7 Ways SaaS SEO Can Boost Your Business Growth

The SaaS industry is fairly new but has turned out to be one of the fastest-growing industries. The numbers say it all, the revenue went from $6 billion in 2020 to $272.49 billion in 2021. That’s a CAGR of 20.8%!

The rise in these numbers shows tremendous opportunities for the growth of your SaaS business. However, the competition to acquire the market share is only going to increase going forward.

So how is your brand going to stand out amongst the crowd?

Here’s where you have to think beyond your product and its features. Your primary motive is to establish brand awareness in this digital era. For that, you will need Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and a killer content marketing strategy.

Let’s have a look at how SEO and content make a great combo for boosting your SaaS growth.

7 Ways SaaS SEO Can Boost Your Business Growth

1. Builds Credibility and Authority

SEO can be a substantial factor in building your SaaS business’s online reputation. Think about it — whenever you Google a query, you end up clicking on the first few links on the results to find your answer. Such is our trust in the search engine’s algorithm.

So, a higher ranking on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) assigns some much-needed credibility to your website. When the target audience does click on the website and finds reliable answers to their questions, you establish significant trust and authority.

Now, SEO steps in as the most important process that can help you occupy a position on the first page of search engine results. Publishing qualitative SEO-driven content on your website can do the trick. Google, especially, has emphasized the importance of Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) in ranking pages on several occasions.

You may need to have a balanced mix of SEO practices like link building, guest blogging, and content marketing to achieve the desired results. While it may take some time to come to fruition, the right mix of optimization activities can help your software establish a steady footing in your niche.

2. Attracts a Ton of Organic Traffic

Since we are talking about establishing a firm footing in the industry, you should know that there is cut-throat competition in the SaaS market. Most SaaS startups struggle to generate a stable flow of high-quality leads and then channel the customers to their product.

Enter Keyword Research — a major aspect of SEO. Ranking for the appropriate keywords will have a vital effect on your lead generation. Did you know that out of the 5.6 billion searches in a single day 15% have never been searched before?

These are usually long-tail keywords with high intent and low search volume. Capitalizing on these searches is the key to closing in on the gap between your SaaS product and potential clients.

Aiming the SEO efforts at ranking for long-tail keywords instead helps you attract relevant traffic. As these leads are already looking for the services that you provide, this traffic has an even better chance of a conversion.

SafetyCulture is one such amazing example. They have managed to grow their monthly organic traffic by 600% with awe-inspiring content that caters to the user’s intent. They have mastered on-page SEO techniques and are actively working on link-building experiments to further their progress.

3. Helps Scale User Acquisition Strategies

Qualitative search engine optimization can help implement the positive user experience necessary for user acquisition. Google’s evolution into an answer engine, providing sought-after data immediately on the SERPs, is a clear illustration of how to create a strong user experience. Google keeps rolling out page experience updates that can be adhered to only with diligent SEO practices. 

Customers are clear about what they want. The search engine’s algorithm is determined to give them exactly that. You can make the most of that as SEO makes it possible to do so in fewer clicks, more quickly and conveniently. This works as seen in the case of Tenacity, where they reached 95% conversion by addressing real customers’ problems.

4. Decreases the Reliance on Paid Marketing

Most SaaS marketers may believe that paid ads are the way to go. However, they are not the only smart way to create brand awareness. Several brands who soar through the clouds in terms of organic traffic and conversions would say otherwise. In fact, 53% of a site’s traffic comes from organic searches whereas only 15% stems from paid searches.

Paid ads and marketing surely aid in spreading brand awareness and making a name in your niche. However, they can notoriously gobble up your entire marketing budget if they are your only source of leads. This can be quite a pain for SaaS startups that are just starting out. 

That’s because you get a limited Return on Investment (ROI) and might soon exhaust your audience. On top of that, there is a high chance that a majority of those leads generated might not be marketing or sales qualified.

That’s a lot of big bucks spent on advertising and marketing strategies that are not directed toward motivated buyers. Here’s where SEO has the upper hand for any SaaS business. Even though it takes a little while before you observe the results you can achieve substantial growth through evergreen SEO strategies.

SEO may warrant a bit of start-up cost and investment, which may seem more than what you are paying for the paid ads. However, post that every click and conversion scored organically through these efforts is essential without any additional burn in your pocket. This makes SEO more effective than paid campaigns in the long run.

5. Reduces the Cost per Acquisition

Cost per acquisition is one of the core metrics measured by a SaaS company. The number is calculated by dividing the sales and marketing cost by the number of new customers acquired within a specific time period.

For example, if your sales and marketing expenses for a month amount to $2000 and you acquire 10 new customers within that month, the cost per acquisition is $200. The marketing and advertising through Google Ads and Facebook campaigns are usually responsible for skyrocketing this expenditure. Here’s how SEO can help alleviate such costs.

Your service’s potential consumers are already on the lookout for your software to solve their issues. Using a holistic guide to curate SEO techniques will increase your organic search visibility for related keyword queries in the most cost-effective manner. 

You can easily reduce the cost per acquisition by hiring a thorough SEO agency. They will make the job easier for you by checking aspects such as page speed, on-page SEO clean coding, and other features adored by Google’s algorithm. On top of that, they will help churn out content that converts and generate backlinks from reputable websites.

These assets provide tremendous results as they become the source for continuous organic traffic, surpassing way ahead of the cost spent on acquisition.

The content will attract continual organic traffic to your website if it is successful. Your business can turn them into leads and ultimately into customers using the right marketing funnel.

Furthermore, the cost of acquiring a user via SEO is far lower than paid marketing, because content has no expiration date; you can recycle and refresh the same material multiple times and it will continue to generate traffic to your website.

Paid marketing strategies, such as PPC, on the other hand, can quickly become expensive when you target high-competition keywords. Every click costs money, and if you turn off or minimize your paid advertising, the traffic will stop.

There is a clear pattern of growth with SaaS SEO, and as your organic traffic grows, your marginal acquisition cost falls.

6. Offers Long-Term Benefits

A well-thought-out growth timeline is a key to success in the SaaS industry. SEO is one of the most effective and time-tested product marketing strategies to ramp up your lead generation efforts in this regard.

Content marketing is a frequent component in most SaaS actionable strategies, and it may often deliver long-term outcomes with compounding value. If you want to win, publishing SEO content can support you to do just that.

Consider how the content you published today will continue to bring in more traffic and leads for months and years to come. It’s a long-term commitment, but when done correctly, it can result in exponential traffic growth for your website.

7. Gives a Definite Edge Over the Competition

There is a high chance of another product that solves a similar problem to yours, and this competitor ranks better on the search engine pages. This is where you might need SEO reinforcement, no matter how stellar the service or customer-oriented your product is. 

Lack of SEO for your SaaS will only lead to the target audience being unaware of your product. What’s more, your competition keeps turning up on their search results and they land on their services pages instead.

Even if you haven’t done any SEO or content marketing, organic traffic is still a part of your buyer’s journey. Customers are likely to compare you to other companies or conduct online research before making a purchase. Knowing what terms people use to find you can help you figure out what kind of material you should make for them.

The other thing you should always consider is what your competitors are doing. A brief examination of their organic traffic using simple online tools such as Ubersuggest, Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz, as well as skimming the most recent articles on their site, can reveal a lot about their SEO strategy and resources.

Freshbooks, an accounting software, does an amazing job of comparing their product to their competitors. They post articles that highlight key features of competitors like Quickbooks and Zoho Books and demarcate the differences for the user. 

This is a great SEO technique for reeling in customers at the bottom of the funnel. And because neither of the competitors has such comparisons up on their blog, Freshbooks gains a certain edge over them. It’s clear that such content marketing and SEO strategies work!

Conclusion

SEO is a critical component of every SaaS company’s success. It aids in the discovery of possible consumers who require your services. We’ve covered why SEO is crucial for your SaaS business, and how it can improve your marketing efforts in this blog. SEO can help you save money on marketing, increase leads, and build a stronger brand.

These factors make SEO a must for your SaaS business. You can further understand the benefits and inner workings of SEO from the experts at Growfusely. We help our SaaS clients accomplish remarkable outcomes with excellent SaaS SEO services.

Image source –  Brightedge

Author

Pratik Dholakiya

Pratik Dholakiya is the Founder of Growfusely, a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO.