In the world of digital business, there are many different methods that companies use to try to get their products and services in front of the right audience. However, not all methods are created equal, and digital companies need to consider the right marketing and distribution channel for them given their industry and business mode. PPC, such as Google and Facebooks ads, are great if you already know exactly who your target customer is. They also make sense if you have a consistent budget for ad spend to invest, and are also aware of an exact ROI you are comfortable with. However, without using a data driven approach, PPC can often feel like throwing money down a well, as you won’t have a sense of what your return should be on your ad spend.
This is why many digital companies, including SaaS companies, are increasingly turning to SEO. SaaS companies often create niche software products that are meant to be adopted by a specific type of user or a specific industry. For example, if a SaaS company makes a CRM, they are most likely going to target a specific industry, such as a CRM for the construction industry. This means that their buyer persona is usually a construction manager or other decision-maker at a construction company.
Using the power of SEO, a SaaS company can directly target this process by creating a SaaS SEO strategy. This strategy will allow a SaaS company to perform niche keyword research based around who their target buyer persona is. This is beyond what an ecommerce company can do, which is usually stuck targeting broader product based keywords which may or may not convert well.
For SaaS companies, the SEO strategy process is a unique opportunity to not only refine their marketing efforts but also to refine their SaaS offering. Within the niche keyword research process, SaaS companies can discover how the market is perceiving their SaaS offering and what they are searching for to find software like theirs or even to solve problems that their SaaS product seeks to solve. More often than not, a keyword gap analysis between a SaaS company and its competitors can reveal how potential users are discovering your competitors, which is more often than not through content rather than highly targeted product-based keywords.
Content keywords are an important part of SEO, particularly for SaaS companies. Within a SaaS SEO strategy, SaaS companies should be prepared to research the problems that their potential users are facing and create detailed guides that discuss these problems. When creating these guides, SaaS companies will be using a SaaS content marketing strategy and also work to rank these guides on Google for target keywords.
After building out this content, SaaS companies then need to invest in link building. Building links is one of the most overlooked parts of SEO, but it can pay off the most. Links, which represents endorsements from outside websites linking to your SaaS website, signal to Google that your website is relevant for the context of the page that is linking out to your website. In doing so, SaaS companies will be able to rank the guides that they have created through their keyword research and content marketing processes, which is how they can ultimately drive traffic to their website.
SaaS companies have a lot to gain from SEO. Given their in-house technical expertise, they are well-suited for the complexities of creating a SaaS SEO strategy and implementing technical changes to their website. Using this process, SaaS companies can also discover new ways that people are discovering their SaaS products and those of their competitors and tweak their software offerings to better reflect what their potential users are looking for.
