Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for any business looking to drive qualified traffic to their website. However, B2B SaaS SEO comes with its own unique challenges and opportunities compared to SEO for many consumer-focused sites.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore key aspects of developing an effective SEO strategy specifically tailored for B2B SaaS products.
What Is B2B SaaS?
First, what exactly makes something a B2B SaaS product? SaaS stands for “Software as a Service” – essentially any software or web app that users access on a subscription basis via the internet. It is hosted on the provider’s servers rather than installed locally on each user’s device.
Some examples of popular SaaS products include:
- Salesforce – CRM platform
- Slack – Team communication app
- DocuSign – Electronic signature service
- Zoom – Video conferencing
- HubSpot – Inbound marketing and sales software
B2B refers to “business to business”, indicating that the core users and customers are other businesses rather than individual consumers.
So B2B SaaS products cater to business users first and foremost in their design, features, integrations, pricing, etc. These can include horizontal applications like analytics, HR, billing systems along with vertical market solutions for healthcare, finance, manufacturing industries among many others.
Why SEO Matters for B2B SaaS Companies
Here are some of the key reasons SEO should be a priority for any B2B SaaS business:
Competitive Market Landscape
The market for almost any category of B2B software is fiercely competitive. SEO done properly gives companies an opportunity to get discovered online ahead of or alongside major players in their space. Most people don’t immediately think of niche vertical solutions when they have a problem to solve. SEO raises awareness of options.
Long Buying Cycles
Selling SaaS products to other businesses often involves long sales cycles spanning across multiple touchpoints. SEO brings qualified visitors earlier to the top of the funnel, nurturing them over time into sales qualified leads.
Higher Customer Lifetime Value
While a single consumer customer for a SaaS may pay a few dollars or hundreds per year, one B2B customer can quickly provide thousands in recurring revenue or even six and seven figure contracts for enterprise deals. SEO provides a steady influx of these highly valuable prospects.
Challenging Paid Acquisition
Paid search and advertising can be extremely expensive for niche B2B software products trying to compete for commercial intent keywords against massive vendors. SEO allows businesses to fight above their weight class in visibility.
Hopefully this gives a sense of why B2B SaaS companies can’t afford to neglect organic search as a core channel driving measurable business growth and ROI.
Key Differences in B2B SaaS SEO
Optimizing for B2B SaaS search engine results has a number of unique considerations, objectives, and best practices compared to SEO for ecommerce sites, content sites and other implementations.
Audience Intent and Behavior
Understanding the search intent and research processes of the target personas for a SaaS product is crucial. For example, someone interested in a consumer focused app may search for simple terms like “video calling”.
However, a small business owner researching options for their team is more likely to use long-tail queries such as:
- “cloud based video conferencing platforms for medium sized businesses”
- “comparing top virtual meeting software tools”
- “Zoom vs GoToMeeting vs WebEx features”
This demonstrates more complex research behavior focused on evaluating multiple options.
Keyword Targeting
For the reasons above, B2B SaaS keywords are often 3-5X longer on average compared to B2C SEO. This allows targeting of commercial information seeking queries:
- “best appointment scheduling software for small business 2022”
- “HIPAA compliant online booking system for healthcare”
- “open source IT help desk ticketing system self hosted”
Rather than just optimizing for the branded and generic root keywords, B2B SaaS SEO requires significant expansion into long-tail keyword variations to achieve full visibility.
Topic Clustering
Along with long keywords, B2B SaaS SEO also relies heavily on topic clusters built around:
- Product category terms
- Common use cases/verticals
- Competitor brand benchmarking
- Feature/functionality comparisons
For example, a field service management solution may target clusters around:
“field service management software” + scheduling, dispatching, work orders, inventory, invoicing
“mobile field service app” + iOS, Android, tablets, offline access
“ServiceTitan versus ServiceFusion versus Jobber” – head to head pages
This allows owning full visibility for commercial searchers evaluating multiple options.
Content Types
The most effective content for B2B SaaS SEO educates prospects earlier in the buyer’s journey, establishing thought leadership and domain authority. Common asset types include:
- Industry trend reports & benchmark data – market analysis, emerging technologies, future outlooks
- Ebooks & ultimate guides – compiled best practices and expertise
- Product category comparisons – unbiased reviews of all main solutions
- ROI calculators & interactive tools – quantify value proposition
- Webinars & video guides – engage audience with rich media
These drive qualified organic traffic that converts better downstream.
Conversion Cycle Optimization
With such long and complex buying cycles in B2B SaaS, SEO visibility must align with each stage of the conversion funnel to nurture prospects over time.
Key phases often include:
- Awareness: building brand recognition and awareness amongst buyer personas through informational content
- Consideration: facilitating product research and comparisons like SWOT analysis, user reviews, free trials, interactive demo requests
- Decision: lead capture forms, sales inquiries, calls-to-action to further discuss needs with a representative
Every page and asset should include clear next steps towards conversion.
Technical SEO Considerations
Beyond keyword targeting and content, technical site architecture decisions can also facilitate or hinder enterprise SaaS SEO performance.
Site Speed
Page speed is an important ranking factor as it directly impacts user experience. B2B prospects browsing enterprise-grade solutions expect a modern, polished web app interface on par with consumer web experiences. Review core web vitals analytics and optimize pages for maximum performance. Prioritize above the fold rendering through code splitting to quickly display key information recognized by search engine crawlers.
Mobile Optimization
Over 50% of B2B searches now originate on mobile or tablet devices. Ensure a mobile responsive design and consistent cross-device user experience. Audit mobile UX issues like small text, cluttered navigation menus, confusing CTAs. Enable click to call from pages to connect prospects immediately via phone.
Indexability
Allow search engines to fully crawl all relevant pages through proper interlinking, XML sitemaps submitted in Search Console, and elimination of excessive client side rendering. Facilitate deep crawling with layered site architecture around key topics and natural linking to related content. Implement proper 301 redirects both at a page level and site level for any changed or retired pages.
Security
If offering any gated premium content for lead generation purposes, ensure proper permissions so search engines can still index and understand pages behind forms. Avoid excessive restrictions such as CAPTCHAs which block helpful automated traffic.
By tackling both keyword content and technical considerations in tandem, B2B SaaS sites can maximize their organic visibility and value delivered to prospective customers researching solutions online.
B2B SaaS SEO KPIs
Like any key marketing channel, SEO efforts must tie to concrete business growth metrics showing incremental lift. Useful KPIs for gauging B2B SaaS SEO success include:
- Organic Site Traffic – Raw visitation from search engines to gauge reach
- Rankings – For key commercial keywords, especially in priority geographic markets
- Leads – Marketing qualified and sales accepted leads driven from organic
- Trials – Any product demos, free trials, interactive brochure requests
- Revenue – Both raw revenue and percentage of net new ARR attributed to SEO
Compare performance period-over-period and highlight specific pages, campaigns, or keywords delivering results.
Set realistic goals based on company stage – an early startup may focus on site traffic and lead gen conversion rates while a mature company tracks ROI from multi-touch attribution models.
Regardless of maturity, every B2B SaaS company needs to connect SEO KPIs directly towards their core growth and expansion goals quarter by quarter.
SEO Isn’t Optional To Scale B2B SaaS
For any business selling software and services to other businesses today, search engine optimization must be an integrated element of go-to-market plans balancing both online and offline channels.
With proper investment into content, technical site improvements, and conversion optimization aligned to buyer journeys, SEO delivers unmatched leverage for customer acquisition and retention.
In competitive markets, SEO establishes brands as category leaders in the minds of prospects throughout the complex purchasing process. Done correctly, it drives more efficient revenue growth quarter after quarter.
Cut Through the Noise
Business software buyers today are overwhelmed with options, advertising messages, and sales outreach across every channel. SEO earned media stands out by answering their questions and needs earlier in research journeys without direct promotional pitches.
Savvy B2B SaaS brands recognize SEO’s unique ability to cost-effectively build mindshare and consideration before prospects actively engage sales teams.
Compliment Other Initiatives
Rather than treating organic search as its own siloed initiative, smart leadership teams integrate SEO into every customer facing activity.
Product launches feature SEO aligned content for discovery. Email campaigns link to related resources ranking for commercial keywords. Paid social ads reuse popular SEO content instead of generic creative.
This amplification across all touch points makes every content creation and technical optimization effort go further.
Gain Market Intelligence
Observing organic search queries and behavior provides unmatched insight into potential customer needs and pain points. SEO managers build an informational advantage identifying emerging segments and opportunities.
They relay these signals to product, marketing and sales teammates to help evolve positioning and messaging.
Build a Growth Engine
With buyer journeys spanning across years for enterprise deals, SEO establishes a continual funnel of sales opportunities in earlier to mid stages. This high volume at the top converts downstream into closed deals.
Rather than one-off campaigns, sustainable B2B revenue expansion relies on efficient customer acquisition at scale. SEO serves as a repeatable engine driving this growth quarter after quarter.
Ignoring organic search leaves opportunities untapped which competitors will quickly claim in crowded SaaS niches.
The clear imperative for founders, executives and investors: prioritize SEO as a fundamental channel to support expansion. Coordinate technology, content, data and talent resources to maximize visibility and conversion.
Commit to SEO excellence over the long term, and your B2B SaaS will reap the rewards as more prospects discover your platform online daily.
Here’s a continuation of the B2B SaaS SEO blog post:
B2B SaaS Growth with SEO
While the foundations have been laid for core SEO strategy tailored to B2B SaaS products, executing initiatives successfully requires coordination across teams, processes, and systems.
Here is an overview of key elements to scale SEO for continual growth.
Centralize Governance
Appoint an SEO lead empowered to work cross-functionally, align on priorities, and manage programs end-to-end. While technical development resources may reside elsewhere, have a single SEO advocate overseeing:
- Reporting on organic KPIs
- Conducting gap assessments
- Building keyword universe/taxonomy
- Setting content development requirements
- Commissioning optimization activities
- Liaising with other channel leads on integrated campaigns
This role tracks performance rigorously, course corrects based on learnings, and spearheads expansion into new markets when proven.
Expand Content Marketing
Content remains the engine driving SEO success. But sporadic blogging fails to gain traction. Develop an editorial calendar for ongoing asset creation around priority topics. Set specific targets for each quarter:
- 10x new blog articles
- 5x tools/interactive resources
- 2x ebooks / ultimate guides
- 4x webinars
This drumbeat of new pages keeps search indexes refreshed with timely and relevant pages that answer commercial queries.
Cultivate Influencers
Particularly in vertical SaaS, industry influencers, analysts and practitioners can become force multipliers for brand visibility and links. Nurture key relationships by:
- Contributing quotes/data for reports
- Providing guest articles
- Supporting client referrals
- Sponsoring events/awards
Influencers tap into buyer journeys far earlier, endorsing emerging solutions through trusted voices on social media and publications.
Listen For Opportunities
Leverage tools like Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, SEMRush to uncover new keyword variations and questions driving search volume. Find gaps where competitors rank well but your content falls short. Expand pages and blogs systematically to own these opportunities.
Automate What You Can
While human creativity powers high-quality content, technology helps scale execution for Enterprise SEO. Leverage solutions like Clearscope, MarketMuse, or UberSuggest’s ContentAI to auto-generate blog drafts for editor review.
Text editing APIs like Rytr refine copy for higher engagement. Automated link building with tools like Pitchbox expands brand mentions opportunities.
Execute repetitious optimization tasks like meta data updates, schema markup, image tagging through scripts rather than manual efforts.
Measure Incremental Lift
Connect SEO directly to pipeline velocity and conversion rates. Analyze multi-touch attribution to quantify SEO’s influence across buyer journeys against other programs. Demonstrate consistent ROI through lower CAC relative to other demand gen channels.
Evolve beyond vanity metrics to financial contribution – the true sign of strategic channel maturity.
The Road Ahead
SEO remains a fundamental growth driver for B2B SaaS brands to build visibility over the long term. View it as an always-on capability tightly integrated into the broader go-to-market tech stack.
While the foundations are straightforward – great content, thoughtful technical considerations, and conversion focused – excelling at B2B SaaS SEO involves coordination of tools, teams and systems.
Use this guide as inspiration to elevate organic search within your organization today. In competitive markets, SEO establishes brands as category leaders and drives more efficient revenue growth quarter after quarter.
