B2B SaaS SEO is more than just trying to rank highly on the search engines. It’s about driving qualified traffic and attracting high-intent leads to fuel long-term growth in what is an increasingly competitive digital landscape.
As SaaS companies scale, visibility in search engines becomes critical for successful customer acquisition. However, traditional SEO tactics can be useful for driving some qualified leads to your site, you will need a more refined SEO strategy in the SaaS market.
In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at what SaaS SEO is, how it differs from traditional SEO, the key benefits it offers and how to build a results-driven SaaS SEO strategy.
Use the links below to jump to the section which interests you the most, or keep reading to explore the full guide.
- What is SaaS SEO?
- What is the difference between SaaS SEO and traditional SEO?
- How important is SEO in a SaaS business?
- How to create a SaaS SEO strategy
As an experienced SaaS SEO agency, we’ve partnered with numerous clients over the years, delivering tailored strategies as a core part of our broader SaaS marketing services. Learn more by visiting our service page or get in touch with our team of SEO specialists to discuss how we can help.
What is SaaS SEO?
SaaS SEO is a marketing strategy used by software-as-a-service (SaaS) brands to deliver business growth through organic search. It works by creating valuable content that attracts relevant potential customers, supporting them in their decision-making process, and ultimately driving conversions for your business.
Like traditional SEO, SaaS SEO can be divided into three main areas: on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO.
What is B2B SaaS SEO?
B2B SaaS SEO focuses on driving traffic and boosting conversions for business-to-business (B2B) SaaS companies. It differs from other SEO types by addressing the unique needs and buying behaviours of B2B SaaS customers, ensuring targeted, effective B2B marketing strategies to attract and convert business clients.
What is the difference between SaaS SEO and traditional SEO?
The key difference between SaaS SEO and traditional SEO lies in the SaaS business model, the nature of the product being marketed, the target audience and the type of SEO strategies required. Both types of SEO share the same foundational elements, but SaaS SEO needs a more nuanced approach.
Whilst traditional SEO is focused on attracting a wider range of visitors to the site at different stages of the sales funnel, SEO for SaaS is more focused on attracting a specific audience at the pivotal point in their problem-solving journey in order to convert them into leads and drive sales.
SaaS SEO focuses on optimising websites for businesses that offer subscription-based software solutions and services. Inherently, these businesses must focus on driving qualified leads, increasing their sign-ups and upselling their products.
Whilst traditional SEO can also focus on these goals, the approach is much broader and typically focuses on building brand awareness to increase traffic and drive sales.
SasS SEO vs Traditional SEO
| SaaS SEO | Traditional SEO | |
| SEO Goals | To drive qualified leads through trial sign-ups, free-to-paid offers and retaining customers. | A focus on traffic acquisition, product sales and lead generation. |
| Keyword Strategy | Niche, often revolving around problem-solving keywords related to the software’s use case. | Broader, relating to informational keywords and transactional keywords. |
| Content Strategy | A SaaS content marketing strategy is usually more in-depth, aimed at solving specific problems or addressing the pain points that lead users to consider the SaaS product. | SEO content marketing can be more varied depending on the business model. Ranging from commercial content to informational content. |
| Analytics and Metrics | SaaS marketing analytics typically track more industry-specific metrics such as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Churn Rate, Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), and Lifetime Value (LTV) in addition to general marketing metrics. | Often include, but are not limited to, organic traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, and page load speed. |
How important is SEO in a SaaS business?
Your website is one of the most powerful tools you can use to communicate your SaaS business’ valuable products and services, whilst also demonstrating credibility and trust to potential customers.
A great website is a good starting point, but it’s SEO for SaaS that plays a vital role in ensuring a website is conversion-driven, optimised and technically sound to drive organic traffic and generate leads for the business.
Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of SEO for B2B SaaS companies.
Increased visibility and awareness in a competitive market
If your competitors are investing in SEO and you’re not, you’re already at a disadvantage. High rankings for valuable keywords give you the edge over competitors who are relying on paid media alone or ignoring SEO altogether.
On the other hand, having a dynamic approach to your digital marketing strategy that combines organic and paid marketing channels, such as SEO, digital PR and paid media, can be a highly effective approach to driving sustainable growth.
Whether you’re a start-up or a larger business looking to engage in enterprise SaaS SEO, this holistic approach helps you stay competitive and drive growth in your market share, ensuring that you’re always in front of potential customers when they need solutions to their problems.
Build brand authority and trust
SEO is grounded in the principles of E-E-A-T, which is a framework that Google uses to determine the quality of a website. Investing time and effort into SEO ensures that the experience, expertise and authoritativeness of a website are prioritised.
Not only does this framework showcase the right signals to search engines, but it also instils trust and credibility for potential customers. Optimising your website with client testimonials, author bios that focus on the experience and expertise of your team who are tasked with creating genuinely helpful and up-to-date content, inspires customer confidence in your business, your website and the products you offer.
Drive consistent and qualified organic traffic to your site
Organic search attracts people who are actively searching for solutions to their problems. For SaaS companies, this is particularly important because these prospects often have high purchase intent. Catching customers at the right stage of the marketing funnel is key to transforming those leads into conversions, and the solution is SaaS SEO.
When someone searches for “hospitality procurement software” or “CRM software for businesses”, they are looking for a solution. Ranking on the first page of results positions your product as a trusted option, which can significantly improve your conversion rates compared to cold outreach or paid ads.
Support the buyer’s journey
B2B SaaS purchases typically follow a longer buyer’s journey that is fundamentally different from a transactional AIDA model. Instead of a single, linear path, B2B SaaS marketing funnels are highly complex, involving multiple decision-makers and internal influencers. This requires a tailored SEO strategy that nurtures leads by continually addressing the specific pain points of each stakeholder.
The extended lead times, from initial Awareness to final Purchase, mean that businesses must support potential buyers across a protracted research phase. A rigid AIDA framework doesn’t account for this reality and the unique internal processes that shape B2B purchasing. A truly effective B2B SaaS SEO strategy needs to support a multi-faceted journey, helping to connect with and support each stakeholder at the right moment with the most relevant information.
Caption: Example of a B2B SaaS Sales Funnel vs Traditional AIDA model
Reduce Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC)
SEO can work to lower your customer acquisition costs by attracting high-intent, organic traffic and reducing the need for paid advertising over time. Unlike paid ads, once content ranks well on search engines, it can continue to attract consistent traffic without ongoing spend.
However, SEO requires a long-term and continuous strategy. To maintain and improve performance, your content and strategy will need to be revisited regularly to ensure they’re aligned with evolving algorithm updates and user behaviour.
How to create a SaaS SEO strategy
Below, we’ll explore key steps you could consider in your SaaS SEO strategy, such as targeting keywords across the funnel, building out high-intent landing pages, creating educational content, and strengthening internal linking to support site structure and visibility.
It’s worth noting that a SaaS SEO strategy is rarely a one-size-fits-all. SaaS SEO services, like those offered by Impression, are designed to address these specific needs, combining technical SEO, content strategy, and conversion-focused optimisations to drive meaningful results.
Set realistic goals and KPIs
For a SaaS brand, SEO success isn’t based purely on ranking position and the number of ranking keywords. It’s about driving qualified traffic that converts.
Whilst visibility and traffic metrics such as organic sessions, keyword rankings and impressions or click-through rates are useful to see how you’re performing against your competitors, it doesn’t always tell the full story.
When deciding on your goals and KPIs, some example metrics you could look to track include:
Non-branded traffic
It’s common for SaaS brands to bring in the majority of traffic through branded keywords, which doesn’t necessarily reflect how effective you are at bringing in new potential customers from users who haven’t heard of your brand.
Tracking the traffic obtained from non-branded keywords gives you a good overview of how successful you are at attracting users at the top of the funnel.
Micro and macro conversion metrics
Micro and macro conversion metrics refer to the types of conversions users are making on your website. Micro conversions are small actions like clicking on a link, navigating to another page, or watching a video. These small conversions are what users tend to do before taking a more significant step toward becoming a customer.
After these micro-conversions, a prospect may become a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) by taking a higher-value action such as downloading an eBook or subscribing to a newsletter. These MQLs then advance to become Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) by making a primary, high-value macro conversion like signing up for a free trial or requesting a demo. Depending on how your qualification process works, tracking both micro and macro conversions gives you a good overall picture of how users move down the funnel, empowering you to see what’s working and where users drop off.
Average time on site
Often referred to as dwell time, average time on site is a measurement of how long a user stays on your website. This metric provides valuable insights into user engagement, indicating how effectively your content captures and retains the attention of visitors.
Identify your customer personas and their pain points
With your goals and KPIs in place, you should next begin to define your customer personas.
These personas, also known as user personas, help you understand who your target audience is, the problems they are looking to solve and their decision-making process. From this information, you’ll then be able to create content that aligns with their search intent and user journey to address their problems and guide them down the SaaS sales funnel.
These personas should include information such as:
- Demographics (such as age, gender, location, education level and income)
- Their motivations and goals
- Their pain points
- Their behaviours (e.g. online search habits, social media usage)
- How do they travel through your customer cycle
It’s important to note that your user personas will change over time, particularly as your product evolves. Therefore, you should revisit these from time to time and make any necessary adjustments or changes. It can also be useful to gather feedback from your sales and customer service teams to help you validate these personas.
To help you get started, we recommend using a template like the one below.
Keyword research
Before you make any significant changes to your site, the next step is to conduct keyword research.
Keywords are the bedrock of SEO and are vital for ensuring your content aligns with what the user is searching for when they type their query into Google. If you are completely new to SEO or just need a refresher, we have written a guide which covers the fundamentals of keyword research for SEO.
Keyword research for SaaS SEO revolves around targeting top-of-the-funnel (ToFu), middle-of-the-funnel (MoFu) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) keywords. You are looking to create content that connects at the different stages to help guide the prospective customer to become a paying one
Top-of-the-funnel keywords
ToFu keywords for SaaS SEO are broad, informational search terms that users will also use at the beginning of their buying journey. They often have higher search volume but lower purchase intent. This isn’t a bad thing, as this can contribute to brand awareness.
The purpose of ToFu keywords is to attract users whilst they are in the awareness stage of the funnel. For example, if you were a SaaS company offering CRM software, you should look to target something like:
- What is CRM software
- Benefits of CRM software
- How to develop a CRM strategy
Whilst the purchase intent is lower with these keywords, the aim is to drive traffic to your website and retain the users. This can be done by providing clear pathways through your content using an internal linking strategy, which encourages users to move further along the marketing funnel.
Middle-of-the-funnel keywords
MoFu keywords are more commercial in nature and refer to terms that a searcher uses when they recognise a problem they need to address. At this stage, they are evaluating their options and comparing different SaaS solutions to solve that problem.
Using the same example mentioned before, here are some keywords you should consider targeting:
- Best customer service CRM
- Best CRM system for small businesses
- Free CRM software
At this stage, you should highlight how your product solves their specific problem and what sets your solution apart from the competition. The content you create here should focus on the key features, benefits and differentiators.
Bottom-of-the-funnel keywords
BoFu keywords are typically transactional, have high conversion potential, and are often searched by users who are aware of the solutions to their problems. They are usually at the purchase decision stage, and the content should provide your leads with an incentive to take action.
Keywords at this stage could include:
- [Brand] pricing
- [Brand] CRM software
- CRM free trial
Within this content, you want to reinforce the benefits of your product that were previously mentioned and use offers such as free trials and demos.
Informational ToFu and MoFu keywords are better suited for blogs or comparison articles, whilst landing pages or service pages are more appropriate for this stage.
Conduct competitor research
Whilst competition between SaaS companies can be fierce, you can also use them to your advantage. Building on your own keyword research, you can also conduct competitor and content gap analysis to identify what’s working for others in your niche.
Taking your direct and indirect competitors, you can use a range of SEO tools to conduct a competitor gap analysis. Our favourite is the Ahrefs content gap analysis tool. You simply input your domain, along with up to five of your competitors. It will then show you a complete list of keywords that your competitors rank for, along with the ranking URLs.
Creating content pillars and topic clusters
When creating content for your site, using content pillars and topic clusters to cover topics is a great way to signal to search engines that your content is relevant to your niche, comprehensive and authoritative, which is paramount for a competitive industry like SaaS.
Not only this, but it also greatly enhances the user experience by providing a clear and well-organised structure to guide users through your content and ultimately further down the funnel.
Instead of churning out random reams of content, try to structure your content based on the keyword research and competitor analysis you carried out. Begin by identifying the core content pillars and build out from there by mapping out subtopics.
Essentially, you want to piece together content which aligns with the stages of the marketing funnel so that potential leads are nudged towards becoming paying customers.
We have also written a handy guide which covers the fundamentals of SaaS copywriting to help you craft compelling content that not only generates leads but also converts them into paying customers.
Technical SEO
As with any SEO strategy, having sound technical foundations is crucial for ensuring optimal website performance. Technical SEO for SaaS follows many of the same principles that you come across if you were auditing an ecommerce or lead-gen site.
When carrying out technical SEO for your SaaS website, you should consider the following:
- Site speed
- URL structure – XML sitemaps
- Mobile friendliness
- Meta tags
- Index coverage
- International SEO including Hreflang tags
Consider off-page SEO
On-page SEO lays the foundation for visibility, but off-page SEO is critical for building authority, trust, and long-term organic performance.
High-quality backlinks from reputable sources such as industry blogs, news media and SaaS review platforms can signal credibility to search engines, which can help improve your rankings.
Another key off-page B2B SaaS strategy is to encourage user reviews and testimonials. Focusing your efforts on sites like G2 and Capterra enhances your brand’s online reputation and helps reinforce trust with potential customers. Similarly, integrating customer reviews from a trusted third-party site like Trustpilot or Reviews.io directly onto your website further builds credibility.
Finally, you should continually monitor for unlinked brand mentions using tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. These are missed opportunities for backlinks that you can proactively request from site owners.
Get Started with SaaS SEO
If you’re a SaaS brand looking to get started with SaaS SEO, you’re in the right place. Over the years, we’ve worked with a variety of SaaS companies that have turned to us for our expert SaaS SEO services.
