Modern SaaS SEO Guide (Rank for MRR/ARR)

SaaS SEO is the act of optimizing a website for rank position in SERPs (search engine results pages) and attracting software shoppers during all stages of their buying journey using keyword research and page creation (from problem discovery queries to brand-specific queries).

There are roughly 30,800 SaaS (software-as-a-service) startups in 2024. And with the advancement of AI-tools in the market, this number is expected to grow by 10-30% in 2025. With all that competition in the market, SaaS and technology businesses need a way to market themselves to software buyers. SEO and organic search is still a highly impactful channel to use to market software tools and solutions.

Key Takeaways

• SaaS SEO is the act of improving a software or technology companies pages for the rank position increases and overall performance in SERPs (search engine results pages).
• SaaS SEO aims at attracting software shoppers during all stages of their technology evaluation (from the awareness stage where a customer doesn’t know their pain points all the way to the evaluation of a specific company and solution).
• The biggest challenges that cause SaaS companies to fail at succeeding in their SEO campaigns include allocating too small of budget, not executing against modern SEO tactics like topical authority building, entity SEO optimization, and using information gain to their advantage.

What is SaaS SEO?

SaaS SEO is the act of using organic search and search engines to help attract software buyers during all stages of their technology evaluation. Terms like top-of-funnel, middle-of-funnel, and bottom-of-funnel are often used to describe buyers in their journey. However, they can be put into a few simple buckets:

1. Unsure of my problem: The software buyer is unsure of their problem. As a result, they are using search engines to discover more information and insights about problem definition. Oftentimes referred to as the “awareness” stage of the process.
2. Knowledgeable about the problem: The software buyer is aware of which problem that they have and are investigating the broader market to get a firmer comprehension of the problem. This is where a buyer is going to be looking for potential solutions to their problem.
3. Knowledgeable about the problem and a specific company: The software buyer is knowledgeable about their problem, the solution, and is investigating which companies that they may want to work with or sign up for. Considered “bottom-of-funnel.”

SaaS SEO helps technology businesses to address all three components to the buying journey. Which also includes helping software businesses get reviews on key websites like G2 or ProductHunt so when shoppers are investigating software solutions, they can learn and see other Users experiences with the company.

SEO for SaaS (software-as-a-service) companies differs from traditional SEO in that software shoppers often like to see multiple touchpoints where the solution is validated by both domain expertise in the space and other customer experiences before becoming a customer themselves (a result of saturated industries where software startups are available).

Learn more about what SaaS SEO is in our guide right here.

Difference Between SaaS SEO, B2B SaaS SEO, and Enterprise SaaS SEO

Often, B2B, enterprise, B2C, and B2B2C are discussed as having greater differences in their SEO approach. And they do have some small differences. Primarily, in the amount of “motivation” that’s required to attract a buyer.

B2B SaaS SEO executes in a very similar way. However, requires far more expertise and thought leadership to be displayed on behalf of those software businesses in order to attract high contract value prospects (MQLs and SQLs).

The SEO campaign will still execute against the same buying journey, however, B2B SaaS SEO and enterprise SaaS SEO will often have the following challenges:

1. Building industry thought leadership: Software buyers that are paying $50,000 to $1M per year in software want to know that the company they’re working with is an expert in their space. As a result, it requires these software companies to be thought leaders in the industry. Speaking to big problems in the space and solutions that they stand behind. This type of thought leadership attracts the right buying personas (ideal customer personas) that can lead to contracts.
2. Attracting the right audience: Similar to the above, B2B and enterprise SaaS SEO have more challenges in attracting the right audiences than they do attracting traffic or eyeballs. Traditional SaaS SEO may have a KPI of impressions, clicks, and organic traffic. However, B2B SaaS SEO may be looking at smaller keywords that are highly specific to a certain buyer persona and using that as an attempt to get the “contract signer” (VP, Director, and C-level executive) to request a demo.

See our B2B SaaS SEO guide for more information.

Common SaaS SEO KPIs

SaaS SEO KPIs can vary depending on the type of technology company it is as well as the buyer persona that the company is trying to target. However, here are some of the most common SaaS SEO KPIs that are used:

• LTV:CAC ratio to give true "customer acquisition cost"
• Activations or integrated closed-won contracts
• Signup to paid conversion (6-month and 12-month period)
• Churn rate
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Retention rate
• Annual contract value
• Marketing sourced revenue (MSR)
• Top of the funnel leads generated by organic search
• Number of active trials or trials from organic search
• Lead velocity rate (LVR) from organic search

In addition, MQLs, SQLs, free trial signups, and demo schedules from organic search are considered to be the most “primary” KPI that’s used to measure the success of an SEO campaign.

See our guide on common SaaS SEO KPIs for more information.

How Technical SEO for SaaS Companies Works

It’s one of the biggest mistakes to make: thinking that technical SEO is going to improve the performance of a website. While technical SEO can certainly (in some rare cases) be the reason for a lack of a software website's organic search performance, it’s usually considered a “foundational” component to the overall strategy.

Technical SEO for SaaS should be aimed at doing the following:

1. Ensuring a website can be crawled: If a website can be properly crawled by search engines, then search engines can evaluate what’s on pages and make a complete determination in how to rank those pages.
2. Ensuring a website has proper structure: Navigational structure can be highly important both for search engines and Users. Showing a search engine that all pages can be accessed in a comprehensive and well-thought-out way is key to both building topical authority and ensuring pages get indexed correctly.

Site Indexing and Crawl Issues

Site indexing and crawl issues are usually one of the top reasons why a technical audit would get executed. The crawl may sometimes use tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, ScreamingFrog, and other tools to emulate how search engines discover pages on a website.

If a search engine isn’t able to discover certain pages, then whatever is on that page, and any on-page optimizations that may take place are essentially moot. After a crawl is performed, tactics like improving overall website navigation and ensuring crawl-depth (how many clicks a person has to make to find a page) is corrected.

Internal Linking

Similar to the above, internal linking strategies are another key part of a technical audit. SaaS websites should have comprehensive top-level navigation that allows them to learn about the company, their solutions, and resources. As well as be able to make a clear distinction on where they are on the website.

In many cases, breadcrumb navigation, top-level navigation, footer links, and other tactics are often explored in the technical audit to determine what might be missing and propose solutions that enable a better User Experience.

Recency and Information Gain

More modern technical SEO audits will be looking at top factors that improve rank. And one of those top factors is recency. You can see this whenever you search on Google. Google wants to display the most authoritative content and information as well as the most up-to-date information. Conceptually, this makes sense. You want the latest and greatest.

Simple mistakes are often not including a sitemap for a website (in XML format), including timestamps in that sitemap, or including timestamps on pages themselves. The technical audit will usually uncover where there might be gaps in displaying recency signals to Google and other search engines.

As a result, information gain is often acquired (new and unique insights across a specific topic or industry) on behalf of the search engine. They see frequent, up-to-date, and authority information on behalf of a domain (domain authority).

See our SaaS technical SEO audit guide for more information.

SaaS SEO Strategies

There are a number of modern and unique SaaS SEO strategies that we execute. In most cases, we look to “surprise” the visitor. Meaning, there’s a lot of garbage out on the internet. And when you can get a visitor to truly read what you have to say, that’s where you win. If you can truly assist a customer in solving a problem—they’re likely to become a customer.

Pain Point Pages (Service Pages)

Let’s say a customer has a pretty good understanding of the issue that they have. For example, let’s say that we’ve got a software solution for attorneys. And the attorney is looking for case management software.

As a starting point, the customer knows that they have an issue with case management in their law firm. So we’ve already determined they are more middle-of-funnel (MoFU). This is great. This means that they’re likely to be looking for a solution and looking for our company.

Where most SaaS businesses fail is that they only create one page for their solution. Let’s call that just a generic “attorney” page. However, using keyword research we can see that there’s plenty of other SaaS keywords that we would want to go after. 

And they look something like this in a structure:

1. Attorney Case Management Software
   1. Mass Tort Case Management Software
   2. Personal Injury Case Management Software
   3. Real Estate Law Case Management Software

Based on the above you can see, there are segments or cohorts of law firm types that are also looking for software solutions. These keywords have lower monthly search volumes (MSV), however, are highly targeted pages that are far easier to compete in.

In addition, we’ll tap into how this builds topical authority later in this guide. However, it does that. It creates a comprehensive knowledge graph that displays you as a business is authoritative (EEAT) in the law space. Because you’re familiar with the fact that there are mass tort, personal injury, and real estate law firms out there.

Creating highly targeted service pages (explaining how your software helps in the case management space) is the best tactic. In a sense, you’re going deeper into the space rather than simply “staying top-level” with your page creation.

This strategy is more ideal for B2B SaaS and enterprise SaaS customers who are looking to attract scheduled software demonstrations as their primary KPI.

Top of Funnel Content

Top-of-funnel content is often avoided by SaaS businesses. And here’s why: they look at the conversion rates of these pages and decide, this isn’t a good investment. And if we were to look at simply the conversion rates of top-of-funnel pages, they would be absolutely right. They are not good investments.

However, SaaS businesses often ruin their entire SEO campaign by not investing in these pages to help build overall authority for the website. This is such an important topic, let me dig into this further.

Let’s say we have the same attorney software solution as mentioned above. And we are creating a number of highly targeted service pages that attract our ICP (ideal customer persona) on a number of different levels. Here are the keywords and proposed pages we’re going to create:

2. Attorney Case Management Software
   1. Mass Tort Case Management Software
   2. Personal Injury Case Management Software
   3. Real Estate Law Case Management Software

Now, to help “boost” these pages chances of ranking higher, we should be creating the following informational pages (articles and insights that tap into information gain):

1. What is Attorney Case Management Software?some text
   1. Common Mass Tort and Case Management Issues
   2. Ways to Improve the Case Management Process for Personal Injury

And so on…

These informational hubs can act as authority drivers for our service pages. Showing search engines (through page creation) that we are experts in our field. Without them, they make driving more key “money pages” more difficult.

Review and Pricing Content

Review, pricing, and competitive analysis content is one of the best ways to rank and get traffic for highly qualified software shoppers. For example, if a software shopper already knows of one of your competitors, then they’re already a very qualified shopper. Meaning that they know what problem they have, the solution they're looking for, and even a company to potentially choose.

There are a number of keywords that would be highly applicable to produce extremely helpful content for. 

Some of those would include:

• [Competitor] Reviews
• [Competitor] Pricing
• [Competitor] Alternatives

These are just a few example keywords that appear time and time again for SaaS companies. In addition, you’ll be able to rank for other keywords that contain your competitors name or brand. This is very similar to how paid search campaigns often include keywords of competitors to give software shoppers another choice.

See our SaaS SEO roadmap for more examples. And get a complete SaaS SEO checklist right here.

How to Perform SaaS SEO Keyword Research

Let’s say you want to execute on some of the strategies above. The next question is where do you begin? Here’s a few ways to get started.

First, our favorite tool for performing any type of keyword research is Ahrefs. Personally, it’s preferred over SEMRush just due to the UI and how easy it can be to perform common functions. You’ll want to sign up for this tool.

Second, get a comprehensive list of all of your software competitors. Ideally, pick the one that has the most organic search reach. And start putting them into Ahrefs. Here’s what we look for when we start looking up keywords:

Keywords That Display Topical Authority

Look for keywords that clearly show topical authority. For example, we’ll be looking for keywords that don’t have a lot of monthly search volume, however, seem highly specific to our industry. These are usually longer keywords that have more words in them. Or words that are highly specific to your industry.

At that point, use the Ahrefs analysis to learn which keywords are matching to which pages. You’ll want to take note of what that page is for later (obviously to create similar content or better content in whatever way it’s being presented).

Here’s an example of what that looks like:

Notice how we can see Ahrefs showing that these keywords are getting picked up as "featured snippets." That would be a strong sign that the domain is answering questions for Users that the search engine deems "authoritative." That's a great indicator that the keywords and the pages are driving overall domain authority.

Keywords That Look Unaddressed

Many times, keywords appear under domains and pages that are ranking further away. For example, ranking 30-50 for a given page. However, sometimes, those keywords present opportunities to fill “content gaps.”

These content gaps are areas where your ideal customer persona might be looking for information, however, very little of the internet has addressed them. You’ll be surprised how many of these actually exist.

One of the top mistakes that SaaS companies make is going after the most competitive keywords without diversifying the investment of keywords that we’re going after. 

Here’s an example of what that looks like:

Notice in the screenshots above that "Legal AI" is a keyword that the company only ranks #7 for. That may indicate that the keyword and their content aren't matching with what Users are expecting to see. As a result, this may be a great opportunity for our hypothetical legal software solution to go after this keyword. Usually, you'll see your competitors ranking lower for the terms that seem "unmet." And in some cases, the keywords may also have zero pages that are directly answering the Users query (or search/question).

Top SaaS SEO Mistakes

Here are some of the top SaaS SEO mistakes that often cause technology companies to believe that SEO “doesn’t work any more.”

Understanding and Using Entities

“Entity SEO” is a more modern approach to SEO. In short, entities are like nouns. They are people, places, and things. Google, in particular, has a very good understanding of relationships between these nouns. If you’re familiar with a knowledge graph, then you’re somewhat familiar with entities.

However, the way that Google started to use these entities was by determining page rank or page authority by the amount of relationships referenced on a given page. And then throughout a given domain.

These are somewhat like keywords. However, you can’t use entities that aren’t relevant to each other. In a way, this is Google’s way of validating “true expertise.” If you don’t understand how this works or how to apply it, your SEO campaign is likely going to fail.

Understanding Information Gain

Very similar to the above. Google wants to see that when you use those entities, that you’re improving the information that exists around them. Let’s take a sample sentence right here:

• SaaS SEO is the act of improving a website for SERPs (search engine results pages).

Now, let’s highlight where the entities are:

• SaaS SEO is the act of improving a website for SERPs (search engine results pages).

Everything around those two entities should contain new and helpful insights. You might be asking, how does Google do this? Well, in their patents, they use “articles” which is the idea of analyzing pieces of content against each other and using User signals to get an idea of how to best address specific questions.

This is a type of machine learning. As a result, if you simply “produce content” that’s exactly similar to what everyone else is saying, you’re likely going to fail.

Building Topical Authority

We’ve lined this up perfectly, here. Understanding entities, understanding information gain, and understanding topical authority are three steel threads that produce the most results in 2024 and we expect this to continue into 2025/2026.

Let’s say that you wanted to show Google you’re an expert in a subject. How do you do that? Well, think about it, Google speaks in content and pages. So we’re likely going to have to create pages that explain our expertise to them.

If we looked at pest control as a subject matter (or entity), we’d be thinking about the types of pests that exist.

Those would be the following:

1. Pests
   1. Ants
   2. Spiders
   3. Mosquitos
   4. Termites
   5. Flies

The deeper that we go into a subject, the more we display our “brain” or “expertise” back to Google. As a result, topical authority certainly works. However, many companies don’t want to invest in it because it seems counter intuitive.

We have to create a number of supportive pages that don’t always have demand (or search volume) against them. And are entirely used to support overall domain authority to search engines. However, not building this is certainly one of the largest mistakes that SaaS companies make: not investing in topical authority (or thinking long-term).

Learn more about which SaaS SEO mistakes to avoid in our guide right here.

Developing a SaaS SEO Roadmap

Technology companies [rightfully so] like to be very pragmatic about their investments. As a result, developing a comprehensive SEO roadmap is key. Here’s what a typical SEO roadmap for a SaaS business looks like:

Month 1:

During Month 1 you’ll want to start with a comprehensive technical audit to ensure that any future on-page optimizations or new pages that get created are going to get crawled and indexed appropriately.

Tasks would include:

• Review Google Search Console errors
• Review backlinks for SPAM issues
• Conduct a ScreamingFrog crawl to determine page issues
• Review internal linking structure
• Review sitemap.xml file for issues or issues with timestamps
• Review on-page technical issues like breadcrumbs, schema.org, and more
• Perform basic keyword research to understand share of voice of the company

Based on the results of the work from the above, a number of resolutions are usually proposed and made to the company.

Month 2:

Month 2 of a SaaS SEO campaign usually includes looking at key pages that either already exist or don’t exist.

Tasks would include:

• Performing on-page optimizations for existing service pages
• Building a comprehensive list of middle-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel service pages that target ideal customer personas
• Building a topical authority map to understand how informational content may influence service pages or “money pages”
• Begin executing against both types of pages based on the research

Month 3:

Usually Month 3 of a SaaS SEO roadmap is all about new page creation. At this point, the company should have resolved most technical SEO issues that might be causing problems. And addressed most of the “low hanging fruit” in terms of on-page optimizations for pages that are currently ranking for important keywords.

However, most companies that are moving quickly will reach a “cap” or ceiling on the work quite quickly. As a result, an informational roadmap will usually be built to attack TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU keywords mentioned in the strategies above.

Related: What is Topical Relevance?

Tasks would include:

• Building an informational or blog post roadmap (often referred to as a topical authority map)
• Executing against the informational or blog post roadmap
• Executing against service page creation for middle-of-funnel terms

By Month 3 most SaaS companies should be well on their way to executing against their SEO campaign. Usually, by Month 5 of 6, the SaaS company should start to see results or growth in MRR/ARR. It’s important to note that not all SEO roadmaps are built the same. And that it’s important to start with a comprehensive audit to identify the top issues and opportunities before starting to execute.

Learn more about developing a SaaS SEO roadmap right here.

Top SaaS SEO Agencies

We like to think of ourselves as one of the most comprehensive SEO agencies in the SaaS space. As a result, we've produced a helpful guide on choosing the best SaaS SEO agency for your business.

So if you’re searching for the top SaaS SEO agency to work with, here are a few of the top agencies in the space:

• SERPdojo: Well, of course we’re going to say that we’re #1 in our space. If you’re reading this then that might indicate that we know what we’re doing!
• SimpleTiger: A great agency known for focusing specifically on SaaS and technology companies and has a great history of growing SaaS companies using SEO.
• Rock the Rankings: Owned by Justin Berg, we’re big fans of his work and he clearly knows what he’s doing when it comes to modern SEO. And, has a very high focus in technology and SaaS companies.
• Skale.so: While they work with all types of technology companies, they still lean into startups and technology businesses. Considered to be one of the “originals” of SaaS SEO, this agency is certainly one of the top five in the world.

See all of the top SaaS SEO agencies on our list right here.

Common Questions

Common questions and answers about SaaS SEO:

Does AI-content work for SEO?

As of 2024 and going into 2025, no it doesn’t. And here’s why: if you think about what Google wants, it wants information. Unique insights that it can use to train their own LLM models. However, AI-content, usually “remixes” existing insights and puts it into new writing. This is somewhat similar to what we used to call “spun content” back in 2010 and earlier. When Google noticed that more websites started using AI-content, they used the information gain scoring mechanism more than similarity scoring.

Even though Google says it doesn’t care about AI-content, that’s true, however, it doesn’t mean that it’s effective. We’ve tried on a number of our own websites and concluded that it doesn’t work, unfortunately.

Does topical authority work?

Topical authority certainly works. And is better than building backlinks. We expect that topical authority will continue to be a strong strategy going into 2025. In particular, Google has mentioned experience, expertise, authority, and trust more than 50 times in the Google search rater guidelines. As a result, topical authority is the way to display to Google EEAT factors.

Does building backlinks work?

The answer unfortunately can vary. While building backlinks is certainly one of those “blanket statements” that many SEO agencies give to you (i.e., you need to build backlinks), it’s usually never “the answer” to SaaS SEO or SEO in general.

However, there are some certain cases where you’ll need to build domain authority in highly competitive spaces. As a result, building the right types of backlinks can be highly supportive in also developing extremely high-quality helpful content and pages that serve great User Experiences.

What are the biggest challenges for SaaS companies performing SEO?

The biggest challenge is content writing. You simply can't hire "generic" SEO copywriters and get comprehensive content produced in a way that will actually create revenue. The reason for this: you need to inform your Users about something new. We fundamentally believe that both Google and Users are looking for the same things: something new. As a result, if you're just repeating what everyone else says, why are any prospects going to be propelled to sign up or request a demo? They won't.

Other SaaS SEO Resources

• SaaS SEO Trends for 2024
• Reasons SaaS SEO Campaigns Fail
• B2B SaaS SEO
• SaaS SEO Meaning and Definition
• SaaS SEO Budgets
• SaaS SEO KPIs
• SaaS SEO Roadmap: Examples
• How Important is SEO for SaaS (Facts)
• SaaS SEO Audit
• 13 SaaS SEO Mistakes to Avoid
• SaaS SEO Checklist