The question that often appears whenever digital marketing leaders are talking about their marketing blend. The question, “Is SEO worthwhile?” There’s a good answer I have for you: yes. Yes, SEO for SaaS is worthwhile. Rather, instead of me suggesting to you that you should believe my words, let's take a look at a few SaaS SEO case studies that show the power of how SEO can drive free trials, MRR, and ARR.
Key Takeaways
- The top SaaS SEO case studies that you should know about are from companies like Beamjobs, Betterteam, ActiveCampaign, Scribe, and Clio.
- SaaS SEO case studies both highlight search engine optimization as a unique opportunity to capture demand and generate ARR/MRR, as well as display long-term growth for the company.
- SaaS SEO can be a highly impactful way to drop your CAC:LTV ratio, since much of organic search traffic isn’t something that changes too drastically month-over-month.
SaaS SEO Case Studies You Should Know
In all the SaaS SEO case studies below, we’re going to use Ahrefs to analyze the existing traffic. If you’re not a fan of Ahrefs, feel free to use SEMRush. These tools will help you better comprehend the SaaS SEO strategy that took place and what you may want to emulate.
1. BeamJobs
BeamJobs is a SaaS tool that helps job seekers create resumes.
Over the past 5 years, BeamJobs has generated more than 400,000 monthly visitors all coming from organic search. Their strategy? Utilize resume templates and other free resources to gather eyeballs from job seekers.
If you think about it, they’ve got the perfect acquisition strategy considering the moment you download a free resume template, you’re going to want to edit it. That’s where their tool comes in.
It’s a perfect execution of using top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel keywords to generate real MRR (monthly recurring revenue).
Related: What is Topical Relevance?
2. Betterteam
Betterteam is a job opening reposting service that takes your one single resume that you’re looking to acquire interviews for and distributes it to a number of job search engines. That would be places like Google, LinkedIn, Indeed, and many more.
Betterteam has been one of the best SaaS SEO case studies to look at since they were early in the concept of building topical authority for their property. At one point, Betterteam was generating more than 2M monthly visitors from organic search.
Today, they still sit with 400,000 monthly search visitors coming in. What did they do well? They targeted businesses by offering free templates for job descriptions, which is often the first stop for employers that are looking to post up a job opening.
3. ActiveCampaign
While ActiveCampaign has been around for some time, they’re one of the larger SaaS success stories with more than a few hundred employees.
ActiveCampaign has done a fantastic job of getting in front of marketers by helping them understand specific definitions of terms, offering free resources (like email templates), and many other digital marketing-related materials.
By becoming a go-to resource for digital marketers, not only do they get the opportunity to build their brand up. But they also get the opportunity to build trust in the marketing community. By displaying trust (in an actual way, not the EEAT way), you’re going to motivate marketers to want to get behind your SaaS solution (presuming marketers are your ideal customer personas).
ActiveCampaign generates more than 300,000 targeted visitors to the property, driving a significant amount of MRR/ARR.
Related: SaaS Content Audit (Guide)
4. Scribe
Scribe is another SaaS SEO success story. The tool allows teams to easily create process documents, instructionals, and other material that can be helpful for teams to get started with SEO early.
Scribe did a great job of using their own tool to help get started with SEO. While some of the targeting for these pages may not be as ideal as what we might execute (you really would want to be a little more specific with your TOFU and MOFU content), it’s still a great story of success.
The property gets more than 250,000 visitors each month from search. Some of these pages, however, highlight the power of Scribe as well rather than driving demand generation or inbound marketing for the property. However, still a fantastic case study to see the startup grow.
5. Clio
Clio, a legal case management and legal software company, has done a great job with SEO. Bolstering a wonderful 400,000 monthly search visitors and targeting the right types of people with their keyword and page strategy.
What they’ve done quite well at is utilizing service pages that target very specific ideal customer personas that exist in their space. Rather than just focusing on informational articles, they used those informational articles to support their “money pages.” Or the solutions pages that are going to drive inbound leads.
As a result, keywords like “case management software,” which gets 1,900 monthly searchers, have Clio sitting at the #2 position. That’s quite the demand to be capturing. And a wonderful display of how to utilize middle-of-funnel along with top-of-funnel.
6. Softr
Softr is a no-code web application development tool. Which, for many thinking about that industry, wouldn’t put SEO as the primary channel for acquisition. However, Softr has done a great job increasing the share of voice (market share) and brand awareness for the software application. Bringing in more than 120,000 monthly search visitors.
Very similar to Scribe, some of the keyword targeting that we see we wouldn’t truly recommend. That’s because it’s most likely bringing in traffic, but not generating as many free trials or subscribers as they would like.
It’s important to know how to generate the right SEO strategy for your SaaS business from the start. A few wrong turns could be detrimental to your organic search performance over time. Google and other search engines now use these pages (the pages you publish) to understand your domain more than they do backlinks.
Common Questions
Common questions about SaaS SEO:
How soon should a SaaS business start investing in SEO?
If you’re a startup and you want to know how to grow your SaaS business, use our guide right here.
SaaS businesses have a unique advantage with SEO. Software shoppers are still going into search engines to be able to determine the best product for them and their business. As a result, SaaS businesses should be investing in SEO very early.
Since SEO can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months to truly start generating returns (real revenue from organic search), it’s important to start early.
How much does SEO cost for SaaS companies?
On average, a SaaS company (without extensive copywriting needs) should expect to spend anywhere between $4,000 to $10,000 per month, on average. There are certainly cheaper agencies and freelancers in the market. However, if you want someone who truly understands how to generate returns from organic search, specifically for SaaS companies, you’re going to need to spend a little extra month.
Does SaaS SEO work for B2B and consumer products?
Yes. Most likely, there’s a keyword out there that matches your business. Whether you’re an enterprise SaaS company, a B2B SaaS company, or a consumer SaaS company—SEO can be a strong and foundational aspect of your business growth.
Other SaaS SEO Resources
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🕵️ Fact checked
This article was fact-checked for the accuracy of the information it disclosed on:
November 21, 2024
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