Importance Of SEO For SaaS
September 1, 2025
4 min read
What is SaaS SEO?
In short, SaaS SEO is a simple process of SEO tasks for SaaS based companies. This is a small difference between doing SEO for traditional SEO. It has a small difference between B2B businesses, too. However, the fundamentals are the same. Learn the differences and importance of SEO for SaaS.
How is SaaS SEO different from traditional SEO?
Honestly, traditional SEO and SaaS SEO focus on promoting their business within existing demand and the keywords they generate. However, SaaS businesses were born to solve problems, which is why sometimes SaaS SEO can be a different method, taking into account data usage. SaaS businesses rely on repeat customers, so it can be different for other businesses. Sometimes SaaS businesses create new demand and new keywords, so that they can revolutionize the industry with their online solutions.
What is B2B SaaS SEO?
There are some differences between B2B SaaS SEO and SaaS SEO. Mainly, SaaS SEO is created to solve the problems with software solutions. Meanwhile, B2B SaaS SEO is for business buyers.
How important is SEO in a SaaS business?
To understand the importance of SaaS SEO, I have separated the reasons why SaaS businesses should focus on SEO.
#1 Reduce customer acquisition cost
There are many SaaS companies spending money on advertising that can include Google ads, social media ads, and many more. I do not want to underestimate the importance of advertising. However, combining the strategy of advertising and being visible in organic searches creates trust for searchers. When you appear on organic searches, this gives you an opportunity not to spend aggressively on ads, and that is the reason you reduce your customer acquisition cost.
#2 New customer potential
There is a feeling as I do. I mostly prefer to click on organic results over ads. It is an interesting thing, as I feel like someone wants to force me to use something. And there are many people who feel the same. That is why SEO is very important for SaaS companies to acquire new customers.
#3 Defining customer persona
Let’s say your website appears in searches, and people who enter your website have different behaviours. Some make a purchase, some read your content, and some just go out after a few seconds. The behaviour of buyers is a key to defining your customer persona. You can take notes on which countries are mostly your buyers and their interest in the website. Having this data in your hand can guide the SaaS company on how to perform well and in creating an SEO strategy for the year.
#4 Boosting brand awareness
At the beginning, SaaS companies should focus on being visible everywhere, even with informational content in Google. Let’s say you have a new link-building management tool. In case you are ranked with that keyword, but let’s be honest, if your website is not appearing with topics connected to link building. In my opinion, this has 2 important aspects. First, people can explore the topic and then look for a software solution. So, when your platform is an information provider, you can win with your CTAs in the article. Second, people getting information or noticing your website on informational topics will trust your source as a software provider. Yes, trust is a very important component for SaaS businesses.
#5 Analyzing competitors
In every marketing campaign, you should look at your competitors. How they earn money and which channels and strategies work within your niche. It can be a partial task, like analyzing competitor backlinks or generally copying the ways they perform. When you are new in the industry, you should take into account that the strategies that work for the leader may not work for you. So, the patient is the key in this situation!
#6 Improve customer relationships
So, you are doing SEO for your SaaS company, and you will absolutely get feedback from your website users. One can make a review, another can start a chat, and others can complain. Taking into account all the challenges they faced before, it will guide you in creating a plan for solving them via your SEO initiatives and content creation. That can be related to technical or even strategic aspects of your business.
How to do SEO for SaaS website?
As in each SEO task management, we should divide the work of SaaS SEO into two parts. Tasks related to on-site SEO and tasks related to off-site SEO.
On-site SEO for SaaS business
This part includes the things that relate to strategic planning. Let’s say you create software to solve any pain of people or companies.
Keyword market research
So, the first thing you should do is keyword research to determine whether people are searching for such a type of solution. You should understand how people search for it to understand the target keywords. Checking their search intent and the volume. For some SaaS industries, people first search keywords that are mostly related to informational intent, then they search “the best tools that do something,” and the third step, choosing the best one, is reading reviews or feedback from real users. Now, SaaS SEO is not only the thing about being visible but also about being trustworthy. If you are not visible within all steps, you lose trust.
Competitor research
There are two possible situations in the SaaS industry. First, you can have competitors, and the second is when you build something that has the demand but does not have a market. As an example, ChatGPT, as a project, had a demand, but there were no competitors in the market. Of course, first creators earn in the fastest possible ways. But you should take into account that, if you do a revolution and there is a demand for your product, in a very low time you will have your competitors. When you are creating a great product, you may not notice the features that should be integrated into the system; however, new market competitors will not allow you to sleep and earn money. You always need to work on your product development. The second scenario is when you are creating competitor tools. Here, you need to work on suggesting something special or just cheaper, so people switch from another tool to yours. It can be just a single feature, maybe even a comfortable interface, flexible packages for subscription, and many, many things to win the game. The advantage of having a competitor in the market is that you can research the mistakes made by teams of your competitors and try not to repeat them. For SEO purposes, you can just analyze their target pages and what exactly they did to bring customers.
Audits
Another important aspect of doing SEO for SaaS businesses you should do monthly audits. When you manage big sites, you can miss anything. It can be some meta tags to real issues. So, to make sure you are always keeping the site healthy, you need to do audits. Always keeping track of the situation of the site is very important for your site. Also, you can integrate some platforms like Hotjar to monitor from which countries your visitors are, what they do, and what they click.
Call to actions
Let’s say your topical selling keywords have low monthly volume, so people make a choice via informational content. For this, you need to know that the pages where your potential customers should have an opportunity not to go out of your site and solve their pain on your site. But you need to hint to them that they are at the right address. This can be popups, some animations that show the place where they should go, then, and just internal backlinks.
Optimize technical SEO
This part includes technical aspects of user experience, such as:
- Website speed optimization
- Mobile optimization
- Schema markup and robot.txt
- Right URL structure
Optimize Site Structure
Homepage
As on each website, your homepage is your most important page. So, here I suggest you target the most difficult keyword. Make sure the target keyword has a commercial search intent. Be sure, people find the right thing they need for that keyword.
Use cases
In this part, software companies share what people can get from that solution. This is very important as sometimes searchers want to understand what they get before any purchase. Sometimes this can be integrated into the website, and sometimes it can be done via Channels like YouTube.
Blogs
People search for software solutions. But let’s be honest. People first search for “what is …”, “how to use…”, “best tools for…”. You can not rank with this questionnaire on your homepage or a service page. As Google owns Google Chrome, the system automatically finds the best-performing page, and if your page does not answer the question, you lose the position. Which is why you need to create relevant articles and guides.
Comparisons
I am sure you saw many pages where you can check in one page comparisons of 2 tools. These pages are great for people who want to choose from 2 SaaS products. For instance, one tool can be best for big teams, another one can be best for small teams. One can be best for Android users, another one best for iPhones. So these types of pages describe the key differences exactly, where you can spend your money, taking into account your specific requirements. For SaaS businesses, this strategy will help to find long-term software buyers. People will not try even your demo version, as they find the exact thing they were searching for. In short, a great opportunity to find customers who will be your repeat customers.
Integrations
It is the 21st century, and if your tool is not integrated with famous platforms like HubSpot, it can dismiss your potential customers. Sometimes, SaaS founders mostly start creating integrations after some polls or waiting for some feedback, but if you have a budget, I recommend doing it right now.
Create Content and Connect them
SaaS businesses that are investing in content creation always win. It is very hard to find nowadays any SaaS tool who do not have a content plan for long-term promotions. But you can not just create content. You need to help your pages. So, here you can not go forward without internal linking. Your smart internal linking will create a picture of your cornerstone content, which will be a great boost for your rankings.
Off-site SEO for SaaS business
SaaS link building is a key thing you should consider for your software success. There are many advantages of focusing on contextual backlinks, especially if they are SaaS backlinks:
- Creating a signal to search engines that you are an authoritative source
- Brand awareness on other sites
- Bring affiliate traffic from relevant sources
- You are becoming a source of information
- Helps to rank your pages
- Creating an opportunity to be featured in AI answers
What are SaaS backlinks?
SaaS backlinks are backlinks from SaaS related websites. So, whether you have a SaaS product, getting backlinks from SaaS businesses can be a priority, as the niche is relevant and you get the best value for your website. To get SaaS backlinks, you can compare the best link-building agencies for SaaS and choose with whom to work.
Where else SaaS platforms should be included, too?
Besides contextual backlinks, it is a widely used strategy to add the platform name in the listicles, review sites, and directories. It is very easy to check all in one place. People are finding tools on one page, where real people write a review, real issues, or advantages. So, if you have a SaaS platform, this is a must for you!
Outsourcing SEO For SaaS or In-House Team?
Whether you decide to outsource SEO for your SaaS business or not, you should consider a budget. Finding the best link-building agency or SEO service providers is a challenge. Why? Agencies can promise you mountains, but the reality is different. By the way, SaaS companies have many scenarios they can have for their SEO performance. So, let’s dive in.
# Scenario 1: Full In-House Team
Let’s say you want to keep the whole staff in-house. This forces you to provide all the tools and expenses of the team. You should buy laptops for each employee, a desk, and provide them with all SEO tools for research and tracking of the results. In case you provided all to them, take into account their employee-related taxes and the salary. As an example, in Armenia, that is one of the lowest salaries in the field, a junior SEO specialist’s salary starts from 400$ monthly.
# Scenario 2: Fully Outsourced SEO Team
Here, two combinations can be integrated within your cooperation! Some agencies handle the deal, but you need to provide them necessary tools. That can be online SEO tools, a software subscription, or something like that. And there are companies that you pay for the services, and they share even the tools with the clients, so the clients can monitor and track the results. Here, for the part of on-site SEO starts from around 500$, and another budget should be prepared for the backlinks. At a minimum, you should consider around 1000$, which will include SEO consultations and backlinks.
# Scenario 3: In-House SEO Team – Ousourced Link Building
The third scenario is about big companies. Why? Because big companies like to keep the strategic thinking and planning in-house, but outsource the tasks that are connected with the technical aspects, or connected with the processes that are cheaper not to keep in-house. Mainly in big companies, management works with SEO specialists to understand where exactly the site should go and the goals of the company for a year or more. Here, again, it depends on where your office is located; the expenses of SEO specialist salaries depend, but if you outsource link building, you have flexibility as it can be hired online, and your backlinks cost depends on the international market, not local.
# Scenario 4: In-House Link Building – Outsourced SEO Team
The 4th scenario is widely about the companies that have lower costs on hiring link builders but do not have a strategic thinker in the team, or do not rely on locals. This scenario I noticed mainly in countries like India and Pakistan. Why? Really, I noticed a lot of link builders from those countries; however, at the same time, it is visible that there is a lack of specialists who can create a plan for international markets or understand the audience outside their country. So, for that situation, keep link builders in-house and outsource SEO management to reliable agencies or famous freelancers. In our link-building pricing guide, I counted that a minimum expense for in-house link building to get 10 backlinks is around $1666. For your consideration, this is more of a comparison; you can outsource to us without spending your valuable time.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that if you are a SaaS business, you have no way to avoid doing SEO and winning in the market (of course, if you are not a revolutionary SaaS product that changes the world). However, if you are still doubtful about the effectiveness, you can start with only finding a monthly link building service. You will get backlinks, and you can understand if you should continue investing in it. According to our monthly link building packages, the price per link is 150$. I am sure SaaS companies spend a lot on adverts, so why not try to be visible organically? Even if you think that it is an era of AI, and you should focus on it, just for your consideration, there are no companies that appear in AI but do not do any fundamentals of SEO. Good luck!
