Gone are the days of the shotgun pattern approach to digital marketing. Now more than ever, granularity and targeting are critical, especially in search engine optimization (SEO) for SaaS brands, where lead engagement and customer acquisition are paramount in an increasingly competitive market.
Software, and especially SaaS, are uber-competitive, ever-evolving, fast-paced industries. If it isn’t already challenging enough to develop a SaaS SEO strategy in a very competitive market, Google’s continuous updates often keep brands on their toes.
Because modern-day consumers expect authenticity, Google’s “by the people, for the people” update is its way of driving user-based results while keeping up with the evolving trends of AI-generated content. This is especially useful to safeguard against users that get answers from social media or other apps over search engines.
Although Google’s revenue comes from brands paying for advertising, the model only works if it provides user value to maintain its 92% search market share. The search giant’s “helpful content update” filters out low-value rewrites, unchecked AI-generated content, fake reviews, and other junk content to give people exactly what they want in the context of why they’re looking. This update reinforces the importance of intimately knowing your ideal client/customer profile (ICP) and creating content that is helpful and engaging for your audience.
The “helpful content” update reinforces what brands should have already been doing and what Google has been preaching for a long time: You must connect with your target audience.
How Google’s Update Affects SaaS SEO
With the advent of video-based social media like YouTube and TikTok, brands are more in touch with audiences than ever. Those already creating EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) content may get a lift thanks to Google’s newest updates. But all is not lost to those new to the game. Rather, user-centric content should be at the top of every SaaS SEO checklist.
It’s not unusual to see considerable financial backing in the software industry, and additional rounds of funding and overall viability depend on fast, scalable growth. Because the business model relies on customer acquisition cost (CAC) first and secondly on customer lifetime value (LTV), these metrics are essential to digital marketing, planning, and benchmarking.
If it costs more to obtain a new customer than they can generate in lifetime value, then the writing is on the wall. Luckily, enterprise SaaS SEO is a cost-effective way to acquire customers and gain profit. Yet knowing goals is only part of the strategy. Success takes careful planning and execution on the right mix of digital channels, like pay-per-click (PPC) and organic blog and video content.
Budgets should include cost per acquisition (CPA) targets and leverage multiple bidding strategies, and if it’s scalable, SaaS and software companies can essentially pay for leads right out the gate.
In addition, a longer-term SaaS SEO strategy gains search engine market share and creates exponential organic growth over time. These strategies, combined with content marketing, good web development, and social media, create the ultimate marketing mix for more visibility and success.
The Importance of SEO for SaaS
SEO for SaaS is no longer a “nice to have;” it’s a must-have. If your target audience isn’t finding you on search engines, they’re finding your competitors instead. And because software is tech-related, who are you if you don’t exist on the internet?
Coupled with the additional challenge of acquiring customers both cost-effectively and quickly, this presents extra pressure for SaaS and software companies to be digitally focused. Most leaders understand what’s at stake if they don’t develop a SaaS SEO strategy, but they don’t know what will be an effective strategy.
Developing a digital marketing strategy is different from engaging in an effective digital marketing strategy. SaaS and software companies stand to lose even more on ineffective strategies than if they hadn’t engaged at all. Wasted time, investment, and even potential market share and traffic loss (or worse—blacklisting) are high opportunity costs in an industry and economy where every dollar and second counts.
SaaS Requires Unique Strategizing
SaaS and software have unique goals, and developing strategies like lead acquisition and CAC influence the digital agency’s decisions to develop, monitor, and evolve that strategy. Any company should tailor its digital marketing strategy to its unique product offering, which varies even among other SaaS companies.
However, SaaS is a B2B play talking to the c-suite and other key decision-makers, and that requires an enterprise SaaS SEO strategy.
It’s important to showcase a product’s key differentiators in a competitive market where the end-buyer is a savvy (and busy) professional. Densely competitive markets take more time, effort, and investment to capture market share, especially when the audience is increasingly desensitized and harder to reach.
An effective digital marketing plan considers these challenges and carefully chooses a marketing mix. It then gets intimate with ICP and messaging, develops out-the-box marketing levers and lead magnets, and carefully considers keyword and targeting strategies. Without these steps, you may face significant risks, such as:
- Shotgun blasting content, messaging, and emails out to a broad audience that gets lost in the shuffle.
- Significant budget waste on ad campaigns with undialed targeting, demographics, geographics, and devices.
- Significant budget waste on inaccurate conversions setup without conversion rate optimization (SEO).
- Targeting the most competitive SEO terms without considering your (and your competitors’) authority.
- Lacking clarity on tangible goals to inform the overall strategy.
The risks of not creating an effective plan with a defined ICP boil down to wasting resources and losing ground to competitors. So, what are the essential elements to build that plan?
Building an Effective SaaS SEO Strategy
I can’t overstate the importance of being at the top of search results. The first result is 10x more likely to be clicked than any other search listing, and the first three organic positions capture 54% of all clicks. And Google’s Knowledge Panel feeds a lot of instant answers that organically rank above everything except paid ads.
That’s why Arcadia Data focused on increasing their first-page rankings (and did by 510%) in the first six months of partnering with us to make their site more visible. Blackbaud went even further, driving a 1398% increase in front-page rankings and increasing revenue by $22 million.
Without organic search and paid media strategies working in tangent, you’re missing viable opportunities and leaving money on the table. But the answer isn’t just pouring more money into advertising; it takes time, patience, and effort to stand out in a saturated market.
Google’s update makes it clear that only well-crafted, meaningful content will rank and that it takes time to create and promote such content to climb the ranks. Unfortunately, some brands are not in the position to play the waiting game, which is why longer-term SaaS SEO tools need to be combined with a short-term PPC strategy where the sky’s the limit if the CPA and return on advertising spend (ROAS) are favorable.
If your CAC is more than your customer’s LTV, your company isn’t viable. This presents two main challenges for your SaaS SEO strategy to address: lowering your CAC and retaining customers. Despite these challenges, our team of experts can help.
As your market share grows over time, organic SEO is the most cost-effective method of customer acquisition because it produces exponential long-term growth. Additionally, an effective paid media team uses CAC as the goal to set targeting parameters for your target price. Different marketing channels may have a different CAC, but you can work to maintain or beat these goals as soon as you benchmark what’s typical.
Knowing your CAC, working with a digital agency that understands your CAC goals, and creating plans to work towards those goals are the foundational steps for a successful SaaS SEO strategy.