Search engine optimization has become a fundamental asset in the world of Software as a Service.
68% of all online experiences begin with a search engine (BrightEdge), and if we consider that there are over 8.5 billion searches per day on Google (Oberlo), then it’s evident how important SEO is in today’s digital marketing landscape.
However, finding the best practices around SEO can be a challenging task for companies in the SaaS Space.
Several SaaS companies fail even in the simplest SEO tasks , which can hinder their long-term performance in organic search.
Today, we are going to go over the top 10 SEO mistakes to avoid for SaaS brands, so you can make sure that your company’s growth isn’t interrupted by rather avoidable hindrances.
1. Not Investing in SEO Early On
Failing to allocate resources to SEO during the early stage of your SaaS is one of the most common mistakes that many founders make.
Several SaaS companies start to invest in SEO efforts after shipping their service. This results in a visibility disadvantage against other websites and competitors who began to work on their SEO strategy before launching the product.
Starting early with SEO strategies allows SaaS companies to have some traffic going before launching an early version of their products.
But this is an extremely common mistake that we see over and over again. In fact, 1 5% of SaaS companies don’t have a blog section (EK Byford), which is a fundamental part of every SEO content strategy.
This is how not investing in SEO early on can turn into a costly mistake for your SaaS:
- Limited Visibility: Without early investments in SEO, your SaaS products will be largely invisible online;
- Non-Existent Awareness: Your target audience and potential customers won’t know about your product because there is no easy way to find it through search engines, which hinders product awareness;
- Delayed Organic Traffic Growth: SEO tends to take some time to yield results. By delaying SaaS SEO efforts, your product will start to get traffic months after its launch, which definitely impacts the brand’s growth;
- Competitive Disadvantage: Other competitors in your industry have already started their SEO campaigns long ago - that’s a fact. Gaining traction can turn into a daunting task for your SaaS product if you neglect SEO from the very beginning;
- Lack of Measurable Data: Delayed SEO means delayed data collection for analysis. Without data-driven insights from search engines, it is possible to make uninformed decisions, leading to SaaS failure.
Consequently, neglecting SEO investment in the early stages of a SaaS product (or even before entirely launching it ) can severely impact traffic growth, competitive standing, and visibility around your company.
2. Lack of Balance Between Keyword Research and Customer Research
Keyword research is the starting point of the SEO strategy - it maps out the path to follow in your content marketing strategy.
However, remember that optimizing for search engines is one thing, and thinking about your customers’ needs is another thing.
The vast majority of keyword research tools online (tools like S EMRush and Ahrefs ) only provide us with information about search volume, keyword difficulty, and similar keyword ideas.
It’s necessary to look deep into the user intent, the pain points of potential customers, and the content your audience expects to find when searching for specific keywords in search engines.
- Search Intent: Understanding the search intent behind a keyword is a crucial part of every SEO content strategy, as it helps us successfully and completely cover the topic that the keyword is about. Consider the audience expectations before dividing deep into content crafting;
- Customer Research: Customers in the SaaS space are constantly searching for solutions to their problems. Ask yourself, what does your target audience expect when searching for a keyword? Do they want to read a long-form blog post, or would they prefer to get a straight solution to a problem? Neglecting customer research can lead to missed insights for SaaS companies;
- Missed Opportunities: Keywords are terms people search for - some are long-tail keywords with concrete meanings, and others are short-tail keywords, also known as generalist search terms. Going after some tempting high-volume keywords might not be the ideal route to pursue, as s ome zero-search volume keywords can represent an opportunity that your competitors haven’t covered just yet.
The main objective of creating content around a keyword is not to trick search engines into manipulating rankings , but to offer relevant content your audience will appreciate.
Performing proper keyword research and customer research creates a balance between what you should optimize for and what to deliver to your readers.
By understanding the needs of your SaaS audience, it is possible to craft a highly compelling SaaS SEO strategy that appeals to both search engines and potential customers.
3. Not Prioritizing High-Quality Content
Creating valuable, informative, trustworthy, and unique content is the secret ingredient behind most successful SEO strategies.
SaaS companies that invest in content marketing see a 30% higher growth rate than those that don’t (Profit Well).
The lack of high-quality content hinders SaaS’s abilities to reach higher ranking in search engine results pages.
Without useful content, search engines will have nothing to rank you for in search results, which is one of the most common SaaS SEO mistakes that we see in different companies.
These are three of the most standard mistakes that SaaS companies make when writing content for their websites:
- The content marketing strategy is not aligned with your audience. Don’t write about topics that have nothing to do with what your audience is looking for. Failing to align with your audience’s interests is a classic SaaS SEO mistake that hinders your ability to reach the right market;
- Search engines-first content. Writing content for search engines is a practice that no longer works. High-quality content is the primary means of community of your SaaS through search engines, but it should be used to reach more people and not to manipulate rankings. Harmful practices, such as keyword stuffing and content automation, tend to fail after a while. Create the type of content that you, as a user, would like to find online when searching for a certain query;
- No focus on user experience . High-quality content should provide visitors with a clear and straightforward answer to their problems. Hiding the answer deep into the article, or failing to successfully address readers’ paint points can lead to an increase in bounce rates.
Creating high-quality content is important for brands in the SaaS space due to several reasons, such as the following:
- Establishing Authority: Positioning your SaaS as an industry expert or leader is possible with the help of well-researched, valuable content. By delivering accurate and insightful information, it is possible to create an authoritative voice around your SaaS brand;
- Promoting Shareability: It’s always necessary to create shareable and link-worthy content. According to Backlinko, long-form content gets 77% more backlinks than short-form articles. Moreover, long-form content tends to rank better in search results, which leads to a natural increase in organic traffic;
- Organic Traffic Growth: Search engines prioritize high-quality content over poorly-researched, bland blog pieces. By crafting highly-useful content, it is possible to outrank competitor’s articles in search engine results, which attracts more visitors and leads to an increase in traffic growth.
4. Focusing Too Much on the Product and Forgetting About the Solution
It’s clear that the main objective of your SaaS company is to drive more sales/customers into your product or service.
Nevertheless, most SaaS companies just want to push the features of their products without providing users with the guidance they are after.
This can be a costly mistake, as SEO strategies based on content are meant to bring more organic traffic by providing solutions in a natural way.
These are three of the most common mistakes that SaaS companies make in SEO:
- Missing the customer’s perspective: Understanding your customers’ paint points, needs, and challenges is vital - an entirely product-focused approach tends to overlook these critical aspects, which leads to failure to address the audience’s concerns;
- Reduced content relevance: If the piece of content is solely promotional, your readers are most likely to leave your website and find the answer they are looking for elsewhere. If there’s no real connection or relevance between the content and the product that’s being promoted, the audience will diminish;
- Lack of Clarity: If the content is not clear, straightforward, and answer-focused, we can’t describe it as relevant content anymore. It’s a solely promotional blog post piece that does not offer a value proposition that works for users.
Users want to find a solution through content - the lack of differentiation and value proposition due to focusing too much on your product can hinder the effectiveness of the SEO strategy.
To prevent this, make sure to check the following tips:
- Consider Solutions-Oriented Content: Understand the search intent behind certain queries before proceeding to content writing/creation - check if it makes sense to include your product’s features or not;
- Provide a Clear Communication on Benefits: If your product does provide a solution to a problem, show the audience how it’s possible to get this solution in a clear and engaging manner;
- Find the Right Balance Between Solutions and Product Showcases : It is much better to balance product showcases with tangible solutions by implementing persuasive and useful messages rather than just pushing the audience to buy products through CTAs.
5. Forgetting About Product-Led Content Marketing
Previously, we talked about how excessively focusing on your product features is one of the most common SEO mistakes that SaaS companies make.
But now, we have the other side of the coin: focusing too much on informational content will not yield the expected results over time.
It’s all about finding the right balance between promotional content and useful content for the audience.
If your product solves a problem , and people are searching for it on search engines, then showing them how to use the product is considered valuable.
If your product does not solve a certain problem, but you are still promoting it on particular pages where it doesn’t make sense to talk about it, then the content will be deemed unhelpful.
However, entirely forgetting about product-led content can lead to the following common SaaS SEO mistakes:
- Reduced Product Visibility: Without product-led content marketing strategies, it will be difficult to increase visibility and raise awareness about the product offered by your SaaS company;
- Ineffective Marketing Funnel: Only focusing on informative content leads to the creation of an ineffective marketing funnel, as there is no tangible way to guide readers from the Awareness Stage to the Conversion Stage.
Product-focused content is not necessarily better than solutions-driven articles - they are equally important, and need to be carefully balanced to improve the SEO campaign results.
Considering product-led content marketing in SEO strategies leads to the following benefits:
- Increase Brand Awareness: By showing your SaS product as a solution to a problem, it is possible to raise awareness and improve the discoverability of your product through search engines;
- Educate Users About the Product: It can be challenging for some readers to understand all the capabilities or features of your products without carefully crafted product-led content;
- Align SaaS SEO Strategy with the Buyer Journey: Tailoring the product-led content to the creation of an effective buyer journey leads to more conversion around your SaaS company. This way, it’s possible to move users forward in the customer journey as users in the Awareness Stage discover a solution through your offerings, move into the Consideration Stage, and potentially finish at the Conversion Stage.
6. Focusing on Attracting Traffic Without Purpose
Getting organic traffic feels nice, and it is undoubtedly the main goal of most SEO-driven marketing strategies, but in the SaaS space, there’s way more than just organic traffic to measure success.
Many SaaS just want to go up in search engine rankings for the sake of acquiring more traffic without a clear purpose , and here is where many campaigns end up failing.
Inadequate audience understanding and a content marketing strategy without a clear plan tend to lead to websites with high traffic and not enough conversions.
The goal of every SaaS company should be to increase organic traffic to generate more revenue , which is why it is crucial to have the following factors in mind:
- Overemphasis in Vanity Metrics: Page views, website sessions, and even social media likes are not worth anything if they don’t lead to an increase in conversion rates and overall results. Vanity metrics are shiny, but not everything that shines is gold, and this applies to SaaS businesses as well;
- Not Defining Clear Conversion Goals: Going up in rankings without defining conversion goals usually yields little to no tangible results. Encourage your users to try the product, gather more leads, generate more purchases, and obtain more sign-ups through organic traffic in order to increase the effectiveness of the campaign;
- Inefficient Lead Nurturing: Many SaaS businesses forget about nurturing and guiding the attracted traffic through the conversion funnel. This results in missed opportunities and a complete neglect of the customer journey stage. Keep in mind that not all content pieces have the same goal: some of them aim at increasing discoverability, whereas others talk directly to readers ready to turn into customers.
7. Ignoring Internal and External Links
Now, it’s time to talk about links. Links are one of the most crucial aspects of all SEO campaigns , as they affect every single aspect of your own site in the SaaS business.
Completely ignoring link building and link structures is one of the most common SaaS SEO mistakes around.
Internal links are crucial for building topical authority, and backlinks help to enhance website credibility in the eyes of Google.
These are some of the most common mistakes around website links that most SaaS websites make:
- Lack of Internal Linking Structure: Most SaaS businesses only link to commercial pages, but linking only to commercial landing pages is not always the most optimum way to proceed. Internal links guide users to find relevant pages within your website, and they also enhance navigation, which positively impacts the user experience;
- Complete Neglection of Link Building: Acquiring high-quality backlinks from other websites can positively impact your SEO rankings. A study performed by Neil Patel shows that SaaS with a strong backlink profile obtains better referability and improved rankings in search results. Although getting backlinks is not always easy, it’s still one of the most important aspects of SEO strategies in all industries, including SaaS;
- Forgetting External Links: Links to external sources are an integral part of your SEO digital marketing strategy as they enhance the credibility and authority of your content.
The Search Engine Journal shows us how fostering the implementation of backlinks in a SaaS SEO campaign can directly boost rankings in the search engine results pages over time.
Sorting out the challenges and bottlenecks of backlinks in SEO leads to better results, enhanced visibility, and increased trustworthiness in the eyes of both Google and your readers.
8. Not Paying Attention to the Little Details
The oversight of critical yet apparently small elements in your SaaS website can negatively impact the visibility of your company in search engines.
It is crucial to pay attention to details in SaaS websites, as these small factors can heavily affect the way a website is shown on the SERPs.
There are many little details to watch out for in an SEO strategy - it’s always better to leave this job in the hands of professionals.
However, there are five main factors that can’t be ignored in a SaaS SEO strategy:
- Meta Descriptions: A well-written meta description enhances click-through rates in search engine results pages and informs users what to expect from a blog post or page before clicking on it;
- Title Tags and Meta Titles: Effective title tags and meta titles are important in SEO because they ensure that both search engines and users know what a page is about before selecting it;
- URL Structures: Optimizing URLs for simplicity, readability, and relevance is one of the most ignored SEO factors. Both search engines and users need to understand the content of a page just by taking a look at its URL structure;
- Social Media Profiles: Social media profiles enhance the credibility and trustworthiness of online companies, including those in the SaaS space. Make sure to add social buttons so users can quickly explore your social media profiles and get more information about your service if needed;
- XML Sitemaps: All relevant websites have XML sitemaps, so it’s easier for search engines to crawl your website pages. Neglecting the XML Sitemap can lead to crawling or indexing issues, which leads to technical SEO problems;
- Anchor Text Optimization: Failing to optimize the anchor texts within your website can lead to a lack of clarity regarding linked content for both search engines and users.
9. Neglecting Technical SEO
Correctly analyzing and prioritizing the solution to certain technical SEO errors can doom your SaaS website to failure.
Google focuses on rewarding websites that offer great functionality, good website speed, and follow all technical recommendations to improve user experience.
Although this aspect can be tricky to handle , it is an important and highly neglected part of SEO strategies for SaaS websites.
- Page Speed Optimization: Ignoring the speed of your website can lead to a poor user experience and lower search engine rankings. Slow-loading pages result in higher bounce rates - your users will go elsewhere to find answers, which will heavily impact your organic traffic;
- Official Google Tools: The vast majority of websites online need to be connected to Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These official Google Tools provide us with accurate insights into website performance, indexing status, and search traffic. Although other third-party services offer analytics features, getting information directly from the biggest search engine in the world works to make data-driven decisions;
- Mobile Optimization and HTTPS: Failing to optimize for mobile devices leads to higher bounce rates, reduced user engagement, and lower rankings on mobile search results. Additionally, having an HTTPS-secured website provides visitors with security and trustworthiness when visiting your SaaS website.
10. Not Constantly Monitoring Performance
SEO is all about regularly tracking, analyzing, and evaluating what works and what doesn’t.
It’s an ongoing process that requires SaaS site owners to evaluate the best path to follow to ensure search engine success.
Despite this, many SaaS businesses fail to correctly monitor SEO performance, which leads to the following issues:
- Missing Opportunities for Improvement: If you are not measuring the current state of SEO campaigns, it is possible to lose valuable insights that could be used to boost your SEO efforts;
- Inefficient Resource Allocation: It’s possible to allocate resources inefficiently if you are not constantly measuring the performance of certain SEO strategies;
- Potential Decrease in Search Rankings: SEO is a very dynamic field. This creates the need to constantly take a look at search rankings to identify potential declines and find the best course of action to revert them;
- Failure to Adapt to Google’s Algorithm Changes: Google’s search ranking algorithm is in a contrast-changing state. Understanding how the algorithm varies opens the door to new opportunities and improved SEO results in the long haul.
Bonus: Being Too Impatient with Results
SEO tends to take time - as they say, this is a marathon, not a sprint.
According to a study by G2, the average ROI for B2B SaaS companies is 702%, but it takes an average of 7 months to break even.
Increasing search engine visibility is a process that promises amazing results, but patience is certainly needed.
Being too impatient with results is a common mistake that not only affects Saas Companies but can also undermine the long-term success of businesses in other industries.
Summary: 10 Common SEO Mistakes that SaaS Companies Make
We all make mistakes - that’s what makes us human. SaaS companies can learn from these common mistakes, and use the power of SEO to rank higher, increase organic traffic, and achieve more business conversions.
This is a quick summary of the 10 most common SEO mistakes among companies in the SaaS space:
- Not Investing in SEO Early On: Late start in SEO affects visibility and growth;
- Lack of Balance Between Keyword Research and Customer Research: Prioritizing keywords over understanding customer needs impacts content relevance;
- Not Prioritizing High-Quality Content: Low-quality content hampers rankings and engagement;
- Focusing Too Much on the Product and Forgetting About the Solution: Overemphasizing product features diminishes content relevance;
- Forgetting About Product-Led Content Marketing: I mbalanced informative and product-focused content hinders visibility;
- Focusing on Attracting Traffic Without Purpose: Traffic without clear conversion goals results in ineffective campaigns;
- Ignoring Internal and External Links: Neglecting links impacts website credibility and authority;
- Not Paying Attention to the Little Details: Overlooking small SEO elements affects visibility on SERPs;
- Neglecting Technical SEO : Ignoring technical aspects harms user experience and rankings;
- Not Constantly Monitoring Performance: Infrequent SEO monitoring leads to missed opportunities and ineffective strategies.
FAQ
Is SEO Important in a SaaS Business?
Yes, SEO is important for SaaS businesses as it serves as the bridge that connects SaaS companies with potential clients organically through Search Engines. According to SEMRush, implementing SaaS SEO strategies helps reduce cost-per-acquisition, increase conversion rates, and boost brand exposure.