The most common SaaS SEO mistakes include failing to build authority around your niche/industry, failing to make a significant enough investment to see results, and failing to inform Users in the buying journey that would influence them to start free trials, sign up for demonstrations, or convert.
Key Takeaways
- The most common SaaS SEO mistakes include targeting too competitive of terms, having too low of a budget for the expected results, not having goal completions incorporated into the campaign, and not having an omnichannel approach associated with marketing efforts (to help build branding and trust).
- Mistakes can be costly on a SaaS business, causing them to feel like “SEO just doesn’t work for us” while competitors continue to advance their acquisition strategy. These mistakes can make reversing them even more costly to perform.
SaaS SEO Mistakes
It’s a fairly common complaint or sentiment, “SEO doesn’t work anymore.” Whenever I speak with marketing professionals or even prospective customers, this is along the lines of what I hear. Or something like, “We’d like to test the channel but we don’t have conviction.”
The reality is this: SEO does work. However, it needs to be part of a bigger omnichannel marketing strategy. Much like many other marketing channels today, they each require more touch points and nurturing to create a true customer.
SaaS SEO Mistake #1: Picking too competitive of initial terms
I’d say this is the biggest mistake. When SaaS businesses want to get SEO traction, they often pick extremely competitive keyword terms that will require too heavy of an investment to see any type of return. As a result, they fail to see the benefit of SEO as a channel.
The keys to success are to start building “small wins” in accumulation. And then using data and analytics to ensure that the strategy is on the right path. In addition, Google’s authority and expertise requirements are often capitalized on when a company decides to start building trust with Google’s systems through these easier to win terms.
As an example, Google can start to rank your domain and website. And then collect data on how Users are interacting with the domain. Positive scores or ‘signals’ are given to websites and pages that address Users questions more clearly and with precision.
Here’s how to summarize this:
- Avoid too highly competitive of keywords: Start small, think about stacking up smaller wins as a way of entering the market in a quick fashion. Know that the larger keyword terms are going to come later.
SaaS SEO Mistake #2: Using the wrong keywords and SEO strategy
I’d say this is the biggest and most important mistake. When it comes to any successful SaaS SEO strategy, it’s really critical to understand who you are targeting (your buyer persona) and at what stage of the buying process you’re trying to target them.
This doesn’t only impact what keywords you target. It impacts what you write about and how you inform your Users. In short, it’s better understanding the who/what/why of your customer and getting the opportunity to speak to them before they reach out.
Generally, you should think about your SaaS SEO keyword strategy as somewhat of the following:
- Branded Searches: A prospect knows who you are and is looking into what you offer.
- Attention Searches: People who don’t know your solution exists, but have a pain point, "how to sell my life insurance policy for cash"
- Awareness Searches: People know the solution exists, however, don't know what you exist, "project management tools"
- Consideration Searches: People know the solution and your brand. So they use modifiers, "project management tool + [your brand]"
- Conversion Searches: Something like, "basecamp alternatives" or "freshworks alternative"
Another way to think about this is that you have “MOFU, TOFU, and BOFU” keywords. Or top-of-funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel. If someone, as an example, is searching your particular pain point that you address with the modifier in the keyword that includes the SaaS brand—that’s bottom-of-funnel.
The conversion rates for a bottom-of-funnel keyword compared to a top-of-funnel keyword are dramatically different. Which is why you need a holistic strategy that considers all angles of the buyer's journey.
For example, some of the following:
- Users that don’t know you: Educating Users on who you are as a brand. And what you stand for.
- Users that somewhat know you: Users that have potentially seen the brand referenced before, however, are learning even more about you.
- Users that are familiar with you: Users that know your brand and are searching to get key questions answered before speaking with someone or signing up for a free trial.
SaaS SEO Mistake #3: Not enough of an initial investment
If you’re going into the campaign with an idea of “testing the waters.” Those are probably the results you’re going to get. If you’re a SaaS product of any kind, there’s a good chance that you have competitors. And in most cases, the keywords that you and your competitors care about are going to become “highly competitive.”
When that happens, it is not only more difficult to rank and get traffic. It’s also more difficult to convince a prospect that they should give you a chance. In short, it comes down to “who is the loudest one in the room.” And usually, those types of SaaS products (the loudest ones) get the most prospects and customers.
Google wants to see EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust). It’s fairly simple, they want to know that you know everything about a subject-matter. Like a subject-matter expert. However, how does a machine determine this? Quite simply, they determine it by looking at the quality of your pages across an entire domain or website. And estimate (or score) how influential those pages are.
For example, if you’re addressing questions that haven’t been answered on the internet. If you’re bringing new insights to the table. And more.
Think for a moment: isn’t this exactly what customers would want, as well? It is. And that’s how and why Google modeled it that way. If you only have 5 informational resources in your catalog. And your competitor has 100. Then, if we blindly asked your customers which brand knows more about the industry, they would probably say the company with 100 resources.
Here’s how to summarize this:
- Set an investment and ROI target: Work with a professional SEO company that knows how to set aggressive targets and hit them. Set an initial investment size according to where your competitors are rather than an arbitrary figure.
- Set realistic outcomes for tests: If you’re testing SEO as a channel, then set realistic KPIs or measurable outcomes for your test based on such. For example, if you’re going to see “how well 5 blog posts perform.” Then know you should have KPIs only related to rank position or traffic. And probably not MRR/ARR KPIs just yet.
SaaS SEO Mistake #4: Not bringing new insights to the table
If you were to sit down with a prospect in your space, the first thing they’re going to want to know is, “Does this person know my industry?” It’s a fair concern. The person who knows the most about the industry is more likely to provide a SaaS product that addresses the customer problems efficiently.
To add into this example, if a dentist created a SaaS product for dentists—that’s going to be highly trustworthy. If a school teacher created a SaaS product for dentists—we have problems.
However, the second scenario is what happens most frequently. You’re more than likely going into an industry and learning all about it. Meaning, you have to educate your Users about how well you know the space.
Whether it’s a service page or an informational blog post, you have to bring new insights to the table. For example, if you write a tutorial about how to build a piece of software, the likelihood people know that you can build that piece of software goes up. Same thing applies for any industry you’re in.
For the dental SaaS product scenario, this might be discussing the following topics:
- Billing and insurance in the dental field
- Managing a team of people in the dental field
- Changing landscape of local marketing for dentistry
If you can really learn about the problems that your customers have and then write about that—you increase your chances of those readers becoming customers. Avoid regurgitating everything that you see on the internet. How is that going to get the attention of the prospect that you care about?
Here’s how to summarize this:
- Bring new insights to the table: Solve real customer problems for free. If you’re doing that through a downloadable document, a blog post, or a video. Earn the trust of your customers by solving an initial problem for free.
SaaS SEO Mistake #5: Not putting your name on the product
This is highly specific to SaaS and SEO. However, if your prospects don’t know who you are, then they don’t really know who they’re buying from. If you have a B2B or enterprise SaaS strategy, this matters even more. In those cases, customers are literally leads. And they may have a very high contract value opportunity associated with each lead.
As you turn those visitors into MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads) it’s better to think of them as “fans” of what you have to say. If you can generate fans of your perspective or methodology, you’ll generate leads that convert.
That’s because in most cases, in the B2B and enterprise space—buyers want to purchase software from people or teams and not from machines.
If you can, put your name all over blog posts. Include relevant podcasts or videos that you’ve recorded talking about the subject. Put your name and face all over the material. In combination with the correct writing and SEO approach: this can increase MRR/ARR/MQL conversions by 2X to 3X.
Here’s how to summarize this:
- Put your face on the product: Make sure you have a strong team page for when SEO prospects click around. Include relevant podcasts, videos, and other material that includes your name or team's name on what you offer.
SaaS SEO Mistake #6: Using AI content
This is such a 2024 problem. And will continue to be one into 2025. However, AI content does the complete opposite of what I mentioned above. It usually takes existing information that’s already all over the internet, then rewrites it.
Not only does this not work to generate rank position increases or traffic—it fails to really address customer problems with unique enough insights that would make the visitor want to produce some type of valuable action (sign up for a free trial, schedule a demo, talk to a BDR/SDR or salesperson).
In many cases, AI-content also has “hallucinations” that can cause it to spout out metrics or statistics that are generally false. As a result, it could cause you to actually lose credibility in your space or industry. If an expert shows up to the website and you’re saying the wrong information, it really just makes the person feel like the website or product is SPAM.
Here’s how to summarize this:
- Avoid using AI-content: It simply doesn’t do the job of writing anything unique or interesting. As a result, you’ll lose User engagement and potentially trust with your customers. Take a few moments and think of something insightful to say. It’s not very hard!
SaaS SEO Mistake #7: Failing to be omnichannel
There are some very rare cases where SaaS products can experience a significant amount of product-led growth through SEO alone. However, it’s fairly uncommon. And most of these SaaS products are fixed-price services that Users can sign up for free trials on. Then go into a very strong growth-loop built into the onboarding flow.
Meaning, if you’re not one of those SaaS products that has a keen understanding of how to do that, then you’ll need to combine SEO with omnichannel marketing. That includes thinking about LinkedIn, YouTube, webinars, public speaking events, and more.
The more a prospect can see you discussing important topics in the field or industry, the more opportunity there is to convert them.
Here’s how to summarize this:
- Combine SEO with other marketing channels: The more marketing channels that you combine your marketing efforts with, the better opportunity there is to continuously “encourage” your Users to sign up for a free trial, get a demo, or want to reach out to speak with you directly.
SaaS SEO Mistake #8: Failing to understand intent
Keeping this toward the bottom of this list is important. However, let’s say you nail your keyword strategy, you nail the content production, and everything seems great. Though, you failed to Google the keyword you were looking to target. And as a result, the keyword that you’re targeting is a page full of links. And your page is a page full of content.
Understanding the various “intent types” can really help when it comes to knowing what type of page to produce. For example, questions, like “What is a _____” would be a prompt or question that may target an informational blog post response in Google’s BERT engines. However, “SEO Agency” as an example, is most likely going to target someone’s homepage or service page that outlines their services.
Knowing that these are two different things. And that the User has a completely different set of criteria in their mind (or think of these as a list of questions someone has that they’re trying to get answered), is the key to success.
Google even admits to classifying pages in this way. Most of them include:
- Informational content: Blog posts, articles, or whitepapers (PDFs).
- Service pages: Things like “mowing services near me” would trigger this.
- Commercial investigation: Keywords like “price of project management software” would trigger this.
- Navigational intent: Pages that show a list of other pages, where a User has a broader idea of what they’re looking for. For example, “job descriptions.”
Here’s how to summarize this:
- Target the right intent of your keyword and your page: Google the keyword terms that you’re looking to target. Learn what page intent types Google or other search engines are displaying. Then ensure that you’re executing a very similar page style.
Even More SaaS SEO Mistakes
While those are my top mistakes. And ones that will surely help you to unravel the issues related to not getting real customers, there are certainly some other mistakes to consider. Those might include the following:
- Harmful backlinks: In some cases, a competitor might be using harmful backlinks to try and “tank” your website or domain. Ensure that you don’t have any of this behavior going on.
- Having unoptimized media: If you don’t have videos, PDF files, or images properly classified for SEO, you’re probably missing out on a great opportunity to build EEAT.
- Not having analytics installed: You’d be surprised how much this happens. If you don’t have GA4 or Hubspot showing goal completions, you’re not going to see how well the channel is performing.
- Writing “unhelpful content”: In Google’s eyes, if you’re writing content just to try and rank a page, you’re writing “unhelpful content.” Write content to address problems your customers have.
- Poor internal linking: An internal linking strategy is key to showing Google that you understand the relationships between two entities. For example, we have our page here linked with SaaS SEO roadmaps. Those two things are related. So we’ll include those resources as a cluster. That’s going to help the User and as a result, help with EEAT.
Other SaaS SEO Resources
Written by Joshua Davis - VP of SEO
Updated on:
November 23, 2024
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