afraid to include your company’s name within one or more of these phrases that are relevant to your industry. This will also help ensure that visitors are staying on your website instead of clicking back to Google’s search results page over and over again.
Final Thoughts
Keywords are integral to any company’s SaaS SEO strategy, but only if they are chosen correctly. Instead of using popular keywords that everyone else is targeting. Your company should focus on industry-relevant phrases that have the potential for greater exposure and more strategic clickthroughs.
