SaaS companies have mushroomed over the past decade, and many traditional software companies have turned to this business model. There were approximately 25,000 SaaS companies in the world in 2021. By 2028, the size of this burgeoning market is expected to reach $716.52 billion.
This is good news for you, but naturally, positioning your company in such a competitive landscape can be challenging.
Paid ads, social media, and word-of-mouth are effective strategies, but you can’t expect to drive any substantial traffic to your site unless you optimise it for search engines. Here are some reasons why having a solid SEO strategy in place is a must if you want to grow your SaaS business.
What Is SEO for SaaS?
There are different strategies for boosting the awareness and visibility of your business. Some are paid, so you have to invest in targeted ads that will be displayed to your potential customers when they’re browsing the internet.
Others are organic, meaning that you use various tactics to attract your audience to visit your site over time.
Search engine optimisation belongs to the category of organic marketing. It’s focused on improving your website rankings in search results through the use of relevant keywords, links, and different technical optimisations.
The top spot of Google organic search results rakes in 27.6% of all clicks. By comparison, only 0.63% of searchers click a result on the second page. This stat perfectly illustrates the power of SEO for your website traffic and, ultimately, your bottom line.
Is SEO Better Than Paid Advertising?
Both strategies yield results if well executed, and it’s best to use them together.
Paid ads are effective, but the problem with them is that they will bring you traffic only while you’re running them. Once you stop investing in this strategy, you’ll experience a drop in the number of visitors.
On the other hand, SEO works by gradually building your visibility in searches. If you’re thinking long-term, then investing in this marketing strategy can help you significantly with customer acquisition.
It’s worth mentioning that, unlike paid ads, SEO won’t eat up your entire marketing budget. Given that most SaaS businesses begin their journey as startups, meaning that they’re usually strapped for cash, the financial aspect plays an important role, which makes SEO an excellent solution.
So, how to leverage SEO to grow and expand your SaaS business?
Create High-Quality Content
Google’s primary goal is to offer its users the most relevant and helpful results for their queries. In other words, the search engine emphasises the user experience.
That’s why creating content that will add value to your target audience and resonate with them is the first step to driving traffic and boosting conversions.
And exceptional content is at the core of a successful SEO strategy.
If your blog posts, product pages, and other parts of your website are optimised for search engines, the likelihood of showing up among the top search results increases. In addition, since such content is educational, your potential customers will keep coming back when they need more information about a solution to their pain point.
And that’s how you can engage your audience and stay top of mind with them.
Creating evergreen content that stays fresh and relevant longer will ensure exponential growth of your ROI.
Target Your Audience with Relevant Keywords
When potential customers try to find out more about their pain points, they enter particular keywords and phrases in the search box.
If you discover the keywords your potential customers use to find a solution similar to the one your SaaS offers, you can strategically place them in your content, meta information, and website elements.
This way, Google will identify your content as relevant for that topic, and if your keyword strategy is effective, improve your rankings in search results.
Keyword research is a crucial part of a well-structured SEO strategy, and it’s best to enlist the help of SaaS SEO experts if you want to make sure to target high-quality prospects and boost your brand exposure.
Build Quality Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites pointing to your content and web pages.
They, in a way, vouch for the credibility of your content, thus boosting your online reputation.
Backlinks as an important ranking signal, but only if they come from reputable and authoritative resources. The more backlinks you earn or build, the better.
Content types that work best for building backlinks include:
- Studies, surveys, free tools, and helpful guides
- Posts packed with relevant data
- Visually-oriented content such as infographics and videos
It’s also a good idea to get in touch with influencers from your industry and offer them to try out your SaaS solution and write a review. This could land you a lot of valuable traffic, plus give your reputation and rankings a significant boost.
Make Your Website User-Centric
It’s not enough just to attract potential customers to your website. You want them to stay longer, explore your content, and convert.
This is possible only if your site is user-friendly and easy to navigate.
Here are some SEO tips to boost conversions on your site.
- Don’t neglect internal linking. This practice helps search engines crawl and index your new posts. Plus, it allows readers to quickly find relevant content about the topic they’re interested in.
- Use CTAs on all your web pages. This way, you will prompt your website visitors to convert. This tactic will be effective only if you create a sense of urgency with your calls to action.
- Provide social proof in the form of case studies, customer testimonials, and reviews.
- Optimise your titles, subheadings, meta descriptions, URLs, and images by adding keywords.
- Improve your site loading speed and aim for no more than 3 seconds.
- Opt for a mobile-optimised site built with the mobile-first approach. As of September 2020, Google switched to the mobile version of websites for indexing purposes. Besides this, more than 50% of your visitors browse your site on their mobile devices, so they will be annoyed if they have to pinch and zoom all the time.
Wrapping Up
SEO should be one of your top marketing priorities if you want to grow and scale your SaaS business. Bear in mind that you’re in a competitive tech-oriented industry and that your customers expect top-notch service. Optimising your site for search engines means you can expect a steady stream of traffic for the long haul. Last but not least, this strategy won’t break the bank.
About the Author:
Sarah Kaminski is a business manager and social media marketer. She works with a number of small businesses to build their brands through more engaging marketing and content. Twitter – @SarahKaminski10