As the world becomes more digitally dependent, SaaS, or Software as a Service, continues to rise in popularity. And with this popularity, comes fierce competition. For those companies wanting to boost brand awareness, stay ahead of competitors, and ultimately ensure their brand name is discoverable online, a solid search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy is absolutely essential.
In this latest HdE AGENCY article, we explain three SEO techniques that have proven time and time again to boost rankings.
#1 | Industry-specific Landing Pages and Testimonial Videos
When potential customers are searching for solutions, it’s not just about features and functionality. A lot of the time, people are searching for software solutions that they can see have added value to their specific industry. Before investing in your SaaS product, they want to know exactly how your business has helped other teams, individuals and organisations similar to theirs.
This is where industry-specific landing pages and testimonial videos can play a huge role in converting customers. These landing pages refer to web pages that are specifically created for a certain industry that you wish to target.
Let’s use HubSpot, a CRM software company, as an example. Its marketing software serves a huge range of industries, from healthcare and e-commerce to education and manufacturing. A prospective buyer from the education sector may be searching for a marketing solution that offers help with onboarding students. On the other hand, an e-commerce company may be looking for a solution that integrates with their Shopify store in order to seamlessly use online store data.
With this in mind, for those SaaS companies who target different industries, setting up targeted landing pages will enable them to boost rankings on search engines for relevant keywords and phrases i.e. “Marketing automation software for E-commerce businesses”. Not only will this help with SEO, but it will also make a huge difference in lead generation and conversion. Why?
Well, visitors will be taken directly to a personalised page that explains how the product or service they are after specifically addresses the pain points in their industry. You’ll also want to ensure this landing page is filled with industry vertical-specific content, including video customer testimonials from those in the industry, which will act as social proof to the prospective buyer. On top of this, you will want to include industry-specific blogs, guides and reports where you can further target those juicy keywords. The more personalised towards the industry, the more successful you will be at generating leads!
#2 | New Feature Announcement Content for SEO
The evolving nature of technology means that SaaS businesses are constantly developing, refining and releasing new product features and functionalities. From an SEO perspective, your business should be using this to your advantage, creating engaging content around these updates on a regular basis.
Keyword-targeted blog posts and articles should be written in support of new feature introductions. Combined with marketing content such as videos, graphics and imagery, these articles will become discoverable by search engines beyond the first announcement, playing a vital role in improving search ranking for your SaaS business. Let’s delve a little deeper into the typical forms new feature announcements take for technology and software companies.
SaaS product release notes
Product release notes or “changelogs” have become a common method for updating users of SaaS products about new features. They typically follow an easily scannable format, listing information in a chronological flow and update segmentation to make navigation nice and easy for users.
A great thing about product release notes is that they are often a great source of building backlinks. Experts and users are likely to link to the content in their own blogs and articles, which is of course a boost for ranking.
New feature announcements
This article format is typically more story-based, providing more detail about specific feature updates with well-crafted copy. A new feature announcement is a great opportunity to truly showcase your brand and how it sets itself apart from others in the industry. Here, you’ll need to ensure the benefits of the new features and functionalities are explained well.
Feature update videos
Sometimes the best way to tell users about new features added to your software product is simply by showing them. And video content and animated gifs are the perfect way to do so.
Not only does this push potential buyers along in the sales process by giving them a good idea of how your product actually works, but this type of media is also great for SEO. For one, having video on your website increases time spent on the page and secondly, video content can also be published on other platforms such as YouTube and social media, which can help drive visibility and traffic.
#3 | Guest Blogging To Create Backlinks
Last on today’s list of SEO-boosting tips for your SaaS business is one of the most tried and tested methods: guest blogging.
Guest posting has long been a valuable ingredient in the recipe for SEO and brand awareness success. Why? It helps to build brand authority, it increases visibility, and of course, it enables you to gain proper backlinks. It seems to work so well as it also happens to be a win-win scenario for those involved. It provides free content to the publication and backlinks to the other.
For SaaS companies, guest blogging is a way of not only allowing your brand to climb the rankings but also for exposure to your target audience through thought leadership articles from C-level executives, subject matter experts or marketing personnel.
What’s truly important with guest blogging is the quality of the piece. Writing something that is too spammy or salesy won’t work here. Instead, you’ll want to focus on providing the reader with real value, providing your expert opinion on the topic in question.
It’s not just guest blogging your company should be keeping on top of. Appear as a guest on a whole range of content forms can help you grow brand awareness while earning yourself a nice little backlink. Some examples to explore include being a guest speaker on an industry podcast and appearing as a panellist on a webinar. There are tons of opportunities out there!
If you’re a SaaS or technology business wanting to thrive, grow, and stay ahead of competitors, you absolutely should be applying the above three SEO strategies in 2022. Here at HdE AGENCY, we understand that this can seem like a lot of work, which is why we are on hand to take the load off your shoulders. When you’re ready, get in touch with us for a no-obligation chat with our SEO-obsessed experts about how we can help boost your brand.