Using SEO to Enhance the Discoverability of Your SaaS Company
The SaaS business model has taken the world by storm. Not only have many companies gotten into the SaaS game in recent years, but even legacy technology companies like Microsoft and Adobe have switched many of their software offerings such as Microsoft Office and Adobe PhotoShop. That being said, the reason that these companies are able to sell recurring subscriptions to their software solutions that they previously sold wholesale is market penetration. Not only are Microsoft and Adobe recognized brands, but the Microsoft Office suite and Adobe PhotoShop were already well recognized software offerings that were widely used for both personal and professional use. Because of this, Microsoft and Adobe had no issues in converting these software to a SaaS model in order to generate increased revenue and fund the development of continues updates and feature rollouts.
However, it is unlikely that your SaaS company has the brand recognition of Microsoft or Adobe. As such, you need to focus on acquiring users and giving them the means to discover your SaaS offering. One of the best ways to do this is through SEO – with a main focus toward Google. SEO is an often-overlooked marketing channel that can have incredible results for SaaS companies. By using a SaaS SEO framework, SaaS companies can get their software in front of people that it will actually help – and even create a new market need for their products.
Remember though that SEO is not just about acquiring users. It is about solving problems to information-related queries. While it is certainty the case that people will be searching for software specifically, more often than not people are not searching directly for what your software can do. Instead, what you want to do is create content that answers core questions that your user may have, or helps to solve core problems that your user may turn to your software to actually solve. By addressing these problems and targeting them in a keyword-specific way, you will be able to boost your rankings on Google for these keywords and in turn help boost the discoverability of your SaaS offerings.
However, when doing this, you want to make sure that you first identify your buyer personas. Doing so will help you greatly with your keyword research process and help you to narrow down the types of problems that your software can try to solve. When doing this research, you may even discover the need for additional features or targeting of your software solution in order to better serve your users and move the needle both in search and on other marketing channels.
Using SEO for SaaS companies is one of the top ways to get users to discover your software. However, when doing so you need to make sure that you target your SaaS website not just to software itself but also to helpful search queries that may help your users actually solve the problems that they would turn to your SaaS solution for.
