There are many ways for digital-first companies to get their products and services in front of others. However, just because these methods exist doesn’t mean that they are all created equal. Paid social or PPC campaigns are great if you know exactly who you are targeting and have the consistent ad budget to invest in this targeting. However, it is difficult to attach a specific ROI to ad spend, especially if you do not have a tried-and-true product. This is often the case with SaaS companies that create niche software solutions to be adopted by a specific user base or industry. However, even they think they can just target people that they think would be interested in their SaaS product, this doesn’t mean that they actually will be. In fact, oftentimes businesses find that their target demographic ends up being markedly different than what they had first thought it would be.
For SaaS companies, one great way to discover who their audience is through the SaaS SEO process. In applying specifically to SaaS companies, they can use their SEO efforts to go beyond what something like an ecommerce company is capable of. For ecommerce, keywords tend to be product based. For example, a men’s clothing company may want to rank for ‘men’s shirts’ and will tie their KPI around a keyword that is far too broad.
SaaS companies, however, have a unique opportunity to expand their reach beyond just selling subscription-based software solutions. They can use the keyword research process to actually research the problems that people are facing. They can then use that process to assign buyer personas to particular keywords or keyword groups and gear the content toward these users. This, in turn, will help Google recognize what people are really looking for when searching for a particular keyword. By doing this, you can help actually alter the search intent of a keyword, provided that the content you create actually addresses what your buyer personas are looking for.
In the keyword research process, SaaS companies can actually look at problems that people are searching for resolutions for. They can then take these keywords and develop features of their SaaS products to address these issues that searchers are having. This, in turn, will help their SaaS solution grow and increase their user adoption rate. This makes the synergy between the SaaS SEO process and the developing of a SaaS solution undeniable, as exploring keywords and creating valuable content can be done in tandem with rolling out new software features and marketing toward new buyer personas.
Ultimately, SaaS companies have a lot to benefit from in terms of SEO. Not only are SaaS companies well-suited for SEO, but they also do not benefit as much from paid ads. This is because paid ads for software do not often convert as well as those that are geared toward ecommerce sites. As such, SEO is a great alternative to paid ads and allows SaaS companies to further explore the ways that people may find or use their SaaS product via search.