Do you have a SaaS company that is looking for SEO services? If so, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, we’ll talk about what SaaS companies do, why they might need SEO services, some ways you can optimize your content to drive traffic, and some places you can turn for help with getting customers to your site to make purchases, like Ampry.Sound interesting so far? Let’s get started!
What qualifies as a SaaS company?
SaaS stands for “Software as a service.” Essentially, these companies maintain software online and offer their customers access to that software as a service. These companies are often very beneficial for other corporations who need software to run critical business functions, including tracking customer information and sales, accounting and invoicing, project management and collaboration, general data management, and much more. Your SaaS company probably profits through subscription-based services. Monthly or annual fees, for example, are often required for customers to maintain access to the software that SaaS companies are offering. This is a beneficial model for both parties in many ways: the company gets a more reliable, steady source of income from dedicated customers, and the customer knows that it’s in the company’s best interest to continue supporting the software and replying to their needs.
Does my SaaS Company need SEO?
Like any company that sells online, SaaS companies will invariably succeed or fail based on their ability to get their services to interested, paying customers. Because SaaS companies are offering their software through the internet, they likely already have a web presence of some kind. But SEO (Search Engine Optimization) will almost always help expand that presence and make sure that people who are searching for the services that you offer will run into your company’s websites and advertisements. In short, while it may be possible for a company to survive without paying attention to SEO, SaaS SEO will almost certainly be a major benefit for any internet-based company that can incorporate it. Some online resources have gone so far as to call SEO the “key driver” behind the success of the most successful SaaS companies. SaaS SEO will help you stand out from the crowd and catch the virtual “eye” of those who might be searching for the kinds of services that you offer. It will also help you reduce your advertising costs by improving the organic visitors that your site gets.
How can I optimize my content?
SEO is a massive field in the business world, and it all focuses on two basic things: 1) Getting your company’s sites to be the ones that show up when people search for your services2) Getting your company’s sites to show up to people who will actually care about your services and/or are already looking for them.The first point is about standing out from the crowd and making sure that your company has high visibility, and the second is about focusing as much as possible on getting your company to show up for people who will be interested in your services.Most SEO is based around keywords that people might use when searching for your services, and on making sure that your company’s site will show up higher on the list when those words are used. Two of the top factors that influence whether or not your site will show up in these searches on Google are your content and backlinks. We’ll look at both of these aspects in turn and how they relate to each other.
Improving Content for SaaS SEO
Content creation is a huge part of most SaaS SEO strategies. Because search engines will give people results based on the keywords they use to search for specific things, you want your company to use those keywords in your online content–on your webpage, in blog posts or other forms of communication, and so on. If you can use the phrasing and terminology common to searches in your content, that content will rank higher when potential customers use those terms.It’s often very helpful to conduct some research about what keywords are used when people are searching for your services. For example, if you can figure out what people are asking or typing online when they want to hire a company like yours, you can make sure that those are the keywords you focus on in your content creation. Of course, in the early days of the internet, search engine algorithms were much less advanced, and would simply give a website a higher rank for a term if it mentioned the term more often. This led to what’s been called “keyword stuffing,” a lazy marketing technique involving simply repeating a key phrase (like “software for marketing”) over and over in an online space, thereby attempting to trick the algorithm into thinking that a page was very relevant for that search term. This “technique” or trick no longer functions very well, and in fact, most sophisticated search algorithms now will actively avoid pages that are attempting to do this. Instead, it’s important to include the key terms you want to focus on, but also surround them with relevant and useful information: related terms, context, and so on.This change means more effort, but it also means that potential customers are much more likely to stay once they find your page. After all, you’d probably be turned away too, if you went to a web page looking for marketing software and just found the term “marketing software” copied and pasted a hundred times. Modern algorithms do well at getting people to relevant pages, and you can make your company more relevant by creating optimized content.So, what can you do with improved content to up your site’s organic traffic rates?
- Technical optimization. If your website isn’t linking to itself properly, with broken pages or erroneous redirects, you’ll hurt the overall SEO and the user experience.
- Research keywords. Find out what phrases and search terms are used when people look for services in your field, and incorporate those phrases into your marketing and website terminology.
- Use keywords in titles and meta descriptions. This shows that the terms are a really strong, key part of your page, and not just something that you mention briefly.
- Streamline your user interface for both mobile and desktop. A more versatile website will rank higher in many search engine functions.
- Write high-quality content that answers questions that your customers might have. If you can turn your site into an information hub that answers the kinds of questions that potential customers have about your field or your kind of services, you will start getting interested traffic to those pages as people search for their questions.
Backlinks for SaaS SEO
One of the most helpful things for raising your search engine ranking is acquiring backlinks to your site. If you can get other websites to link back to yours, search engines will know that people are talking about your site and that it’s a trustworthy, reliable location to which they can send searchers. There are a few things you can do to increase the backlinks for your site:
- Pay an SEO company to create backlinks on their sites. Some companies will write relevant articles for you which can include links to your company’s site, for example.
- PR. If you can get a news organization to write about your company and include a link to your site, that has great backlink boost potential.
- Contact the owners of pages that mention your company or services, and ask them to include a link. Sometimes, an article might just mention your company’s name, but not have a backlink to your site! A simple email reaching out to the writer might get you an additional link.
- Include links on any business association pages for organizations your company is a member of.
- Put links in the description of your company on sites that allow you to post company information. This could be social media, for one thing, or yellow page-style sites where people go to look for a company that fits their specific needs.
Once I get more traffic, how do I convert it?
That’s the trick, isn’t it? Obviously, you don’t just want to get people looking at your website, but you also want them buying your services. Although part of that is going to depend on your reaching a proper audience, the rest of it depends on what happens once customers reach your site. When that traffic starts to build up, based on your improved SEO, what’s the next step? If you’re not sure what to do with all the traffic you get, and how to make sure that it’s effectively funneled, try scheduling a strategy call with a company like Ampry, a platform that drives customers to purchase, no matter where your site is.