SaaS SEO: A 7-Step Guide to Growing Organic Traffic 

In this guide, you’ll learn exactly how to create and implement a SaaS SEO strategy.

My name is Bill Widmer I’ve these same strategies to help B2C and B2B SaaS companies like Ahrefs and Sumo gain hundreds of thousands of organic traffic from Google.

Ready for higher Google rankings and more sales? Let’s get started.

What is SaaS SEO?

SaaS SEO is the process of optimizing your SaaS website to increase rankings on search engines like Google, Bing, and soon-to-be major players like AI-driven SearchGPT.

It involves different search engine optimization techniques like keyword research, content strategy, on-page SEO, technical SEO, and link building.

For both B2C and B2B SaaS businesses, SEO efforts can:

• Attract potential buyers
• Increase brand awareness and trust
• Reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC)
• Increase customer lifetime value (CLV)
• And more

In short: SaaS SEO is the growth engine that turns search traffic into sustainable revenue.

SaaS SEO Basics: What You Need to Know

Before I dive into my step-by-step SaaS SEO strategy, let me give you a quick course in SEO 101.

Here’s how Google (and most other search engines) find and display search results:

1. The search engine sends out web crawlers (also called “search engine bots” or “spiders”) to “crawl” various web pages. These search engine crawlers scan the page to identify the content.
2. This content is then “indexed”, or stored in a database of all the content the crawler has ever scanned. Note that just because content is indexed, doesn’t mean it will show up in search results — this just means Google has a copy of it stored in its database.
3. Finally, the indexed content is ranked based on over 200 ranking factors.

If we look at Google’s “How Search Works” page, it reveals some of Google’s ranking factors:

• Backlinks (links from other web pages back to your website)
• Freshness (how recently the content has been updated)
• Keyword mentions
• User experience (bounce rate, time on page, etc.)
• Topical authority (cover a topic in-depth with many related articles)

If you want to learn more about these ranking factors and how the Google search algorithm works, you can read my full guide here.

In a nutshell, there are four things you need to learn to improve your search engine rankings:

1. Keyword research (i.e. uncovering high-value keywords and avoiding money-wasters)
2. Content creation (i.e. crafting content that’s optimized for search engines)
3. Link building (i.e. getting other websites to link to the content you published)
4. Technical SEO (i.e. ensuring your website is mobile-friendly, fast-loading, uses proper schema markup, etc.)

Feeling lost? Read my “SEO for dummies” guide that breaks down SEO into its most basic components for anyone to understand.

How SaaS SEO Is Different From Conventional SEO

SEO for SaaS companies is different from conventional SEO in two main ways:

1. It requires a deep understanding of your buyer
2. You must optimize for sign-ups, not just traffic

Rather than trying to get as much traffic as possible, SaaS SEO strategies aim to get the right traffic and showcase your software as a solution to the reader’s problem, (hopefully) leading to loyal customers.

Unlike conventional SEO, SaaS (particularly B2B SaaS) SEO zeroes in on the unique buyer journey of software customers, targeting them at every stage of the marketing funnel — from discovery to purchase.

Top-to-Bottom: Aligning SaaS SEO With The Marketing Funnel

Keywords like “best CRM software” are obviously lucrative, but they’re also incredibly difficult to rank for.

That’s why your SaaS SEO strategy should target keywords for every stage of the marketing funnel, not just the bottom. If you only focus on commercial-intent keywords, you may as well give up on SEO now.

By aligning your SaaS SEO strategy with the marketing funnel, you’ll attract qualified leads, nurture them with tailored content, and convert them into paying customers.

Next, let’s look at the different types of keywords across the funnel.

I’ll use ClickUp, a project management software, as an example. They do a good job of creating product-led content across every stage of the funnel.

Top-Of-The-Funnel Keywords – Awareness

Top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) keywords for SaaS are search terms that fall at the beginning of the buyer journey when they're just becoming aware of a problem or seeking general information.

They are typically broad, educational keywords that often have a higher search volume but a lower purchase intent.

The goal of ToFu keywords is to get potential customers into your funnel before they even know about your product or why they might need it.

Examples of ToFu Keywords for SaaS

Educational keywords: General topics that help users understand broader concepts, issues, or trends, such as:

• "what is project management"
• "how does cloud storage work"
• "what is a CRM"

Problem-focused keywords: Search queries used for identifying and researching a problem the searcher is facing, such as:

• "managing remote teams"
• "team cooperation"
• "keep track of multiple projects"

How-to and tutorial keywords: Users search for these when looking for solutions or guidance on specific tasks or problems.

• "how to create a marketing plan"
• "how to track sales leads"
• "how to improve time management"

The type of content you create for ToFu keywords is typically blog posts or videos.

A great example of ToFu content is ClickUp’s post about out-of-office message examples, which gets around 45,000 organic visits per month.

Keywords like “out of office message” have a high search volume, but virtually no purchase intent.

However, the smart marketers at ClickUp used product-led content strategies to promote their software even in these low purchase intent articles, driving a small percentage of readers to sign up.

You can see what I mean in this section on how to use ClickUp to improve your OOO messages:

More on product-led content later. For now, let’s look at…

Middle-Of-The-Funnel Keywords – Consideration

Middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu) keywords for SaaS target potential customers who are already aware of their problem and are now considering the solutions; i.e. the ‘consideration’ stage.

They are often comparison keywords, where the searcher is aware of their problem and potential solutions, but doesn’t yet have enough information to buy.

The goal of MoFu keywords is to educate the reader on what your software does and why it’s the best solution to their problem.

Examples of MoFu Keywords for SaaS

Feature-focused keywords: These keywords highlight specific features prospects are searching for, such as:

• "project management with time tracking"
• "CRM with SMS and email"
• "AI project management tools"

Comparison keywords: Users comparing different SaaS options to find the best fit:

• "[Your SaaS] vs [Competitor]"
• "Trello vs Asana vs ClickUp"
• "best alternatives to [Competitor SaaS]"

Solution-focused keywords: These address how your software can solve specific pain points or meet particular needs:

• "project management tools for remote teams"
• "team collaboration tools"
• "small business project management software"

Industry-specific solutions: Keywords that focus on how your SaaS serves particular industries or niches:

• "marketing agency project management software"
• "best real estate crm"
• "best self employed accounting software"

MoFu keywords are typically great for case studies, testimonials, product feature pages, and demos.

ClickUp has created “vs” pages for all of their major competitors, such as Asana, Trello, and Monday. These pages should be a no-brainer in your content marketing strategy.

Their comparison page with Monday, in particular, receives over 112 organic monthly search traffic. Plus, they use it in their Google Ads campaigns, with over 5,700 monthly paid search traffic.

Bottom-Of-The-Funnel Keywords – Decision

Bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) keywords target potential customers who are ready to buy. They’ve already researched their options and are looking for the final push to choose a product.

BoFu keywords are often focused on very specific features, pricing, demos, and comparisons that help prospects evaluate their final choices.

The goal of BoFu content is to overcome objections or doubts and generate conversions.

Examples of BoFu Keywords for SaaS

Product-specific keywords: These keywords highlight your SaaS business specifically, as users are ready to make a purchase:

• "buy [your SaaS product name]"
• "[your SaaS] free trial"
• "[your SaaS] demo"

Pricing-related keywords: Searchers in this stage are often comparing the cost and value of different solutions, looking for transparent pricing information.

• "[your SaaS] pricing"
• "[your SaaS] vs [competitor] pricing"
• "cheap project management software"

Comparison and alternative keywords: These keywords are used by users comparing your SaaS product to competitors or exploring alternatives.

• "[your SaaS] vs [competitor]"
• "best alternatives to [competitor SaaS]"

BoFu keywords are suited for landing pages, sales pages, and FAQ pages.

You might have also noticed there are “vs” keywords in both the MoFu and BoFu sections. They can be either, depending on the search intent of the user.

One example of BoFu content ClickUp uses is its pricing page, which gets 5,400 monthly search traffic from keywords like “ClickUp pricing”.

This traffic is only due to their excellent brand awareness. But it shows you what’s possible as you grow your search presence.

Now, let’s talk about…

Connecting Your Funnels

The buyer journey isn’t always linear.

Your readers might land on ToFu content and immediately purchase or they might land on BoFu content then go back to ToFu content to learn more before buying.

The key is to create content that connects the stages together.

For example, ClickUp has an article on mind map examples — a top-of-the-funnel topic, only loosely related to project management software.

Within the article, they have internal links pointing to other content across the funnel, like this link to their guide to “marketing planning”, which includes using ClickUp to plan your marketing strategy:

They also include links and examples throughout their mind map article of using ClickUp to create mind maps — a direct and natural promotion of their tool:

This is called product-led content, and guess what? It’s…

The Secret to SaaS SEO Success: Product-Led Content That Converts

Product-led content naturally integrates your product as the solution to your reader's problem, without feeling forced or promotional. It's the key to building an effective SEO strategy for SaaS websites.

ClickUp does this throughout their content with visually-appealing & relevant CTAs.

For example, in their guide to tracking project progress, they weave in using their ClickUp Goals tool to define clear, trackable goals for your project:

Finding ways to weave your SaaS product into the solution your potential customers are searching for is guaranteed to increase sign-ups. I’ve seen it work over and over again.

Here’s another example; TestGorilla is a B2B SaaS company that offers skills test software to hiring managers and business owners to help them evaluate job candidates.

They have an article that ranks well on Google for “how to hire the right person”.

In that article, they have CTAs like the one below, which naturally promote TestGorilla as a solution for the reader’s problem without being overly salesy or promotional:

I disagree with the button copy (I would run some A/B tests with copy like “Sign Up Free” or “Get Free Skills Tests”), but the fact remains the same; this stuff works.

If your SaaS business isn’t using product-led content, you’re losing money.

The trick is to find ways to naturally promote your software throughout the marketing funnel — and I’ll teach you exactly how to do that.

The 7-Step SaaS SEO Strategy I Use to Help Clients Reach 4M+ Monthly Organic Search Traffic

Below, I break down the exact step-by-step SaaS SEO strategy I use to help SaaS companies like Ahrefs and Sumo gain thousands of new customers using SEO:

Step 1. Set Your Goals & KPIs

SEO can take months, if not years to pay off — and you could easily spend that time shooting in the dark, never knowing whether or not it will give you a return…

Unless you set specific goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) to track your progress and measure success, you won’t know if your SEO efforts are moving the needle.

Goals are the big-picture outcomes you want to achieve with SEO, such as:

• Boosting brand awareness and authority
• Attracting more qualified leads and customers
• Improving customer retention and reducing churn
• Lowering customer acquisition costs and increasing customer lifetime value

Ideally, your goals should be SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timely).

Let’s make these goals SMART:

• Increase the number of qualified leads generated from organic traffic by 20% over the next 6 months by optimizing landing pages and targeting MoFu and BoFu keywords related to our SaaS offering
• Reduce customer churn by 10% in the next 9 months by creating 8 new product-focused content pieces addressing common user pain points
• Reduce customer acquisition cost (CAC) by 15% within 12 months by shifting 30% of paid ad spend to SEO, focusing on ranking for high-intent, low-competition keywords that drive conversions

KPIs are the specific measurements that show you how well your SEO strategy is working, and if you’re on the right track to hitting your goals.

Here are some good SEO KPIs:

• Search traffic: The total visits your site gets from search engines
• Conversions: Trial signups, demo requests, or email signups
• Search rankings: How high your website ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for your target keywords
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of clicks to your site in the SERPs
• Bounce rate: The percentage of visitors that leave without engaging with your content
• Retention rate: The percentage of people who come back to your site after their first organic visit
• Organic revenue: How much money your site generates from organic traffic

Take some time to think through your SEO goals and how you’ll measure success. Write them down and refer to them often.

Step 2. Define Your Buyer Personas

To be successful with SaaS SEO, you need to understand your target audience.

Who needs your software?

The best way to figure that out is by creating buyer personas; fictional characters that represent your ideal customers. A buyer persona includes information like:

• Demographics: job title, age, gender, location, education, and income
• Psychographics: interests, hobbies, values, and beliefs
• Behaviors: online habits, search patterns, and social media usage
• Pain Points: specific problems and challenges, buying triggers
• Objectives: goals and desires

Simply put, you need a deep understanding of who your ideal customers are, what problems they're facing, and how your software uniquely solves those problems better than anyone else.

So let’s create your buyer personas..

Semrush has a pretty cool free buyer persona template you can use to follow along with me.

If you have the budget, you can use Semrush’s One2Target tool to get a lot of the demographic and socioeconomic information from your competitor’s sites, like so:

If you don’t have the budget, some other options include:

• Surveying your current customers
• Using Google Analytics’ demographics report
• Running Facebook ads and see what demographics resonate most with your content

This can be a long and extensive process, but the more effort you put into defining your buyer personas now, the easier and more effective all of your marketing will be in the future.

Step 3. Research Your Competitors

Luckily for you, your competitors have already done a lot of the heavy lifting.

Chances are, your competition already has an SEO strategy and search engine rankings that you can uncover, replicate, and build on.

Here’s how:

Open Semrush’s Organic Research tool, enter your domain name, and click “Search.”

Then, click the “Competitors” tab to see a list of your top organic search competitors.

These are all the websites that rank for similar keywords to yours. Click on any of your competitors to see an overview of their organic traffic, the keywords bringing them the most traffic, their top pages, and more.

From here, I like to carefully pour over my top competitor’s websites, noting anything they seem to do well and what they could improve on.

For example, Monday.com has an excellent search presence with over half a million organic visitors per month.

But if we look at their blog posts, they leave a lot to be desired.

Like this post on the best project management software, for example. The intro is an ugly wall of text followed by a button that says “Get Started” with almost no context as to what you’re getting started with:

This tells me that, with better content, ClickUp could outrank them for valuable keywords like “best project management software”. Or at least convert better.

Take the time to review your competitors’ SEO strategies, content, keywords, and top pages.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

When you’re done with the sniper approach (individually reviewing SaaS websites), bring out the shotgun — the Keyword Gap tool. It shows you all the keywords your competitors rank for, but you don’t.

To use it, enter your URL and up to four competitors’, then click “Compare”.

You’ll see a whole bunch of insights and some “Top Opportunities” that Semrush’s AI picked out.

If you scroll down and click “Missing”, this is where you see the keywords that all of the entered competitors are ranking for but you aren’t.

You can see information like search intent, ranking position, monthly search volume, keyword difficulty (KD%), cost per click (CPC) and more.

You can also check out the “Untapped” tab to see keywords that at least one of your competitors are ranking for but you aren’t.

Take some time to review these keywords, adding any that seem promising to your keyword list with the “+” button next to the keyword. I like to create several keyword lists as I’m doing keyword research:

1. Landing page keywords (i.e. “ai business plan generator”)
2. Blog keywords (i.e. “what is project management”)
3. [Category-specific] keywords (i.e. Project management keywords)

Last but not least, in this stage I like to research competitors backlink profiles to see what I’m up against.

To do that, head to Semrush’s Domain Overview tool and put in a competitor’s URL.

Scroll down to the Backlinks section and click “View details”.

You’ll be taken to their Backlink Analytics section, with an overview of all the backlinks pointing to their domain, including the linking page’s Authority Score (Page AS), which gives you an idea of how much authority that link is passing to their website.

The real power of competitor backlink analysis, however, lies in the Backlink Gap tool. Like the Keyword Gap tool, it shows you backlinks that all of your competitors SaaS websites have but you don’t.

In ClickUp’s case, Canva, USA Today, and US News are linking to all of ClickUp’s competitors, but not to ClickUp.

Let’s find out why…

You can click the caret “>” in any of the rows to get more information on which page is linking to which URL on the competitor’s site.

You’ll be shown the authority score, number of internal and external links pointing to the page that’s linking to your competitor, and the anchor text and target URL. (Anchor text is the linked text.)

In this case, Canva is linking to Trello in an article on free marketing tools.

ClickUp could potentially reach out to the author and see if they would include ClickUp as another free tool. More on link building in step 7!

For now, simply browse competitor’s links and take note of any you may be able to replicate or steal.

Once you’re happy with your keyword lists and competitive research, it’s time to look in the mirror.

Step 4. Audit Your Website And Content

Technical SEO is the foundation of your SaaS website, and content is the house built on that foundation.

If your website’s never undergone a technical SEO audit, you might have cracks in the foundation. And if you’ve never done a content audit, your roof may be leaking!

Let’s start with technical SEO for SaaS…

Key SaaS technical SEO factors include:

• Crawlability & Indexing: Search engines need to be able to find and crawl all the important pages on your site. If your site isn’t crawlable or indexable, it won’t rank. This involves an optimized robots.txt file and sitemap.
• Site Speed & Performance: A fast website improves user experience and is a direct ranking factor for Google. Slow sites lead to higher bounce rates and can hurt your rankings.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it primarily uses the mobile version of a website to determine rankings. A site that isn’t mobile-optimized will struggle to rank well. This includes a responsive design, fast mobile load times, and ease of navigation on smaller screens
• HTTPS & Website Security: Google has made HTTPS a ranking factor, and sites without HTTPS (SSL certificates) are marked as “not secure,” which can negatively impact user trust and rankings. Make sure your site is secured with HTTPS and uses SSL certificates to encrypt user data.
• Structured Data (Schema Markup): Structured data helps search engines understand your content better and can result in rich snippets (e.g., reviews, pricing) that improve your click-through rates (CTR). Use schema markup to provide additional information about your website’s content (e.g., products, reviews, events) that can be displayed directly in search results.
• URL Structure: URL structure is how your site’s pages are organized and named, and it’s important for user experience, search engine crawlability, and overall rankings. Your URLs should be clean, descriptive, and consistent (i.e. www.yoursite.com/blog/simple-descriptive-url).
• Meta Tags: Meta tags, namely your meta titles and meta descriptions, are information search engines use to show your pages in the search engine results page (SERP). Meta title is the blue hyperlinked text and meta description is the description below that text.

There’s a lot more to technical SEO, like Core Web Vitals, canonicalization, broken links & redirects, and internal linking — but for the sake of simplicity, I won’t go into detail on everything here.

HubSpot has an excellent guide to technical SEO if you want to dive deeper.

For now, let’s quit the theory and dive into the practice…

First, set up Google Search Console (GSC) if you haven’t already. Google Search Console is where you’ll get insights and diagnostics on how Google crawls, indexes, and ranks your website.

GSC shows you crawlability and indexing insights, search performance data, sitemap and URL submission, website security and manual actions, and a lot more.

Check out Semrush’s guide to learn how to use Google Search Console.

Once that’s set up, run a technical SEO audit with Semrush’s Site Audit tool. (You can use other tools like Screaming Frog or Ahrefs; whatever you have access to.)

You’ll get access to a heap of technical SEO data, including technical and on-page SEO mistakes:

Click the Issues tab to see a list of everything you need to fix and how to fix it.

Run through the list and fix as many technical SEO issues as you can. With that, you’ve mended the cracks in your foundation and can move on fixing up your house (i.e. your content).

To perform a content audit, head to the Crawled Pages tab and click “Export” > “Export to CSV”.

Make a copy of Semrush’s content audit template and copy-paste the data from your CSV to the Google Sheet doc.

Proceed to fill in all the information in the sheet. It’s good to get Organic Traffic data from your Google Analytics account, as that will be more accurate than Semrush’s rough estimate.

Once you get to the On-Page SEO column, use Semrush’s On-Page SEO Checker tool to get suggestions for ways to improve the content’s on-page optimization. You can check your pages in bulk by uploading the CSV you downloaded from the Crawled Pages report.

Head to the Optimization Ideas tab and, if a page isn’t fully optimized, it will give you suggestions on ways to improve on-page optimization.

The next step is simple; if a page has suggestions for optimizations, click “No” in the dropdown for that URL under the On-Page SEO column. Otherwise, mark yes.

In the Technical SEO column, you can mark the specific technical SEO issues you uncovered in your technical SEO audit.

Finally, the Action column is where you mark what action to take for that particular piece of content.

Your options are:

• Keep As Is: No changes needed.
• Update: Refresh the content with better on-page optimization, up-to-date information, or a complete change to better match search intent.
• Consolidate & Redirect: Move the content to a page better suited for the target keyword and redirect the old URL to the updated URL.
• Delete: Get rid of the content because it’s not performing, doesn’t have backlinks, and isn’t helping your SEO strategy in any meaningful way.

Now, there’s a lot more that goes into auditing content than on-page SEO and technical SEO. But this is a great place to start to see what content is under-performing and make meaningful changes.

Check out Semrush’s guide to content auditing for a deeper dive on this process.

Step 5. Create A Content Plan Using Keyword Research

Keyword research for SaaS companies is a bit different from regular keyword research.

Your SaaS website has more opportunities to target keywords related to free SaaS tools and features, helpdesk support articles, and FAQs, which can all be included in your content strategy.

Thorough keyword research for SaaS boils down to three keyword types:

1. Customer pain points
2. Landing page keywords
3. Comparison keywords

To start, brainstorm the common questions, pain points, and goals of your target audience. Use the buyer personas you created in step two.

For ClickUp, customer pain points might include topics like:

• How do I manage projects more effectively?
• How to keep track of multiple projects at once
• How to set project goals

To find more keyword ideas, use Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool.

First, enter a seed keyword. A seed keyword is a high-level keyword related to your products, like “project management” or “CRM”.

Put your URL into the AI-powered field for customized results specific to your domain, then click “Search”.

Pro Tip: If you’re a newer SaaS business without a strong backlink profile, set the keyword difficulty (KD) to less than 50%. That way you only see keywords you have a decent chance to rank for.

Browse the keyword results the tool spits out, adding any that seem promising to one of your keyword lists with the “+” button next to the keyword.

In this case, “project manager salary” isn’t likely to convert readers into ClickUp users, but it’s still a good keyword to attract backlinks and achieve topical authority in the eyes of Google.

Check the Phrase Match, Exact Match, and Related keywords tabs for more keyword ideas.

You can also check the Questions tab for long-tail keyword ideas. Long-tail keywords are longer keyword phrases that often have a lower search volume but are easier to rank for.

Once you have a good list of ToFu keywords based around customer pain points, it’s time to find your landing page keywords.

These are commercial-intent keywords for your product and feature pages or blog posts that directly promote your tool.

Here are some examples of landing page keywords:

• “best project management software”
• “free project management tool”
• “project management tools”

To find commercial-intent keywords, go back to the Keyword Magic tool and set the Intent to only include “Commercial” and “Transactional”.

Here are some examples that ClickUp was able to find and rank for:

You know the drill; add any promising keywords to your list.

Then, head back to the Keyword Magic tool to find the “[You] vs. [Them]” keywords.

Search for your product name, click the “Include keywords” filter, type “vs,” and click “Apply.”

Create a template to use for each of these comparison keywords. Here are some things to keep in mind:

• Use target keywords in the page title, meta description, headings, body text, and images.
• Present facts objectively for both products without being overly promotional or biased.
• Use a clear format like a table or chart to compare features side by side.
• Address pain points by showing how your product solves specific problems.
• Include a strong call-to-action (CTA) such as a free trial, demo, or discount.
• Design for user experience with easy-to-read content and fast loading times.
• Include transparent pricing information to help users compare costs.
• Update the page regularly to ensure information stays current and accurate.

ClickUp does a great job of this:

Once you’ve done the research, it’s time to create a content plan to craft content that ranks.

I have an internal content strategy document for my clients that I built in Notion, but you can create one using a simple Google Sheet.

Include important information like:

• Target keyword
• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty
• Search intent
• Strategy (i.e. blog post, landing page, etc.)
• Category
• Priority

Your goal here is to decide which keywords you want to prioritize, what kind of content you need to create to rank, and assign due dates to feed your content engine.

Step 6. Craft Content That Converts

Creating content that converts is my specialty; I obsess over every word, every line, every button.

While it’s important to create content that’s optimized for search engines, you have to remember that the goal of that content isn’t just to rank; it’s to get more customers.

Here’s how you do that:

First, create a content brief that includes an outline of the page, topic research, and the goal of the piece.

This outline process gives you a logical structure to your article and details what will make your article better than what’s already ranking.

Here’s an example of a brief for “how to make ramen noodles”:

Here are the steps I take when researching an article:

1. Ask ChatGPT about how the topic relates to your specific target audience, with prompts like: 
   • explain [topic] in simple terms as it relates to [target audience]
   • what are some tangible examples of what [topic] looks like for [target audience] and what challenges come
   • what are some common misunderstandings about [topic] that I should know if I'm writing about [topic] for [target audience]

2. Search for the topic on YouTube and watch some of the top videos.
3. Search for the topic on Reddit/Quora/LinkedIn to see what people are saying about it and their specific pain points.
4. Finally, search for the primary keyword on YouTube and review the top 5 results.

I use Google for research last because many SEOs fall in the Google paradox where they just regurgitate the same thing the other results already say. While this might get you ranked, it won’t help you beat your competition or stand out among the crowd.

Once you have your outline and initial research, it’s time to start writing.

One example of a great product-led SaaS article is this WordPress guide I wrote for Ahrefs, which ranks on the first page for keywords like “how to use wordpress”.

Inside the article, I mention using Ahrefs’ tools to help you build your WordPress website:

There’s a lot that goes into creating high-quality content; from research to product inclusion, copywriting, formatting, and design. You also need to include keywords in the right places while avoiding keyword stuffing.

Here are some other articles I wrote to help you learn how to write better content that ranks:

• 21 Writing Tips to Become a Better Writer Fast
• 6 Straightforward Steps To Create Bookmark-Worthy Content

Step 7. Build Backlinks

Backlinks; what search engines crave.

Backlinks are hyperlinks pointing from another website back to yours.

This is a backlink.

As a rule of thumb, the more high-quality backlinks your web page has, the better your search engine visibility…

But not all backlinks are made the same.

A link from Forbes, CNN, or a .gov or .edu website passes more page authority than a link from a random small website no one's ever heard of.

In other words, search engines like Google want to see that well-known websites are “voting” on your authority by linking to your content.

You can get a rough idea of the authority of a website using Semrush’s Domain Overview tool and checking their “Authority Score”:

Authority Score ranges from 0-100, with a higher number meaning greater authority. Semrush uses backlink profiles, organic traffic, and other factors to determine this score. It’s similar to Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) or Moz’s Domain Authority (DA).

I know what you’re thinking…

How do I build high-quality backlinks to my SaaS website?

Here’s how:

1. Utilize guest posting and guest podcasting to be featured as an authority on relevant websites.
2. Reach out to web pages with broken links, and create a source they can replace the link with.
3. Find link roundups (like “best project management tools”) and get listed on them
4. Create a free tool with specific features, like CoSchedule did with their headline analyzer
5. Publish linkable assets, like surveys, studies and research, and “definitions” pages

There are a lot of link-building strategies. My recommendation is to pick 2-3 and master them.

You can also use Semrush’s Link Building tool to get additional link ideas and track the progress of your link outreach campaigns.

Check out Search Engine Journal’s guide to SaaS link building to learn more.

More SaaS SEO Tips

1. Set Up Google Analytics

If you haven’t already, set up Google Analytics and conversion tracking, so you can see how well your SEO content is performing and get insights into things like site speed, sales funnel tracking, and more.

2. Claim Your Brand Name on Social Media Platforms

Even if you don’t plan on using TikTok or Instagram, you should still claim your account on all of these platforms. Doing so gives you future flexibility, brand protection, and some minor SEO benefits.

Go ahead and claim your brand name on:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Twitter (X)
• Pinterest
• Snapchat
• Reddit
• Quora
• Medium

Even if you never use some of these accounts, it’s still good practice for brand protection.

3. Set Up Brand Mention Alerts

Any time someone mentions your brand name, they should be linking to your SaaS web page.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Sometimes people mention you without a link..

That’s where brand mention alerts come in — get alerted anytime someone mentions your brand name but doesn’t link to you with Semrush’s Brand Monitoring app.

This way you can reach out and request that they add the link. Boom, easy link building!

4. Refresh Your Content Often

Most SaaS businesses create content. But not all of them regularly refresh that content.

Over time, your rankings may drop due to competitors coming in with better content. You should check your content at least once a year to ensure it continues to match search intent for the keyword and contains up-to-date information.

You can track your rankings and set up alerts for any time your rankings drop with Semrush’s Position Tracking tool. If your rankings drop, it may be time for an update!

5. Hire a Reputable SaaS SEO Expert

SEO for SaaS companies is no small task.

There are a lot of moving parts, from creating a winning strategy to crafting high-value content, building links, and measuring the results.

Save yourself a lot of time, money, and wasted effort by hiring a dedicated SaaS SEO expert (like me!)

I’ve helped dozens of SaaS companies create a technical SEO strategy, keyword strategy, craft high-converting website content, and improve their rankings.

Summary

In a nutshell, SEO for SaaS companies boils down to five key steps:

1. Create a solid foundation for technical SEO
2. Research relevant keywords that target all stages of the marketing funnel
3. Create content optimized for both search engines and conversions
4. Build links to establish authority in the eyes of Google
5. Monitor SEO progress like keyword rankings and organic traffic

Click here to get help setting up and executing your SaaS SEO strategy, from a SaaS SEO expert who’s helped SaaS companies like Ahrefs, Sumo, Oberlo, and a dozen more grow their organic traffic and MRR.