Key Takeaways
- Using SEO to target high-intent keywords and drive qualified traffic is a great way to boost SQLs for B2B companies.
- SEO campaigns offer significantly lower CPL (Cost-Per-Click) than PPC campaigns with many CPCs growing faster than the CPI (Consumer Price Index).
- Brand and entity authority are the #1 priority for B2B companies targeting growth.
- The following SEO strategies are essential for growth:
- Building buyer personas
- Keyword research
- Establishing authority through backlinks
- Creating topic clusters
- Internal linking
- Building keyword-dense URLs
- Optimizing headings
- Technical improvements, like mobile optimization, less than 2-second page load times, and schema markup
For today’s biggest B2B SaaS trailblazers, SEO is a unique tool to increase free trials, target and land high-value clients, and expand their reach across multiple channels simultaneously.
In this detailed B2B SaaS digital marketing deep dive, we’ll break down why SEO is a must-have in today’s digital landscape and how you can maximize your reach with the right SEO strategies for B2B SaaS.
Table of Contents
How SEO Makes a Difference in B2B SaaS
As a top B2B SaaS SEO agency, we know that SEO is now, more than ever, a vital lifeline for B2B organizations.
Impulse and short-term thinking drive most sales in the B2C world, whereas B2B sales cycles are much, much longer. They involve multiple decision-makers who each conduct a massive amount of research before moving forward.
What’s SEO’s job here? To make sure that when a CEO, CTO, or procurement manager looks up a problem on Google, they’ll see your name pop up first. That’s why 81% of B2B companies spend over $7,500 on SEO monthly. Other benefits include:
- Long-Term Value: As a B2B SaaS SEO agency, we’ve always emphasized that SEO can be a vehicle to drive Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) in the long term. These are high-value buyers who are ready to commit to a purchase if presented with the right solution.
We do this by consistently driving qualified traffic over time, using high-intent keywords like “secure cloud hosting solutions” to ensure your content surfaces exactly when prospects are actively researching solutions. - Brand Authority: Brand and entity authority are the #1 priority for B2B companies targeting growth today. Google’s AI Overviews and even AI-powered tools like ChatGPT assess authority to determine which pages might offer the best solutions for searchers.
Our strategies focus on building that authority by consistently ranking for industry-relevant terms. - Lower CPL: If you’re using SEO for B2B SaaS, you can look forward to a significantly lower Cost Per Lead compared to paid advertising channels. Advertising costs are rising consistently across most PPC channels today. In fact, Search Engine Land’s Mark Meyerson notes that “12 out of 23 industries analyzed have CPCs (Cost-Per-Click) growing faster than the CPI” (Consumer Price Index).
Working with a B2B SaaS SEO agency is your ticket to getting the best possible ROI at a fraction of the cost compared to relying solely on paid advertising channels.
How Slack Used SEO To Drive High-Value Leads
Let’s kick things off with an example from one of the most successful B2B SaaS companies operating today: Slack. Slack used the power of B2B SaaS digital marketing to dominate search engine results for terms like ‘team collaboration software.’ Their strategy involved a couple of interesting moves:
- They moved their blog (formerly known as ‘Several People are Typing’) from Medium to their own domain, allowing them full control over their content and more freedom for future SEO strategies.
- They went all-in on targeting high-value businesses, especially with detailed customer stories covering their impact. These case studies are dense with high-intent, long-tail keywords to subtly guide prospects to their platform.
- Their focus for content creation was squarely on originality and value creation. Whether it’s a whitepaper or a standard blog, their pages offered original, valuable information you couldn’t find anywhere else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is working with a B2B SaaS SEO agency worth it?
It almost always is. Working with a trusted lead gen SEO agency like Coalition Technologies can help you stay ahead of B2B SaaS trends and improve your ROI with strategies proven to perform.
Why should I use SEO for my B2B SaaS company?
It’s simple: SEO offers one of the most cost-efficient ways for B2B SaaS companies to drive more SQLs, free trials, and sales over the long term and boost their brand authority.
What does a B2B SaaS SEO strategy involve?
Your typical B2B SaaS SEO strategy will be multifaceted and involve various steps, such as audience research, keyword research, content planning, and on/off-page SEO.
B2B Saas SEO Strategies
Know Your Audience
As a leading B2B SaaS SEO agency, we’re familiar with the importance of knowing your audience before trying to talk to them. You can’t consistently expect to sell to high-value buyers without understanding what makes them tick.
That process starts with buyer personas. These personas should:
- Be Specific: The more specific you are, the more effectively you’ll be able to tailor your messaging. Mention details like job titles and the responsibilities involved with them in your personas. You’re not selling your solution to Customer X, you’re selling to CFO Tony, age 40, who likes Oxford commas and hates overpriced software.
- Outline Pain Points: Marketing is all about solving problems. Work with a B2B SaaS SEO agency to understand the problems your customers want to solve. This could be anything from generating more SQLs to boosting free trials. Don’t be that company that can’t tell its target audience from a random LinkedIn lurker.
SaaS Keyword Research
The biggest concern for businesses using SEO for B2B SaaS is the evolving nature of search engines and consumer preferences. You shouldn’t target generic keyword strings just because that’s where the volume is. Tools like AI Overviews have affected top-of-the-funnel clicks, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be your priority.
Your strategy needs to cover the broad spectrum of the buyer’s journey, whether they’re just getting started or they’re ready to purchase. For example, you should be:
- Targeting top-of-the-funnel users with long-tail educational keywords and long-form content to help them learn more.
- Working with a B2B SaaS SEO agency to create more detailed resources for users further along the journey, such as whitepapers, to help them understand your solutions.
- Use transactional keywords to convert users at the end of the funnel. They’re informed and ready to purchase a solution, and it’s up to you to give them that last push. For example, a cloud SaaS company might target keywords like ‘Cost of implementing cloud ERP solutions’ at this stage.
Establish Authority
B2B SaaS digital marketing revolves around establishing domain authority. This right here is the secret sauce that’s going to make Google and your sales prospects notice your website. Trying to rank for competitive terms like ‘CRM software’ without backlinks and interlinked content? That plan’s going to fall flatter than a ’90s band reunion.
Ask any B2B SaaS SEO agency, and they’ll tell you this is a long process, but it’s well worth it. The key is to prioritize quality over quantity here. Start by building topic clusters: topics that revolve around your SaaS solution and the problems it aims to solve.
For example, the main theme for a healthcare startup using SEO for B2B SaaS might be ‘Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems.’ Around this central topic, you’d have a cluster of topics like:
- EHR software
- Automating EHR
- EHR patient support
The startup could then use these topics to build content around them, allowing it to effectively target its buyer personas. For example, a blog about EHR patient support could discuss how the startup uses AI chatbots to expedite customer service.
Last but not least, you’ll have to make sure to link these pages to each other in a way that makes sense to search engine crawlers and users. A first-time visitor should easily be able to find related content on the same page. If you’re unfamiliar with internal linking strategies, we strongly recommend working with a B2B SaaS SEO agency to build one around your brand.
On-Page and Technical SEO
On-page and technical SEO are the nuts and bolts of your B2B SEO strategy. On-page SEO focuses on:
- Using keyword-optimized title tags to convey what the page is about and convince readers to click through.
- Optimizing content headings (H1, H2, etc.) to help users and search engines navigate your pages. If possible, your H1 should include the primary keyword.
- Internal linking (mentioned above) helps build your topic clusters and keeps users engaged, which has a direct impact on SEO.
- Building keyword-dense URLs that are helpful and relevant to the page. Stay away from using jargon or long number strings in your URLs.
Technical SEO for B2B SaaS is where you ensure your website isn’t a clunky mess. This involves elements like mobile optimization, page load times (under 2 seconds is optimal here!), page security, and implementing changes like speakable schema markup to make your page more relevant for AI chatbot recommendations.
Pro Tip: If you can’t consult a professional agency, try running a free audit tool like Ahrefs to catch broken links before they tank your rankings. If you skip technical SEO, your website’s going to be a digital dinosaur in no time.
SaaS Customer Story: How We Drove Sales for Azure Maps
As a top B2B SaaS SEO agency, we’re constantly working with some of the biggest enterprises on the market today. One of those SaaS solutions included Azure Maps (formerly Bing Maps) by Microsoft.
Microsoft wanted to re-establish their top position amidst an increasingly competitive market, and they tapped our B2B SaaS digital marketing expertise to do it.
Our solution involved an extensive technical SEO audit to identify issues like redirect errors, targeted PPC campaigns, and website enhancements with optimized copy to engage and convert visitors. In less than a year, we increased site traffic by 27%, decreased bounce rates, and surpassed our goal conversion rate of 11.56%.
Scale with SEO Today
If you’re targeting skeptical CFOs and overwhelmed IT directors, we’re the B2B SaaS SEO agency you can trust to get the right eyeballs. Ready to make your SaaS the talk of their C-suite? Contact Coalition Technologies for a free consultation today.
