34 SaaS Keyword Research Methods to Copy (2025)

SaaS keyword research is the act of utilizing keyword research tools and first-party data to better understand how customers are performing their software evaluation journey and utilizing search engines to do so. Keyword research helps you better understand your core customer and helps to ensure you present yourself in the pathway of their buying journey.

Key Takeaways

• Top keyword research tools for SaaS companies include Ahrefs, SEMRush, Google Search Console, and first-party data tools like Google Analytics, Salesforce, Hubspot, and more.
• The top method to perform SaaS keyword research includes looking at customer-centric research, intent mapping, using competitor intelligence, and using personalized techniques.
• Understanding page intent types can be highly critical in how you think about mapping your keywords to a future SaaS SEO strategy.

34 Top SaaS Keyword Research Methods to Use

Here are the top SaaS keyword research methods to use to stay competitive:

1. Customer-Centric Keyword Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Customer Interviews and Surveys: Analyze customer feedback to understand their pain points, language, and search behavior.
• Customer Support Data Mining: Review IT support tickets, FAQs, and customer support logs to identify frequently asked questions or recurring issues.
• User Journey Mapping: Align keywords with customer journeys (unaware, awareness, consideration, decision).

Customer Interviews and Surveys:

Interviewing existing customers can be a great way to understand how they both found you in the customer journey as well as understanding what your customers are doing to stay up to date in the industry.

For example, asking questions like, “What websites do you frequently visit to stay up to date in the industry?” Or other questions like, “How did you find us?”

Customer Support Data Mining:

Customer support data can also be a great gold mine of opportunities. In general, we want to almost generate a type of keyword cloud that better helps us see what’s often discussed about our product. This can also help to prioritize certain terms that are more trendworthy than not.

User Journey Mapping:

Trying to get an understanding of where the User starts their journey and ends it can also help to generate keyword ideas. You’ll hear us talk about the following a lot:

1. Unaware: The unaware customer doesn’t know they have a problem.
2. Problem Aware: The ideal customer persona is now aware that they have a business problem that’s valuable to address.
3. Solution Aware: They know there are multiple vendors to choose from.
4. Product Aware: They are now knowledgeable about your SaaS product.

Related: SaaS Inbound Marketing

2. Competitor Intelligence Keyword Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Gap Analysis Tools: Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrrush to identify keywords competitors rank for but your SaaS doesn't.
• Competitor SERP Features: Analyze how competitors leverage featured snippets, People Also Ask, or video results.
• Indirect Competitors: Look at related industries (content competitors) and solutions that serve similar customer pain points.

Gap Analysis Tools:

Ahrefs and SEMRush make it easy to put in competitors or use their content analysis tools to understand what keywords your competitors rank for and that you don’t. This is one of the most basic forms of keyword research for SaaS.

Competitor SERP Features:

Looking as SERP features can be a slightly more advanced way of performing keyword research. In particular, PAA questions, suggested queries at the bottom of the page, autocomplete answers in the Google search box, and more. All of these are ways of looking at the SERPs and deriving more ideas that tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush don’t catch.

Indirect Competitors:

Indirect competitors would be considered content competitors. Content competitors are websites (like editorial websites) that might be discussing topics related to your industry your SaaS product.

Content competitors are often some of the best opportunities for B2B SaaS companies to get keyword ideas. Since keywords will often be more widely aligned with editorial content, Google can leave behind hints on these types of websites.

3. Intent Mapping Keyword Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Problem-Solution Pairing: The act of grouping keywords by the problem they solve and their page intent (informational, navigational, transactional).
• Action-Oriented Keywords: Focus on terms like "best SaaS for [X]," "how to solve [X] with software."
• Job-to-Be-Done Framework: Identify keywords that resonate with the “jobs” users are trying to accomplish.

Problem-Solution Pairing:

Problem-solution pairing would be putting together a hub-and-spoke type of model to help Google naturally align your pages to keywords that are applicable. In a way, this is like doing reverse keyword research. You create the page, then let Google show you what keywords are applicable.

Action-Oriented Keywords:

Action-oriented keywords are some of our favorite keywords to go hunting for. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush are best for finding these. And then using patterns in their keyword research tools to uncover more. You can use “SaaS” or your industry as the starting point, then add word variations like “best” to find most of these terms.

These are great in-market buyers that are clearly more middle-of-funnel (meaning, they understand what problem that they have). 

Job-to-Be-Done Framework

A jobs-to-be-done framework can be useful in reverse engineering keywords that you go hunting for. Or pages that you create. This would be users that have a specific need, like, “CSV file export” or some other type of simple pain point that’s related to your SaaS product.

Related: Importance of Backlinks for SEO

4. Deep Industry Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Niche Forums and Communities: Explore Reddit, Quora, or LinkedIn communities for SaaS-specific discussions. And use that for keyword research and mining.
• SaaS Review Sites: Analyze reviews on sites like G2, Capterra, or Trustpilot for common keywords that come up from those pages.
• Conferences and Webinars: Study event agendas, session titles, and speaker topics for emerging trends and terminology. Then use those top terms to reverse engineer keywords.

Niche Forums and Communities:

Forums and communities are very similar to using content competitors (like editorial or news websites) to get ideas. Often, forums show us related keywords or large clusters of keywords that are applicable for us. To do this, all we have to do is put in Quora or Reddit into Ahrefs, then use the keyword explorer to expand all keywords, then filter down by applicable terms using industry variations (as a word filter).

Here’s how I do it in Ahrefs:

SaaS Review Sites:

SaaS review websites like G2 and Capterra can help us to identify keywords that are related to competitors that we may want to discuss. For example, “[X] Price” or “[X] Alternatives”. These would be great keywords to target in page creation.

Here’s how I do it in Ahrefs:

Conferences and Webinars:

Conferences and webinars can help us to target upcoming keywords. That means, ones that don’t have any search volume at all. These could be terms that will take off in the future and help us align our B2B solution to them.

Related: Topical Relevance (Guide)

5. Leverage Emerging Trends

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Google Trends: Track new search behavior and seasonal variations in SaaS-related keywords.
• AI Tools: Use AI-based tools like ChatGPT to brainstorm niche keyword variations.

Google Trends:

Google Trends can also be a powerful tool at finding keywords that are trending or upcoming. Remember, not all keywords need to have monthly search volume through tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush. Google Trends can show us upcoming term variations or industry related terms that are impacting our specific industries. For example, “generative AI” is going to be a big term for 2025 in your industry.

AI Tools:

AI-tools can be super helpful in coming up with keyword ideas based on specific prompts. Here would be a unique prompt to use:

Write me a list of keywords to target for a SaaS product that’s for [Industry] and that would be applicable for a website with low authority and wanting to drive the most leads.

6. Using Unique Content Format Keyword Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Search for SaaS-Specific Queries: “How SaaS [Feature] Works,” “SaaS [Category] Guide,” “Best Practices for SaaS [Functionality].”
• Target Video Keywords: Identify keywords optimized for YouTube and other video platforms.

Search for SaaS-Specific Queries:

These types of keywords are the most easy to find in tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush, however, can also be found by simply going through competitor websites or sitemaps and seeing what type of blog posts they’ve written.

Whether or not the pages have any keywords that have search volume associated with them is irrelevant, we’ll want to look at how all of these pages are contributing to topical authority (if they’re a market leader—they have topical authority).

Target Video Keywords:

Video keywords can be a unique keyword research method as well. The best way to do this is to use Ahrefs, put in an applicable keyword phrase, then try to reduce the SERP features down to where videos appear. This can give you a list of keywords that are video targeted.

Related: B2B SaaS Content Marketing (Guide)

7. Advanced Keyword and SEO Techniques

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Entity SEO: Research entities (people, organizations, or concepts) related to your SaaS niche and use them for content additions to your pages.
• Topic Clustering: Create clusters of related keywords to dominate topics holistically using topical authority.
• Semantic Keyword Expansion: Use tools like Clearscope or SurferSEO to uncover semantic connections.

Entity SEO:

Entity SEO is the inclusion or use of entity records in Google’s systems to better individual pages or to display authority to Google by building our own knowledge graph that reflects the same knowledge graph that Google has.

This is a reverse method for doing keyword research where we produce pages that don’t have any search volume or keywords aligning to them. However, help us rank other pages that do have keywords that are associated with our organic search campaign as we gain more authority in Google’s systems using EEAT signals.

Topic Clustering:

Topic clustering is the idea of expanding on your page creation by looking at keywords that are ranking for pages that you already have, however, are not ranking highly because the relevance of them are less applicable.

What you can do is put in an individual page into Ahrefs or SEMRush, look at the keywords that are currently ranking for the page, then looking for keywords that are less applicable to the core page’s intent, however, give you ideas for other pages to create.

Semantic Keyword Expansion:

Semantic keyword expansion is very similar to topic clustering. However, may be more driven by relationships of topics. For example, if you had a SaaS website that was related to dictionary uses, you might know that “affect” and “effect” are very similar, however different.

Using Ahrefs or SEMRush to validate your own ideas based on semantic keyword expansion can be useful. Or using tools like SurferSEO which can give you topical authority maps to help expand your keyword profile.

Related: Marketing for SaaS Startups

8. Internal Data Mining Keyword Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Website Analytics: Look to utilize internal site search data for untapped keywords.
• CRM and Sales Data: Look for patterns in prospect questions or objections.
• Support Content Gaps: Review low-performing knowledge base content for new keyword opportunities.

Website Analytics:

Website analytics like using Google Search Console can be really useful. GSC often gives you a list of queries that someone used to land on your page. Or even, to not land on your page. If you’re seeing queries that seem directly applicable to your website, it might be worthwhile to invest in that.

CRM and Sales Data:

CRM and sales data can also be very useful in performing keyword research. For example, asking your SDR/BDR team what the top features are that the customer was interested in. Or the features that the customer asked about that we don’t currently have.

Support Content Gaps:

Knowledge base articles and other on-platform content pages can give us indications of middle-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel content pages to create. For example, if a customer has questions about pricing or about contract length and they find themselves on a knowledge base article, it can be a great indicator of a page that we may want to create.

Related: How to Grow Your SaaS Business

9. Personalization Keyword Techniques

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Location-Specific Keywords: Optimize for geographic variations if your SaaS caters to localized markets.
• User Role-Specific Queries: Target keywords for specific personas (e.g., “SaaS for CFOs,” “project management software for startups”).
• Industry-Specific Keywords: Focus on verticals like healthcare SaaS, edtech, or fintech.

Location-Specific Keywords:

Location specific keywords are still very applicable to SaaS companies. For example, some SaaS companies offer a type of service layer along with their software. For example, AI SEO services would be something software and consultative related.

As a result, as these terms start to gain in popularity, they often start to get localized. The best way to find these is still to start from a high level word in your industry and then filter down by variations of cities or states and discover whether your space has any localization to it. Here’s how I do it in Ahrefs:

User Role-Specific Queries:

User-specific roles can also be considered job titles or personas. For example, if you’re a SaaS company looking to target attorneys, you may want to put in specific job titles into the Ahrefs keyword research tool and then determine if any of those keywords also align with SaaS specific keywords. Here’s how I do it in Ahrefs:

Industry-Specific Keywords:

Verticals or industries are also keyword methods to go out and look for. The best way to find these are to either utilize competitor websites that include these types of industry pages or searching for industry specific terms to start and then filtering down by words that might indicate pain points. Here’s how I do it in Ahrefs:

10. Reverse Engineering Competitor Keywords

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Backlink Research: Examine competitors' backlinks to uncover keyword opportunities.
• SERP Scraping: Analyze top-ranking content to extract keyword patterns.
• Competitor Paid Ads: Use tools like SpyFu to analyze paid search keywords competitors are bidding on.

Backlink Research:

Backlink research, like looking through a competitors backlinks, can give some insight into keywords and pages that we may want to create that help to drive links. While these may not be keywords exactly, we know that a potential website found our competitor website through some type of source. Maybe that source was Google.

Here’s how I do it in Ahrefs:

SERP Scraping:

SERP scraping can be a great way to identify specific keyword patterns. For example “alternatives” is a great keyword pattern for SaaS products and may not have any keyword search volume. For example, if you have an up and coming competitor that now getting into the market, you may want to create a “[Competitor] Alternatives” page just to get ahead of that search term.

Competitor Paid Ads:

Competitor paid ads can sometimes give fruitful ideas for where customers are. However, can be tricky to fully understand from tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush. I would say that this tactic is less used and less effective than some of the others.

Here’s how I do it in Ahrefs:

11. Multi-Channel Insights Keyword Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• Social Media Listening: Use tools like Brand24 to track SaaS-related discussions on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram.
• Podcast Analysis: Look at the most popular SaaS podcasts for keyword-rich topics that may be on the verge of getting keyword research volume.
• Webinar Q&A Analysis: Review attendee questions from your webinars.

Social Media Listening:

Being active on LinkedIn and other channels where your customers live can be really useful in getting ahead of trending topics or discussions. The easiest way to rank a page is when there’s little to no competition for it.

To do this, all you have to do is stay abreast with industry trends and changes. And when terms start to become populraized, mark them and consider the creation of informational pages to accompany them.

Podcast Analysis:

Podcasts can also give you a great idea of what keywords you may want to consider for your website. For example, if they are using terms that don’t exactly align with your website. I’ve seen this with “PPC” and “Paid Search”. While both of these terms are similar, paid search is often used in conversation more than PPC.

Webinar Q&A Analysis:

Webinars also allow you to spy on competitors research of what’s getting populraized.  You’ll want to utilize competitors webinars and industry webinars to do this. If you can, look at the Q&A questions asked during the session.

12. Long-Tail and Conversational Keyword Research

Here are the key takeaways from this section:

• FAQ Mining: Identify questions from Quora or Google’s “People Also Ask.”
• Voice Search Optimization: Use natural language phrases suitable for voice assistants like Siri or Alexa.
• Hyper-Niche Keywords: Focus on micro-niches that competitors overlook.

FAQ Mining:

FAQ mining can be a gold mine. To do this, search the core keyword you want to rank for, then look at the people also ask panel. Click to open multiple of these panels and see which questions they put into them. Try to find a keyword that exists inside multiple of the questions to get a better sense of where to go.

Here’s how I do this with Google:

Voice Search Optimization:

To do voice search optimization, it’s pretty simple, interview friends or family members and have them explain to you the industry or product that you have. You want them to be uneducated about your space. Then, listen for keywords that they’re using (relevant or not) to identify what you do. Consider those for use in your content strategy.

Hyper-Niche Keywords:

This is one of our favorite methods. Using Google autocomplete can give you an idea of B2B keywords that are extremely related to your industry but not in Ahrefs or SEMRush yet.

Here’s how I do this with Google:

Understanding Page Intent Types for SaaS Keyword Research

There are a few page intent types that are classified by Google. These page intent types are considered the method of delivery of information that best matches the core intent of the Users search term. For example, whether they’re shopping for a particular product or whether they’re looking for insights or guides.

Here are the top SaaS page intent types:

1. Informational intent: These are guides and informational editorial that help to produce content around “what is” type of terms and definitions.
2. Transactional intent: These are solutions pages, usually highlighting branded features and speaking to very specific use cases. Usually designed in a way that contains a lot of navigation, testimonials, and more.
3. Navigational intent: These are pages that contain a lot of links. Think of this as a hub page. Not seen as often in the SaaS industry, however, important to recognize. Sometimes, keywords align to a page that contains a lot of links to other pages. Think of free resources.‍
4. Commercial intent: A page that’s designed to highlight key points of research and looks very similar to transactional intent pages, however, may contain more insights on competitors and comparisons.