How the SaaS Business Model Benefits from an SEO Strategy
The SaaS business model has become increasingly popular with software companies in recent years. Using this business model, software companies develop software solutions and then rent it out to companies or individuals who may need it on a monthly or annual basis. This business model differs dramatically from how software companies used to create and package software in the past. Instead of selling lifetime access to a static software solution at a fixed price, the SaaS model allows for a ‘living software’ that can continually be updated to best serve the needs of its customers.
However, in order to do this, the SaaS business model requires that a software company perform extensive research into its buyer personas. Doing this will allow you to move beyond cold pitching and emailing and actually have leads come to you. Finding the right keywords using SEO is a great way to do this. By using the power of SEO, SaaS companies can better target their buyer personas and hone their software features through the use of keywords and identifying why leads are coming to their site through search in the first place.
Researching keywords is just one part of creating a holistic SaaS SEO strategy. By following all of the steps in a SaaS SEO strategy: keyword research, website optimization, content marketing, and link building, SaaS companies can leverage SEO to both learn more about their buyer personas and make their software something that these buyer personas will want to use.
Being able to set up their website to win out in the SERPs will give SaaS companies a huge boost. For one, SaaS companies can actually use their keyword research efforts to create content. This content can take the form of an ‘ultimate guide’ a whitepaper, an eBook, or a blog post. In certain instances, this content can even be an ‘alternative’ page that shows how your SaaS product is better than that of a competitor. However, you don’t just to create quality content, you have to make sure that it ranks. While bigger SaaS companies have the resources to invest in more expensive and intricate content, you can beat them out in certain niches by finding the right keywords and optimizing your content toward that.
Once this is done, you’ll then want to build links to your keyword-targeted content. Getting links from other websites, either on a promotional or editorial basis, will help your website gain relevance to Google. For SaaS companies, this is particularly important, as the keywords you will be targeting and content you will be creating will often be niche and targeted toward particular buyer persona. As a SaaS company, you also want to make sure that you can relate the website that is linking to you back to your SaaS product in some way, such as technology, business, or the specific SaaS niche you are targeting.
By investing in a SaaS SEO strategy, and finding the right keywords, creating the right content, and building the right backlinks, you’ll be able to guarantee that your SaaS solution gets in front of the right people. However, in order to make sure that your software is right for them, you’ll want to leverage the power of the business model and make tweaks to your software to better target these buyer personas while thinking of it as a ‘living software’.
