Inbound customer acquisition is one of the key priorities for SaaS brands. Content that nurtures and informs the target audience is a BIG part of it. 

But no matter how good your content is, if it doesn’t reach the right person at the right time, you’re missing out. That’s when SEO for SaaS comes into the picture. 

SEO for SaaS is a marketing strategy that focuses on drawing potential customers by converting these visitors into users or customers. 

This is accomplished by ranking the website or certain keywords on Google’s SERP. 

82.9% of all organic searches land prospective customers on a SaaS blog, which shows us that investing in SEO optimization is necessary to power organic growth. 

In this article, we look into 5 common mistakes marketers make when doing SEO for SaaS;

Mistake #1: Not being clear about objectives.

A content marketing funnel consists of pre-funnel content, top-of-the-funnel content, mid-funnel content, and bottom-of-the-funnel content. For each blog that is published, it must address a conflict and a solution (almost always). 

If the reader cannot identify a solution fast, they will bounce off and hop onto another article, which most likely will be a competitor of yours. 

Here’s how to fix this;

• Identify touchpoints that matter the most, and address them first. Moreover, encourage free users to convert to active users (use discounts, etc.
• Upsell and cross-sell whenever relevant. Content is also about finding innovative ways to provide new and extended levels of service and value to the existing user base. 

Use CTA’s, and be crystal clear about your reader’s search intent right from the first sentence. Make sure that the piece doesn’t have content gaps. Insert FAQs if necessary. 

Content that lacks the answers to all the queries a reader has means they will have to look for additional answers outside. That’s not desirable. 

TLDR; Not being clear about objectives right from the start is a recipe for a high bounce rate, and eventually low ROI. 

Mistake #2: Getting harmful backlinks.

High-quality backlinks help content rank better. But doing the reverse can have adverse effects. Marketers need to be aware of companies that claim to be white hat link-builders when that’s not the case. Harmful backlinks can damage the entire website and recovery from it can be difficult. 

Here’s how to fix it now;

• Reach out to top referral sources, and find backlink opportunities with them.
• Foster relationships with websites you use for outbound links. So, if you’re linking to a high authority website that sends you tons of traffic, you can send out an outreach email to create a partnership.
• Exploit Google Search Console to scour possibilities for backlinks for your website. Google has a free tool that provides excellent data that can help boost rankings. 
• Understand what your competitors are doing. Figure out where your competitors are getting their backlinks from. Map out their organic strategy and the type of content they usually publish or focus on. It’s really important as a brand to stay abstract with all that’s happening in the industry in a real-time and no better place than to look at how the top three competitors are performing. 
• Goes without saying, but to secure great backlinks you need to write stellar content that meets all the requirements of a rank-worthy page. It not only gets you backlinks with ease but builds brand authority quickly. So, your north star metric should be to create a piece of content that industry experts/bloggers can use in their pieces and link back to your website.
• Write skyscraper content. Skyscraper content is basically a super-detailed guide on existing topics (evergreen topics) and could be as long as 10,000 words. Create a lot of these guides and increase your chances to get backlinks. 
• Design informative infographics. When you create relevant infographics, others can use it too and add your link as a source — that way you can secure backlinks for your website.
• Leverage HARO (or Help a Reporter Out) because getting high-quality backlinks from news websites and journalistic blogs is like finding a jackpot. 
• Make use of guest posting opportunities because it is a tried and tested strategy to get backlinks for your website. Start with reaching out to various websites that accept guest posts. Moreover, you can choose to do a collaboration too if possible.

TLDR; Stray away from harmful backlinks. As good advice, working with a professional link-building agency could help achieve incredible results. 

Mistake #3: Considering SEO as a quick fix. 

On-page SEO is not a one-time fix. It is a continuous process. Tweaking the title tag, and meta description, or stuffing more keywords no more works. Since the onset of Google’s helpful content update, the factors that make a website page rank have changed. Both the competitors and Google’s algorithm have become powerful in the sense that cheap tricks no longer meet the cut. Pair SEO efforts with good content to increase the website’s findability. 

TLDR; SEO is no longer a quick fix. Write content that answers the search query better than competing pages, and use SEO to make sure it reaches the right person. 

Mistake #4: Focussing on one keyword phrase. 

Targeting popular keywords is a commonly used tactic, but there’s a caveat— not everyone uses the same search term. Try to incorporate alternatives for a keyword. 

Make use of synonyms and latent semantic indexing variations other than cramming up the same keyword multiple times in the piece. Here’s a great example by the folks at productled.com,

“Let’s take our fictional friends at the Travel Tracker App Company. If they are writing an article about tracking and controlling checked luggage costs for business travelers, they might focus on the keyword “Checked luggage costs” But to expand that out, they could also touch on the:

• Cost of checked bags.

• Checked baggage costs.

• How much does it cost to check a bag for business travel?

• How to reduce checked luggage costs for business travelers?
• Checking bags for business travel.

This provides a more holistic view of that subject.”

How to do this? Go to Google search and look for “Related Searches” within the Google search.

TLDR; Focus on different variants of keywords, don’t just stick to the one you picked from an SEO tool. 

Mistake #5: Focusing on text-based content only. 

Nearly all SaaS brands focus more on text-based content. So, it can feel a tad bit tricky to rank when every website and blog is trying to rank too. The good news is that you don’t have to stick to text-based content only. We are in 2022, and there are lots of other context formats to explore and use SEO to your advantage. Videos, infographics, podcasts, webinars, and images too can rank on Google and push organic traffic to the website. There are a good number of people who like to listen to or watch content on the same subject instead of reading it. If we look at the best-performing format then videos top the charts because they are high in demand. So, when you write titles, descriptions, and closed-caption, keep SEO in mind because Google is looking at them!

TLDR; Explore other forms of content and optimize them for SEO too.

SEO mistakes can be costly. 

More than 5 billion searches on Google are performed daily, and SEO plays a huge role in the process. For SEO to be successful, you will have to first ensure that it’s successful for the end-user, meaning it adds value and answers their query. 

If the customer is looking for free productivity tools for web devs, finding a list of paid tools won’t be of much help. 

Create great pieces of information and tools for users that nurture and add enough value to trust your brand. 

Also Read: 6 Steps For SaaS SEO Success