A SaaS SEO roadmap is a structured strategy with a set time limit and outcomes expected, plus activities that are aimed at achieving those outcomes in that given amount of time. For example, a SaaS SEO roadmap that is 6-months long will contain different tactical components of the strategy than one that’s 12-months long.
Key Takeaways
- A SaaS SEO roadmap is a structured strategy with a set time limit and outcomes expected, plus activities that are aimed at achieving those outcomes in that given amount of time. For example, a SaaS SEO roadmap that is 6-months long will contain different tactical components of the strategy than one that’s 12-months long.
- A SaaS SEO roadmap should contain both technical and on-page optimizations as part of it's activities. Activities should get organized by individual months and broken down into achieving certain milestones.
- SaaS SEO roadmaps should contain timelines, outcomes, milestones, and activities or SEO tactics that will get deployed.
What is a SaaS SEO Roadmap?
A SaaS SEO roadmap is a strategic plan that outlines a timeline, outcomes (or KPIs), and tactical components of an SEO strategy that will help it achieve those metrics. The roadmap is a planning tool that’s used to communicate expectations between stakeholders, clients, SEO team members, and more.
Typically, the SaaS SEO roadmap is considered to be an alignment artifact that helps teams to collaborate more closely and manage expectations of what’s needed to achieve a certain set of goals, metrics, or KPIs.
What Should Be in a SaaS SEO Roadmap
A SaaS SEO roadmap should always begin with a set timeline. Is the roadmap for the next 3-months, 6-months, or 1-year? By having these set timelines, the strategy can get set with more accuracy. In side of the SaaS SEO roadmap should be:
1. Timeline
The timeline should set a fixed date on the strategy. Will the roadmap get followed for 3-months, 6-months, 8-months, or longer? By knowing the timeline, the strategy can get set on smaller increments. Including a monthly or bi-weekly cadence for the types of deliverables that are needed to achieve the outcomes.
2. Expected Outcomes
Metrics or KPIs should be set by executive staff members or by the SEO team themselves. These metrics could be traffic numbers, new customer figures, MRR/ARR, or some other type of leading indicator that helps to determine the effectiveness of the SEO campaign.
3. Milestones
Milestones should be important markers in the calendar or roadmap that indicate what should happen and when. Because SEO as a channel is so slow to mature, it’s important to set realistic milestones.
Example milestones should be something like the following:
- Completing 15 published blog posts: Completing 15 published blog posts by Month 1 of the roadmap would be a good milestone considering the team has complete control over the performance of meeting this date.
- Hiring an SEO strategist: Setting a date for when a new hire will be made can also be a great milestone to add to the roadmap. If a particular human resource is required to achieve the goals, it can be a controllable element to track the progress toward the greater plan (or roadmap itself).
4. Tactics / SEO Strategy
An accompanying SaaS keyword list may be your best method for determining your tactics and strategies that accompany the roadmap. As an example, you may want to target a number of informational blog posts that aim at bringing in new visitors that have pain points around what your SaaS product solves for. For maybe developing a number of service or feature pages that also target specific keywords.
Your roadmap should contain the elements of your strategy from a high-level, then break down the individual strategies that accompany them. You can use project management tools to create task clusters. Or even Google Spreadsheets to help to determine these strategies.
Try to set up your strategies and individual task needs on a monthly basis. And ensure that they’re well aligned to the milestones that you set. Then, create either a weekly or bi-weekly cadence of some type of internal reporting to ensure that your teams are on track.
SaaS SEO Roadmap Example
Most commonly, a planning roadmap of any kind is going to contain “multiple streams of work.” This is the concept that work can be done in parallel to achieve the fastest and strongest outcomes. Toward the end of this example, I’ll provide what a 6-month SaaS SEO roadmap may look like with multiple streams of work.
However, let’s break them down by the two common types of SEO work needed: technical and on-page. Both of which are the most important in ensuring that Google crawlers can access pages and that the pages they do access are made to be helpful, unique, insightful, and have healthy amounts of information gain.
6-month Roadmap
A SaaS business is attempting to:
- Increase organic keywords by 2X.
- Increase organic traffic by 1.2X.
- Increase organic leads and demo’s scheduled by 30%.
Technical SEO Needs
- Month 1: Address Google Search Console errors and resolve issues around missing sitemap and crawl errors reported in the Search Console.
- Month 2: Resolve robots.txt file from preventing pages from being crawled.
- Month 3: Resolve long meta descriptions throughout the entire property.
On-page SEO Needs
- Month 1: Hire content strategist and copywriter team to assist with content production around tutorials, product comparison guides, and feature pages.
- Month 2: Produce 10 informational articles highlighting tutorials around the use of AI and our core marketing features.
- Month 3: Optimize 10 service pages to align with the keyword strategy set. Produce 10 informational articles highlighting tutorials around the use of APIs and our core marketing features.
- Month 4: Produce 10 informational articles highlighting product competitors and comparing them to one another.
- Month 5: Produce 10 informational articles highlighting general budgeting, costs, and workflows related to our marketing features.
- Month 6: Produce 10 informational articles around thought leadership.
All SaaS SEO Activities
- Month 1:
- Technical: Address Google Search Console errors and resolve issues around missing sitemap and crawl errors reported in the Search Console.
- On-page: Hire content strategist and copywriter team to assist with content production around tutorials, product comparison guides, and feature pages.
- Month 2:
- Technical: Resolve robots.txt file from preventing pages from being crawled.
- On-page: Produce 10 informational articles highlighting tutorials around the use of AI and our core marketing features.
- Month 3:
- Technical: Resolve long meta descriptions throughout the entire property.
- On-page: Optimize 10 service pages to align with the keyword strategy set. Produce 10 informational articles highlighting tutorials around the use of APIs and our core marketing features.
- Month 4:
- On-page: Produce 10 informational articles highlighting product competitors and comparing them to one another.
- Month 5:
- On-page: Produce 10 informational articles highlighting general budgeting, costs, and workflows related to our marketing features.
- Month 6:
- On-page: Produce 10 informational articles around thought leadership.
Reviewing the Roadmap
As you can see from the SaaS SEO roadmap example above, most of your activities should be around on-page optimizations, creation of new content, and ensuring a strong foundation for Google’s crawlers to be able to access your website.
The way that Google is working these days is rather simple: using engagement metrics to determine when content is bringing new insights to the table and being helpful to Users. At the core of it, Google is a question and answer machine.
Because of that, you want to ensure that you’re not just simply copying what’s out there. Rather, having your own individual and unique perspective that gets Users to both feel like they’ve gotten their question answered as well as begin to trust your brand.
Common Questions
Questions about the SaaS SEO roadmap:
Should competitive research be part of the roadmap?
Ideally, it’s part of the roadmap before you create a 6-month roadmap. Knowing what your competitors are doing and how you’re going to compete with them feels more like a pre-planning phase to your roadmap.
If you don’t have these competitive insights, you probably shouldn’t be setting a 6-month goal for you, the company, or your team.
What tools can I use to look into what my competitors are doing in SEO?
My favorite tools are Ahrefs and SEMRush. Both of which offer a number of individual features that can assist in getting unique insights on what your competitors may or may not be doing.
Other SaaS SEO Resources
Written by Joshua Davis
VP of SEO
September 9, 2024
