Navigating the Complex Landscape of SaaS SEO
In the saturated, competitive marketplace of software as a service (SaaS), how do you position your brand so it doesn’t feel like finding an online needle in a digital haystack? The post-2024 era has already witnessed an influx of new competitors, making it more competitive and forcing SaaS marketers to bring their A game.
SEO strategies that have worked well for ages might serve as a perfect base, but the SaaS field is flooded with its own specific dynamics and challenges.
Not only do SaaS companies have to worry about the nitty-gritty of keyword research and content marketing—they also had to navigate a crowded field where every business was fighting for product space for their target customers.
In this post, we tackle the challenges SaaS marketers face and what they need to do if they want their startup to grow into a big business.
What Is a SaaS Company?
SaaS, or Software as a Service, is an increasingly common business model that provides software via the internet rather than installing it on your computer. Rather than purchasing and installing software on your computer, customers may use the program via web or mobile app. This monthly subscription approach provides additional advantages over traditional software licensing.
- Scalability: As the customer base grows, then services for SaaS companies can be scaled quickly and smoothly without requiring large hardware or infrastructure investments.
- Quick Accessibility: This is one of the crucial benefits for users since SaaS applications can be signed into from any device with an internet connection.
- Value: Compared to traditional software licensing, SaaS subscriptions usually offer cheaper and more cost-effective pricing.
- Ongoing updates: Software-as-a-service providers often update their software with new features and upgrades, ensuring that customers are always using the most recent version.
Salesforce, a top CRM platform and Zoom, a video conferencing and collaboration tool that are essential for home office work, especially during COVID-19 lockdowns).
SEO Challenges Face By SaaS Companies
Below are some SEO challenges that SaaS companies encounter:
Competitive Keywords
One of the hardest tasks in SaaS marketing is discovering what keywords to rank for your content on search engines. Because it is a lot of work and not easy—neither fast nor cheap. This is even more difficult for SaaS companies as there are a lot of competitors out there.
The thing is, big companies with larger budgets and a more robust online presence tend to rank better for keywords—so rather than risk your company’s growth waiting in line behind them, you might as well try running some PPC ads of your own.
Poor SEO Strategy
The only thing is, with most companies, poor SEO makes the potential customer’s life a lot tougher in finding them and buying products. Common pitfalls in this area include keyword research being neglected to find what people actually use; creating content only with the purpose of selling; and technical problems on a website being ignored.
These do require a partnership with a B2B SaaS SEO agency for website audits, finding optimal keywords relevant to the particular business, and creating high-quality content. Steering clear of these mistakes and having a good SEO plan in place will afford B2B SaaS companies better visibility online and improve customer acquisition.
Content Decay
Content decay is your SEO’s worst enemy, and it will creep into every corner of your website or blog. But as information grows stale, competition increases, and search behavior changes over time. Blog posts can lose visibility. Combat this by updating older content and adapting to current trends, tracking the performance of existing posts, and creating lasting evergreen pieces.
Dealing with content decay will help keep your website live in the long run, keeping up organic visibility and driving more traffic and leads.
Using More Branded Terms
Yaniv Masjedi, Chief Marketing Officer of Nextiva said, most SaaS websites rely on branded traffic, leaving loads on the table by not going further into non-branded searches. Companies like Blockchain.com have really good branded traffic owing to VC funding and heavy marketing to drive that branded traffic home; however, they are leaving loads on the table for customers who may not have heard about them yet. That is because they are not targeting the non-branded keywords that users actually search for.
This leads to an entity focused solely on brand awareness, which is absolutely a missed opportunity when branded and non-branded traffic could come together to ensure a sustainable organic growth. Unfortunately, this aspect of leveraging organic growth through non-branded keywords is realized too late by many SaaS companies.
Specialized Niche Market
SaaS products often serve very narrow, specialized niches, which can work as a competitive advantage. Yet, this specialization too proposes peculiar SEO demands. Niche keyword research requires a lot of work and research about the industry-specific terms, which is easy.
However, producing the type of quality content that can resonate with a relevant niche audience often requires expertise. As a result, it becomes more challenging for SaaS companies to rank on relevant keywords and attract organic traffic because they find difficulty in finding content creators with the required skills or experience.
Ignoring Technical SEO
Search tools like keywords and article creation, while necessary for SEO success, tend to overshadow the technical aspect. These factors include page load speed, mobile optimization, crawlability, indexability and structured data which all make a huge difference in how well or poorly Google categorize your website.
Technical SEO often gets ignored by SaaS marketing teams who put other priorities ahead of this. This could potentially cost you great opportunities and prevent organic traffic.
Marketing teams should work hand-in-hand with IT and web design teams to make sure the right technical SEO best practices are in place. Improving the visibility of websites, and getting more organic traffic are done by solving technical alerts from search engines.
More Focus on Creativity Over SEO
Simon Brisk, SEO Strategist of Click Intelligence said, SaaS marketing teams often lead with creative content over SEO, leaving so much opportunity on the table. It’s very important to have a balance between creativity and optimization for search engines in order to capture organic traffic and realize true marketing objectives.
This means giving equal thought to the creative appeal and the SEO value of your content. Understand the importance of SEO yourself, and by working with your marketing team, come up with such content that is both engaging and optimized to pop up in a search—and also drive more organic traffic to your site.
How Can SaaS Companies Overcome SEO Challenges: Best Practices!
SEO is a big challenge for many SaaS companies because the industry is highly competitive. To surpass these stumbles and exceptionally spread afloat, the track of suitable growth includes:
All Round Keyword Research
Identify Target Keywords: Do keyword research to identify keywords that your target market is searching for.
Long-Tail Keywords: Target long-tail keywords that have less competition but more conversion chances.
Keyword Mapping: To improve the searchability of your web page, map keywords to discrete content pages.
Creative Content Writing
Best Content: Great content that addresses the pain points and offers a solution to your target users.
Blogs and Articles: Publish blog posts and articles regularly to establish thought leadership and improve organic visibility.
Case Studies and Testimonials: Promote your product success stories to gain credibility.
Technical SEO Optimization
Website speed: Your website must load fast; otherwise, it can affect the user experience and search engine ranking.
Mobile Optimization: As more users use mobile regularly, it is essential to make your website compatible with all types of devices, including the smaller screens.
Technical Audits: Run regular technical audits to find and fix any issues that are holding back your SEO.
Backlink Building
High-Quality Backlinks: Develop high-quality backlinks from industry-specific reputable sites.
Guest Posting: Provides guest posts for similar blogs and websites to get your brand out there and create valuable backlinks.
Find broken links on other websites and ask them to replace them with your related content—broken link building.
Unlock Your SEO Growth Potential!
SaaS companies can use a well-rounded SEO strategy to smooth out their challenges and create organic growth with these techniques. Always remember, SEO is not a one-time job. It requires consistent observation and adjustments. Investing in proper SEO helps you attract more serious prospective clients, and position your business for future success within the highly competitive creator economy ecosystem.
