4 Pillars of SaaS SEO Success: A Checklist

SaaS SEO is a continuous process of optimizing your SaaS website to get more organic traffic and qualified leads by ranking higher on search engines for the desired keywords.

Why is SEO important for your SaaS business?

Here are a few important factors that are directly affected by your SEO performance:

1. Organic traffic received by your website.
2. On-site experience of your visitors.
3. Your understanding of your prospects.
4. Quality and quantity of leads captured.
5. Your conversion rates.
6. Your brand’s reach and visibility.
7. Your brand’s perceived level of credibility and authority.

Multiple studies have also signified the importance of SEO for SaaS businesses.

1. SaaS companies get 68% of organic traffic through SEO.
2. Only 0.78% of Google searchers click on results from the 2nd page.
3. SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media.
4. 70% of marketers see SEO as more effective than PPC.

4 Pillars of SaaS SEO Success

There are four pillars of SaaS SEO success.

• Keyword Research – Process of discovering search terms your target audience might use to find your product.
  • Helps you understand user intent.
  • Makes it easy for your prospects to find you.
  • Helps improve relevance in the eyes of search engines.
• Technical SEO – Process of improving your website’s underlying architecture to improve rankings on search engines.
  • Makes your website search-engine friendly.
  • Delivers a great on-site experience.
  • Improves your website’s security.
• Content Creation – Process of creating and distributing useful content for your defined target audience.
  • Gives value to your prospects, leads, and customers.
  • Builds credibility and authority in your vertical.
  • Helps improve conversions at every stage of your sales funnel.
• Link Building – Process of increasing the quality and quantity of inbound links to your domain to improve your rankings on the search results.
  • Receive quality traffic from relevant domains.
  • Builds your thought leadership across reputable niche publications.
  • Improves your domain rating.

A checklist for SaaS SEO Success

• Keyword Research
  • Finalize the primary keyword for your business.
  • Find long-tail keywords related to it.
  • Find keywords targeted by your competitors.
  • Arrange keywords by search volume and difficulty level.
  • Determine search intent for researched keywords.
  • List the intent of articles that rank for those keywords.
  • Filter out the top keywords to use.
  • Utilize those keywords as you create content.
• Technical SEO
  • Run a website crawl to fix crawl errors.
  • Fix broken links: internal, redirects, and outbound.
  • Find and eliminate duplicate content.
  • Add more content to thin pages.
  • Add schema markup to relevant pages.
  • Update and optimize your XML sitemap.
  • Make your domain HTTPS.
  • Optimize core web vitals: FID, LCP, and CLS.
  • Review your robots.txt file.
• Content Creation
  • Define the purpose of your content.
  • Learn what your customers want to know.
  • Decide the types of content you want to produce, such as blog posts, guides, infographics, etc.
  • Use keywords strategically. 
  • Prepare a content distribution strategy.
  • Add a relevant CTA to the content to direct readers to sign up for your product.
• Link Building
  • Create linkable assets such as ebooks, whitepapers, checklists, etc.
  • Conduct a backlink audit and disavow links from spammy domains.
  • Use broken link building.
  • Avoid black-hat SEO tactics.
  • Get interviewed by trusted websites.
  • Publish reviews in respectable domains.
  • Write guest posts and news articles for other domains.
  • Publish industry-specific whitepapers and host webinars.

SEO metrics that matter

Which metrics should you keep an eye on while conducting SEO for your SaaS business?

• Organic traffic: The number of people visiting your website through organic search.
• Click-through rate (CTR): Percentage of searchers who click on your domain’s URL on the search results page.
• Bounce rate: Percentage of visitors that view just one page on your website and leave without taking any action.
• Keyword rankings: Do you rank higher for the keywords you have been targeting?
• Core Web Vitals: FID, LCP, and CLS
• Referring domains: Websites from which you are getting links.
• Domain Authority: Determines your website’s overall authority.
• Conversions: The impact of your SEO efforts on your bottom line.

SEO tools in your shed

These are the tools you need to get the most out of your SEO efforts:

• Google Analytics: To track your organic traffic, bounce rates, conversions, and other page-level metrics.
• Google Search Console: To keep an eye on your CTR, URL issues, and overall website performance.
• WooRank: To conduct keyword research and tracking, competitive analysis, and more.
• Website Authority Checker: To check your Domain Authority.
• Ahrefs: To conduct backlink audit and keyword research.
• Screaming Frog: To identify crawling, indexing, and other technical SEO issues.

Found this checklist useful? Here’s a handy infographic version you can share with your colleagues and network.

Author

Arkin Khemchandani

Arkin is a content marketer at Growfusely - a SaaS content marketing agency specializing in content and data-driven SEO. Besides work, he's an ardent recreational runner who loves beaches and trance music. Connect with him on Twitter: @arkin008