As the years go on, the web has become much more saturated. This means that the competition is fiercer than ever, and this applies especially to SaaS companies. Simply put, SaaS companies exist in a purely digital space, and their primary function is to license software to other companies or individuals who may need the software services they provide. This differs from past iterations of software companies, who would sell the software outright to other companies and consumers. Instead, the SaaS model is predicated on subscriptions, and this is infinitely harder to market than a one-time sale. While companies like Salesforce have become ubiquitous to the SaaS space, the truth is that there are many smaller players in the market, all offering subscription-based software solutions to industries both niche and large, including ecommerce, healthcare, and everything in between.

Because of this, SaaS companies need to figure out a way to differentiate themselves from each other in the marketplace. One way to do this to focus heavily on and invest in SEO efforts. SEO requires SaaS companies to optimize their website so that it ranks better on Google. This requires a plethora of factors, including keyword research, technical optimizations, as well as ongoing content and link building to help a SaaS website rank on Google for target keywords. While a more comprehensive SaaS SEO guide is needed to gain the full effect here, this article will serve as a base to learning SEO to help gain eyes on your SaaS company.

Select the Right Keywords

Keyword research is fundamental to all SEO efforts, and is the foundation on which they stand. Without competent and comprehensive keyword research, your SEO efforts will essentially be for naught. Even if you are able to technically optimize your website, build quality content, and build links to that content to help it rank, if it is not geared toward a targeted keyword that is relevant to your SaaS business, then it will never see the light of day on Google. To get a basic sense of what you need to do for keyword research, you want to make sure that you analyze your customer base, and try to get a sense of what they search for. Within SaaS, this may not be related directly to software, but rather to a pain point that your target customer is going through.

Ongoing Content and Links

Although technical optimizations are certiantly important, you need to make sure that the technical optimizations are happening to a SaaS website that has quality content and quality links. As such, you’ll need to make sure that the content that you build out is relevant to your target audience, and that the links you build are appearing on websites that are relevant to your business. If not, you may find it difficult to rank the pages you are hoping to for the keywords they are targeted toward.

While SEO is not an exact science, it is often an underrated way for SaaS companies to get more customers and increase exposure to their software solutions. While this article is not meant to be a comprehensive SaaS SEO guide. It should help you with how to get started with this process.