SEO, or search engine optimization, is a unique combination of digital marketing tactics, website technical optimizations, and outreach to other websites. SEO is a truly ‘digital first’ form of digital marketing, and has little to no application outside of the internet. While other forms of digital advertising, such as social media ads and PPC or Google Ads, there is a clear precedent from the world of physical advertising. Whether it is billboards or commercials, there is a translation from this world to the modern space on content aggregators on the web. SEO, in other words, is the antithesis of this, as it is purely based around how information is presented on your website and beyond to Google, the top search algorithm.

Taking advantage of the unique properties of SEO is an excellent choice for SaaS companies. Often called SaaS SEO, this comprehensive SEO strategy combines the best of what SaaS offers as a business model along with the four pillars of SEO: keyword research, technical structure, content strategy and production, and link building.

 All SaaS companies are based around information, and helping companies aggregate or easily organize information. They can also provide tools to help a company with production needs, especially when it comes to simplification. A company like Canva is a great example of this, as they provide an essential service that most companies do not have the ability to do on their own or without the employment of a designer. In that sense, SaaS companies can use the keyword research process to see what problems they can actually look to solve. They can then optimize their website around these keywords and create unique pages on their website that are targeted toward these particular keywords.

Once that information is in place, a SaaS company can create an excellent content strategy around these keywords. Within this content strategy, they can create large pieces of pillar content that exist to help a SaaS company become an authority around a particular keyword or keyword group. If done correctly, that keyword group will correspond to a core process or issue that a SaaS company looks to solve. If a SaaS company thinks beyond their general idea as a software company, and instead looks to themselves as a company that solves problems, then that opens the door to the types of keywords they can build content around.

Finally, a SaaS company will want to invest in link building. Ideally, this link building should be to pieces of content on their website that are heavily keyword targeted, but thinks like software-specific pages that compare themselves to larger competitors or integration pages are also great options. When building links, SaaS companies need to focus on relevance and the authority of the content that their link appears in, and ideally it should be editorial in nature.

While SEO may seem like a daunting task, it is a unique way for companies online to promote themselves to audiences searching for things on Google. Whether these searchers know it or not, they are using keywords to find information, and a SaaS company is in a unique position to use SEO to take advantage of this.