The abbreviation OKR stands for Objective and Key Results. It's a way for business teams to manage expectations of what specific business units should be executing against, as part of a broader strategic company initiative, as well as manage expectations for the types of key results that the business unit should be aiming to achieve. OKRs can be used in a variety of disciplines, from product management to marketing. In which SEO would sit under the marketing umbrella.
A SaaS SEO OKR would be considered a marketing OKR for a SaaS company with a strict focus on what the SEO team should be achieving.
Key Takeaways
- SaaS SEO OKRs are objectives and key results that are set by executive teams which help to guide the marketing discipline (search engine optimization) for a given quarter or for a given fiscal year.
- Objectives (O) are overarching opportunities that have been determined by execute teams as necessary areas for improvement.
- Key Results (KRs) are the expected outcomes from the business unit. These usually include defined metrics that can assist teams in setting roadmaps and activities for the fiscal year.
What is a SaaS SEO OKR?
A SaaS SEO OKR is a set of objectives and key results that are associated with an SEO teams general objectives and expected results that they aim to achieve. More commonly, OKRs are set on either a quarterly or an annual basis, depending on the level of complexity that the OKR defines. For example, if the key results within the OKR are fairly substantial, a team may be tasked with trying to achieve that OKR for all four consecutive quarters in a given fiscal year.
The OKR is usually determined by a group of executive leaders. These executive leaders usually develop a financial plan, which is a tool that's used to map out the expected needs of growth for a business, then mapped further into objectives for individual teams. This would be led by a Chief Marketing Officer or Vice President of Marketing. And would then go to a VP of SEO or another type of professional to then start working against the OKR.
Once an OKR is set (remember, these are Objectives and expected Key Results), an SEO team that's working within a SaaS business may start creating a quarterly road map of activities that helps to set the team up for success and meet those expectations of the business.
Related: SaaS SEO Guide
Examples of KPIs for the SaaS SEO Key Results
The KPIs or key results that might be expected by a marketing leadership team could be one or many of the following KPIs. For SaaS businesses that are looking to use organic search to grow, usually, they rely on these key indicators for success:
- 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
Related: SaaS SEO KPIs
Before we start defining key results that may contain some of these KPIs, we should first set our objectives.
Examples of Objectives for SaaS SEO OKRs
Objectives should be generic enough to leave room for teams to execute. However, specific enough to provide guidance. The way that Objectives in OKRs are crafted can be highly important to the overall success of the teams. It's vital that leaders spend time thinking about how they word their OKRs, especially if it's providing guidance for a complete fiscal year.
Here are some examples of objectives:
- Improve organic search presence
- Improve share of voice against competitors
- Improve our MQL and SQL lead velocity rates
- Improve our website and readiness for SEO
While those are fairly generic, you'll start to see how they come into play when we combine them with key results.
Examples of Key Results for SaaS SEO OKRs
Key Results (KRs) are usually two to three expected outcomes that the team should be striving for. They should contain metrics or specific targets that help to set the tone of the work. Here would be some examples of key results:
- Increase rate of MQL and SQLs by 20%
- Increase retention rate from organic search customers by 15%
- Increase organic search share of voice by 30%
- Increase lead velocity rate (LVR) by 18%
- Reduce LTV:CAC ratio from organic search by 25%
- Increase our average annual contract value from organic search by 25%
These types of key results should help guide the activities that are set by the SEO team. For example, the SEO team may then create a robust roadmap of activities that contain optimizing product pages, creating top-of-funnel content, coordinating with other marketing teams, driving off-page needs that help to increase share of voice or visibility in SERPs (search engine results pages).
Combining the Objectives and Key Results
Here are some examples of combined objectives and key results for SaaS SEO teams:
- Improve organic search presence
- Increase rate of MQL and SQLs by 22%
- Increase lead velocity rate (LVR) by 18%
- Improve share of voice against competitors
- Increase organic search share of voice by 30%
- Reduce LTV:CAC ratio from organic search by 25%
If you're doing the diligence to understand the business correctly, there shouldn't be a drastic amount of OKRs to choose from. They should be fairly evident once you have the top-level business strategy determined. In addition, they may actually repeat year-over-year. Since SEO and organic search is one of the slower marketing channels to mature, it's more likely that you set annual OKRs for the SEO team and that you set year-over-year objectives.
Related: B2B SEO Guide
Other SaaS SEO Resources
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November 5, 2024
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