8 reasons why you need SEO skills in your SaaS business

As a founder of a SaaS startup, you probably think a lot about how to spread the word via SEO about your newly founded company and how to generate first leads and sales. In this article, I’m presenting you 8 reasons why you’ll definitely need someone in your team who’s bringing your SaaS SEO efforts to the next level.

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Everybody does content marketing

Content marketing is one of the newer marketing techniques with which a lot of SaaS businesses start. Well, that’s absolutely a great idea, since you’ll not only sell your product, but also educate your potential target group through various content.

However, it’s not that easy to create excellent content which stands out from the mass of other SaaS startups. SEO for SaaS startups might help (if well executed).

Hello SaaS startup, you’re not alone

According to various studies the software as a service market is an ever-growing industry. Steady growth is expected and according to statista, the online statistics portal, the worldwide SaaS revenue will reach 27.94 billion US dollars by the end of 2015.

This means: if your SaaS business won’t be seen in organic search, another product will be.

SEO has evolved

Well, similar to a lot of other digital industries, the SEO business has evolved a lot in the last couple of years. You can still learn SEO fast by following the best practices that most content teams follow.

From more technical driven aspects, to backlinks, to more content-driven SEO activities. Executing a well-planned SEO strategy means that you have thought a lot about your external communication, as well as with which content you’d like to target your audience. To build a solid SEO strategy, consider working with experienced SaaS marketing agencies that can provide comprehensive SEO audits and recommendations for on-page and off-page optimization

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SEO & Positioning

People buy products, because of the *Why*. Because why you do something. So always – and I really mean *always* – bear in mind that your customers buy what you stand for. Because of your identity and your positioning on the market. Want some example?

• People use Slack because it positioning itself as an alternative, cool way of cooperate chat messenger (compared to other tools like Yammer, Lync, etc.).
• People use the social sharing tool from Buffer, because the seo company is well-known for its value of transparency in everything they do.
• People use the customer communication tool from Intercom, because it stands for a simple & new way of communicating with customers.

Being found in organic search requires having a clear scope about how you position yourself and for what you want to be known for.

Thinking SEO in your development team

Building SaaS products require a lot of technical skill sets in your team. By not forgetting about different SEO activities while building a great product, you can get ahead of your competitors through hacking your organic search ranking. Want some tips?

• Generate backlinks by distributing your product: One of the easiest way to generate backlinks is through your very own product. For example, embed links to your site in widgets (which are embedded by your customers on their websites) or browser extensions.
• Make your product shareable: Through implementing clear call-to-actions in your product, you can make use of your current customer base.

Be a thought leader

As a SaaS startup you probably work on a new kind of product, which hasn’t been there before in this kind of form. By positioning yourself as a thought leader for a certain topic, you’ll be the go-to place where people go to ask you for your expertise.

Being first in the search engine ranking page will help you being recognised as a thought leader in your industry.

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Hack your sign-up rate with SEO

We – as a SaaS business – track a lot of key metrics in order to understand our website visitors and customers better. Besides traditional key figures – such as unique visitors / session duration / bounce rate, the sign-ups and the signup conversion are one of the most important metrics to track.

A simplified chart looks probably like that:

What we’ve seen & experienced in the last couple of years, is that this green path performs way better for organic traffic, compared to social, paid or referral traffic.

Organic traffic has the lowest bounce rate (10% less than social or paid), a 1 to 3% higher sign-up rate and most importantly it generates the most activated users. Also, some categories of SEO keywords convert better with “alternatives” and “competitors” articles driving up to 8.43% sign-ups.

Everyone talks about growth hacking his SaaS business…

On the one hand, SEO is something which needs to be done regularly. It isn’t something which is conducted once. Nope. Forget about SEO if you don’t want to commit yourself to a long-term strategy. Well, you can do SEO pagination on your website for seamless navigation and more user-friendliness, once, but, generally, doing SEO is a continuous process. On the other hand, your regular SEO activities will help you to establish a sustainable growth.

PS: Stay up to date for further content on how to get started with various SEO activities for your SaaS business.

This article was brought to you by Usersnap – a visual bug tracking and screenshot tool for every web project.

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