How to develop SEO Strategy for SaaS
If you’re building or scaling a SaaS company, SEO can be your most powerful and cost-efficient growth lever, but only with the right strategy. Generic SEO tactics won’t cut it in a world of complex B2B funnels, product-led growth models, and intent-rich buyer journeys.
With leading B2B SaaS companies seeing up to 702% ROI from SEO and hitting breakeven in 7 months on average, not investing in SEO means falling behind.
This guide breaks down how to build a high-impact SaaS SEO strategy from the ground up one that drives pipeline, reduces CAC, and compounds over time. Whether you’re pre-Series A or expanding globally, this is your blueprint for turning organic search into a scalable acquisition engine.
Related reading:
What is SaaS SEO?
SaaS SEO is the process of optimizing a Software-as-a-Service company's website to increase its visibility on search engines, attract qualified traffic, and convert visitors into leads or customers. It involves targeting keywords that match the entire buyer journey, from awareness to decision, to drive sustainable growth.
Differences Between B2B and B2C SaaS SEO
B2B SaaS companies typically have different SEO levers and more nuanced growth opportunities compared B2C SaaS products.
There are differences in;
- - Customer profiles
- - Sales cycles
- - Product complexities
- - Pricing models
- - Buyer behaviors
- - Budgets
- - ACV
- - Level of customer support
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SEO for SaaS Companies
In the SaaS industry, growth is often driven by various channels layered on top of one another. SEO plays a critical role as an acquisition lever, providing a sustainable, cost-effective path for attracting high-intent traffic, generating leads, and supporting long-term revenue growth.
For SaaS businesses, a well-developed SEO strategy aligns closely with the broader Go-To-Market (GTM) approach, positioning SEO as a core driver of scalable, repeatable growth.
How SaaS SEO benefits growth:
- - Scalable growth engine
- - Supports the full SaaS buyer journey
- - Builds brand authority and trust
- - Complementary growth lever
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SaaS SEO Strategy Definition
A SaaS SEO strategy defines top-down how a business is leveraging its competitive advantages to solve its core challenges through SEO. It outlines the differentiated approach the business takes to executing specific SEO tactics to overcome these challenges.
The 3 Components of a SaaS SEO Strategy:
1. Challenge
This is “the why” behind the SEO strategy. This remains constant barring a major change to the business model that presents an entirely new set of challenges.
Example from our Cascade case study: The identified challenge was to reach and educate our ICPs that there was a solution to their problem of strategy execution. SEO was identified as the channel to access the entire buyer journey, from problem aware to customer.
2. Approach
The approach is “the what” of the SEO strategy, this is the framework that guides the direction and differentiation of the strategy. This can be adjusted or changed from time to time when the problem space or market changes.
Example from our Dovetail case study: To overcome this challenge of capturing people who do research was to leverage our competitive advantages of brand strength and resources to create content pillars under umbrella terms like “research”, “product development”, and “experience” to gain topical authority, addressing the entire buyer journey.
3. Tactics
SEO tactics are the initiatives that address “how” a business solves its critical challenge/s. These tactics will change completely over time as the product, growth models, market, competitors, etc shift or evolve.
Example from our Dovetail case study:
- - Migrate domains to improve brand strength
- - Write 100’s of articles on the topics over 12 months
- - Prioritize EEAT by creating author pages to strengthen topical authority
- - Create Jobs-to-be-done pages addressing adjacent pain points - internally linked from articles
SaaS SEO Strategy Framework
Bringing the “Why” and “What” Together
Our strategy will define top-down how we’re leveraging our competitive advantages to solve our core challenges through SEO. It outlines the differentiated approach we’ll take to overcome these challenges.
SaaS SEO Strategy Example:
Challenge
To reach everyone in the research process and not just researchers, SEO was identified as the channel to access the entire buyer journey, from problem aware to customer.
Approach
Leverage our competitive advantages of brand strength and resources to create content pillars under umbrella terms like “research”, “product development”, and “experience” to gain topical authority, addressing the entire buyer journey.
Key Takeaway: Developing a SaaS SEO strategy requires in-depth knowledge of the product, market, customer journey, and SEO landscape. With this understanding, companies can tailor their approach and select tactics that effectively address key challenges and maximize growth potential.
Characteristics of a Well-developed SaaS SEO strategy:
- - Communicates the core challenge concisely
- - Gets the most out of competitive advantages
- - Aligns with the broader GTM strategy
- - Is inherently scalable
- - Strategy first, tactics second
- - Provides context for each tactic
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Is it Time to Rethink Your SaaS SEO Strategy?
Determining when it’s time to iterate or pivot away from your existing strategy is a tough decision as numerous factors come into play. We recommend asking these questions to assess whether you need a change;
- - Are you addressing your core business challenge?
- - Is your strategy differentiated and scalable? Utilizing your competitive advantages?
- - Are you still growing? Has your growth been impacted by any external factors?
- - Are your tactics aligned under your approach?
Unsure if your current SEO strategy is still effective? Let us help you evaluate and optimize your approach.
How to Develop a SEO Strategy for SaaS
After defining top-down how we’re leveraging our competitive advantages to solve our core challenges through SEO. We now develop the differentiated approach we’ll take to overcome these challenges through tactics.
SEO Discovery
SEO discovery is the critical decision-making process that guides SEO teams in prioritizing their next steps. This process consists of two key phases: gaining a deep understanding of the business and clearly defining the core SEO challenges. By conducting discovery work before setting an SEO strategy, teams can ensure their efforts align with business goals and address the most impactful opportunities.
Understand the Customer, Product, Business, and Market
Building on from the process of validating SEO as an effective acquisition channel, we need to deepen our understanding of the;
- - Product functionality, core solution it provides, and adjacent jobs to be done
- - Core and adjacent pain points of the customer
- - The buyer journey
- - Main business challenges, goals, metrics
- - Gap between your current performance and goal
- - Overarching business and GTM strategy
- - Business model and existing growth motions
- - Existing resources and competitive advantages
- - Assets, resources, and growth in comparison to competitors
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Understand SEO Landscape
After gaining a deeper level of knowledge about the customer, product, business, and market we then dive into the SEO landscape to gain the context that will inform the approach “the what” we take to the identified challenge and identify tactics “the how” to test.
- - Current SEO Strategy - acquisition, activation, monetization, retention from SEO (& PPC) - What’s working? Driving traffic? Engaging, and converting?
- - SEO levers - Do we aggregate or integrate content? Is there potential to evolve?
- - Existing content approach - What are our current topics? What topics align with our product(s), and which do we need to win?
- - Technical SEO debt
- - Competitors SEO strategies
- - Buyer journey in search, How does our target audience search? Specific language used?
- - Solutions, use cases, and jobs-to-be-done in search environment
- - Topics - search volume, difficulty, semantic relevance, intent, and estimated conversion %
Developing SaaS SEO Tactics + Examples
Now we develop tactics, these are under the defined approach to the identified challenge, which essentially explains how we will impact the business goal. Through the SEO discovery process, we have the context required to develop SEO tactics tailored to the unique offering of our SaaS product.
To showcase how this process works, we’ll use the approach from our Dovetail Case Study
With Dovetail, we leveraged our competitive advantages of brand strength and resources to create content pillars under umbrella terms like “research”, “product development”, and “experience” to gain topical authority, addressing the entire buyer journey.
Defined Approach: 5 Step Framework
- - Create and prioritize keywords within topics (including ICP pain points)
- - Map keywords to the SaaS buyer journey
- - Conduct keyword gap analysis and analyze search competition
- - Identify SEO opportunities and explore SEO levers
- - Prioritize, develop, and test tactics
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Example Tactics
- - Migrated domains to improve brand strength
- - Wrote 100’s of articles on the topics - focusing on semantic relevance
- - Prioritized EEAT by creating author pages to strengthen the topical authority
- - Created Jobs-to-be-done pages addressing adjacent pain points - internally linked from articles
- - Future state - Leverage the product and business model to shift to a PLG acquisition motion facilitating scalable Product-Led SEO via the aggregation of user-generated templates.
SEO Metrics for SaaS
Now we’ve defined the key challenge and outlined the strategic approach we need to understand the North Star and choose KPIs and Input Metrics that align with our GTM approach and ladder up to the overall business goal.
SaaS Growth Framework:
- - The North Star Metric encapsulates the ultimate goal of delivering customer value and achieving long-term growth.
- - KPIs measure the effectiveness of these activities in achieving specific business objectives.
- - Input Metrics represent the controllable activities and processes that a company can adjust to influence outcomes.
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Example Frameworks
The approach to laddering up metrics to the business goal differs from SaaS to SaaS, but all follow the same formula in the sense that the North Star Metric is the output of the Input Metrics.
Example 1 - Business Strategy
North Star Metric: Monthly Active Users (MAUs)
KPIs: Conversion Rate, CAC, Churn
Input Metrics: ICP Signups
Example 2 - GTM Strategy
North Star Metric: Net New MRR
KPIs: Conversion Rate, CAC, ACV
Input Metrics: ICP Signups
All SaaS businesses approach this differently, but this is the general framework for measuring SaaS growth. Setting these metrics at the strategic level ensures that the tactics developed will be aligned with our approach to the main business challenge.
Metrics at the Tactic Level
Each tactic needs to have metrics that indicate what’s driving the impact, how it’s going, and to what standard, these need to clearly ladder up so that at a glance someone can understand the why, what, and how. These metrics are Leading Indicators, Quality, and Guard Rail Metrics, which ladder up into the input metric.
As an example, let’s say our North Star Metric is New MRR and one of our KPIs is ICP Signups. The Input Metric at the Tactic level is organic traffic, meaning our metrics need to clearly ladder up to organic traffic. Depending on the tactic the Leading Indicator could be search impressions, the Quality Metric content quality score on X tool, and the Guard Rail Metric of pages indexed. These indicate how the tactic is going at a glance and clearly show a connection to the North Star.
Example 3 - Product-Led SEO Strategy
North Star Metric: Net New MRR
KPIs: Free to Paid Conversion Rate
Input Metric: ICP Signups
Guard Rail Metric: Search Impressions
Leading Indicator: Organic Traffic
Quality Metric: Avg Time on Page
SEO Roadmaps for SaaS Success
An SEO roadmap is the SEO implementation plan that outlines the specific steps, timelines, and objectives necessary to achieve growth goals through SEO. It’s important to clarify that an SEO roadmap is not an SEO strategy, the roadmap facilitates the strategy. This is unfortunately a common misconception.
For SaaS companies, an SEO roadmap provides a structured plan for executing and tracking SEO that is visible to the wider business. It’s a living document that guides SEO initiatives over the short, medium, and long term, ensuring alignment with business goals and flexibility to adapt to changing market or search trends.
What’s on an SEO roadmap for SaaS businesses?
- - Defined goals and metrics
- - Initiatives and tactics
- - CRO tests and experiments
- - On-Page SEO testing cadence
- - Content development and distribution
- - Technical SEO work
- - Backlink and authority building
- - Competitor analysis and benchmarking
- - Planned research
How to Forecast SEO Traffic For SaaS
Let’s say our example is a B2B SaaS company with a product designed for project management. Their goal is to increase monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by driving organic signups through SEO. Here’s how they might approach forecasting:
1. Establish Baseline Metrics
Our SaaS currently drives 10,000 organic visits per month, converting 2% of traffic to signups, with a monthly average of 200 signups and an average customer value (ACV) of $1,200. The North Star Metric is net new MRR, and the key Input Metrics are organic traffic and conversion rate.
2. Apply Incremental Growth Assumptions
Based on past performance and expected improvements from SEO initiatives, our SaaS estimates monthly traffic growth of 3% through targeted content, on-page optimizations, and technical improvements. They also expect a slight conversion rate increase from 2% to 2.2% due to improved content relevance and targeted CTAs.
- Traffic Growth: 10,000 organic visits + (10,000 * 0.03) = 10,300 visits in Month 1
- Conversion Rate: Increase from 2% to 2.2%
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3. Forecast Organic Signups
Using these assumptions, our SaaS forecasts monthly organic signups based on projected traffic and conversion rate:
- Month 1: 10,300 visits * 2.2% = 226 signups
- Month 2: 10,609 visits * 2.2% = 233 signups
- Month 3: 10,927 visits * 2.2% = 240 signups
These incremental increases in traffic and conversions are expected to contribute a modest but steady growth in organic signups.
4. Translate Signups into MRR Impact
Given an ACV of $1,200, each new signup contributes approximately $100 in monthly recurring revenue. Using this, our SaaS can project incremental MRR from organic signups:
- Month 1: 226 signups * $100 = $22,600 in new MRR
- Month 2: 233 signups * $100 = $23,300 in new MRR
- Month 3: 240 signups * $100 = $24,000 in new MRR
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5. Adjust Based on External Factors and Track
While the forecast projects growth based on SEO efforts, it’s essential to consider potential changes in the search environment, trends, seasonal fluctuations, and competitive updates. Tracking actual results against these projections monthly allows our SaaS to adjust assumptions, such as revising traffic growth rates or conversion targets based on real performance.
6. Evaluate Quarterly and Yearly Impact
At the end of each quarter, our SaaS assesses cumulative organic MRR growth. With consistent execution, the company expects to see YoY growth in organic-driven MRR, supporting a compelling case for further SEO investment.
Key Challenges in SaaS SEO Forecasting
- Baseline Traffic: basing forecasts on past performance often results in unrealistic expectations because it combines historical traffic with incremental growth from existing tactics.
- Cross-functional Collaboration Dependencies: the strategy may be dependent on other teams for implementation, which can result in delays and affect the projected growth.
- Initiatives & Scalability: SaaS SEO tactics vary in scalability and confidence level, this is more pronounced when shifting growth motions.
SEO ROI Calculator for SaaS
16 SEO Tools for SaaS Strategies
The SEO softwares required will vary depending on the strategy and tactics you execute. We’ve grouped these into tiers to give you an idea of what you need as a minimum vs running a Programmatic SEO strategy at scale for example. These tiers stack on top of one another;
Tier 1 - Essential
Tier 2 - Growth
Tier 3 - Scale
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Programmatic SEO Workflow for SaaS
- Find keywords with Ahrefs
- Lay out your page in Figma
- Collect data with ScrapingBee
- Organize your data in AirTable
- Create content outline with Frase
- Generate images with Placid
- Build your pages in Webflow
- Sync your data and template with Whalesync
- Track your traffic in Google Analytics
Key Takeaway: SEO tools are essential for executing a SaaS SEO strategy. A structured toolkit covering keyword research, data collection, content development, and analytics ensures teams can effectively implement and measure SEO tactics at scale.
SaaS SEO Strategy FAQs
How is SaaS SEO different from traditional SEO?
SaaS SEO requires a specialized approach distinct from traditional SEO. To rank high in SERPs, SaaS companies must prioritize content that resonates with their target audience and strategically target keywords directly related to their product or service.
How important is SEO in a SaaS business?
SaaS SEO is essential for attracting organic traffic and generating leads for your business. By leveraging the right strategies and tools, you can optimize your website for search engines, increasing its visibility to potential customers.
What is the difference between SEO strategy and SEO tactics?
In SEO, tactics and strategy are often used interchangeably, but they serve different purposes. Tactics involve specific actions taken to optimize a website for search engines, while strategy provides the overarching framework that aligns SEO efforts with broader business goals.
How to create a SEO strategy for a SaaS product?
A successful SaaS SEO strategy involves a multifaceted approach, including keyword research, on-page optimization, technical SEO, content creation, and link building, all geared towards driving organic traffic and conversions.
Here's a more detailed breakdown:
1. Understand Your ICP and Buyer Journey
- Define your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) based on roles, industries, pain points, and use cases.
- Map the buyer journey: Awareness → Consideration → Decision → Retention.
2. Conduct Deep Keyword & Intent Research
- Identify high-intent keywords by funnel stage: TOFU (informational), MOFU (comparison/use case), BOFU (product-led, sign-up).
- Use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, GSC, and Infranodus to uncover keyword clusters and semantic opportunities.
3. Build a Scalable Content Strategy
- Develop content types by funnel stage:
- TOFU: Blogs, guides, explainers, programmatic pages
- MOFU: Use cases, industry pages, templates, comparison content
- BOFU: Feature pages, demo/trial CTAs, case studies, pricing
4. Optimize Technical & On-Page SEO
- Ensure fast load times, mobile responsiveness, and crawlability.
- Implement structured data (schema), meta tags, internal linking, and clean URL structure.
5. Create Product-Led & Intent-Driven Pages
- Build SEO landing pages around product features, templates, and use cases.
- Add clear CTAs: “Use Template,” “Start Free Trial,” “Get a Demo.”
6. Implement Semantic SEO & Topical Authority
- Use topic clusters to dominate SaaS niches.
- Optimize for entities, context, and natural language to rank in generative engines like Google SGE and ChatGPT.
7. Earn Authority with Backlinks
- Pitch guest posts, digital PR, thought leadership.
- Leverage case studies, templates, and tools for natural link acquisition.
8. Track, Measure & Iterate
- Measure metrics: organic traffic, keyword rankings, MQLs, CAC, activation.
- Use GA4, GSC, Looker Studio to assess performance and update content accordingly.
